譯/李京倫
"Bob Dylan refused to go back onstage unless I came to see him immediately,"Françoise Hardy recalled in a recent interview. On the evening of May 24, 1966, Dylan's 25th birthday, he was playing his first concert in Paris and wanted nothing more than to see the then-22-year-old French singer, whom he had dedicated a song to but never met.
"I went and he agreed to go back onstage," she said. A few months earlier, while in London, Hardy had turned the heads of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Brian Jones. Singing in French, English, Italian and German, the shy beauty and talented French songwriter cast a spell on many of her contemporaries — and over France for nearly 60 years.
「當年巴布狄倫拒絕回台上表演,除非我馬上去看他。」法國歌手馮絲華哈蒂最近受訪時這麼回憶。1966年5月24日,狄倫25歲生日,當天晚間在巴黎開他的第一場演唱會,一心一意只想看看這位當時芳齡22歲的法國歌手,狄倫為她寫了一首歌,卻素未謀面。
哈蒂說:「我去了,他終於同意回到台上。」更早的幾個月前,哈蒂人在倫敦時,更引起樂壇要角的注意,包括英國滾石合唱團主唱米克傑格、吉他手基思理查茲、英國披頭四樂團主奏吉他手喬治哈里森、成員保羅麥卡尼、約翰藍儂與滾石合唱團成員布萊恩瓊斯。這個害羞、美麗且才華洋溢的法國作曲家能用法語、英語、義大利語和德語演唱,讓許多同代人如癡如醉,也風靡法國近60年。
Hardy's memoir, "The Despair of Monkeys and Other Trifles," is being published in English this month, and in the United States, her new album, "Personne d'Autre" ("Nobody Else"), has just been released. It is her 28th and the first after six years of silence during which Hardy fell gravely ill. She learned she had lymphatic cancer in 2014; her health declined; and in 2016, she was placed in a coma from which doctors thought she would never wake up.
Against all odds, Hardy has returned and recovered her sensually adolescent voice, and her taste for writing. Her airy, timeless and elegant album is perhaps a literal "au revoir," as in "see you again soon," to life and loved ones.
哈蒂的回憶錄「淘氣鬼的絕望和其他瑣事」英文版定本月上市,而她的新專輯「別無他人」也剛在美國發行,這是她第28張專輯,也是她沉寂6年、其間並罹患重病後首張專輯。2014年哈蒂得知罹患淋巴癌,後來健康狀況惡化,2016年陷入昏迷,醫師一度認為她再也醒不過來。
雖然醒過來的機率微乎其微,但哈蒂還是回來了,恢復了她性感的少女嗓音,還重拾寫作的嗜好。她輕快、優雅、不因時間流逝而魅力稍減的專輯,也許就像在「希望不久後再見」裡唱的一樣,是真正與生命和所愛的人「再相會」。
Hardy is well versed in singing about partings and beginnings. In 1968, at age 24, she rose to the top of French and British pop charts with "It Hurts to Say Goodbye," written by Serge Gainsbourg. Ever since, she has been a French national treasure, known as much for her long androgynous silhouette, austere elegance and melancholic songs as for her wit and forthright intelligence.
In her memoir, Hardy examines what it meant to shoot to fame at 17 and what it feels like having been an icon in France for nearly six decades. The literary critic Bernard Pivot called the book "a brave confession both painful and invigorating."
哈蒂精於用歌聲演繹離別與開始。1968年她24歲,以一曲「如何說再見」躍登英法兩國流行歌曲排行榜榜首,作曲的是法國傳奇歌手塞吉甘斯柏。從那時起,哈蒂成了法國國寶歌手,不僅以修長的中性側影、嚴肅優雅的風格和憂鬱曲風聞名,聰慧和直截了當的才智也為人津津樂道。
回憶錄裡,哈蒂剖析了17歲一舉成名的意義,還有當了法國風雲人物近一甲子是什麼感覺。法國文學批評家貝爾納·皮沃稱這本書為「勇敢的自白,既痛苦又令人振奮」。
Born in 1944 in Paris, Hardy was the daughter of a beautiful young working-class woman and her much older and wealthy lover, a married man who never lived with his secret family, and came out as gay in his later years.
Hardy grew up fast. At 16, she received a guitar as a reward for good marks at school and started writing songs. A year later, after a few auditions, and music lessons, the record label Vogue offered her a contract. The whirlwind of the swinging '60s, which she lived through in Paris and London, did the rest.
1944年哈蒂生於巴黎,母親是年輕漂亮的勞動階層女子,父親則是比母親年紀大得多且富裕的已婚情人,從未跟他這個秘密家庭同住,而且晚年出櫃坦承是同志。
哈蒂很早熟。16歲時因為在校成績好而獲得一把吉他,也開始寫歌,一年後,參加幾次試音,又上了一些音樂課,唱片公司Vogue就跟她簽約。隨後,多采多姿的1960年代颳起的旋風,自動將那段期間分別住在巴黎和倫敦的哈蒂捲上了天。