Dave, Sarkozy, Delon: celebrities pay him a last tribute

Heartbroken, relatives and admirers of the French singer Françoise Hardy gathered Thursday at the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris for the farewell ceremony to one of the last icons of the sixties, who died at the age of 80.

Thomas Dutronc, the son of Françoise Hardy and singer and songwriter Jacques Dutronc, arrived shortly before 3:00 p.m. local time under the dome of the Crematorium, where the artist’s family and friends were meeting.

His artistic family was present, the singers Etienne Daho, Julien Clerc, Laurent Voulzy, Sheila, Dave, Marc Lavoine, Salvatore Adamo, but also the director François Ozon, the producer Dominique Besneard and the actress Anouchka Delon.

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni attended the ceremony at Père Lachaise, as did Culture Minister Rachida Dati and the wife of the French head of state, Brigitte Macron, who was booed, noted an AFP journalist.

“She marked our life”

The artist with his androgynous physique and assumed melancholy conquered the Anglo-Saxon public in the 1960s, catching the eye of Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan. She was also the only Frenchwoman in the ranking of the 200 best singers of all time published by the American magazine Rolling Stone in 2023.

Hundreds of onlookers came to pay tribute to the woman whose hits “All the boys and girls” – which she had written and composed, sold more than two million copies – or “Comment te dire adieu”, her standard of 1968, rocked their adolescence.

“She has marked our lives, from the 1960s to today,” Jean-Charles, a 70-year-old Parisian retiree with a Basque beret on his head, told AFP. “With his texts, we could take the time to settle down and live.”

“She represents all of my youth, she was a discreet personality, far from the buzz, a very beautiful woman compared to the bimbos of today,” says Houria, a 71-year-old Parisian.

Annie wasn’t born in 1962 when “All the Boys and Girls” was released, but she’s here to pay tribute to the woman who reminds her of her mother – who always listened to her songs.

Burial in Corsica

“I also came for the whole Dutronc family”, Thomas and Jacques, the husband of Françoise Hardy from whom she had been separated for more than thirty years but not divorced, adds this civil servant, who works nights and went to the cemetery of Père Lachaise before taking up his post.

The singer of “So many beautiful things” had expressed the wish to be “cremated in privacy and without religious ceremony”, according to the weekly Paris Match, and buried in Corsica, more precisely in Monticello, where Jacques Dutronc lives.

The disappearance of Françoise Hardy, who had fought against cancer which appeared in 2004, comes almost a year after that of the French’s favorite Englishwoman, Jane Birkin, another emblematic figure of the sixties who died in July 2023.

ATS