“When the biography is not good…” Jean-Jacques Goldman has been discreet for a long time but when he deigns to speak to the newspapers, in this case Le Canard enchaîné, his verb is as definitive and effective as in his songs which he has sold some thirty million copies since the early 1980s.
Visibly irritated by the recent biography signed by historian Ivan Jablonka, Prix Médicis 2016 for Laëtitia ou la fin des hommes, the author-singer-interpreter of When the music is good took his phone to tell our colleagues from the famous newspaper satirical what he thought of this work titled (too) soberly Goldman: “I have never met this author (Ivan Jablonka, editor’s note), neither have my friends, and I am sad for all the people who are being duped in buying these books that talk about me.” Close the ban.
Jean-Jacques Goldman, who retired from the scene twenty years ago, does not support authors, even renowned and intellectual like Ivan Jablonka, who want to transform him into a living hero of French song. But it is perhaps the attempt at appropriation attempted by Ivan Jablonka in his book that undoubtedly annoyed the inspired songwriter of Celine Dion, Johnny Hallyday, Patricia Kaas, Garou and others the most. In the chapter From failure to absence, the biographer, therefore unauthorized, wrote: “A work of social sciences, archeology of an era, this book is also a self-portrait, because I look at myself in Goldman as in a mirror…” Obviously, for Jean-Jacques Goldman, the reverse is not true.
When the music is good by and by Jean-Jacques Goldman (1982)
