School is over!!!!!

 

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 but "Sur un coup de tête" fared as badly as its predecessor. After one final release similarly ate dust, it was clear that whatever talent he might have, Carrère was not going to make it as a singer.

 

A spell in the backrooms of the industry helped give the ambitious Carrère a new orientation. Linking up with songwriter Jacques Plaît, he developed a talent for crafting (or reworking) catchy teenage pop songs that could be sung by any enterprising youngster with a good voice and a marketable image. As the sixties dawned and first Johnny Hallyday and then Sylvie Vartan broke through to widespread success, Carrère astutely tapped into the desires of their tenage fans, recognising that looking fashionable counted for as much - if not more - than musical ability, and he set about looking for a young starlet whom he could manage and direct to the top of the charts.

In 1962, Annie Chancel was working with her parents on a market stall in Paris, selling bonbons while dreaming of becoming a singer. At night she performed occasionally with a group calling itself Les Guitares Brothers, who found themselves recommended to Carrère by Henri Leproux (the manager of the city's leading teenage club, Le Golf Drouot). Carrère didn't rate the group but he spotted something in the singer that he thought he could work with, and in a rash but prescient display of eagerness, signed her to a ten year management and production deal.

One of the big American hits of the summer was "Sheila", the first big seller for Tommy Roe, which topped the charts in both the US and Canada and fell just short at #3 in the UK. A light rocker in the style of Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue", it was perfect fodder for the French cover industry, almost tailor made to become a yé-yé hit. 

Knowing a hit when he heard one, Carrère duly crafted a French lyric (retaining the American title), which he offered to Lucky Blondo, a young rock 'n' roller just coming off his first hit, a cover of Bobby Darin's "Multiplication". The song also found its way into the hands of Les Pirates, one of the country's leading rock 'n' roll groups. Both Blondo and Les Pirates laid down versions off the tune, but Carrère also saw a bigger opportunity, and a chance to use the song as the perfect vehicle to launch Annie Chancel to stardom.

 

At the risk of stating the obvious, "Sheila" was not only a hit song - it was also a name. Carrère's idea was to rebaptise Chancel as "Sheila" and to have her record the song as well, with the song promoting the singer and vice versa. So it was that Annie Chancel became Sheila and went into the studio to cut four tracks for her debut EP release. Alongside a version of the song that provided her stage name, she cut an adaptation of The Islanders' 1959 hit "The Enchanted Sea", retitled "Un bateau s'en va" (Jacques Plante crafted the French lyric), and two original songs co-written by Carrère: "Avec toi" (which carried the misleading English subtitle "With You" to fool teenagers into thinking it was a cover of an American song) and "On a juste l'âge", which had just been recorded for the first solo release by the former frontman with Les Chats Sauvages, Dick Rivers.

In time honoured tradition, Carrère lopped a year off his protégée's age (she was seventeen, not sixteen, when the record was released in November 1962), although he oddly chose not to feature her image on the cover, instead including a signed photograph inside. Sales were predictably slow, given that Blondo's version of the song was rocketing up the charts, but by Christmas, enough interest was being generated by Carrère's marketing campaign that Sheila's own version entered the charts behind it. What was needed now was a follow-up that would take her to the top.

So it was that in early 1963, Sheila went back into the studio to cut her second EP. Once again, there were two cover versions, this time Brook Benton's "Hotel Happiness" ("Le ranch de mes rêves") and The Orlons' "Don't Hang Up" ("Ne raccroche pas"), and two originals. "Papa t'es plus dans l'coup" was the work of songwriting tandem Jil et Jan (who had written some of Johnny Hallyday's early hits) and was a typical teenage blast at unhip parents (comic actor Bourvil would respond later in the year with his own "J'suis papa et j'suis dans l'coup"). The other was a Carrère co-write that ticked all the necessary boxes for a hit.

Two years earlier, Gary "U.S." Bonds had made the top five in the US with the engaging party record "School Is Out" - a clearly commercial topic for a song (as Alice Cooper would reconfirm in 1972 with the timeless "School's Out"). Rather than adapt that song for French consumption however, Carrère and songwriters André Salvet and Jacques Hourdeaux concocted an original song, "L'école est finie" around the same lyrical theme. Salvet and Carrère both had an ear for a musical hook and when they finished the song, it was obvious to both men that they had a smash on their hands. Even so, Carrère left nothing to chance. The record was packaged with a coy, handwriten note from the singer (beginning a tradition that would last several years), announcing "This is my second record. Tell me if I have made any progress".

Indeed she had. Where her first record had sounded somewhat tentative, the new one brimmed with confidence and enthusiasm. "L'école est finie" leapt out of the airwaves like a call to arms for a generation of schoolgirls waiting for the school bell to ring so that they could get home and listen to Salut les copains on their transistor radios. Making the point as unsubtly as he knew how, Carrère commissioned a video clip to promote the song, featuring the singer surrounded by school pupils, dressed much as they were, very much the "girl next door" of the growing yé-yé pantheon. Sweet, unthreatening, unglamorous even, Sheila was the perfect star for the era, the big sister that many schoolgirls wished they had, and in "L'école est finie", she had the perfect song to launch what turned out to be a surprisingly long and durable career. It would be a quarter of a century before the name of Sheila dropped out of the charts for the last time... and nearly sixty years later, the song is still a staple of oldies radio, and remains a clarion call for all those who long for that school bell to ring.

You can read more about Sheila's recordings - and much more besides - in my newly-released book. Feel free to grab a copy here: BOOK