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Johnny Hallyday: the last chapter

For anyone who began following Robb Johnson's tribute to Johnny Hallyday here, the third and final part now appears at Salut! Live. He has some provocative thoughts on French and Anglo-American pop cultures, and I have naturally added another YouTube clip of his héros in action.

My thanks are due to him for a work of real depth. Robb is such a prolific writer on his own account that he's probably put himself 1,000 new songs behind schedule. Oh, and that's Robb not Johnny above, of course.

And I'll be back over the weekend with some thoughts on the French and Anglo drinking cultures.......

Hallyday had his day? Non monsieur, Johnny be good (2)

Johnny in public service mode. Picture: ParisDailyPhoto

The second part of Robb Johnson's epic work on his implausible héros Johnny Hallyday can now be found at Salut! Live, along with another clip of Johnny in action.

Come back here later today for a wonderful tale of granny rage, French style.

Hallyday had his day? Non monsieur, Johnny be good

French pop music is rubbish. Everyone knows that. Or is it? Robb Johnson*, an English singer-songwriter with impeccably radical views, uses Salut! Forum to discuss his improbable passion for Johnny Hallyday

Halfway through the last century, it became manifest to most of the youth of the industrialised western world that being a grown-up was not a particularly desirable option.

Teenagers, like women a sociological phenomenon recently empowered out of historical and economic necessity, literally faced conscription into an adult world organised upon naked principles of institutionalised violence, legalised murder and mass destruction.

If you want a three minute thumbnail sketch of what life was like in the 20th century for the industrialised masses, listen no further than Jacques Brel’s bleak howl of anguish and impotence Au Suivant.

Not surprisingly teenagers were less than enamoured of such career opportunities.

During the Second World War, Europe under fascism (which after all is only capitalism taken to brutally domestic extremes) saw the emergence of youth sub-cultures of not so much resistance as disaffection.

However, it took the US and the mid-50s before international youth finally found a language that expressed their adolescent rebellion against the awfulness of the adult world.

In the US, with black culture, there was a ready made template already at odds with the ruling hegemony. So America got rock’n’roll and Elvis Presley, Britain got rock’n’roll and Cliff Richard, and France got Yé-yé and Johnny Hallyday.

And that says it all really. Anybody care to own up to having Cliff’s latest album? Fifty years later, and the only one of that classic triumvirate still rocking, with a capital R, is Hallyday.

He is all your rock’n’roll dreams come true.