They do not blame David Hallyday himself but the choice of the title of his tour. If “Requiem for a Madman” is one of the best-known songs in Johnny’s repertoire, in their eyes, the words of a verse do not pass. “Requiem for a Madman”poetizes feminicide”they say. In question: the text signed Gérard Layani, who also signed “Que je t’aime”, “Entre mes mains” and “Ma bouche”, always for the same Johnny: “Je l'aimais tant que pour la garder, je l'ai tuée/Pour qu'un grand amour vif toujours/Il faut qu'il meurt, qu'il meurt d'amour“.
The text was inspired by a news item that took place in Paris in 1975. A man had barricaded himself in his home while sequestering his wife who wanted to leave him. Before the intervention of the police, he had killed himself after killing his wife.
David Hallyday announces a very special tour from 2024 to… 2027!
We cannot fail to be surprised by this charge against a song that is anything but new. It has been part of Johnny Hallyday’s repertoire since the beginning of 1976 and its release. It ranked number 1 in sales in France for several weeks that year, and sold more than 500,000 copies. It is true, as explained Le Figarowhich has returned in force to playlists since the rocker’s disappearance in December 2017 when the #MeToo movement only began with the Harvey Weinstein affair revealed by the New York Times two months earlier.
The announcement of David Hallyday’s tour bearing the same name, no more than the release of his own version of the song released in 2023 for the album also titled Requiem for a Madmanhad not until now, to our knowledge, led to the slightest reaction.
There was, however, a radio column highlighting the subject of “Requiem for a Madman” and the femicide mentioned there. On FranceInfo, in 2022, columnist Bertrand Dicale drew a parallel between the song and a tweet from Jean-Luc Mélenchon about the Quatennens affair, named after this political personality close to the leader of France Insoumise condemned to prison for domestic violence.
In his message, Jean-Luc Mélenchon used vocabulary typical of patriarchy when he tries to defend the perpetrators of violence against women, he analyzed: “I salute his dignity and his courage. I tell him my confidence and my affection”or even “police malice, media voyeurism and social networks were involved in the divorce of Adrien and Céline Quatennens”. In the case of the tweet as in that of “Requiem for a madman”, “it is to take the consequence for the cause and seek to erase what is accused of the famous Fool of Love”, said Bertrand Dicale. This explained in his eyes what made feminists jump today and which could apply to the activists of Saint-Omer today.
