From the 3rd album by Joe Dassin with “Le petit pain au chocolat” and “whistle on the hill”, “Les champs Elysées” is the hit of which all singers dream: a very mysterious alchemy between a rhythm, words and an interpretation. And for Jo Dassin, in 1969, it’s downright a surprise.
And despite the success of the “Champs Elysées”, 600,000 copies soldJo Dassin remains an anxious man, devoured as much by the search for perfection as by the pangs of show business, tours, parties and artificial paradises. His life is hectic like on the Champs Elysées “last night, two strangers and this morning on the avenue, two lovers completely stunned by the long night”.
1969, Joe Dassin is 31 years old, he does not spare himself, his first heart attack is near.
After more than 50 years of success, Joe Dassin’s song has been interpreted in all languagesrepeated hundreds of times, all over the world and of course on the Champs Elysées.
If the original version is English and has the name “sur la route de Waterloo”, it is indeed the French version which has gone down in history thanks to Joe Dassin and his lyricist Pierre Delanoe who, extremely rare, one day replaced Joe Dassin to sing “Les Champs Elysées”.