| Véronique Sanson | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Sanson |
| Also known as | Véro |
| Born | 24 April 1949 |
| Origin | Boulogne-Billancourt, France |
| Genres | Chanson French pop Pop Rock |
| Occupations | French singer-songwriter producer musician |
| Instruments | Piano Guitar |
| Years active | 1967 onwards |
| Labels | Warner Music Group |
| Associated acts | Michel Berger, Stephen Stills, Chris Stills, France Gall |
| Website | veronique-sanson.net |
| Notable instruments | |
| piano | |
Véronique Sanson (full name, Véronique Marie Line Sanson,[1] born 24 April 1949, in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris, France) is a two-time Victoires de la Musique Award-winning French singer-songwriter, musician, and producer with an avid following in her native country.
She brings a very personal vocal style to the singing of French pop songs: Her voice has a very strong vibrato.
Unlike most previous French artists of the Sixties and early Seventies, who mostly released EPs usually consisting of a collection of singles, B-sides and covers, Sanson was one of the first female artists to release actual albums with a full-length artistic statement and comprising songs flowing together thematically. In 1972, her breakthrough album (Amoureuse) was reviewed by many critics as a revolution, and ten years after Barbara, Véronique Sanson became one of the very first French female singer-songwriters to break into stardom.
Over the course of a four-decade career, and despite her tumultuous love life and difficulties in overcoming alcoholism, she has never failed in her artistic career, establishing herself as one of the most prominent artists in France, with an impressive series of hits, sold-out concerts and platinum albums.
Sanson was romantically involved with French singer-songwriter Michel Berger from 1967 to 1972. Their love story has become a part of French pop culture, especially through songs they wrote to each other long after they broke up. From 1973 to 1979 she was married to American rock musician Stephen Stills. Their son, Chris Stills, is also a musician. " One of her songs, Amoureuse, was covered in English in 1973 by singer Kiki Dee, and became a major hit in the United Kingdom, and has been covered since by various other singers, from Polly Brown (1973) to Olivia Newton John (1974) and a dance-music version by Illusive, featuring Amanda Abbs (1997). In 1974, Patti Dahlstrom recorded a second version with her own lyrics, entitled "Emotion", and this new version was covered by Helen Reddy (1974) and Shirley Bassey (1975). Many other covers of "Amoureuse" have been recorded in French, German, Japanese...[2]
Véronique Sanson plays piano and guitar. According to the SACEM, Sanson has sold over 5,8 million albums in her native country alone.[3]
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Véronique Sanson grew up in the memory of World War II. Both her parents, René and Colette Sanson were members of the French Resistance during the German occupation of France.[4] Before the war, René Sanson was a French diplomat in The Hague. When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, he sent a coded message to warn the French government that Germany was planning to attack France from across the Belgian border. This very message was decoded by Colette, a communication worker at the French Ministry of War. It was not until a few months later that they met in person, in a resistance cell. Both became prominent within the French Resistance. In 1944, after the bombing of a German train , Colette was arrested and sentenced to death by the occupation force, but she heroically managed to escape.[5] After the liberation of Paris, René Sanson was appointed Minister of Labour in Charles de Gaulle's provisional government. The couple married in 1945. As a lawyer and an economist, René Sanson remained involved in politics as Member of Parliament and Mayor of the 13th district of Paris until 1967.[4]
Véronique grew up in a very posh and privileged Parisian home. Her parents considered music the finest art there was, and emphasized the musical apprenticeship of their daughters. Her mother introduced her to the guitar, while her father, who was a great fan of jazz, taught her the piano at the age of four.[6] Early on, she displayed great ability and could play complex classical pieces by Mozart, Bach or Gershwin. At the age of 13, she already composed her own songs, influenced by The Beatles, Ray Charles and by Dionne Warwick's peculiar vibrato. In 1965, she was struck by amnesia after a severe bout of meningitis. This experience became a leitmotiv in Sanson's work, as she often expressed a deep nostalgia towards her "forgotten childhood"[7]
In 1967, her career began in a trio, the Roche-Martin, with François Bernheim and her sister Violaine Sanson. (Bernheim is currently a songwriter for many notable recording artists including Patricia Kaas, while Violaine Sanson has pursued a career in advertising). What started as a fun adventure ended up as a commercial disaster. Despite their enthusiasm, the three teenagers only managed to sell a few hundreds records, "mostly to their friends, family and pets".[5] However, this experience allowed her to meet with Michel Berger (who was actually a childhood acquaintance), with whom she began a romantic relationship as well as a prolific artistic career. He introduced her to his record company (Pathé Marconi), and encouraged her to pursue a solo career. Sanson later mentioned that period as her most productive. In an interview, she recalls that she forced herself to write a song per day to keep up with Michel Berger.[8] Similarities in their musical styles definitely played a tremendous part in their love story. In 1969, she released her first solo single, comprising "Le Feu Du Ciel" and "Le Printemps est là", which met with very little success despite some radio-play on a few Parisian radio stations.
