In April 1977, all French youth recognized themselves in Laurent Voulzy's Rockollection , which became one of the great hits of the year. Flashback on the little story of this title whose music was to be used for another song.
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An old melody born at a dinner party
If the artistic collaborations between Laurent Voulzy and Alain Souchon allowed the latter to record several hits such as J'ai dix ans en 1974 and Bidon in 1976, it was not until the following year that it was Laurent Voulzy's turn to find success and step into the light with Rockollection . The story of this title, whose originality is to mix nostalgic verses in French with covers of great Anglo-Saxon standards from the sixties, begins one evening in the summer of 1974.
At that time, Laurent Voulzy dines with friends and has fun improvising a song that tells the tribulations of a friend named Daniel. A year later, while Laurent Voulzy is working on a model for an American artist named Anne Calvert, who sings under the pseudonym of Anne C. Sheridan, the melody imagined during dinner a year earlier comes back to him. On this music, Anne then writes a text in English entitled Thriller which tells the story of a girl pursued in the street by a character with a sinister air. Finally, this song does not see the light of day and Laurent puts his score back in a drawer.
Claude François as a source of inspiration
Two years later, when preparing his sixth single as a singer, Laurent Voulzy thinks back to this music and decides to recycle it to tell his teenage memories by illustrating them with musical extracts. This idea comes to him while listening to Claude François's hit: This year . At the time, Laurent found it a pity that Claude did not include extracts of songs from the year 1962 of which he speaks in this success.
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Initially, Laurent Voulzy had himself written a text about his music. He then plays his song to Alain Souchon who finds the idea nice but the text not terrible ... And, in one afternoon, Alain rewrites five verses. The text is first titled Recollection in reference to the English word which means, to remember something. Finally, Alain has the idea of creating a neologism by associating rock with collection to give birth to Rockollection .
Extracts in English chosen in an arbitrary manner
The studio work on this track lasts almost two months. Laurent Voulzy who believes a lot in this song, does not want to leave anything to chance. To give the title a club atmosphere with applause and exchanges between young adolescents, he brings high school students from Perreux to the Paris region in the studio.
If one can think that the nine extracts of English songs which punctuate the title, were chosen in a rigorous and considered way, it is not so. On the contrary, the choice was totally arbitrary and was made in a hurry, the very day of the final recording!
Only the first side was broadcast on the radio
The 45 rpm record was released by RCA at the beginning of April 1977. It lasts 11 minutes and 40 seconds and occupies both sides of the record. It is the artistic director of Laurent Voulzy, at RCA, Bob Socquet, who had insisted that the singer extend the song.
The radio programmers then broadcast only the first side which quickly became a huge success and ranked No. 1 in the charts on May 6, 1977. Rockollection's success went far beyond French borders. The title ranks N ° 1 in Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Quebec and Italy. Laurent Voulzy recorded an English version, with which he obtained a gold record in Spain and Scandinavia. He also recorded a Brazilian version, in which the title Gloria was replaced by Guantanamera.
In 1994, during his Voulzy Tour, Laurent performed a live version of Rockollection of 18 minutes 20, adding titles from the Bee Gees and the group Police. In 1997, Rockollection was featured on the motherfuckers album, Le Zénith des enfoirés, by Laurent Voulzy, Alain Souchon, Patrick Bruel, Francis Cabrel, the Fredericks Goldman Jones trio, the Innocents, Vanessa Paradis and the group Pow Wow.
Five rights holders attacked Voulzy and Souchon
In 2008, Laurent Voulzy, to celebrate the 30 years of Rockollection , recorded a new version lasting 15 minutes 40, which appears on the album Recollection . For the first time, he includes a song in French in his Rockollection , L'amour avec toi by Michel Polnareff.
For the record, as on the cover of the first version of 1977, the extracts of the songs taken on Rockollection, were not credited, the beneficiaries of five titles out of the 9, assigned Laurent Voulzy and Alain Souchon. As a result, copyright was blocked for three years. The case was finally settled amicably by the payment of a lump sum in compensation for the damage of the songwriters of the songs included in Rockollection .