AZNAVOUR’S LONG GOODBYE — 83 AND STILL SINGING
AFP
October 09, 2007
PARIS (AFP) — As he would, Charles Aznavour, uncontested star of
French song, hummed and tapped a few bars before sitting down to talk
about his latest tour, a seemingly gruelling affair for an 83-year-old
— 20 Paris concerts followed by 28 in France, Belgium and Switzerland.
After announcing his retirement in 1999, then again in 2000, and
crooning through a farewell foreign tour in 2006, the French press
reckoned the concerts kicking off next week were the singer’s last
good-bye.
"I never said farewell, never!", said an indignant Aznavour, still
sprightly though a little hard-of-hearing. "But it’s true the tours
are getting shorter. Only 20 concerts in Paris this time against nine
full weeks in the past. Next time it’ll only be three or four days."
"It’s like cutting back on cigarettes to stop smoking," said the
musician who’s composed close to a mammoth 1,000 songs, sold more
than a million records, and played in some 60 films.
"There’ll come a day when I forget the words and stumble on stage —
then I’ll stop."
Nicknamed "Aznovoice" at the beginning of his career by English
critics because of his raspy delivery, the slight and easy-going
showman is the last of a generation of French "chanson" masters —
where the lyrics are king, the tune a prop.
"It’s the words that count," he said. "It’s a French genre. Our
chansons say more than anyone else’s."
Born in Paris in 1924 to Armenian immigrant entertainer parents who
hoped to get to America but were never granted a visa, Aznavour —
original name Aznavourian — grew up in the poorer neighbourhoods of
the city, pulling himself up by the bootstraps to a career on stage.
With his quirky eyebrows and tiny stature — 1.64 metres (5 foot 3
inches in bare feet) — Aznavour never quite made it as a leading
man on screen.
Cash-starved in his early 20s during the war years, Aznavour instead
tried cabaret, where he met and teamed up with young songwriter and
composer Pierre Roche, then with Edith Piaf, who would take him to
America and to a solo career.
"I got lucky," said the singer.
In 1954 he rose to prominence with his live renditions of "Sur Ma Vie",
followed by one of his biggest hits "Je m’voyais deja" in 1960 —
the same year he starred on screen in Francois Truffault’s "Shoot
The Pianist", which catapulted him to fame abroad.
A couple of years later he took New York’s Carnegie Hall by storm
before touring the world and seeing his songs sung by stars from
Ray Charles ("La Mamma") to Liza Minnelli and Fred Astaire. In 1972
he was top of the charts in Britain with the single "She", recently
rerecorded by Elvis Costello for the Julia Roberts-Hugh Grant comedy
"Notting Hill."
"I’m the last of the few singers who didn’t just use their voice," he
said. "There were never very many of us, Sammy Davis, Liza Minnelli,
Shirley Maclaine, Yves Montand and me … we also performed."
Voted one of the century’s top singers with Elvis Presley and Bob
Dylan in a 1999 CNN/Time Internet poll, Aznavour dishes up his lyrics
with a typically French chanson syrupy mash of pop, jazz, blues and
latino sound (his just-released "Colore Ma Vie" was recorded in Cuba
with pianist "Chucho" Valdes).
The hundreds of tunes brought fame and wealth as well as a conflict
with the government tax-man that has left him living in tax-easy
Switzerland half the year.
But the hits often were hard-hitting with a social thrust — songs
about his native Armenia, his 1970s ballad on homosexuality "Comme Ils
Disent" and currently, in his latest album, songs on the environment
and the plight of migrants in France’s sleazy urban ghettos.
"I am attuned to what is going on around me," he said. "I grew up
among the Polish, Armenian and Greek tailors who worked off tables
on the outskirts of Paris. I never knew misery but I did know poverty."
Sitting in his Paris office — the musical publisher Raoul Breton
which he bought in 1995 — Aznavour is interrupted by a small girl
in black boots who suddenly opens the door, his granddaughter Leila,
who’s lost a toy.
A devoted family man and husband married three times but 44 years to
his current wife, Aznavour decribes himself as "the Benetton of song."
One daughter is married to a North African, a son to a half-Canadian,
half-Haitian, himself to a Swedish Protestant though he remains
faithful to the Armenian Gregorian church.
"In half a century the whole world is going to be coloured, people
will be intermixed," he added. "We must all learn to be earthlings
together."
And did he mind being described as a monument of French culture?
"It’s nice to be considered a monument … as long as the pigeons
stay away," he laughed.