After the commercial failure of her first single, her contract with Pathé Marconi was severed. However, she remained convinced that music was her calling. She kept on working with Michel Berger, who asked her to write songs for Isabelle de Funès, niece of French legendary actor, Louis de Funès. She wrote "Mon voisin", "Une odeur de neige" and "Jusqu'à la tombée du jour" that would later be featured in her 1992 album "Sans Regrets". In 1971, she wrote "La brume de Philadelphie" for Petula Clark. The song was issued as the B-side of her French single "La Chanson de Marie Madeleine".
At that stage of her life, Sanson's voice had reached maturity, and she suddenly discovered her ability to produce the vibrato that would rapidly become her trademark. She and Michel Berger had become an inseparable team, and were offered a joint recording contract by Bernard de Bosson, the emblematic CEO of WEA, the label to which they would remain faithful for the rest of their careers.
In 1972, Sanson finally released the album "Amoureuse", produced by Michel Berger. The album received a warm welcome from critics, and with the singles "Besoin de personne", "Amoureuse", and "Bahia", it reached the summit of the charts thanks to intensive radio play (2x Gold in only 5 months). Nowadays, songs from this album remain very popular in radio stations' playlists . However, the success of the album had an ironic downside for Véronique, who was terrified of performing in front of an audience and therefore refused to schedule concerts. However, Michel Berger and Bernard de Bosson believed she could overcome her debilitating fear, and forced her to perform a daily showcase at the Eiffel Tower's restaurant. Every night she had to perform four songs in front of "a horde of Japanese tourists who couldn't care less about her songs".[5] Nevertheless, she later mentioned it as a necessary experience that helped her conquer her stage-fright, and the same year she appeared as the opening act for some of the biggest stars of the time such as Claude Francois, Julien Clerc, and Michel Polnareff.
"Amoureuse" was closely followed by De l'autre côté de mon rêve, which also became a huge success thanks to the singles "Comme je l'imagine", and "Chanson sur ma drôle de vie". In the meantime, she had attended a concert by Stephen Stills (Crosby, Stills & Nash) with his new band Manassas in Paris, and met the lead singer, Stephen Stills. The pair fell in love, and Véronique Sanson left Michel Berger, just as De l'autre côté de mon rêve was released. (She supposedly went out to buy cigarettes, but never came back...). In Canada the next year (1973), Sanson went on tour as the main act for the first time.[2]
Despite her doubts, Véronique Sanson and Stephen Stills got married in 1973, in Guildford, England, with notable guests such as The Beatles and The Who.[9] She permanently moved to the United States, but returned to France regularly to give concerts and perform on French television. In 1974, she gave birth to her only child, Chris Stills, in Boulder, Colorado. Sanson seemed very happy in the United States, where she really blossomed as a complete artist. Being close to Stephen Stills taught her a lot about producing and recording music. In interviews, she has often mentioned her preference for the American way of making music, in comparison to what she had experienced in France. In that sense, her marriage also marked a new direction to her career, which has led the French media to constantly associate her music with Anglo-Saxon influences (in her career she has recorded most of her albums in the US, and mostly with American musicians). In the TV documentary "La douceur du danger", Véronique Sanson remembers her first year of marriage as artistically frustrating. While she had been constantly pushed by Michel Berger to work, she did not receive that kind of support from Stephen Stills, who did not take a lot of interest in what she was doing. However, she finally took the leap, and decided to work on a new album.[5]
Far from home, and without musicians, she enrolled Stephen Stills's band (Manassas), and decided to produce the album herself, using what she had learned with Michel Berger and Stephen Stills. In total contrast with her Beatles-inspired previous albums, the record emerged as a remarkable mixture of pop and rock'n'roll. Still considered by the critics as her best album to date, "Le Maudit" was released in 1974, and reflects a large spectrum of musical influences such as bossa nova in "Alia Souza", or pure Rock'n'roll in "On m'attend là bas". After a tour in Quebec the same year, she went touring in France, with two concerts at the Olympia (the ultimate goal for a French artist) with Stephen Stills on the bass guitar.
