“I was a beaten child”: his childhood, success, exile, paternity … Michel Polnareff confides without taboo in “seven to eight”

Despite the celebrity, he still has the stage fright. Whether before a concert or before an interview, like this Sunday against Audrey Crespo-Mara in “Seven to eight”. “If we are not afraid that means that we are a fool!”says Michel Polnareff behind his iconic white glasses. While he went back on stage at 80 years old and he is about to release his new album A time for her On April 25, he agreed to look at his life and at the least atypical career.

Starting with his mania to regularly disappear from radars. “”I’m never afraid to disappear because I think I’m in the collective and I’m very proud of it “says the singer who returns to his childhood marked by a tyrannical and violent father who put him on the piano at the age of 3 or 4 years at an infernal pace, from 8 to 10 hours per day. As soon as he made a false note, it was spanking “With the belt on the side of the loop. I was beaten to death, it’s easy to type on a kid who cannot defend.”

A violent father

A father who deprived him of childhood and who demanded that he be the first everywhere. “”When I was second, it was hell “admits Michel Polnareff who says he has forgiven him because it was important for him. Faced with all this violence, he slammed the door of his home and landed in Paris where he sings in the street. A difficult period when he sleeps outside and makes the sleeve to survive.

Quickly spotted thanks to his talent, he made the first part of the Beach Boys and Dalida before walking the scene of Olympia himself in 1972. He jostles France by displaying his buttocks in the air to promote his show. He will even be sentenced to modesty attack. “I wanted to make the buzz, everything was a joke and it was taken in the first degree”they disallow michell Prolnaffe.

He gave birth to his son himself

But victim of a scam, he was ruined. While the taxman claims a million francs to him, he flees France. For 50 years, he has lived in the United States and he is not afraid of Donald Trump. “Trump is in all his states, except in California”he has fun.

He also says “worship” His only son Louka, 14, of whom he is not the sire, but whom he gave birth to in the bathtub of the house. “It happened around 2 or 3 am. I was not at all ready,” recalls Michel Polnareff who saw his wife Danyellah survey the room, kneaded with pain.

You never lose your child’s soul, we play the adult

Michelp polnarff

“I told her to take an Alka-Seltzer! She threw herself on the bed and she lost the waters. I then filled the bathtub and fortunately, he got out of her mother in good conditions”continues the artist. Since then, he has made a point of offering Louka a childhood opposite to the one he had. “I never, never, never raised my hand on him, it was unthinkable”.

Does he always feel like a child? “In a song, I say that we have been born for a long time. We fulfill a role and we pretend not to be a child anymore. But we never lose our child’s soul, we play adults”estimates the singer.

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A few years ago, at the end of his autobiography, he said that he was going to be kept in nitrogen at his death to better come back. “Why not? We don’t really know if death exists. In my opinion, the soul never disappears, we just talk about the envelope”. Is it sure to go to paradise? “I am under contract!”he launches laughing.