There are moments that we never forget… Those during which we learn of the sudden disappearance of an artist we loved. On January 14, 1986, there was Balavoine, killed at the age of 33 in a helicopter accident. On June 19 of the same year, the road to Coluche ended against a “Damn truck” at 41 years old. On August 2, 1992, Michel Berger was died of a heart attack at 44. Stars, geniuses some would say, gone too soon.
Many lines have been written about these disappearances, then the drama fades away. Time erases the small details, alters reality, sometimes leaving only a few words, or a sentence, a confused memory of a sad moment: Michel Berger is died of a heart attack playing tennis while on vacation in Ramatuelle with his wife France Gall. More than thirty years after his death, this is essentially what many have remembered from his death.
The truth is very different. Michel Berger died after three heart attacks. He breathed his last breath in his bed. While he was playing a game of tennis with his friend Framboise Holz, the wife of journalist Gérard Holtz in the property that Berger owned in Ramatuelle with France Gall, he suddenly felt the need to take a breather. In “Michel Berger, a life in songs”published by Hugo Editions, the author François Alquier interviewed the composer Michel Pelay. Present on the scene at the time of the tragedy, the latter recounts: “At one point, Michel gives up the game [de tennis]. He sits on a bench along the court then gets up and tells us: “It's really not okay, I'm going back home.“We don't worry too much, because we know he's a little tired at that point.” As Berger's condition did not improve, another friend of the couple, Claude-Michel Schönberg, creator of the musical Les Miserables and also present in Ramatuelle, calls the SAMU. The emergency services, caught in the immense summer traffic jams in Saint-Tropez, will take more than an hour to arrive. They will only be able to note the death of the artist.
Even if Michel Berger loved another woman, France Gall will pay him the most beautiful tribute
“Michel Berger France Gall, destiny strikes down the ideal couple of the world of stars”written a few days later Paris Match. However, we know after the publication of the biography of Yves Bigot entitled Michel Berger and published in 2022 that when the tragedy occurs, the couple no longer has anything ideal since Michel Berger then has an affair with Béatrice Grimm, a famous German model with whom he was about to leave. France Gall knew about it. She made sure the relationship was never knownuntil the singer's funeral where this rival of hearts had of course not been invited.
It must be believed that this adventure did not in no way altered the love that France Gall had for her man. It was by working on her husband's final resting place that the singer provided proof… On August 6, 1992, while countless anonymous people gathered near the Montmartre cemetery to say goodbye to Michael Berger, There are only a few relatives of the singer who attended the burial of the composer, surrounding with their presence his wife France Gall and their children: Pauline and Raphaël, now a producer. Johnny Hallyday, for whom Berger had written Something from Tennesseethrows a rose on the coffin before Véronique Sanson, Françoise Hardy, Michel Jonasz and Alain Souchon pay their respects to the latter. The tomb is therefore nothing exceptional. But 20 years later, while in the meantime, Pauline, carried away by cystic fibrosis, has joined her father, next to whom she rests, France Gall will make it an extraordinary monument.
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