“We still have a little time ahead of us, time to get used to the idea. I am doing well, the dizziness of the announcement has passedit's better there! We begin to rejoice in being on the side of life. That'll be three.“
Last December, on the France 5 show C to youthe actress Mélanie Thierry formalized the arrival of a youngest in the family she forms with her husband the singer Raphaël Haroche (known as “Raphaël”) and their children, Roman (born in 2008) and Aliocha (born in 2013 ). On May 10, 2024, this third baby (whose first name has not been leaked) finally showed up, to the great joy of his parents and brothers. “I am very happy to have had a third sonrejoiced, two months later, her mother in the magazine Elle. Three boys, I find it wonderful. They are such different ages that their father and I share different things with them. With Raphaël we have never laughed so much, never cried so much, a little thing upsets us. The look of my eldest son at the little one brings tears to my eyes. It's great to relive the emotions of having a new child.”
And it’s not the happy dad who will contradict her! “Yes, it's wonderful, he confessed in June in Femina version. My first two sons, aged 15 and 10, are like examples for me, I admire them, I like their spirit, the way they perceive the world, their tenderness, their humor. It's also happy to have a baby, we forget how miniature, precious, fragile it is.”
Raphael is the heir to a series of tragedies
The singer knows the fragility of life very well because his family has unfortunately already noticed it. In 1974, a year before his own birth, his parents lost a little boy barely six months old named Fabrice. Conceived in the process, he confides: “I wouldn't have gotten here without this tragedy.” He was also named Raphaël because this first name means “God heals” in Hebrew.
This loss echoed anotherwhich occurred forty years before and which traumatized the artist for a long time. In the early 1930s, his great-grandparents on his mother's side, Alfred and Suzanne Lang-Willar, went on a trip to China. After a few months, they board the brand new French liner Georges–philippar who leaves Asia for Saint-Nazaire (Loire-Atlantique). There they meet the famous reporter Albert Londres with whom they sympathize.
On the night of May 16 to 17, 1932, the flagship of the Maritime Shipping Company caught fire and then sank off the coast of Aden (present-day Yemen). Forty-nine passengers died, including Albert Londres. Raphaël's ancestors survive. Before dying, the journalist entrusts them with important documents which they must bring back to France. A plane comes to pick them up a few days later in Yemen. And then the unthinkable happens. The plane crashes in the Apennines (Italy). Raphaël's great-grandparents also die. And it's not over…
He overcame his phobia
Twenty years later, his Jewish maternal grandparents took refuge in Argentina to escape the Nazi regime. They have a car accident in Buenos Aires and her grandmother died. The grandfather returns to Paris with his 5-year-old daughter, the singer's mother. The latter speaks of“accidentology” and is surprised: “What impresses me is how one accident can create fault lines over three or four generations.”
Because if he does not fear traveling by boat or car, he has for a long time, like Elodie Gossuin, been very afraid of flying. Although his songs always spoke a lot about roads and travel, he avoided this means of transport… on the pretext that he did not know the pilot! When he found himself on a plane, he stuffed himself with sedatives and usually fell asleep half an hour after takeoff. It was only in his thirties that he decided to act: he took flying lessons and managed to overcome this phobia.
Son refuge breton
Today, the interpreter with Jean-Louis Aubert of the hit On the road (2003) can fly but prefers to go on vacation to France, by train or by car. A few years ago, with his wife, they bought a magnificent villa on the Breton island of Bréhat where they like to recharge their batteries.
It is there that he composes songs in which he pays tribute to his loved ones who have passed away. As Somnambulist (2015) where he asks: “If I ever fall asleep before / Is there life tomorrow? / Will we recognize our own?” Or I came back (2021) : “I recognize the dead by their voice / And all night until dawn I wait for dear guests.”
Ironically, the clip for this last song was partly filmed at the Abbeville airfield (Somme) and Raphaël poses there in a bomber jacket next to a plane. He definitively exorcised the family trauma and is certain of it: he will not imitate Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Otis Redding or Glenn Miller, gods of music, carried away too young in plane accidents.
