“Tout should change all the time, the world would be much more fun/We would see planes in the corridors of the metro and Johnny Hallyday in a cage in Medrano/Oh, yeah. It was with these words suggesting locking the singer in a cage at the Medrano circus that Antoine declared, in his nasal voice, war on the idol of young people, in 1966.
Johnny is then a star. First French rocker, he has already released a dozen timeless hits: “Souvenirs, souvenirs”, “Retiens la nuit”, “Excuse-moi partner”, “Pour moi la vie va commence”, “Le Pénitencier”… From the yé-yé generation, star of Hi buddies, the Europe 1 program available as a magazine popular with sixties youth, he is young, handsome, sensual, well-known and he has just married Sylvie Vartan, considered the ideal young girl for half of the French people, during a highly publicized ceremony. Unfortunately, since his military service, Hallyday is (only 23 years old) in the trough.
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During his absence, a young engineering student at the Ecole Centrale stole the show. His name is Pierre Antoine Muraccioli, alias Antoine, he is 22 years old, barely a year younger than Johnny, but he finds his eldest, with his banana and his fitted jackets, already outdated. Like the hippies who have just made their appearance, far from well-groomed yé-yé idols, Antoine wears flowered shirts and lets his hair grow vaguely wavy. Former fan of Johnny, he uses the services of the former impresario of the rocker and signs on his old label (Vogue), determined to steal his place. Will he make it? As soon as it was released, “Les Élucubrations d’Antoine” was a hit. The record sells 200,000 copies. Number one, there are nineteen weeks left in the top 100.
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Johnny does not react to the provocation of this little brat who does not even know how to sing. On the subject, he is content to reply to the press for teenagers eager for scoops that “there is only good humor that counts”. He closes the subject with a devastating smile narrowing his steel blue feline eye. In reality, he has other fish to fry. He plays every day in front of half-full halls, he is exhausted, his manager ripped him off, he owes four million francs to the taxman and his wife is pregnant with their first child… Johnny is so indifferent that he even congratulates his rival, met by chance one evening in a nightclub. Except that the joker does not want to let go of the waxed boots and does it again with “I say what I think, I live as I want”. Excerpt: “I say what I think, I live as I want / I put Johnny in a cage, I don’t like Edith Mathieu / What do you care about my hair / I have the shirts I want / I do all that for me not for you/Understand it. »
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Johnny’s response
In May, Johnny Hallyday then responds to Antoine with “Long hair and short ideas”: “If words were enough to achieve everything / Sitting on his behind with his arms crossed / I know that in a cage I would be locked up / But it’s another story to get me in there/Because it’s not enough to have long hair. » On a melody borrowed from « My Crucified Jesus » by the Flemish beatnik singer Ferre Grignard, he also attacks Antoine on his pacifist ideas: “Write on his jacket / The war must stop / Sitting on his behind / With his arms crossed / The monks of Vietnam / Never thought about it /All they found/Is going up in smoke. Beyond the singers, there are two ways of being young that clash here.
The song remains ranked twenty-four weeks in the top 100, including five in first place. It’s “win-win”, as the Americans would say: Antoine becomes famous and Johnny sees his career boosted. The show Tender age, the idol tour then serves as a ring to decide – live – the knights of the enamored midinettes. Johnny sings “Long hair and short ideas”, Antoine replies (in song): “But you know that Hallyday doesn’t understand anything”, Johnny replies: “Antoine arrived determined to bring us down on our ass / But his shot missed and has his nose broken…” No, all that does not fly very high. Moreover, France Gall rebels, dapper, of these bad manners in “La Guerre des chansons » : “On all posts / We shout at each other / It’s war / The war of songs / With harmonica / Guitar under the arm / They devour each other like lions / And all that, because of long hair . »
Finally, it was Jean-Marie Périer, then producer, who buried the hatchet. The joke has gone on long enough. One evening, he locks the singers in the living room of a nightclub to force them to reconcile. After two hours, everything is forgotten. However, in 1978, Antoine, whose career had fizzled out, tried once again to use this famous rivalry to exist. He sings, “Oh, yeah! He spent nearly fifteen years on this / And Johnny Hallyday is as handsome as before / He should be exhibited but there are more Medranos / Besides, it’s not a cage that he needs, it’s a whole zoo. This time, Johnny doesn’t answer. Wise decision. He has just released two hits: “I forgot to live” and “She forgets me”, and is flying to Los Angeles, his dream America, to record a new album, Hollywood.
It was only in the 2000s that the two singers were again in competition, in a completely unexpected field: that of opticians! While Optic 2000 signs a colossal advertising contract with Johnny (how can we forget his roar: “ooooptiiiic two-miiiiiille”), Antoine receives a more modest but quite correct fee to appear in Atol pubs. Oh yeah…