The Dallas series celebrates the 40th anniversary of its first broadcast in France.

While his credits in French have become extremely famous in France, Marc Demelemester known as "Rocky", former guitarist of Johnny Hallyday, told Friday on Europe 1 how he became his interpreter a little without wanting to.

INTERVIEW

"Dallas, your ruthless universe ..." Everyone knows this melody, but few know who sang it.

Marc Demelemester known as "Rocky", former guitarist of Johnny Hallyday from 1982 to 1987, is also the interpreter of the famous credits of the series "Dallas" in French.

But it should never have been him!

Guest from Europe 1 on Friday, he unveiled the behind the scenes of this generic which has become cult made of "end to end coincidences".  

Joe Dassin should have sang it

"We were in the studio in the Var, with the musicians of Johnny Hallyday to record the album 

The fear

. And the producer at the time, Jean Renard, arrived with a model in his suitcases and asked us if we would kindly save him, "says" Rocky. "

The musicians record it without knowing what it is all about.

"It was done a lot at the time," assures the former guitarist of Johnny.

"He came back some time later. We had completely forgotten what we had recorded and he said 'Well there you go, it's my model that was chosen for an American soap opera called Dallas' ... That's where he asked the musicians 'who could sing it? It's just for the model and then it will probably be Joe Dassin who will sing it' ”. 

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But Joe Dassin is dead.

And it's Marc Demelemester who sings on the model.

Auditions are then made to find a final voice, without success, and it is finally "the record company, CBS and TF1" who decide that it will be him.

"And that's how part of Johnny's orchestra became the Dallas group," he laughs.

“Him, that was one of his favorite jokes. When he introduced me on stage, he would say 'You don't know, he's the one who sings the credits of Dallas', obviously. So I often had to sing on the minus a refrain. "

The series "Dallas" was then broadcast for 20 years, almost every day on TF1 until 2001 and then on France 3 until 2007.