“This time I told the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, I swear.
Michel Sardou made this promise to us during our last discussion, on March 21, two days after being made Commander of the Legion of Honor by the Minister of Culture.
Does he keep it in his second autobiography, which appears this Thursday?
Only he knows it.
In any case, this book dedicated to his wife Anne-Marie - "my only certainty" - whose brilliant title is inspired by his song "Je ne suis pas mort… Je dors!"
“, Is more confessions and memories delivered in bulk than a classic chronological autobiography.
This short and unpretentious book is tasted like a discussion with broken sticks, in this case the imaginary dialogue between Michel Sardou, 74 years old, and his mother Jackie, famous actress who died in 1998 whose banter he brings back to life.
Both are very talkative and we won't get bored for a second, as long as we are interested in one of the most popular and divisive artists in the country.
A "son of" who suffered as a child from the absence of his parents, became a singer by accident and became a full-time actor again three years ago for fun and to follow Jacques Brel's advice: "Stop the day when you sing the same songs as at the beginning.
"
He regrets falling out with Johnny
Sardou does not give himself a gift.
Bad student, fired from schools, "I was not a good son either," he believes.
With his first wife, Françoise, from whom he divorced after twenty years, he admits not having been a "model husband" and remains "sickly jealous".
“My wife tells me that I drive with my cock,” he also admits.
Why does he never smile in the photos?
“I never liked my face.
My physique has never pleased me.
Not tall enough, the head too round, the forehead too high, the spike on the wrong side and that fucking tendency to gain weight that has put me on a diet for years, when I love to eat;
"
“We lived like two brothers for years, shared almost everything, and one day we broke up,” writes Michel Sardou in his book about Johnny.
LP / Arnaud Dumontier
He regrets having quarreled with Johnny because of a "bad joke" released between two songs on stage on the ski and his "viet-cong babies". “We lived like two brothers for years, shared almost everything, and one day we broke up and no longer spoke to each other, writes Michel Sardou. It is not his fault but mine […] I admit having deserved it and I regret that we never had the opportunity to talk about it. He would have understood that it was an awkwardness, a fault on my part, certainly, but not a meanness. "
He recalls the joke his friend Guy Bedos made on stage about him: “Sardou, he sings right but thinks wrong.
»For his other childhood friend, Jean-Michel Ribes,« I am a dangerous fascist ».
React him?
"I'm not on any side, I'm more French than a Roquefort," he says.
A little Gaullist because of dad
(Editor's note: Fernand Sardou, actor)
who listened to him standing up when he spoke on television… Today, I am not well anywhere.
The state no longer leads us.
It weighs us down.
"He can not help but castigate taxes," too expensive and harmful ", and the Greens.
"So green that they take us for apples!"
"
"A crazy story"
Sardou prefers to talk about people he loves or loved, in particular his wife Anne-Marie - "without her, I'm lost" - his late father-in-law François Perrier, his children - even if he is not tender with her daughter Sandrine and her son-in-law - her three favorite singers, Mylène Farmer, Kim Carnes and Barbara. He thus tells that the long brunette lady came to her dressing room to sew sequins on her belt and had asked her one evening to sing in his musical "Lily Passion" ... That she will finally play with Gérard Depardieu. "A mad story," he said without further clarification.
We also learn that he hates his first success, "Les bals populaire", that he always hits the mark before going on stage, that he no longer sings in Besançon since he was shot there, that he learned of his father's death during a poker game with Johnny and Eddy, which he insisted on performing on the evening of his mother's death but cried while singing "The Girl with the Clear Eyes" , and finally that he discovered by a DNA test that he is "of Welsh, Scottish and Irish descent".
We expected no less from the author of "The Lakes of Connemara".
EDITOR'S RATING: 4/5
Michel Sardou, “I am not dead… I am sleeping!
»,
XO Éditions, 158 pages, 16.90 euros.