In 1976, she began a long-lasting professional collaboration with producer Bernard Saint-Paul (making 12 albums) who would become a close friend of hers. The album Vancouver, recorded in London with British musicians, equals her previous achievements. The album went platinum and got a tremendous amount of radio play, especially the single "Vancouver", one of her biggest hits.
By 1976, Véronique Sanson had become an established star. Her music, very much inspired by "la crème de la crème" of American producers, constituted a rarity in the French musical landscape. Her carefully crafted melodies, her poetic lyrics, and the highly skilled musicians surrounding her, were the main reason of the Sanson phenomenon. The Vancouver tour was concluded by two weeks of concerts at the Olympia, where her first live album was recorded.[10]
In 1977, "Bernard's Song" the opening song of her 6th album, "Hollywood", is presented as a tribute to Bernard Saint Paul (though she has since denied it).[2] Recorded in Stevie Wonder's studios in Los Angeles, Hollywood found Sanson combining a disco-inspired sound to pop-driven melodies. Also, this album is often referred to as the most emblematic piece of Sanson's American period. The same year she went on tour across France with Michel Jonasz as her opening act. Although she lived in the United States most of the time, she managed to remain present in the French musical landscape, travelling back and forth between her home in Colorado and her audience in France.
In 1978, she became the first female artist to perform at "Le Palais des Sports" in Paris (the biggest arena in Paris at that time).
In 1979, she released "7ème", best known for the single "Ma révérence", a tragic ballad with memorable lyrics, that has become her most popular song. Although the main single was a hit, fans usually designate "7ème" as her weakest album. Indeed, it might be fair to say that, in contrast to the rest of her discography, this record is the only one that has not aged gracefully, despite containing some of her best songs ("Toute une vie sans te voir", "Celui qui n'essaie pas", "Mi-maître, mi-esclave"). Overall, the album is quite melancholic, which contrasts with the lightness of "Hollywood" two years earlier. In fact, Véronique Sanson was going through a hard time in her life. She had decided to leave Stephen Stills and was engaged in a tough juridical battle in American courts for the custody of her son. This album marked the beginning of a darker period for the singer, after a decade that easily qualified as the zenith of Sanson's career. Indeed, she had managed to craft six critically and commercially acclaimed albums in the course of eight years.
