Starmania 1979
The French singer, author and composer Michel Berger one day heard about a surprising news item . Patricia Campbell Hearst, the daughter of a billionaire, kidnapped by terrorists ended up joining their movement out of love for one of her kidnappers !
This true story will fascinate him, to the point of starting an album inspired by this story :
This will be the “Angelina Dumas” project .
Ultimately the album never saw the light of day and only one song that remained of Berger's work remained that he recorded as a duet with his wife France Gall :
Frustrated by what he considers to be a failure, Michel will not let go of what he thinks (rightly) is a good artistic vein
thanks to his wife who will make him meet the Canadian singer Diane Dufresne, Michel will work with his lyricist Luc Plamondon with whom he created the most famous rock opera in France :
The story takes place in an undated future (despite a now outdated reference to the year 2000 and the 80s) Humans now live in underground galleries redeveloped into a huge city called Monopolis. The only mirage of happiness for ordinary citizens is the number 1 television show "Starmania" where everyone can become a star for one night .
We simultaneously follow the lives and actions of several characters :
Johnny Rockfort : A young anarchist leader of the terrorist group " les étoiles noires " ( the black stars )
Sadia : A transvestite student co-creator of " les étoiles noires "
Marie Jeanne : The depressed waitress who works at the " Underground café "
Ziggy : A mythomaniac and ambitious homosexual record store owner
Cristal : The host of Starmania
Stella Spotlight : A sex symbol on the decline
Zéro Janvier : An extremist politician running for became president
Gourou Marabout : An extremist politician also competing in the presidential election
Roger-Roger : the TV presenter
Brilliantly the duo Berger / Plamondon went out of their way to organize the broadcast of a special television program in 1978 in order to present the songs to as many people as possible :
The show was performed for a short month for 33 performances at the Palais des Congrès , but it is considered one of the greatest French musicals
DISTRIBUTION :
Daniel Balavoine : Johnny Rockfort
France Gall : Cristal
Fabienne Thibeault : Marie-Jeanne
Étienne Chicot : Zéro Janvier
Diane Dufresne : Stella Spotlight
Grégory Ken : Ziggy
Nanette Workman : Sadia
Roddy Julienne : le Gourou
René Joly : Roger-Roger
Due to his short presence on stage, the show unfortunately did not have the right to a complete recording but fortunately the audio of the show has available in its entirety !
To get an idea of the visual identity of the show I had to dig into the TV archives :
The repetitions :
Full live audio of the show :
Single :
Monopolis / Quand on arrive en ville / Le blues du business man / La complainte de la serveuse automate / Ziggy / Le monde est stone
But the most memorable song is " SOS d'un terrien en détresse "
A song renowned for its difficulty and which launched the career of Daniel Balavoine then, years later, that of Star Academy 2004 winner Grégory Lemarchal :
ANECDOTES :
The original album contains two songs missing from the final show :
Petite Musique terrienne Part 2
L'air de l'extraterrestre
This extraterrestrial is a deleted character who only appeared physically in two production ( Francis Martin in 1980 and Marc Gabriel in 1986 , in this last version we discovered that Roger-Roger was in reality an alien ) the song, or rather its theme, will be recycled in several subsequent versions .
The show also contains several unreleased and missing songs from the album that will never be reused !!
La serveuse et les clients
Jingle de Stella
Sex shops , cinéma porno
Les parents de Cristal
Le tango de l'amour et de la mort
...
Claude Dubois (the original voice of Zéro Janvier) is the only one of the singers present on the album who did not reprise the role on stage, unfortunately it was because of his drug addiction, he took his revenge in 1989 when he replaced Richard Groulx on stage ( thanks to miss-starmania for the archive picture and additional information )
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Michel Berger abandons his role of Grand Gourou to Roddy Julienne without any explanation ?!
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In this version, in addition to randomly attacking wealthy people in the street, scratching their cars and raping girls in parking lots, les étoiles noires of 79 are a bit more extreme than in the other versions … Roger Roger specifies that the terrorists deliberately disconnected the oxygen ventilation of an entire neighborhood, killing all the residents ! This free murder will be deleted from other versions
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The name Johnnie Rockfort (a complicated pun to translate which can mean "strong rock'n'roll " or just the cheese of the same name ? ) is perhaps not a coincidence , the producer of the show Roland Hubert, not being convinced by Balavoine, completely unknown at the time, he fought (in vain) with Berger so that the role was offered to the rocker Johnny Halliday
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According to the memories of France Gall, during one of the performances a disgruntled spectator had fun whistling throughout the show exhausting Daniel Balavoine who patiently waited for the curtain call to jump into the audience to beat him up while he was still wearing his bulky costume ( the one below )
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France Gall speaks with emotion about the show (not subtitled) :
For more Starmania or to discover other French musicals I invite you to follow the path of my main masterlist to learn more about French musicals and their stories :
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