After the release of the title “Un cri” last November, Laeticia Hallyday assured that “there will be no others”.
It's ultimately a good surprise that awaits fans of the rocker: more than six years after the death of Johnny Hallyday, two new unreleased songs will be revealed on Friday on streaming platforms, a few days before a reissue of the album "Flagrant crime” in a boxed set.
The tapes of these two titles, “Reste” and “Waterloo”, were found in London where they had been sleeping for 50 years at the Olympic Sound Studio, reveal BFMTV and RTL.
The task was not easy: “The tapes of this album were not entered in the name of Johnny Hallyday but of Lee Halliday, the producer of the album,” Xavier Perrot, artistic manager of the Hallyday catalog, explained to BFMTV at Universal.
Cousin of the rocker who considered him a second father, the singer and dancer Lee Hallyday was the star's first producer and artistic agent.
He died in September 2023.
“A great moment of creation”
Since the death of Johnny Hallyday on December 5, 2017, Universal Music has reviewed its archives and digitized a year of recordings by the “Taulier” every year, explains RTL.
They recently looked back at 1971, discovering these two never-before-released songs.
They were signed by the writer, lyricist and filmmaker Philippe Labro, friend of Johnny Hallyday.
It was he who wrote the entirety of “Flagrant Délice”, the singer's fourteenth studio album released that year.
An opus created from London, where the rocker had gone, seeking to reinvent himself after May 1968. “Rest” and “Waterloo” had been imagined for a time to appear on this record, the result of intense writing sessions.
“It was extraordinary, I have rarely experienced that,” recalled Philippe Labro to RTL, describing a “frantic, exciting job”.
“I was bathed in happiness and fatigue, I knew that we were experiencing a very great moment of creation,” he added.
A reissue of the opus in a box set will be released on February 23, enriched with these two new releases, but limited version 45 rpm vinyls will be released on Friday.
Read alsoJohnny Hallyday exhibition in Paris: Laeticia reveals new little treasures to us
As for the titles themselves, “Reste” is akin to a loving entreaty (“Stay, don’t go, my heart is only you”), which sounds like a first draft in the form, while the ballad “ Waterloo” seems more accomplished, describing the famous Battle of Waterloo of 1815.
When writing it, Philippe Labro asked himself "why we wouldn't make history in rock, which tells the story of the place, the troops present, the drama, Napoleon...".
“I put all that into words,” explained the lyricist, judging the result “very original and very funny”.
These new releases complete a long series of unreleased songs released since the singer's death.
“La Nuit avec moi” and “Two sorts of men” had been resurrected, before the release last November of “Un cri”, recorded a few months before his death and composed by Maxim Nucci, alias Yodelice, of whom Le Parisien revealed to you the story.
A track published on the compilation “Made in rock'n'roll”, presented by the star's widow Laeticia Hallyday as a final release.
The following month, Universal finally revealed another unreleased one, “Grave me the heart”, dating from 1996.