“I didn’t want to meet him at first”

Actor and singer Jacques Dutronc is the special guest of Le Monde d’Élodie Suigo from July 8 to 12, 2024. Five days to trace the thread of his professional and personal life.

Jacques Dutronc is considered one of the greatest French artists. He welcomes us into his refuge, his haven of peace in Monticello, Corsica. When we say: “Jacques Dutronc“, we obviously think of music with a real incarnation, a real presence on stage and its cult titles which have become Proust’s madeleines: And me and me and me (1966), I like girls (1967), It’s five o’clock, Paris is waking up (1968), The Playboys (1966) or again Shit in France (1984). We also think of cinema when we talk about him, with the starting point in 1973 being the film Antoine and Sébastien of Jean-Marie Périer or Maurice Pialat who entrusted him in 1991 with the role of Van Gogh and in the end, the César for best actor. All these ingredients can be found in his memoirs, And me and me and me published by Cherche Midi. A funny and fascinating work, as its humor, self-mockery and sincerity ring true.

franceinfo: In Paris, you got up at five in the morning, or rather you went to bed after five, since you noticed that Paris was waking up. We discover in this book that sleep is still complicated today.

Jacques Dutronc: I still have trouble… And the more informed we are, I’m sorry to say this in relation to franceinfo, in principle the less we sleep. Sometimes, you have to have a selective ear. Shyness also prevents you from sleeping.

That’s to say ?

I don’t know… We are afraid of the bed or of falling asleep. The bed is an extremely dangerous place, look at the number of deaths in beds, it is very dangerous!

You met Jacques Prévert. There has always been poetry in what you have been able to do. When we listen to: It’s five o’clock, Paris is waking upthere is the meaning of the verse, the meaning of writing. Do you feel a bit like a poet?

No. I think that for poetry, you have to be very selective. This song, it started to form at Place de Breteuil with the three Jacques (Dutronc, Wolfsohn and Lanzmann). I said to Jacques: we have to make a song about Paris, unlike those with accordion and company, and that’s how it came about It’s five o’clock, Paris is waking up. And the schedule is the one I used to take to have water and do drifts in the car… Boom!

Among the most beautiful encounters and friends forever, there was Serge Gainsbourg. You produced the album War and Farts together. You both worked with a bottle and a basket. You emptied one and filled the other.

Yes. There were several baskets. There was a musician, a guitarist named Patrick Tison who came straight into the studio. He greeted us through the window and at one point, he came to listen to the sound. He said: “But, the studio cabin is a cellar“. There was wine, but everywhere, boxes. It was very strong, there. It was not a competition… Yes, War and Fartsit wasn’t bad. I did it because a little farting in life didn’t hurt. There was so much conflict on earth that a record…

The friendship with Gainsbourg was very strong.

Yes, it was sealed thanks to Françoise Hardy by a dinner while I, I did not want to meet him at the beginning. I thought that he also did not want to meet me. I, I said: “but I don’t want to meet either“, but Françoise said to me: “But not at all! You are wrong. Serge wanted to know you and you didn’t want to“. So I replied: “which proves that I am normal“. No, but it’s good when there’s one who doesn’t want to and the other who does. It’s more united, it’s stronger.

“I fell under the spell of Serge Gainsbourg, his intelligence, his humor, everything!”

Jacques Dutronc

to franceinfo

We also learned that you opened for Gene Vincent and that he tried to assassinate you after drinking 30 beers. Tell us about this improbable moment.

Yes, I played with him. He was at the theatre and he was staring at me. His English was quite strange because it was slang and then, he was quite fired up, he must have had 38 beers in his bag and so he was staring at me. He was convinced that I had stolen his comb. He absolutely wanted to kill me because I had stolen his comb. There are others who have died for less than that. We were on tour with the clarinettist André Réwéliotty who was like Claude Luter, they very often accompanied Sidney Bechet and I went on tour with him. But he often stared at me, he thought I had the face of a priest. He offered me to come with him in his convertible Hotchkiss. I declined, he told me: “Oh really, hello, priest head!“And he killed himself. They killed themselves on the highway.