IHe met them when they started, when Michel Berger found the singer he was waiting for in France Gall… At the time, Yves Bigot was a rock journalist, he worked on Europe 1 when the couple came to introduce themselves and made contact. Yves Bigot will follow their career in the front row, a musical decade in osmosis with the French, punctuated by numerous hits, “Resiste”, “He played the piano standing”, “Calypso”, “Babacar”, “Ella, Elle l’a “… In the early 1990s, however, the duo broke up, Michel wanted to divorce and start a new life. In a new version of his biography devoted to the singer, Yves Bigot returns to the last secrets of the musician.
Point : Who is Beatrice Grimm, who is coming to the end of Michel Berger’s life?
The story could have ended there, but they meet again…
Fate gets involved since she lives in Paris at the corner of the passage where Michel and France have their studio in the Batignolles district… They talk, get to know each other. And see each other again in 1991, when Michel is in Los Angeles to set up and produce an American rock band. He looks for voices, he auditions and he calls Beatrice… She rehearses with him “You’ve Got a Friend”, a huge hit sung by James Taylor. This is where their story really begins, it will last almost 18 months, until the singer’s sudden death in August 1992.
We have the impression that, at the time, Michel Berger was at a crossroads, both emotionally and professionally…
He is at a crossroads in his life. He had confided to some of his friends that he had more and more difficulty finding new ideas in music, that he wanted to switch to image and cinema – he also started making music videos. He had in his drawers a film which he called Cherokeethen Totemthe story, it seems, of Indians who get lost in the urban jungle… He had just sold his musical editions to start producing, first with this rock band, but also with the version English from starmaniabaptized Tycoonfor which he was looking for international voices between Los Angeles and London.
Did he consider leaving France Gall for Béatrice?
That’s what the evidence suggests. In any case, this is what Beatrice Grimm wanted and hoped for. And obviously, Michel planned to settle in the United States. He was looking for a school for his children, but he was also prospecting in Switzerland… You have to understand that Michel compartmentalized his life and his conversations with everyone very well. He managed his relationships and his projects in his own way, very discreetly. I can very well imagine him exploring several hypotheses at that time.
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Did France Gall know of the existence of this relationship?
Yes, she knew, she spoke about it with certain close relations, but it was especially not necessary that this business is rumored. It was necessary to preserve the children, but also the show-biz image of the duo so popular, ideal couple, untouchable in the eyes of the French. But France also had her own adventures… And she no longer liked what Michel was doing at that time, she criticized him a lot.
Some even go so far as to say that he was so torn by these life choices, that he did not want to decide and let himself go…
However, at that time they released a new album, Double-dealing…
A curious album where there is no love song, the album of the end somewhere… For the first time, France is co-producer, she makes him drool, everyone agrees to say that he there was a bad atmosphere during the recording and the promo. Which doesn’t mean that the couple wouldn’t have given each other another chance, it’s hard to say what Michel would have done in the end. He left suddenly, at 44, an age when one is not supposed to die… The day before, he had just received a phone call from Luc Plamondon telling him that “The World Is Stone”, the hit of starmania covered in English by Cyndi Lauper, had entered the British charts. His wildest dream came true…
Change of private life, new professional challenges… Some say that the stress ended up killing him.
It is true that Michel was at a decisive moment in his life. He was certainly plagued by a form of guilt: his daughter, Pauline, is sick and condemned, she has cystic fibrosis, it was not the time to leave… Leaving France Gall is also breaking an intimate and artistic, long and complex, it must have been unbearable for him. We must also add the production of Tycoon, who occupies his time and his thoughts… All his friends say that he had changed physically: they found him exhausted, stressed, beginning to feel unwell. Some even go so far as to say that he was so torn by these life choices, that he did not want to decide and let himself go…
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To this is also added the death of his father, Professor Jean Hamburger, six months before his own death. With which a heavy dispute remained…
We cannot understand Michel Berger without knowing this story: this father, scientific authority, triple academician, pioneer of nephrology, but frankly undrinkable, who drops his family overnight on the pretext of amnesia after a heavy operation. He bluntly says he no longer recognizes them and starts his life again. Michel is six years old, it’s an emotional earthquake, for him as for the family. He will always live with this feeling of abandonment, the idea that everything is ephemeral, temporary, that everything can stop. When her father died, they had seen each other again, but never really reconnected. His death cannot leave him indifferent, it supposes that their relationship can no longer be repaired.
Wasn’t Jean Hamburger proud of his son’s success?
He hated when people reminded him that he was the father of Michel Berger, because he felt that it belittled him… For him, having a son in show biz must have been an absolute shame! Jean Hamburger was a brilliant guy, but so polar, condescending, almost disembodied. He went so far as to disinherit his children, one more violence for Michel.
To leave France Gall was also to reproduce somewhere the abandonment of the father…
He must have had a hard time letting go of everything, he felt responsible. It must be understood that Michel was a straight man, with a real Protestant ethic, endowed with a real moral compass, all of this had to work on him… The fact is that he died in Saint-Tropez in the arms of France, and not with Beatrice. Who will not be at the funeral, unlike Véronique Sanson, invited by the family… For Beatrice, it’s also a total collapse, they were very much in love: in her apartment in Santa Monica, she suddenly finds herself with Michel’s things, her clothes, her piano, she doesn’t know what to do with them…
What remains of Michel Berger today?
rock opera starmaniathe album Rock’n Roll Attitude by Johnny, “Personal Message” with Françoise Hardy, a magnificent song… And this artistic couple with France Gall: they were in perfect symbiosis, a musical complicity, an identical phrasing… Michel made them the spokesperson for young French girls, of an entire generation. This is what will remain.
To read : Michael Bergerby Yves Bigot, Editions du Seuil.