“At 17, I saw the Beatles, the Yardbirds and the Animals at the Palais des Sports, it was incredible!”

He started singing by chance at 18 years old during holidays in Corsica… Julien Clerc also tells us about listening to the first 45 laps of Montand or Aznavour drawn from the disco of his mother and his passion for Anglo-Saxon pop.

Where did you spend your childhood and in what environment?
My father married the daughter of my grandfather’s cleaning lady. My maternal grandparents, both workers, housed in a small apartment under the roofs in the 14ᵉ arrondissement, when my paternal grandfather lived a more noble floor, in a building in the same district. My father, older than my mother, did brilliant studies. Normalien, he was a senior official. I was born from a marriage between a very different man and a woman of social classes. After divorced when I was still a baby, more prepared and more able to defend himself and work his file than my mother, my father obtained my guard. Which, once again, was not common. I spent the week in Bourg-la-Reine with my father’s, in a pretty suburban house, and on weekends with my mother, in a very small apartment in the popular district of the Porte d’Orléans, in Paris.

I have a fairly gray memory of my childhood, these round trips, this double life, and the sadness of my mother when she left me in front of the house portal, every Sunday evening. I was not allowed to talk about her in my father’s house, she was a taboo subject. I only confided in my brother, with whom I shared my room. I was lucky to be very well brought up also by my mother-in-law, who gave me a lot of love and who, when she was still of this world, told me that I was a happy, talkative child, with fairly stopped ideas on life. My father gave me a taste for reading. I loved the comics, I was subscribed to the magazine version of Spirou and Tintin. From the age of 13 to 17, I did scouting among the scouts of France. I had not chosen the troop of my high school, the Lakanal Lycée de Sceaux, which had a fairly strict and military reputation. I preferred to join that of the Montaigne high school, in the 6ᵉ arrondissement, which looked more like me. At school, I was dilettante and lazy. But by doing the bare minimum, I always managed to go into the above class, up to the bac and even the propédeutic exam, which allowed me to integrate English college into the Sorbonne and spend the oral of Sciences Po. Everything changed when I started my singer job: I was still very young, but I quickly passed for someone rigorous, difficult and demanding.

Did your parents listen to music?

My father was a big fan of poetry. He did not have a musical ear, unlike my mother-in-law, who listened to a lot of classical music. She was a good -level amateur pianist and her piano was enthroned in the middle of the show, as is the case with me today. I was rocked by the pieces of Beethoven, Chopin or Schumann that she played. On Friday evening, when I arrived at my mother, the musical atmosphere changed completely. She had a large disco where you could find both Jazz discs from New Orleans, Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, as well as French song, with albums by Jacques Brel, Ferré, Barbara and 45 Tours as The neighbor’s cat, Yves Montand, or You go to go, d’Aznavour. But the singer she loved above all was Brassens, who accompanied me all my childhood. I also remember the recording of the sketch Balendar at the Théâtre aux Armées, by Fernand Raynaud, whom I adored. On the back of the cover, there was written “If you don’t show up, you are caught in a jail. »» We went to see him on stage. In the first part played a twist group called the vultures. Shouldn’t he feel in danger to ask a young music group to open for him? The time changed, it was not easy for artists of a certain age.

What is the favorite song of your childhood?

When I was little, I loved Brassens. If I have to choose a particular song, I would say Almond. I always find it amazing to reduce your talent to that of author. Brassens is a huge melodist. The French public, especially the one who does not appreciate it, is customary to say that all his music are alike. But they confuse arrangements and music itself. His melodies marked me for life. When I was 15, I bought myself jazz records that I was exchanging with my boyfriend Momo, with whom I smoked the pipe when I leave the Lakanal high school. We especially liked pianists like Thelonious Monk, Bobby Timmons and Art Tatum. Then I started buying French song records. I remember that the very first I paid with my pocket money was All my friends, by Sylvie Vartan. I also listened to a lot Barbara sings Barbara. When I was 15, my godfather offered me my first transistor, where I heard for the first time Amsterdam, of Jacques Brel, and on which I listened Hello friends. When the Beatles arrived, I only saw them. It was a real revolution for a whole generation. Little by little, I discovered Anglo-Saxon pop, the Shadows then the Americans like Bob Dylan and Ray Charles, whose walks I loved with stringed orchestras.

What is the first concert you attended?

As a child and adolescent, I was fortunate to be registered in the classic mornings of the Comédie-Française and the Musigrains of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where every first Thursday of the month, Germaine Arbeau-Bonnefoy, seated at a table in front of a symphonic orchestra led by Robert Blot, told the life and the work of a classic composer to an audience of young adolescents. At the end of the conference, the orchestra withdrew. On the green papers that the openers had distributed to the entrance, we had to answer a questionnaire on the composer. It could also be a musical dictation or a recognition in the ear of an instrument played behind the scenes. The first concert for which I paid for my place is that of Duke Ellington, at Olympia, I must have been 14 years old. A year later, to please a girlfriend, I went to see Cliff Richard, whom I did not like too much, but there was in the first part the Shadows, of which I was a big fan. In 1965, I was 17, I saw the Beatles at the Palais des Sports. All English pop played there in the first part, there were Yardbirds and animals. It was incredible!

Have you learned music as a child?

I started the piano at 6 years old with a special teacher, whom I saw a few years ago during one of my concerts. I stopped at the age of 13. In high school, I took battery lessons with a classmate who had claimed to be able to give it, but it especially allowed him to take me some money. I trained in the house in Bourg-la-Reine on a clear box and a cymbal by playing over my jazz discs. It was at the age of 18, during a trip to Corsica with a boyfriend, that I started singing. Calvi musicians were looking for a singer. I don’t know what happened to me by my head but I got involved with them. They played all the music that we loved and that we listened to the campsite on our eaters: the Beatles, the Stones, Rhythm & Blues. I learned all the songs in an afternoon, in approximate English. During our three weeks of vacation, I sang with them every night in a box. Back in Bourg-la-Reine, I got into the piano and tried to reproduce the songs I liked in my ear. With Bob Dylan, it worked roughly, when it was the Beatles, things were complicated, not to mention jazz.

Little by little, I discovered that I was able to invent and compose music. It started like that. Quite quickly arose the problem of the lyricist. Perhaps because of my father’s requirement in the face of poetry, I found my texts without interest. In college, I spent a lot at the coffee writing, place de la Sorbonne. One day, I addressed myself to the restaurant hall asking if someone wrote words, and a little voice replied « Moi ! » It was Étienne Roda-Gil. The afternoon of work were followed in Bourg-la-Reine, where I played my music that I recorded on cassettes. I auditioned at Pathé in the fall 67 with our first song, The Tarantelle, and another called Hecatombe. It was very long is very ambitious, we wanted to impress them. I played in front of the wall on a straight piano and when I turned around at the end of the song, I read for the first time admiration in someone’s eyes. But we lacked a song that could be a tube. We got back to work and very quickly we wrote At the cavalry.

Do you remember the first song you wrote?

Etienne often disappeared. For several days, no one knew where he was. His first text, The Tarantelle, was given to me by a young girl in the writinger who told me “Here, Etienne told me to give you that!” »» We first recorded it in Pathé studios on a flexible disc which, in reality, was very hard and cashable, and which is the equivalent of what is called a model today. She was released in 45 rpm, before To the cavalry, In 1968, I was 20 years old.

L’album A life, From Julien Clerc, was released on May 23, 2025. He will be on tour throughout France in 2026 and 2027.