When we think of Michel Berger, it is impossible to dissociate him from France Gall, who was his muse and his wife for years. But what few people probably know is that before his death the singer had started an affair with a German model, Beatrice Grimm. A short-lived but passionate romance that makes one of her relatives say that she is in fact his real widow.
In the pages of Paris Matchwhich publishes excerpts from the soberly titled biography of Yves Bigot Michael Berger (at Seuil, available March 18, 2022), we learn a little more about this woman whom the singer had met in Los Angeles in 1991 when he was doing castings to find performers for the Anglo-Saxon version of the musical starmania. The young woman had put her suitcases in Santa Barbara, opting for this city as her main residence. On casting day, Michel Berger fell in love. Quickly, he will multiply the trips to and from California, officially for work because, at that time, even if his relationship with France Gall is about to end, he is not divorced. “It was a clandestine relationship“, notes the author.
Madly in love with each other, Michel Berger and Beatrice Grimm end up being less and less discreet, the young woman having taken over time an apartment in Paris. The couple will multiply the trips: in New York in 1991, in Egypt in 1992 – she kept a photo of the singer “in front of the Pyramids but she threw everything else, out of spite, out of anger too” – then in Corsica. The interpreter of the hits White Paradise, The pianist’s groupie or A few words of love had ended up informing France Gall of his desire to divorce when he was “torn by the guilt he feels in front of his children, in front of France perhaps also and the desire to start a new life.“He will even start”looking for a house in Los Angeles“but will never have the time, he who died on August 2, 1992 in Ramatuelle, victim of a heart attack at only 44 years old.
Aware of the affair of her husband and father of her children Pauline and Raphaël, France Gall will ensure that this story is never made public; a feat, until its existence was finally revealed in 2012 and then in 2018. Thus, at Michel Berger’s funeral, Beatrice Grimm was obviously not invited… Despite everything, the romance between the German and the singer had been so strong that for Bernard Saint-Paul, a star manager and close friend of the artist, “Beatrice is the real widow of Michel Berger“. Moreover, Franka Berger, Michel’s sister, had herself invited Yves Bigot to meet Beatrice Grimm at her home in 2018 to tell her story!
Paris Matchon newsstands March 17, 2022.