Eddy Mitchell

Eddy Mitchell — Biography

Born Claude Moine on 3 July 1942 in Paris's 9th arrondissement, Eddy Mitchell is a French singer, lyricist, actor and television host. He borrowed the first half of his stage name from Eddie Constantine, the American expatriate tough-guy actor he admired, and picked the surname Mitchell purely for its American flavour. Across a career stretching well beyond six decades he has alternated between rock and roll, chanson and country, and is regarded as one of the figures who helped rock music take root in France.

His musical career got under way in the late 1950s as the frontman of Les Chaussettes Noires, widely seen as France's first rock group. After performing at the famous Golf-Drouot nightclub in Paris, the band signed to Barclay Records and met with almost immediate success, selling two million records in 1961 alone.

He launched his solo career in 1962. Strongly marked by American rock and roll, he made most of his recordings outside France: first in London, with releases such as Eddy in London (1963), and later in the studios of Memphis and Nashville. British session players Jimmy Page, Big Jim Sullivan and Bobby Graham regularly backed him in England, while in the United States he worked with musicians including Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Roger Hawkins and David Hood. De Londres à Memphis (1967), Rocking in Nashville (1974) and Sur la route de Memphis (1976) rank among the notable albums of that period. Early on he also adapted American hits into French, among them Leiber and Stoller numbers like Baby, I Don't Care and Charlie Brown. In the second half of the 1970s the albums La Dernière Séance (1977) and Après minuit (1978) carried him toward a crooner style; without turning his back on the rock and country he loved, he always wrote his lyrics under his real name and forged a durable partnership with composer Pierre Papadiamandis.

Acting became the second pillar of his career, particularly from the 1980s onward. He appeared in Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World (1991), and his performance as Gérard 'Gégé' Tilier in Étienne Chatiliez's comedy Happiness Is in the Field (1995) won him the César Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1996. Among his other films are Round Midnight (1986), American Cuisine (1998), Au bistro du coin (2011) and Salaud, on t'aime (2014). He also dubbed Dylan in the French version of The Magic Roundabout (2005) and Chanticleer in the French version of Rock-a-Doodle.

A passionate devotee of American cinema, he hosted La Dernière Séance on FR3 (later France 3) from 1981 to 1998; in a format recalling old-fashioned double features, two full-length films were accompanied by cartoons and newsreels. The programme took its name from one of his albums, which had itself borrowed the French title of The Last Picture Show.

On 5 September 2011 he gave a concert at the Olympia as part of Ma dernière séance, a tour announced as his farewell; five years and two new albums later, however, he returned to the stage at the Palais des Sports in Paris. Between 2014 and 2017 he formed the trio Les Vieilles Canailles with Johnny Hallyday and Jacques Dutronc. He holds the knighthood of the National Order of Merit and the rank of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, and has received several Victoires de la Musique awards.