As Michel Sardou launches into his final rehearsal, staff at Bercy stadium are preparing for a mass onslaught tomorrow night. Hundreds of thousands of music fans are expected to turn out to see the Grand Old Man of French chanson and Sardou will doubtless attract capacity audiences throughout his tour (which runs until June 2001). Renowned for his provocative outbursts, Sardou has been surrounded by a whiff of scandal from the earliest days of his career. In '92 he launched a vicious attack on the French education system with Le Bac G, then went on to denounce the French justice system with Selon que vous serez… in '94. And in 1997 he caused a scandal by referring to jailed French politician/businessman Bernard Tapie on Mon dernier rêve sera pour toi. But Sardou's latest album, Français, is a strangely scandal-free affair. The Angry Old Man of French chanson appears to have made his peace with the world – and lost none of his fans in the process!
Sardou is a popular singer in every sense of the word, capable of bringing together fans with diametrically opposed musical tastes, from all walks of life. Critics love to dissect Sardou's songs and expressing moral outrage at his un-PC lyrics became a national French sport for a while. Sardou's detractors flew up in arms when he sang "Tu n'as plus besoin d'avocat/J'aurai ta peau tu périras" ("You won't need a lawyer when I get my hands on you!") about French child murderer Patrick Henry and mocked his patriotic lyricism on Le Temps des colonies and Ils ont le pétrole mais c’est tout. In short, Sardou's national chauvinism and reactionary views shocked the more liberal sections of French society.

Sardou has always been fully aware of his public persona and played up to the role, declaring "It's not so much that I've got a big mouth – I've got a big voice!" Never having been afraid to say exactly what he thinks, Sardou has at times been openly offensive. His first single, Le Madras, recorded at the age of 18, contained the highly ambiguous lyrics "Ayez l’air de filles étant des garçons (...) Et vous serez dans le vent" ("If you want to be in fashion, be a boy with feminine airs") and homophobic sentiment also appeared to creep into his 1976 hit J'Accuse and Chanteur de jazz, recorded in 1981. But Sardou's personal position on the subject was never really clear. In 1971 he recorded a hilarious song entitled La Folle du régiment and twenty years later he appeared to preach a lesson of understanding and tolerance with Le Privilège, singing "Is it really an illness when a boy loves a boy?
The problem with taking Sardou's angry outbursts too seriously is that in the course of the past thirty years he has attacked just about everybody, vaunting an equal amount of spleen on militarists and anti-militarists, feminists and misogynists, criminals and the police. Rather than seeking refuge in a fantasy world like other famous misanthropists, Sardou preferred a head-on collision with the real world, painting a frequently unflattering portrait of French society. In his first hit, recorded while De Gaulle was preaching against joining NATO and proposing jumping into bed with Adenauer's Germany, Sardou staged his own personal revolt, singing "If the Yanks weren't there/You'd all be shooting off to Germany!" However, hits such as La Java de Broadway proved he was none too fond of the Americans either!

And what of Sardou's attitude to women over the years? There's no doubt that he started out being as offensive as possible, penning inexcusable lyrics such as "J'ai envie de violer des femmes/De les forcer à m'admirer" ("I feel like raping women to force them to admire me"), but on the same song, Les Villes de solitude, his anger appears to be as much directed against men as women. Sardou's position on the military appeared to be more muddled. On the one hand he sang openly patriotic songs like Montmirail and Verdun, but on the other he refused to do his national service and armed police were actually sent to arrest him backstage at Le Bobino in 1966. Maintaining his rebel position right up to the end, Sardou went off to do his military service dressed in his stage costume and full make-up!
But, surprising and disturbing as it may seem, Sardou's latest album appears to be completely free of bile, rebellion and provocative statements. So it's no good looking for barbed comments and veiled attacks – there aren't any! Like Jules Renard, Arno Schmidt and many famous rebels before him, Sardou is just fighting to make the world a better place and his latest album, Français, is basically a hymn to humanist principles and the rights of 'little people'. The Angry Old Man of French chanson appears to have mellowed with age and the songs on the album are infused with a new-found serenity and humour. Whoever imagined that one day Michel Sardou would end up singing "J’aime les Français/Tous les Français/Même les Français que je n’aime pas" ("I love French people, all French people without exception – even French people I don't actually like!")?
Bertrand Dicale