Eddy Mitchell releases his memoirs, soberly titled Autobiographywhile a new album, Friendsis expected in the coming days. Eddie Mitchell? Everyone loves him, even the RN voters, against whom he recently got angry on the airwaves of France Inter : “I am against these people! Before, I didn't vote, now I vote against them! » And to add in this book: “It’s a no-choice, but it’s mine. »
After all, why not and it's his right and it does him a lot of good. Moreover, it is with caution, apart from this obligatory anti-Lepenist screed, that he attempts to define himself politically: “ I have never been of a particular movement. My heart would rather beat on the left. I had the weakness to believe a lot in Mitterrand, in 1965, out of pure anti-Gaullism. […] I have always been domiciled in France, I pay all my taxes and I find that it is the best contribution to national solidarity. Tax exile is not for me. » And to add, in a flash of mischievous lucidity: “ I just hope our taxes do something. I thought I noticed that despite all the taxes that are added to us, there are still poor people on the streets, perhaps even more than before. But maybe it's an optical illusion. »
Very skeptical about the bourgeois sixty-eighters…
Still not fooled, he remembers May 68: “ I could see that Cohn-Bendit, Sauvageot, all these new leaders were already behaving like politicians. They were petty bourgeois and their speeches only affected students and absolutely not the working class. I never believed in the revolution. » Packed, it's weighed. And here is the political question evacuated.
Note that, apart from the superb melodies that he interpreted, with a very sure taste in covers of American hits without neglecting the immense talent of his pianist composer, Pierre Papadiamandis, Eddy Mitchell is also the author of magnificent texts, often anchored in social reality. Thus, He is not coming home this evening evokes, from 1978, unemployment among executives hitherto unknown: “ The great head of personnel. / Summoned him at noon. / I have bad news. / You finish on Friday. / A multinational. / Offered our company. / You are overwhelmed. […] No more golf and bridge. / Holidays in Saint-Tropez. / The education of children. / In the big private school. / He cries over him, thinks he is / For an immigrant worker. / He feels overwhelmed. »
But already, in 1966, he felt this ill wind coming with another prophetic song in terms of globalization, Limited company : « In a 20-story building, / Summer and winter / You work for a company / Of a hundred thousand shareholders. / Your name here does not exist, / You are just a number. […] Nothing is yours. / You're not worth a single penny. / Everything belongs to the Société Anonyme. »
In this melancholy of passing time, giving birth to an increasingly disembodied world, there is still The Last Session (1977), a song in which he deplores the planned disappearance of small neighborhood cinemas: “ The light is already going out. / The room is empty to tears. […] / An old man is crying in a corner. / His cinema is closed. / This was the last sequence. / It was his last session. / And the curtain on the screen fell. »
Each time, the song is a little film in itself, as evidenced by On the road to Memphis (1976), adapted from a hit by the American Tom T. Hall; or the story of a bandit thinking of his fiancée: “ I have the right to shut up and smoke. / Keeping my handcuffs on my wrists. / On the road to Memphis. / For once the cops won. / Towards your place I am only passing by. / On the road to Memphis. » It is true that Eddy Mitchell, an accomplished actor, is also an erudite film buff having delighted us from January 1982 to December 1998 – rare longevity in the world of television – with his show, aptly named The Last Sessionwhich he hosted with joy and good humor while introducing us to small B series and great forgotten classics.
And it is therefore to him that we leave the end credits: “ Certain features of the era really displease me. I am capable of railing infinitely and indifferently against social networks, cell phones, singers without voices, raclette cheese, new technologies, subsidized artists and music without musicians. […] The computer, the same, I can't stand, I don't want to become blind and hunchbacked. And then, I'm not a typist. »
Just for these sentences, we can't help but forgive everything!
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