To celebrate his eight decades, Michel Polnareff is going back on tour and releasing a new album, with this song as an aperitif: Sexcetera. His latest unreleased title, The Man in Redalready dates back to 2015. And, as almost ten years ago, the same feeling predominates: a sort of awkward silence.
Indeed, how can the artist having produced marvels such as Holidays, The Laze Ball, Love Me Please Love Me or Letter to France could he have posed such a musical pigeon?
Victim of ambient wokism?
Because beyond the pachydermic arrangements, there is no melody, and words would have been better if there had been none, Michel Polnareff here giving in to the spirit of the times: “ He told me he wasn't her/She told me she wasn't him/She told me I'm a near he and my boyfriend is a near her. » To find such a stupid text, there is hardly anything other than Third Sexfrom Indochina; This shows the scale of the disaster. The most indulgent make the connection with I am a mantel Le Figarowho sees “ a tailor-made subject “. The problem is that comparison is not necessarily right, this song having then, and on the contrary, aimed to remove any ambiguity regarding the sexuality of the young androgynous singer that he was then.
The reason for this plea? We find it in his Memoirs, Polnareff by Polnareff (Grasset 2004), written jointly with Philippe Manoeuvre, the eminent rock critic we know: “ On June 4, 1970, in Rueil-Malmaison, a spectator jumped on stage, threw himself at me and beat me. After punching me very low below the belt, he punches me in the face. I fall backwards. Knocks me out against the piano. General panic. The CRS intervene by clubbing absolutely everyone, attackers, fans, musicians, organizers. » In short, a whole era. Result ? Our man decides to lift iron, trying to sculpt an athletic body, and assiduously practices karate, a discipline in which he quickly becomes a black belt.
I am a man : the revelations of Pierre Delanoë
Then, in order to remove any form of misunderstanding about his masculinity, he asked the lyricist Pierre Delanoë to write him the I am a man in question starting from this refrain written by him: “ I am a man,/What could be more natural in short/In bed, my style/Corresponds well to my marital status. » And his new sidekick adds another layer: “ People who see me passing/In the street call me a faggot/But women who believe it/Just have to try me. » Not very gay-friendlyall that…
Quoted by Christian Eudeline in his essay Polnareff, the king of the ants (Éclipse, 1997), Pierre Delanoë reveals: “ He was so lost, this Polnareff-star who, at that moment, was breaking down and whose posters covered the walls of Paris. He was so pitiful that I told him, “Listen, I'll make you this song for free and I won't sign it.” So I didn't sign it and I don't regret it. »
Her buttocks are showing
Speaking of posters, there is another one which arouses quite a stir in the ambivalent register, that of his posterior – fairly soft and flat, but he is just beginning his sporting period – revealed during his show, Polnarevolutionin October 1972. “ See that a little ass can lead to big things », he laughs. Questioned by television, the French are divided. “ It seems a little corny to me, that's the word “, says one, while another exclaims: “ What a horror! »
In December of the same year, he was therefore sentenced by the courts to a fine of 60,000 francs. The opportunity for him to make amends, not without humor, with a new poster where he once again poses completely naked, but facing forward, with a hat masking this virility that he considered offended. In hindsight, it all seems very childish. Nudity and sexuality, supposedly deviant or not, were then more subject to jokes than to academic theses, both scholarly and militant.
Paradoxically, it was when Michel Polnareff did not take himself too seriously that he wrote the best of his songs. Today, trying to let himself be carried away by the spirit of the times, this ambition of a dead leaf, he would tend to pontificate, locked in as he is in his character of operetta admiral and, above all, to no longer have anything compose inspired. What a shame, at his age, for this gifted artist, holder of a first conservatory prize at only twelve years old and who, with his first guitar purchased, immediately wrote the three chords which would become The doll that says no. This first success required that it be recorded in London with, as musicians, no less than Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, future founders of the group Led Zeppelin.
The rest is to match, such is his artistic demand. His compositions are stunningly beautiful, especially when he dabbles in jazz, with Born in ice creamor symphonic arrangements on the occasion of Goodbye Marylou. So, much be forgiven to him who gave us so much. Which does not prevent us from asking the question of how such an artist could have fallen so low into the most bloated self-satisfaction. This is perhaps the Michel Polnareff mystery.
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