French Pop History

    It is often said that the Beatles failed to make the same impact in France that they made in the rest of the western world, that French teenagers (and adults) were unimpressed by the Fab Four and that the band's records and live performances went unappreciated by French audiences. It has to be said though that this is nonsense.... It is true that the band's sales figures in France fell some way below those in, say, Germany or Spain, but they were far from unimpressive. Partly this was because the French record market in the early sixties was smaller than that of most countries of comparable size, for a variety of socio-economic reasons; it was also true that many French teenagers - and indeed French record buyers in general - preferred to listen to music in their native tongue (there is a reason why "Michelle" became The Beatles/ biggest seller in France, after all). Even so, The Beatles were certainly popular - very popular indeed - among French teenagers; far mo...

    7 May, 1954. The French military have just been humiliated by the Vietnamese in the battle of Dien Bien Phu and hopes of reconstituting the pre-war French empire in south eastern Asia have been vanquished along with the army. The government is in shock and the defeat hangs heavy over a country still piecing itself back together after the most calamitous of decades.  The very same day, Marcel Mouloudji, a rising chansonnier  with a following among the intelligentsia congregating on the left bank in Paris generally known only by his surname, was giving a concert. Among the repertoire he chose to perform that day was a newly written song by poet, jazz musician and journalist, Boris Vian, who had been trying to get someone to perform it for some weeks, without success. At length, after Vian reworked the lyrics to adopt a more pacifist approach, Mouloudji agreed to sing it, and 'Le déserteur' received its first public airing in front of a shocked and stunned audience....

  A school bell rings and the joyous sounds of yé-yé  ring out across the arirwaves. What could be more in keeping with the teenage experience than the joy that the end of the school day brings? And what could be better for launching the career of possibly the biggest yé-yé   chanteuse of them all? Claude Carrère had been a singer during the fifties but had struggled to make a name for himself in the competitive French music hall circuit. His first EP release in 1957 had been headlined by a cover of the country favourite "Cigareets, Whuskey And Wild, Wild Women" ("Ciagrettes, whisky et p'tites pépées") but had been uncermoniously buried in the wake of hit versions by Eddie Constantine and Anie Cordy, both stars whose light shone considerably brighter than Carrère's flickering flame. The sleeve of his second release played on his youthful appearance (belying the fact that he was 26 years old) and tried to hint at a power that wasn't really in the grooves ...