It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “Le Pénitencier” by Johnny Hallyday
November 11, 1964
“Le Pénitencier” by Johnny Hallyday
#1 on the IFOP Top 100 Singles Chart (France), October 17 – December 4, 1964
The roots of the American folk tune “The House of the Rising Sun” are shrouded in mystery, though apparently it had been kicking around for some time before its first recording in 1934. Originally, the song’s narrator was a woman forced into prostitution at the eponymous brothel. A male variation changed the title setting into a gambling hall where he blew his fortune, or an opium den where he wasted away. Either way, it was meant to be a moral tale, warning the listener to keep on the straight and narrow, lest a brush with vice leads to inexorable ruin.
The song became somewhat of a standard in the folk revival boom of the late ’50s and early ’60s, even appearing on Bob Dylan’s debut LP. It was a rock version by the British band the Animals, however, that put “The House of the Rising Sun” on the pop map. Lead singer Eric Burdon tears into the song with apocalyptic fervor, while Alan Price’s hypnotic electric organ line makes the sinister bent of the song into something palpable, a creeping dread that never abates.
Nothing else on the radio in 1964 sounded remotely like it, not only because it’s one of the darkest, most terrifying songs to take the #1 spot, but also for its muddling of traditional American folk with electric rock ‘n’ roll. (In this sense, it can be credited for inventing folk rock — albeit in a wildly different style from how the Byrds would come to define it.) “The House of the Rising Sun” was an enormous hit around the world, topping the charts in several countries, including the US and the UK. The Animals’ version also inspired countless remakes, including one particularly successful version in French.
Ask an Anglophone to name a French rock star, and if they can, it’s probably Johnny Hallyday. The singer (born Jean-Philippe Smet) shot to fame after a 1959 TV appearance and soon was dubbed the French Elvis, though his style was closer to the teen idol movie star than the gritty Sun Studios rocker. (Like Presley, Hallyday was also conscripted into the Army at the height of his fame; he appears in uniform on the cover of the Le Pénitencier EP). While he would occasionally record chansons francaises and original pop songs, Hallyday made his name reinterpreting American pop for a French audience. His early #1 hits include covers of Floyd Robinson’s “Makin’ Love” (“T’aimer follement“), Ricky Nelson’s “Teenage Idol” (“L’idole des jeunes“), and the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron” (“Da Dou Ron Ron“).
One of the biggest of these Anglo-pop remakes was “Le Pénitencier” (“The Penitentiary”), a note-for-note reworking of the Animals’ version of “The House of the Rising Sun,” down to its arpeggiated guitar lines and famed organ solo. “Le Pénitencier” relocates the setting to a prison, but retains the tragic, repentant tone of the original and its moralizing ending: “O mères, écoutez-moi / ne laissez jamais vos garçons / seuls la nuit traîner dans les rues / ils iront tout droit en prison” (“Oh mothers, listen to me / never let your boys roam the streets alone at night / they’ll go straight to jail”).
It’s clear why “Le Pénitencier” was a massive success in France, topping the singles chart for seven weeks: it took an established, memorable hit, translated the lyrics, and put them in the mouth of one of the country’s biggest stars. But to English-speaking ears, there’s little of interest in “Le Pénitencier” aside from the novelty of hearing a familiar song in another language. Hallyday’s plaintive voice puts a slightly more humanistic, smaller-scale spin on the song (as opposed to Burdon’s earth-shaking agony), but the recording as a whole is so derivative that it’s completely unnecessary. Why listen to a watered-down version when the real thing is so easy to come by?
Even if the recording of “Le Pénitencier” isn’t particularly notable in and of itself, however, it sheds some light on how the French reacted to rock music. English-speaking artists were dwarfed in the French pop charts by their Gallic counterparts, even if their songs were frequently targeted for reinterpretation. (The Beatles didn’t have a #1 hit there until “Michelle” in 1966 — a song which alluded to traditional chanson ballads, complete with French lyrics.) In turn, French rock had little to no success with American and British audiences.
Part of this limitation is due to the language barrier, of course, but much of it can also be ascribed to the character of French popular music. Hallyday’s version of rock ‘n’ roll won over French audiences because he didn’t just translate the songs — he put them into a context they could understand. His distinct, vibrato-laden voice focused the listener’s attention on the lyrics rather than the beat, aligning him within the tradition of chanson singers like Édith Piaf and Charles Aznavour.
Yet the fact that, unlike the US and UK, blues and R&B never really spread to France meant there were few musicians who could understand rock ‘n’ roll. Hallyday’s backing band on “Le Pénitencier” may be attempting to replicate the arrangement of “The House of the Rising Sun,” but their mainstream pop-jazz backgrounds can’t recapture the original’s stark menace. While France managed to produce some terrific rock-influenced pop in the ’60s — namely yé-yé — the close-but-not-quite quality of “Le Pénitencier” illustrates why Hallyday could never be embraced outside of the French-speaking world. Next to his Anglophone counterparts, Hallyday comes off less like an authentic rocker than a cabaret performer who could play power chords.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