The transition toward the 1980s was difficult and challenging. Still tied to America by her son (of whom she did not gain full custody until 1983), she continued to split her time between the USA and France. After the general disappointment of "7ème", fans and critics were enthusiastic when her new album came out in 1981 (" Laisse-la vivre"). Though the record contained no memorable hit singles, it emerged as a remarkable ensemble of well-crafted songs. The album went 2x gold, and she spent the following year on the road, managing to draw large audiences during a tour that ended with three weeks in a row at the Palais des Sports of Paris.[11]
In 1983, she permanently settled in France with her son, Christopher, and her boyfriend, actor Etienne Chicot. After a long break, she released an eponymous album in 1985, recorded entirely in France. This untitled album was nicknamed "The white album" by the press, while Sanson often refers to it as "The lil' trees" or "Les p'tits arbres" (the cover features trees painted by Véro over a white background). Reviews were excellent, and die-hard fans were thrilled at the long-awaited reunion with the singer. This synth-driven album included "C'est long c'est court" which became a hit on French radio during the summer of 1985, as well as the ballad "Le temps est assassin". The tremendous success of the 1985–86 tour demonstrated that Véronique Sanson had managed to rally her faithful and patient following, and in November 1985 she began a month-long residence at the Olympia, performing daily shows.[12]
In 1988, she released the album Moi le venin, which included the highly controversial single Allah (produced by Michel Berger). A couple of months after the release of the video directed by Dominic Sena (Gone in 60 Seconds, Kalifornia, Swordfish...), the song was censored in the media, and Véronique Sanson was forced to drop it from her tour's set-list after receiving threats of violence from radical Muslims. As a result of several death threats, she was put under police protection. The controversy arose because of the Muslim tradition forbidding reference to Allah in a song, and occurred just a few weeks after a fatwā was issued against Salman Rushdie. In response to the uproar, Sanson apologized and pled that the song was really meant to be a message of peace and tolerance. French show-business massively stood up for her, and more than a hundred artists signed a pamphlet against "the diktat of all forms of radicalism"[13]
In November 1989, Véronique Sanson took part in the first charity tour entitled Les Enfoirés for Les Restos du coeur, alongside French rock stars Johnny Hallyday, Eddy Mitchell and Jean-Jacques Goldman. Since then, every year an Enfoirés concert has been held on national television with major stars performing covers to encourage people to donate to the Restos du Cœur, a humanitarian institution providing food to the poor across France.
In 1989, a dream came true for her: to play with a symphonic orchestra. After rehearsals in Czechoslovakia with the Czech Symphonic orchestra "Fisyo", a series of six concerts started in December 1989. A resulting live album was released the subsequent year. She toured with the Symphonic orchestra for a dozen concerts through France in 1990.
In 1991, Véronique Sanson received the Grand Prix of "la SACEM" (the French Singer Songwriter guild) to celebrate her entire recording career. The same year, she released a duet with her friend Catherine Lara, entitled "Entre elle et moi".
For the first time since 1980, Véronique chose the United States to record her ninth studio album. As usual, she surrounded herself with the best in the business. Sans regrets, issued in 1992, was a tremendous success propelled by the famous single Rien que de l'eau. This song was the result of an unprecedented collaboration with another songwriter, Bernard Swell, a long-time friend. The album went platinum and its first single still remains one of her biggest hits, with over 500,000 copies sold in six months.
In 1993, she won a Victoires de la musique (French Grammy Awards) for best female singer of the year. In March, she performed at the Zenith de Paris. During these shows, she gave a legendary performance of "Seras-tu là", a song by Michel Berger, who had died in 1992. The album recorded at the Zenith went platinum and is considered by many to be her best live recording.[14]
Between 1992 and 1995, thanks to the enormous success of her most recent album, Sanson went on tour in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada, among other places. During the summer of 1994, at the Francofolies Festival of La Rochelle, many artists gathered to pay an emotional tribute to her. For more than two hours, Michel Fugain, Alain Chamfort, Yves Duteil, William Sheller, Marc Lavoine, les Innocents and I Muvrini, performed some of her biggest hits in duet with a very emotional Véronique. This magical moment gave birth to a live album released the following year. "Comme ils l'imaginent" went 2x Platinum.
In 1995, she married stand-up comedian Pierre Palmade in Triel-sur-Seine, where she had lived since 1981. In the same year, she recorded a duet with her son Chris Stills, titled "Run". The song was released on a benefit album for children living with AIDS (Sol En Si). In 1996, she won her second Victoires de la musique for Best Female Artist of The Year.
