In 1985, Marc Lavoine had his first real hit with a song full of sensuality: Elle a les eyes revolver . This title reveals Marc Lavoine to the general public and remains today inscribed in the collective memory. But do you know the history of the song, above all the result of a beautiful encounter in the early 80s, between a teenager from the Parisian suburbs, Marc Lavoine, who dreams of cinema and music, and a young composer, Fabrice Aboulke? The latter is the son of the famous Florence Aboulker, an influential show business personality who notably discovered Patrick Juvet.
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A first version of the album prepared in Spain
Florence recommends that young Marc Lavoine, who has come to meet her in a publishing house, to contact her son, then artistic director at Mercury / Phonogram. Thus, Marc Lavoine meets Fabrice Aboulker and succeeds in convincing him to compose music on the texts he writes. Their first song went relatively unnoticed, but the second, Pour une biguine avec toi , had a small success in 1984. Suddenly, producer Pierre-Alain Simon asked the two boys to prepare an album.
Marc and Fabrice go together to Spain, on the Costa Brava, where their friend Jean-Louis Fournols owns an apartment. There, in Empuriabrava, in a few weeks, Marc and Fabrice created several songs. But when producer Pierre-Alain Simon listens to the result, he is not at all convinced of the effectiveness of the titles. He asks the boys to get back to work.
Two sources of inspiration for the lyrics
Back in Paris, Marc Lavoine, who then went through some turbulence in his life as a couple with the American top model Denise Pascale, model for Vogue, decided to settle for a while with Fabrice Aboulker. At that time, Fabrice lived in a small two-room apartment, on the third floor of 39 avenue de Versailles, in the 16th arrondissement of the capital. And precisely at this address, one morning, Marc Lavoine puts on Fabrice's piano a text he has just written and which is entitled Elle a les yeux revolver .
Two things inspired Marc to write this text. First the famous American film, The Eyes of Laura Mar s with Faye Dunaway released in August 1978 and which he has seen 9 times! But also, a reflection of his mother Michelle who always told him when he was little: "Stop making your eyes revolver!"
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After having read this text, Fabrice composes the first chords of the melody which he plays and plays again to the great despair of his neighbor upstairs, an elderly lady who does not hesitate to go downstairs to ring at his house, with revolver eyes, for him ask to make less noise! Some time later, Elle a les yeux revolver was recorded and mixed at the Joe Dassin studio, in Saint-André-les-Alpes, at Bernard Estardy's. The arrangements are signed Pascal Stive. Due to a compressor error while recording the witness voice, a particular tone is given to the song. When redoing the final voice, faced with the impossibility of finding the same effect, the team chooses to keep the initial version which will make the Marc Lavoine sound unique.
800,000 copies sold
But when they discover Elle Has the Revolver Eyes , the managers of the record company Phonogram find that this song has too many strings and that it does not correspond at all to the radio programs of the moment. They are opposed to it coming out in 45s. But Marc, who believes a lot in this title, insists and ends up winning his case.
Finally, the two main peripheral stations put into programming Elle a les pieds revolver , followed by all the FM. With three daily broadcasts on the radios, the 45 rpm record sold 35,000 copies each day and climbed very quickly in the first places of the Top 50. The song reached 800,000 copies sold and became one of the hits of the year 1985 .