For the aperitif, we’ll come back. It’s 4:30 p.m. at the English Bar of the Raphaël hotel, avenue Kléber, in Paris (16e), and Eddy Mitchell orders… a glass of mineral water. It was a time of sobriety, of course, but still! Legacy of the interview that preceded ours, an empty cognac glass lays carelessly on the table. Who took him down, the colleague or the singer? “I take it easy with alcohol”, grumbles the latter, trusting to be “very followed” medically. Eddy Mitchell is 80 years old, sixty of whom spent singing and acting. “My doctors harass me, he continues. Yesterday I was at the Necker Hospital for exams, tomorrow I will be at the American Hospital. I have to be careful. »
We remember his song, A little bit of lovereleased a year ago (on the album Country Rock), in which he pulled up the straps, post mortem, to his lifelong friend, Johnny Hallyday, guilty of having “burnt all [sa] life “ remaining deaf to the warnings of those close to him. The premature disappearance of sound “almost double”in 2017, at the age of 74, would she have convinced him to put the pedal soft?
Two shoots per year
The tobacco ? “No more than ten cigarettes a day. It sucks but I have no choice. » The coke? “Old history. I only took it to do shit I didn’t wanna do, like that two hundred date tour [en 1976] which was to be used to pay divorce arrears. I’ve never had an addiction. Coke, you don’t get a cold when you take it. » Without filter, Mister Eddy…
His gambling addiction, finally? Completed, too, in part thanks to his wife. “Either you quit or I’m out”she threatened him one day. “I stopped, while being banned from a casino, to no longer be able to set foot in a gambling establishment anywhere in the world. One day when I was in Vegas, I wanted to take part in a poker table that interested me. I was asked for my passport, before being told “oh no, not possible”. I broke. »
“I started to sing in baloches around 14 – 15 years old. I haven’t stopped since. That’s enough, I can’t take any more hotels, the gourmet salad at 2 am, fed up! »
Spared by the Covid-19, with his four vaccinations, Eddy Mitchell feels rather ” in shape “, he mutters. Not to the point, however, to leave one day on tour. That too is over. “I started to sing in baloches around 14-15 years old, and I became a “star”, in quotes, at 19 years old. I haven’t stopped since. That’s enough, I can’t take any more hotels. The gourmet salad at 2 a.m., fed up! And then, you have to do them, the two hours on stage. You have to give what people expect”argues the ex-Poulbot from Belleville, today shared between a wealthy corner of 16e arrondissement and Saint-Tropez.
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