by André Depienne

Jean-Philippe Smet was born on June 15th 1943, the son of a Belgian father and a French mother. Eight months later, his father who worked as an actor, singer and dancer, left the family. Since his mother pursued a career as a model and didn't have enough time to look after her son, she left him with her sister.

In 1946 Jean-Phillipe's older cousins Desta and Menen who worked as dancers, took him to London where they were booked for a tour. There, Desta got to know her future husband Lee Lemoine Ketcham, an American dancer who performed under the stage name Lee Hallyday. Lee soon became some sort of father figure for Jean-Phillipe and started calling him Johnny. Later as a singer, Johnny adapted Lee's stage name as his own and Jean-Phillipe Smet became Johnny Hallyday.

Those times had a great impact on Johnny and inspired him to become an artist himself. Lee introduced him to Rock 'n' Roll and convinced him that this kind of music would also be a great success in France.

After his first attempts as a singer, Johnny was eventually invited to perform in Pierre Medelsohn's radio show Paris Cocktail in 1959, where he sang Viens Faire une Partie. Attending his performance were composers Jil & Jan who were thrilled by his talent. They introduced him to music publisher Jacques Wolfsohn who signed him for his record label Vogue on January 16th 1960.

Two months later he released his first single T'aimer Follement and three months later, the catchy Souvenirs. Souvenirs became his breakthrough.

A tour in which he was the opening act for Sasha Distel and numerous TV performances on shows like the legendary Salut Les Copains, soon made Johnny a so-called ‘idole des jeunes’; a youth idol.

With barely 18 years, he had already sold 1,673,000 records. During his long career he made 184 tours that took him to 40 different countries. He performed 2800 times in France and 450 times internationally.

In total he is estimated to having performed to 29 million people.

Johnny Hallyday is among the 80 most successful musicians of all time, the only frenchman in the list, having sold 85 million albums.

Between 1954 and 2017 he also acted in numerous successful movies.

Johnny Hallyday's long career was only interrupted once when he had to do one year of compulsory military service in 1964. He served for the 43 marine infantry regiment in Offenburg. On April 12, 1965 he was granted special leave to marry his girlfriend, singer Sylvie Vartan. The marriage lasted until 1980 and the couple had a son, David Hallyday, who later became a singer as well.

In 1981 he married Babeth Étienne. The marriage lasted only a few months.

From 1982 til 1986, Johnny was in relationship with French actress Nathalie Baye with whom he had the daughter Laura Smet in 1983. The successful song Laura from 1986 is dedicated to her. It was written by Jean-Jacques Goldman.

After that he married Adeline Blondieau in 1990, divorced her in 1992 and married her again in 1994. Their second marriage lasted til 1995.

Then, Hallyday met model Laeticia Boudou at a disco in Miami and married her one year later. In 2004 and 2008 the couple adopted 2 Vietnamese girls, Jade and Joy.

In November 2009, Johnny Hallyday had to interrupt his farewell tour because of a disc surgery. Due to complications during the surgery he was put into an artificial coma which caused damage to his brain. He therefore had to learn to speak and sing again.

In March 2017 Hallyday announced that he suffered from lung cancer and 9 months later on December 5th, he lost his battle to the illness.

French president Emmanuel Macron had the streets of Paris closed for a funeral procession that led from the Arc de Triomphe over the Champs-Elysées to the church, La Madelaine. An estimated 1 million people lined the course of the procession. The New York Times and CNN declared Johnny Hallyday The Elvis Presley of France.

At his request, he was buried on the the French Caribbean Island Saint-Barthélemy.