In Pagny by Florent, an autobiography to be published on April 5, the singer recounts his beginnings. He also opens up about his cancer and his problems with the taxman.
Florent Pagny returns, but not with a new album. The singer, who announced last year to suffer from cancer, publishes this Wednesday April 5 an autobiography entitled Pagny by Florent (Fayard), that BFMTV was able to consult, and of which we reveal some extracts below.
He recounts his modest childhood in Le Creusot, and his discovery of the happiness of singing, one day at 11, to a song by Gérard Lenormand which is on the radio. He hides nothing of his slumps, his misfortunes, and obviously returns to his troubles with the taxman.
• Son cancer, un “uppercut”
In a chapter entitled “the switch”, Florent Pagny evokes his cancer, the announcement of the diagnosis of which picked him up. “When the information falls I am stunned,” he says. I take a slap that fucks me in the air before I tackle the ground, throat so tight that I can not breathe. The earth is collapsing.”
He hears the news while he is in the studio, recording The Voice.
“Alone in my dressing room, I receive the uppercut”, he says. “I don’t take the time to cash it. I hang up. Ten seconds later, I push open the dressing room door and head for the set.”
He also explains why he wanted to inform his public of his state of health. “I was supported from all sides,” he wrote again. “I followed my instinct as well as a certain practical sense in going public with what was happening to me. I thought the most direct way to explain to people who had bought their ticket for the remaining forty concerts that could not honor my dates was to tell them things frankly (…) Instagram will have been used for that. Reveal this twist of fate. Then give reassuring news along the way.
“This disease took me elsewhere, forced me to question my fundamentals to fight for my skin to rebuild myself”, continues the artist. “I built myself up until I was 60 now I’m rebuilding myself and it gives me so much strength.”
His troubles with the taxman have often made the headlines. “Between taxes and me, it does not start with a love story”, he writes in the preamble to a chapter entitled “Taxes, season 1”. “When I think that there are still people who imagine that I don’t pay my taxes, or that I am against the principle of paying them… I want to tell them that nothing could be further from the truth.
“His first confrontations with the tax authorities date back to 1989. Florent Pagny pleads inexperience. “I come from nowhere. I do not know anything about it. I had never been told what to do in order to enter the circuit. I never received a letter of summons, asking me for a statement. I show up spontaneously and get wrung out.”
Who says season 1, says season 2. After this first regularization with the Public Treasury, Florent Pagny has not finished with the tax authorities. In 1992, his “first real dispute with taxes” took place. “Season 2” is “much more dramatic than season 1.” “Glem would not have declared the sums they ‘gave’ me – and they are plump. Gérard Louvin’s company, in charge of my management, has taken care until then of declaring my income. is our deal.”
Florent Pagny finds himself in “an untenable situation”. “Being aware of this unfortunately does not make it possible to soften my financial situation which is getting even more complicated. I had no more money, now I have something more: debts. They are colossal.”
The “taxes season 3”, and the seizure of Florent Pagny’s property, will give rise to a now famous song: My freedom of thought, written by Pascal Obispo and Lionel Florence. “I didn’t think the song would trigger such a reaction to the ministry. It’s still more ironic than mean and above all so much less violent than what I experienced,” he wrote.
In the 1980s, Florent Pagny had a love affair with Vanessa Paradis. Her singing career was launched in 1987 by joe cab him, when she was only 14 years old. The two young artists met in 1988. Vanessa Paradis was 16, Florent Pagny was 27. If he hadn’t “paid more attention than that” to the young girl at the start, they ended up falling into the arms of each other, a few years later, in 1989, at the Avoriaz festival.
“She has the crazy charisma of the very shy people (the same as Johnny Hallyday had). These people, as soon as they arrive somewhere, everyone wants to approach them, talk to them, be part of their lives, but they are so introverted…
“They will separate three years later. “I cleared of the photo. Straight!”, he wrote. “That’s what I can blame her for at the end, because I was there for her so much, I worked so hard to fix everything that was screwed up or unhealthy around her. her, and it worked so well for her.”
In 1992, Florent Pagny meets the one who will become the woman of his life. Her name is Azucena, and she is Argentinian. She is then a model. “I found my heroine. All the cards are against me. We will have to fight for our love story to exist,” he wrote. Their first meeting is icy and the attraction is not mutual. “My destiny is changing, I know it, I feel it, but I can see that Azucena, on the other hand, is not aware.”
Azucena will end up being sensitive to the charm of the singer. They have now been married for 30 years.
