PARADIS REGAINED

I first heard Vanessa Paradis back in 1987 when the song Joe Le Taxi was receiving a lot of airplay and attention. I bought the single and her first album M & J and at that time they were seldom off the record player. Over the years I have followed her career, collected all her albums (now on CD), a few of her films (despite being in French) and an archive of photos.

I hoped one day to see her live in concert and maybe even get an interview with her. The interview never happened, despite my best efforts, but I finally saw her in concert in 2014 at The Forum, Kentish Town in London and it was a great show. I was due to see her again last year but the Covid pandemic put paid to that and as of now the concert hasn't been rescheduled. 

Back in 2004 I wrote an article on Vanessa Paradis for the music magazine Record Collector which covered her career up to 2001 and I am reprinting the article here exactly as originally published, with additional images.

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Fifteen years after her 'Lolita'-like launch, Vaness Paradis is one of only a handful of French Singers who have had chart success in the UK. Peter Lewry celebrates her career.

Photographer Unknown

Until the success in recent years of dance acts like Daft Punk and Air, few French artists had ever graced the UK charts, particularly the Top 30 singles. A look back over the past 25 years shows Mireille Mathieu at No. 26 in 1967 with La Derniere Valse, Sacha Distel's No. 10 hit Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, and Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, who scored a No. 1 single with the controversial Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus. And there's always Jean-Michel Jarre...

To this exclusive list can be added Vanessa Paradis who, at the tender age of 14 reached No. 4 with Joe Le Taxi, the first Top 5 French single in nearly 20 years. Interestingly, it wasn't an overly ambitious mother who steered her in a musical direction but her uncle, producer Didier Pain, who would also become her manager.

Born on 22 December 1972 in the Paris suburb of St. Maur-des-Fosses, by the age of seven she had made her first public appearance on French TV on the amateur talent show L'Ecole Des Fans, singing Chanson d'Emilie Jolie. It was Didier Pain who entered her in the contest and then, six years later, recorded her singing La Magie Des Surprises Parties which, although not released as a single at the time, led to a meeting with the composer/lyricist team Franck Langolff and Etienne Roda-Gil.

The due promised to a write a song for Vanessa and eventually came up with Joe Le Taxi, about a Parisian taxi driver with a penchant for rum and Latin music, who knows where all the bars are. The song had to be re-written slightly to be more appropriate for her tender age.

Pain took a demo of the song to both Virgin and Pathe with no success and finally received a positive response from Polydor. They were interested, provided they could first meet Vanessa and be sure she wasn't being pushed into showbusiness by her parents. It only took her five minutes to convince them and in February 1987, just a couple of months after her fourteenth birthday, she signed with the label and went into the studio to record the song.

Released in April, the song reached No. 1 on the French charts and not even Madonna could dislodge the single. Available in several formats, the UK issue with a poster picture sleeve is valued at £25, while the French four-track CD/video single, that included a Spanish language version of the song and video performance, is highly sought-after and commands a £35 price tag.

The song immediately became a hit throughout Europe, staying at No. 1 in France for 12 weeks and a Top 5 hit in the UK, and pushed Vanessa firmly into the spotlight. "Finally, success gave me the freedom to say what I liked... and what I didn't like."

She followed this with a string of successful records including Manolo Manolette, Marilyn Et John, a song about the rumoured romance between Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy, Maxou, about her idol James Dean and Mosquito all penned by the winning combination of Langolff and Roda-Gil.

Following the success of Joe Le Taxi, and not wanting to miss a marketing opportunity, the record label AB released her recording of La Magie Des Surprises Parties, although copies were scarce and the single now fetches anything up to £120 for a mint issue.

Fame had a price though. Despite her success, the French public refused to accept this precocious schoolgirl and she found herself at the receiving end of hatred and jealousy, and was often spat at in the street or called a 'slut' and a 'whore'. During her time at school she had to suffer regular insults from other girls and in an interview in 1988 she recalled that "I no longer wanted to see anyone. I was crying every five minutes."

Photographer Unknown

A few years later, during an appearance at the Cannes Film Festival where she performed Joe Le Taxi, she was jeered at. Even recent glossy magazines have run headlines like 'Why Do Women hate Vanessa?' stating that she is 'vain, pampered, dissolute and precociously sexy.' Her Lolita schoolgirl image, while  being a major selling point, was also proving to be a downside to her fame.

The success of the single, not only in France, but throughout Europe necessitated an album. The result, M & J, released in 1988, was a collection of Langolff/Roda-Gil compositions that demonstrated that she was far from a one-hit wonder. Despite pop music never being taken seriously in France the album was widely acclaimed as a French masterpiece, qualified for a platinum disc and was voted one of the five best domestic albums by the daily paper Liberation.

In the UK the album stalled at No. 45 and she was unable to capitalise on the success of Joe Le Taxi. It would be another four years before she would have another hit on this side of the Channel. Vanessa was happy with most of the album but felt that tracks like Chat Annas, which features her serenading a kitten, was too childish. Even at the early age of 15 she wanted to record material with a harder edge.

