While he has just published the book Étienne Daho, a Secret Book, the 66-year-old singer confided in the columns of Paris Match this Thursday, October 27. He notably agreed to deliver some secrets about childhood in Oran and his first years in France.
A confessional book. This Friday, October 28, Etienne Daho published the book Etienne Daho, a Secret Book, in which the singer lifts the veil on his childhood, his family and his journey. A rich book of 400 pages, written by his high school friend, Sylvie Coma. And on this occasion, the artist has agreed to give an interview to Paris Match this Thursday, October 27.
Étienne Daho thus returned to his first eight years in Oran, at the time of the Algerian war. A time that he also discusses at length in his book. “In Algeria, life was complicated because of the war but, as a child, you get along with everything and you can even play under the bombs. My sisters and I had to dodge dead bodies in the street, duck under windows for fear of getting shot, lie down in cars when we were driving.”confided the interpreter of Weekend in Rome to our colleagues.
Étienne Daho: “I didn’t want to be considered an immigrant”
In 1960, when he was still very young, Etienne Daho and his mother were abandoned by his father, a career soldier and musician who loved to party. And in 1964, at the age of 8, the boy left Algeria with his aunt Francine, heading for Reims at first, then Rennes. “My father had disappeared in France in 1960, my mother like me could not leave Algeria without her authorization. So I came alone with my aunt and uncle who took care of me”continued Étienne Daho who did not fail to be grateful to them for the education they instilled in him: “What I sometimes considered to be great severity on their part was actually a spur. It required me to be good at school in order to exist. Because’deep down I didn’t want to be seen as an immigrant. I wanted to have a new life here, to be faced with a blank page“.
All the same, this did not prevent Étienne Daho from sometimes having the impression of not feeling out of place among the other students. “When I arrived at school in France, my little friends had a normal life, they lived with both parents, which was not at all my case. So I tried to make myself invisible”thus confided the singer, specifying that “it lasted until adolescence when, all of a sudden, I was thought to be cool”.