• On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, "20 Minutes" shares with you the most striking memories of its journalists.

  • Today, December 6, 2017, the day of the disappearance of the innkeeper Johnny Hallyday.

It was when I woke up that I heard the news.

“Johnny is dead…”, had sent me a relative by SMS.

“I imagine you already know that, but Johnny is dead, good luck to you,” another friend warned me.

The brutal announcement fell in the middle of the night in a short and pithy first dispatch at 2:44 a.m. on Wednesday December 6, 2017: "Johnny Hallyday is dead (wife to AFP)".

This death, we had feared for months, since the rocker had publicly announced his illness at the beginning of the year.

We knew that he could at any time succumb to this cancer, while convincing himself that Johnny was immortal.

An intense and emotional day

At

20 Minutes

, everything went very quickly.

Long before I opened my eyelids, the journalist who covered the Parisian news had jumped into a taxi in the direction of Marnes-la-Coquette (Hauts-de-Seine) to follow the events as closely as possible.

On the editorial side, a live had been opened in the early morning, and would not close until several days later, after the national tribute.

In the culture department, we were in turmoil, publishing hour after hour new articles to salute the memory of the artist and report on this France in mourning.

But the commotion concerned all the journalists, all departments combined, all united to cover this intense and emotional day.

“Imagine when Johnny is going to die?

!

How many times I had heard this phrase from the mouth of one of my colleagues, anticipating a historic, unprecedented, unreal event.

That day had finally arrived, and it was gone in a flash.

I remember the sadness of the French, my own confusion.

But I also retain this momentum and this common energy within

20 Minutes

, even among those who did not carry the rocker in their hearts.

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  • Culture

  • Johnny Hallyday

  • Rock

  • Singer