“This is the most important project of my life.” This Thursday, April 25, 2024, David Hallyday has just finished recording his album Requiem for a foolcomposed entirely of covers of his father’s greatest hits. On this occasion, he agreed to deliver an interview with our colleagues of Parisianin which he evokes this “challenge” truly “upsetting”. Because in addition to covering and modernizing Johnny Hallyday’s hits, the singer even decided to create a virtual duet with his late father, on the song he wrote for him 25 years ago. Wednesday April 24, he therefore previewed the title Blood for bloodthey had “sung together so many times, on stage, on TV” before the death of Taulier in December 2017. “I interpreted it as if he were there. It was upsetting to hear his voice in the headset”confides David Hallyday to the Ile-de-France newspaper.
David Hallyday, the man who “soothed” Johnny in his torments
It must be said that in addition to initially being a joint project, Blood for blood rightly tells the special relationship between the father-son duo. Today, it is David Hallyday who sings these cult words: “I never knew how to find the gestures that could heal your wounds…” A choice that owes nothing to “chance”since this sentence “has real meaning in [leurs] exchanges, in [leur] relationship”. At the time, Johnny’s eldest son was sort of playing the role of “big brother”this confidant who has the gift of reassurance: “He often talked to me about things that weren’t going well for him. I soothed him. […] I worked a lot on my personal life, more than my professional life, and I had some experience that interested him.”
For David Hallyday, maintaining a link with his children is essential, and he regrets that his father did not do so much with him in his youth. “For me, being successful in life means keeping in touch with my children, even when they are grown up, so that they always want to see me. And I missed it a lot with him”, entrusts Cameron’s father, Emma and Ilona Smet, to our colleagues. Luckily, Johnny and David Hallyday managed to “calm down a lot of things” thanks to their shared passion for music. “At the time, he didn’t want to record this song”, he remembers. And to conclude: “He refused to talk about what happened when he was younger. And I reassured him by saying: ‘It’s just a father who says to his son: I’ve been absent, I haven’t done things the way I wantedbut one day you will understand.’”