France is celebrating a terrible anniversary this December 18, 2021. For twenty years now Gilbert Bécaud died of illness, succumbing to generalized lung cancer at the age of 74. From up there, however, the artist can be delighted to have left a trace of his passage on this Earth. His discography, of course, but also his big blended family.
Gilbert Bécaud was indeed the father of six children, born of several different relationships. Gilbert, nicknamed Gaya, born in 1953, as well as Philippe and Anne, born in 1957 and 1961, are the fruit of his love affair with his first wife Monique Nicolas. Jennifer was born in 1968 from his union with Janet Woollacott and he had Emily in 1972 with his last wife Kitty. He also had adopted Noï with her, in 1993, in Laos. But did the members of this large tribe follow in Dad’s footsteps? Yes and no.
The boss is always me!
A few days from the anniversary of his father’s death, on November 19, 2021, Emily Bécaud released a triple album entitled I come back for you at Warner Music. She performs, above, three virtual duets with Gilbert Bécaut. Apart from this opus, which sows discord within the clan, few tributes are apparently planned. No exhibition, no portrait devoted to television. And for good reason. Gaya, the eldest of the clan, creative director at RTL, is the sole heir of his father’s work and he doesn’t plan to do much with it. He has, moreover, recently been the victim of a stroke which prevented him from organizing anything.
Kitty had tried to challenge this decision but justice ended up leaning in favor of Gaya, who was the artistic director of Gilbert Bécaud during his lifetime. “Little Bécaud acts as if she were all alone, but the boss is always me“, he assured recently in the columns of the newspaper Le Figaro. As for the rest of the family, it is difficult to follow in everyone’s footsteps, or legal disputes. We simply know that Anne died, in 2019, in a terrible fire …