In 1989, in a move away from the music business, she made her film debut in Noce Blance (White Wedding), playing a Lolita-like pupil who seduces her teacher. Her performance won over her critics and she was awarded two of the most sought after French awards -- a Cesar for Most Promising Actress and the Prix Romy Schneider for the Most Promising Debut Performance on screen. Many more films would follow including Elisa, based on a song written by Serge Gainsbourg, The Girl On The Bridge and the romantic comedy Un Amour De Sorciere.

She also signed a three million franc contract with the perfume company Chanel to be the face of their perfume Coco. In the advert, filmed by Jean-Paul Goude, ex-husband of Grace Jones, she appeared as a bird in a gilded cage, complete with a set of feathers, while a white fluffy cat looked on! Once again Vanessa found herself the centre of more controversy. Many people thought the idea of a woman displayed in a cage to be sexist.

Despite a successful film career, her singing was not forgotten. Vanessa concentrated on her music and during this time she met up with Serge Gainsbourg, best known for his hit single with Jane Birkin, Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus. He was taken with this new French sensation commenting that "She has a little bit of Bardot in her."

Her second album Variations Sur Le Meme T'Aime, produced by Gainsbourg and released in 1990, was a fine collection of music by Frank Langolff and the lyrics of Gainsbourg. With the exception of one track, the album was recorded entirely in French, the exception being a cover of the infamous Lou Reed song Walk On The Wild Side. It was proof that Vanessa was now a mature 17-year-old who was ready to handle harder material with stronger feelings. Even the music leaned towards a bluesier, rockier feel.

Three singles were lifted for the French market, Tandem, the beautiful Dis-Lui Toi Que Je T'Aime and L'Anour En Soi, all accompanied by promotional videos. Released in several different formats these singles fetch between £9-£18.

In the UK the failure to capitalise on the success of Joe Le Taxi and the follow up singles meant that nothing from her new album would be issued in that format in the UK. Following the release of the album Vanessa, once again, found her private life splashed across the pages of many tabloids, most seemed to concentrate on her supposed affair with Gainsbourg.

Her third album found her working with yet another producer/songwriter in a different country. Sessions for Vanessa Paradis, released in 1992, were held at Waterfront Studios in New Jersey with Lenny Kravitz producing and arranging all the tracks. She had met Kravitz backstage at a concert given by him in May 1991 where he told her "If you need me, just give me a call." The years of verbal abuse that she had endured in recent years finally drove Vanessa to leave her flat in Paris and move to New York. It was there that she made contact with Kravitz, and they hit it off straight away. The rumour mill was working overtime yet again with stories of an affair between Vanessa and Kravitz, fuelled by intimate photographs of them on holiday in the Caribbean.

Be My Baby, the first single to be lifted from the album was a hit in both France and the UK where it reached No. 6. Two more singles were released for the UK market Sunday Mondays and Just As Long As You Are There reaching No. 49 and 57 respectively -- disappointing, especially after the success of Be My Baby. In France both Natural High and Gotta Have It were issued as singles. As with the previous album, she turned to Lou Reed for a song. On his I'm Waiting For The Man she perfectly fulfilled the role of siren with a dangerous edge -- a marketable combination.

Since the release of Joe Le Taxi she had been a regular on French television and had made appearances in the UK on Top Of The Pops and the chat show Wogan but had not toured to promote any of her albums. In 1993 she finally undertook the massive 70-date Natural High Tour of Europe, with appearances throughout France as well as a one-off concert in London. A show at the Olympia in Paris in April 1993 was recorded and released as Vanessa Paradis Live the following year.

The concerts and subsequent album showcased songs from her previous three albums and one of the highlights of this set is As Tears Go By, originally recorded by Marianne Faithful and performed by Paradis in an almost breathless whisper. She also performed La Vague A Lames as a tribute to the late Serge Gainsbourg.

It would be six years before she released a new album. her film career went from strength to strength and she met and moved in with actor Johnny Depp, falling pregnant and enjoying life with her daughter Lily-Rose.

Bliss, released in 2000, was another collection of mainly French language recordings recorded in Los Angeles. She had more involvement in the making of the album, contributing lyrics and music to many of the songs and producing or co-producing most of the album. The track Commando was lifted for single release in France and was issued in several formats.

In 2001 she went out on the road again for only the second time in her career and, in November 2001, a live album was recorded during her Bliss Tour at the Zenith in Paris. Au Zenith included two Serge Gainsbourg songs that she hadn't recorded before, L'eau A La Bouche and Requiem Pour Un Con. There was also a cover of the old Zombies track, This Will Be Our Year.

As a sellable product and sex symbol her picture has appeared on countless magazine covers and in recent years she has featured in a variety of French magazines including Photo, Tele Cable, Femme and Paris Match as well as making the cover of the US publication Rolling Stone.

Photographer Unknown

So what of the future for Vanessa? With the addition of a young son to the Depp/Paradis family and a successful film career it might be that her music career takes a back-seat for a few years but there is no doubt that music is a major part of her life and fans of this talented French singer hopefully look forward to more albums in the future.