Yéyé icon and talented showwoman, Sylvie Vartan, who bids farewell to the stage at 80, was a popular singer with sometimes provocative titles and often melancholic melodies recalling the exile from her native Bulgaria.
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Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the woman who formed a legendary couple with Johnny Hallyday gives her three final concerts at the Palais des Congrès in Paris. Entitled “I bow out”…
The end of a 63-year career of one of the greatest French-speaking artists: around fifty albums, 40 million records sold and 2,000 magazine covers, more than other French stars Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve.
Among his approximately 1,500 songs, there are numerous hits: from “La plus belle pour aller danser” (1964), composed by Aznavour, to “L’Amour, c’est comme une cigarette” (1981) via “Comme a boy”, where she swaps the dress for “the jacket” and “the belt”, irreverent words for the time. However, she came to the song by chance. “From the age of 6, I wanted to be an actress. And then, life took me elsewhere.
In 1961, his brother Eddie made him skip school to record “Panne d’essence” with Frankie Jordan. Immediate success at 17 and first Olympia. This legendary venue would welcome him for decades, sometimes accompanied by future world stars like the Beatles in 1964.
The “twist high school girl”
Rather introverted, the “high school girl of the twist” quickly turns into a femme fatale and stage beast. The blonde with a deep voice was born on August 15, 1944 in Iskretz, a village in Bulgaria. She grew up in Sofia where her father worked at the French embassy.
She was eight years old when her family fled the communist regime for France on the Orient Express. A tearing away that we feel in his songs like the most legendary, “La Maritza”, the name of a Bulgarian river. “Beautiful songs are melancholic. Melancholy has stuck with me since childhood,” she said.
She did not return to her native country until 1990, where she adopted her daughter Darina with her second husband, the American producer Tony Scotti, married in 1984. In Paris, the beginnings were difficult for the Vartans, who lived for five years in a bedroom. ‘hotel.
-“Falling suddenly” into success, the teenager, a perfectionist, established herself in this difficult profession, “particularly for women”. Weathering a storm of criticism in 1965 by being the first to sing… in pants. The couple she formed with the “Youth Idol”, Johnny Hallyday, father of her son David, fell prey to the paparazzi.
The “marriage of a generation”
Their union in 1965 in a village in the Oise, amid a cohort of fans and journalists, was the “marriage of a generation”. They sometimes share the stage and record “I have a problem” (1973), a duo that has remained famous. “If you’re not real love, you look like it,” they hum.
In 1968, Sylvie Vartan survived a car accident which cost the life of her childhood friend. Two years later, a new accident, from which Johnny emerged unscathed, forced him to stay six months in the United States to regain his face. She took the opportunity to take dance lessons and learn about “American” shows.
The union of the enfant terribles of rock ended in divorce in 1980, after many clashes, breakups and reconciliations. She moved to Los Angeles for her third life. But regularly finds France and its public.
Intended to play in “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”, she ultimately had a modest career in theater and cinema, with only one major role (“The Black Angel”, 1994). “If I feel a lack, it’s on the cinema side,” she confessed.
Rather discreet about her private life, she banged her fist on the table after the disappearance of Johnny, at the end of 2017, to publicly support her son and Laura Smet against the singer’s widow, Laeticia.
In 2024, when announcing that she is bowing out, she recalls that, if Johnny is “almost dead on stage”, this will “not be the case” for her. “Irrevocable” farewells to the stage, she confided to AFP in November. “I have lived on a volcano since I started. I’ve done so much that at some point you have to calm down a little. It’s time.”
