Johnny's Belgian blues

Anguished fans of Johnny Hallyday, eternal pop idol and highest-earner in French showbiz, have been twice relieved this week. After a five-year investigation, prosecutors have dropped all proceedings against him for the alleged rape of a hostess on a yacht on the Riviera. Today, Hallyday, still rocking hard at 62, promised that he was not about to desert France and move to Belgium to escape French taxes. He is, however,  taking Belgian nationality.

Last week, the Belgian ambassador to Paris shocked the country by announcing that le Johnny national was ditching his French nationality. Hallyday may have spent his life in the role of a hard-living, blues-twanging, leather-clad, Harley-driving all-American rebel, but he is a French national monument.  Ministers raised the news at President Chirac's cabinet meeting as France waited for Johnny to say it ain't so. Hallyday, who was born Jean-Philippe Smet, popped up today in a bad temper in Paris Match to confirm that he was indeed switching nationality because he wanted to "settle accounts" with the memory of his late Belgian father. But he is staying put. "I will carry on living in France," he said. "I will pay my taxes in France."

Leon Smet fathered the singer with a Frenchwoman in wartime Paris while married to another. He had no contact with the boy until he became a teen star in the early 60s. Johnny once described meeting his father in a record shop. "I saw this man who jumped on me talking with a Belgian accent. Behind him I saw seven, eight, nine paparazzi. He left. I realised he had been paid for the photo. I cried all night," he said.

He now says that he is haunted by the memory of his absent father. "That's where all my demons come from. It's time for stock-taking and self-questioning and I absolutely want to finish that before leaving this earth."

But things may not be so simple. According to rumours that were relayed by the media today, Johnnie's new belgitude may be a ploy to qualify for another, sweeter, tax haven: Monaco. Under a deal forced on Monaco by the late General de Gaulle, French citizens do not enjoy the zero income tax status of other foreign residents of the principality. They pay full French taxes. Hallyday hinted that there could be something to this, complaining that he pays too much tax in France. "What is all this fuss and false accusation about when not a single celebrity sportsman lives in France ?" he wondered.

The Belgian angle is interesting because Hallyday's spiritual move to France's little northern neighbour is part of a trend. Long mocked as a flat land of slow-witted bumpkins, Belgium is suddenly hip in France. Belgians used to try to lose their accents when they went south. Now that Belgian fashion, cuisine and architecture are hot, they flaunt their Dutch-tinged vowels. Current stars include Francois Weyergans, the novelist and winner of the Goncourt literary prize, Philippe Geluck, cartoonist and talk-show regular, and Benoît Poolevorde, a film actor.

But everyone knows that Johnny is not really going to be Belgian. He will always be a citizen of the same mythical America to which the Beatles, Rolling Stones and other British fans of rhythm and blues aspired in the 1960s. He said it himself today. "My roots are rock and the blues. I need to find my roots again. The ones that got me started when I was 16." 

PS: I have avoided the traditional remark about Hallyday, who is largely unknown outside the French-speaking world, being a musical joke. I like him.  He is a great performer and can hold his own with most of the Anglo-Saxon dinosaurs. Don't forget that a century ago, the blues emerged from the former French territory of Louisiana and they were sung in French as well as English.      

Comments

[Sarah Hague]

I cannot understand this reverence for JH. One father of a friend of my son's is a JH mega-fan and has a bust of his hero in the sitting room. In fact, he has something of a shrine there with silver disks, pictures and so on. Quite cringe-worthy, it is. But, I suppose it takes all sorts...

[Victor Tan]

The man has belately realised that he is paying too much in taxes to subsidise those who live off the state. At his age, he feels that it is time he kept more of his earnings, although he cannot be short of a € or two.

Can you imagine the public outcry if he were to say that he was leaving for Belgium in order to pay less tax? I can imagine le president coming out with some cynical remarks about abandoning the country that has provided him the opportunities and living.

My bet is that he will take up Belgium nationality on the grounds that he has to reconcile with his father to bring closure at his advancing age. Thereafter, he will move to Monaco to continue his lavish life, as a Belgian enjoying the tax free status. Bravo Johnny! Keep rocking!

[S.G.]

In France, JH embodies the American myth of the 60's, with his retro rock star looks and junkie aura. He's one of the rare artists still active at 62, and most of all, he's probably the only one who hasn't changed an iota. He's a mythical reference, an unwavering pillar of the French culture while everything else comes and goes at an blindingly fast pace. Despite being a reference, I don't believe the French take him seriously -- at least I hope not.

[Felix Lowe]

I have a small framed picture of Johnnie Hallyday, strutting his stuff, in leather, with the rain beating down on his already weather-beaten face, in my room. It's a classic, offered to me by friends as a 'secret santa' present a few years back when I lived in Bordeaux. It was in the wake of his hit cover single 'O Marie' - slightly downbeat, but a belter nevertheless. But it's not that etonnant that he is unknown here in the UK or, for that matter, anywhere beyond the borders of France, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium. What is stranger is when US singers forge out a career in l'Hexagone, but remain relative unknowns in their own country. A few years back, the buck-eared Billy Crawford - who dated the equally aurally challenged Lorie - was massive in France, but none of my American friends had a clue who he was stateside. And then there's always the example of David Charvet, the Canadian Baywatch actor, who frequently graces the French airwaves with his mellifluous brand of Gallic sugar-pop... Talking of Baywatch, wasn't David Hasselhoff a huge stadium rock star in Germany (but not elsewhere)?