Véronique Sanson started the production of a new album in 1997. A video for the first single, "Un etre idéal",[15] was released at the end of the year, before the album itself was even finished. As usual, she recorded the album in the United States. Bernard Swell wrote and produced four of the album's songs. A sold out tour followed the release of the album. "Indestructible" is a controversial albums among fans. Some found it overproduced, while others loved its modernity. It is fair to say that it is the most pop-oriented of her albums since Hollywood in 1977. Although an undoubted commercial hit, "Indestructible" (2x gold) failed to score higher than "Sans regrets" (2x platinum).
During the summer of 1999, Véronique appeared at the Festival "Les Vieilles Charrues". In fact, the singer had in mind to record an album covering some of Michel Berger's songs, and her performance at "Les Vieilles Charrues" allowed her to test the audience regarding her ambitious project.
Sanson's cover album of songs written by Michel Berger--a few well-known, but mostly from his early years—appeared in 2000 (D'un papillon à une étoile). The press loved it, but the reaction of the audience was more ambivalent, especially among Michel Berger fans, who regarded the album as sacrilegious. However, it became a huge success and went platinum in just a few weeks. It was followed by a majestic tour, produced by Paul Buckmaster (Elton John's arranger), and eventually by a live album (Avec vous). Véronique surrounded herself with her usual musicians, mostly Americans, as well as a classical ensemble from Prague. Her stage outfits for this tour were entirely created by Yves Saint Laurent himself.[14]
In 2002, after a prolonged absence due to health problems, Véronique Sanson had to cancel a solo tour on which she would have accompanied herself only on piano.
However, in September 2004, a few months after the press had announced her divorce from Pierre Palmade, she released a come-back album titled Longue Distance, produced by long-time friends Bernard Swell and Bernard Saint-Paul. Her 2005 tour was a triumph, spiced up by nine concerts in the mythical Olympia, during which she recorded her eighth live album.
In her autobiography, La Douceur du Danger (written with Didier Varrod), she depicts the most striking events of her life, particularly her alcoholism, and her love life.
The "best-of", titled Petits moments choisis, was released in November 2007, just as she started an unusually long tour. This lasted until summer 2009, and is considered by many as her best since 1993–1996. In December 2008, the 22CD/4DVD collection "Et voilà", including all her albums and videos plus a great many previously unreleased tracks, sold out in less than a month.
In October 2008, she joined her ex-husband Stephen Stills, and her son Chris Stills, on the stage of the Olympia, to perform a family version of Stills's "Love the one you're with".[16]
In November 2008, famous rapper Jay-Z released a song called "History", to honor the election of US President Barack Obama. The song is based on samples and melodies from Véronique Sanson's 1972 recording of "Une nuit sur son épaule" (the original solo version, not the 1995 duet with Marc Lavoine). Jay-Z's song features Véronique on background vocals. In December 2008, she declared on Canal Plus's "Le Grand Journal" that she appreciated it, but would have preferred to be asked beforehand.[17]
French-Canadian pop star Ima released a salsa-inspired reworking of "Chanson sur ma drôle de vie", followed in February 2009 by an associated video. Additionally, singer Lara Fabian released a cover version of "Amoureuse" in June on her studio album Toutes les femmes en moi.
In March 2010, the two lead actresses of the film "Tout ce qui brille" released a cover of "Chanson sur ma drôle de vie" on the movie soundtrack. The song became a number one hit in France, while the original recording by Sanson peaked at number 2 on the French iTunes.
Before a concert in Jerusalem in June 2009, Sanson announced she was about to start working on a new album. The album, titled "Plusieurs lunes" ("Many Moons") was released on 25 October 2010, and debuted at number 3 on the French charts.[18] Plusieurs Lunes caught the attention of the press who widely celebrated and highlighted the return of the real Sanson after a couple of fairly disappointing albums ("Indestructible" and "Longue Distance"). A song from this new piece, "La nuit se fait attendre", was made available on her official website in June 2010, while the second single, "Qu'on me pardonne" (written by her sister Violaine Sanson) was released in early October. After a week long residence at the Olympia in March 2011, Sanson is currently on tour across France.
(French) "Veronique Sanson's great moments in Quebec". http://www.sansonquebec.com/.
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