Paris (AFP)

It's decided, he won't sing anymore, but William Sheller tells himself in an autobiography-fireworks: family secrets, Barbara's advice, crazy parties, cocaine, intimacy in straight or "homo-romantic" mode.

It's a blow to fans of the author of "Daughters of the Dawn" or "A Happy Man".

"I don't want to sing anymore, I don't want a stage anymore, I sold the grand piano, I gave my gold and platinum records, I gave some to a doctor friend, I unplugged all the synths, the bazaars ... ", he explains to AFP, talkative.

He only keeps an upright piano to compose, but his life as a singer is over at 74 years old.

Blame it on too many tours a few years ago.

"Too many badly done concerts, you get off the train, you go on stage to play the same soup as the day before because we don't have time to write, to think. And then, it's burn-out, the real one, which attacks the heart: cardiac arrhythmia and pulmonary edema ".

As a result, his body swells so much - healed, he has since regained his thirty-something figure - that he sees himself as "Fetid Uncle of the Addams family" and that at the hospital he is confused "with Jean-Pierre Coffe ( laughs) ".

- "You look like daddy!"

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His autobiography, "William" (Ecuador editions), reads like the script of a film with many twists and turns.

Sometimes funny, like when, musician-arranger, he goes to Barbara's place.

"The Lady in Black ... besides, I knew it, I had read it, she only worked with brown people, I'm coming, blond, long hair, dressed in white ...".

The star's embarrassment is visible but only lasts a "short minute because it was quite open".

And had the ear, since it is she who will push him to sing.

But the book is especially valuable for what it says about his romantic life.

Starting with his mother who reveals to him, on her deathbed, the identity of her biological father, an American GI.

When he learns it, this progenitor is already deceased but he goes to his family in the United States.

When he gets off the plane, he comes across his half-brother "who has the same shirt as me, exactly" and his half-sister tells him "what do you look like daddy!".

He now wears around his neck the GI plaque of his father, who took part in the landing in 1944. "I have that and also an aluminum tumbler on which are engraved all the towns he passed through immediately after the landing, such as Stuttgart. , he almost went as far as Russia ".

Two objects that one of his grandchildren would like to recover after his disappearance, a subject which is not taboo: "at my age, we think about the next trip, I asked him what he would like, he m 'said + the plate of my great-grandfather and the cup, that's all + ".

- "It dismantles" -

William Sheller is cash, in interviews as in his book.

He talks openly about his past cocaine use, the days of radio hits.

"I didn't have dealers, I had top tier suppliers who supplied top tier people, TV, government departments, etc."

And to remember, amused, one of these suppliers, "1.60 m, cowboy hat, fringed jacket, cowboy boots, declared as a plumber and having a student card in pre-Columbian art!".

And it is one evening that he returns home on foot, in the middle of a trip after an evening of abuse of all kinds, that he meets a man, Peter, who offers to take him home.

The artist, who has known women until then (he has two children), discovers "a homo-romanticism".

"Maybe I should have had a bi background, although it didn't go very far."

The singer will later put an end to this relationship with this companion falling more than in his turn into excess.

"Living with me, that dismantles: life is easy, housed, fed, + jointed +, + cocaine +, alcoholic, why worry?".

Did he say all he had to say?

No.

"Of course there will be a second book!"

© 2021 AFP