He is one of the most prolific singer-songwriters of French song. And if Jean-Jacques Goldman wrote for Céline Dion or Johnny Hallyday, he also made himself available to stars with slightly less gigantic success. Like Marc Lavoine.
At 62, Adriana Karembeu's current companion returned to their collaboration in the columns of Paris Match. Jean-Jacques Goldman retired in 2016. The anecdote that Marc Lavoine told dates back to 20 years earlier.
Marc Lavoine at the bottom of the wave
He remembers: “Jean-Jacques is someone very fair. I also made songs with him and he helped me by putting me in the hands of his brother. I must have been really bad.”.
His brother is Robert Goldman, born in 1953. He is a songwriter under the pseudonym J.Kapler. Also manager of Jean-Jacques Goldman, the two brothers founded the JRG production house in 1980.
Marc Lavoine collaborated with Jean-Jacques Goldman on two albums. “False Dreamer” in 1993, and “Seventh Heaven” in 1999. He explains that during the first: “And one evening, I was at his house, he said to me: 'Do you think you are really made for this job? Maybe it will never work for you again?'. I thought he was making fun of mebut no, he was serious.”
And added: “He has been so far for push me to question myself. More I subsequently proved to him that it was more than a job for methat I had not chosen to do it”.
The history of Jean-Jacques Goldman's nicknames
If we know that Jean-Jacques Goldman wrote most of these songs using his own name, he sometimes preferred pseudonyms. The goal is to leave room for its performers. This is how on Marc Lavoine's album, from 1993, he signed the music of “You will be enough for me”, “The Human Adventure”, “Here below”, par “O. Minor”.
This pseudonym is a phonetic transcription of “golden man“, a play on words with the translation of the English gold man. Marc Lavoine, who signed the lyrics of the songs, signed “M. Oats“, oats meaning oats in English.
Six years later, when they returned to the studio together, Marc Lavoine's career was already more assured. And Jean-Jacques Goldman then signs with his real name the song “I write songs“, with his colleague. A hell of a symbol of success.
