Reply With QuoteMany discerning music fans from younger generations will know of her through her connection to Nick Drake.Originally Posted by Old_pie
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Most males of my generation will have had a crush on Françoise Hardy. Stylish, beautiful, elegant, very French, a romantic gentle style of then modern pop music and she has just died at the age of 80 after a difficult few years.
Lots of stuff on YouTube including rare appearance on TOTP eg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPGQol_WuTQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlMwDBzwOKI
RIP
Last edited by SwalePie; 12-06-2024 at 10:31 AM.
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Many discerning music fans from younger generations will know of her through her connection to Nick Drake.
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A beautiful talent. I only found her through Blur, but she was so wonderfully Gallic that her songs should be on the French GCSE curriculum.
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Very sad news...
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Unfortunately she was not a troubled cure for a troubled mind.
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Very sad news. It's a shame her son, Alain, didn't live up to expectations.
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Wasn't that him accompanying Jane Birkin on 'Je t'aime,moi non plus' ?
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Being a bit younger I’d not heard of her before. After I read your post and being a big fan of Nick Drake I looked her up and read about their connection. There’s one theory that the Pink Moon album might have been intended as a demo for her, but Nick was much too shy to give it to her.
Anyways, I decided to give one of her albums a listen (If You Listen). It’s not bad at all! She has a lovely voice and her style and instrumentation is very similar to ND’s. I wish they had have collaborated - while my first listen of her album was pleasant, I can only imagine how Nick on the acoustic and Robert Kirby doing the orchestral arrangements would have boosted it to another level. Nevertheless, I shall explore her music more.
Thanks for mentioning ND in your post. While my neighbour mentioned her death, I probably wouldn’t have given her a listen without your post.
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I recommend Richard Morton Jack's 2023 biography of Nick Drake which comprehensively covers the Francoise Hardy connection. There were rumours in the 1980s and 1990s (when very little was know about him) that they'd actually been an item. The author had access to Drake's father's diaries which detailed his son's day to day condition after he'd retuned from London to live at the family home with Nick being in and out of a mental hospital, pumped with powerful drugs and given electric shock treatment, which makes for harrowing reading. It was long assumed that the photo session to promote "Pink Moon" late 1971 (of him walking around a park and sitting on a bench) were the last photographs taken of Drake but this book reveals that he did have a new passport photograph taken shortly before he died which the author describes but decided not to include in the book for "reasons of sensitivity", which says an awful lot I think.
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Funnily enough I preordered that book on Amazon for my daughter before it was released, and finally got notification a few days ago that it’s been shipped. It was to be part of my daughter’s birthday gift. She’s a big fan of him as well.
Several years ago (Nov 2022) her and I made a pilgrimage to Nick’s grave. Before our trip to the uk I asked her if there was anything particular she wanted to see or do while we were visiting and her only request was to visit Nick’s grave. It turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip. Witnessing the atmosphere of the surrounding area gave a really tangible connection to Nick’s music that brought it all together - as if it all suddenly ‘made sense’.
Captured a really nice photo of her overlooking the field to which his grave faces:
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