The 5ft 2in ‘Love Pixie’ who crooned his way into women’s hearts: Richard Kay tells story of Charles Aznavour after his death
By Richard Kay for the Daily Mail
On the face of it he was the unlikeliest of sex symbols — too ugly, too short and, said critics, the possessor of a terrible voice.
But the stage presence of the singer they called the “love pixie" reduced female fans to hysteria — even in his 90s when there was a frantic scrambling for a dropped handkerchief during a concert at the Royal Albert Hall.
With his soulful ballads, Charles Aznavour helped a whole generation of women cope with the anguish of unrequited love.
He sang about the eternal triangle and the pain of rejection and in his trembling, melancholy voice he expressed exactly what they thought.
His genius was transcribing the heartaches of humanity into music and women loved him for it. And they remained devoted until he died yesterday at the age of 94 at his home near Marseilles in the South of France.
His most famous song in the English language was She, co-written by his friend Herbert Kretzmer, the former Daily Mail television critic who went on to write the lyrics to Les Miserables. Covered by Elvis Costello, She was the theme song for the film Notting Hill, starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant.
Kretzmer last saw the singer a couple of months ago. He said: “He dropped into my house for a cup of tea and a chat about songs. He always said ‘the day I stop is the day I drop’. It turned out to be very accurate.”
In France, Aznavour was cherished as the “French Sinatra”, but unlike the American crooner he wrote his own songs — more than 1,200 of them, along with selling 180 million records and appearing in more than 80 films. Twenty years ago, readers of Time magazine voted him Entertainer of the Century, way ahead of Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan.
The most telling similarity with Sinatra, of course, was his appeal to the opposite sex. Beautiful women adored him but even so he played down his reputation as a lover and seducer. “I am not a love god,” he declared in one of his last interviews. “They call me that and yet I haven’t been in love more than the next man…but certainly not less so.”
Maybe, but Aznavour, who was married three times, was linked with many famous beauties, among them Audrey Hepburn, Britt Ekland after her split from Peter Sellers (although he insisted they never met) and Liza Minnelli.
“The women I was with didn’t have to be famous. Liza was not famous when I was with her. In fact I don’t think I had any famous lovers.”
Too discreet to name names, he was open about his affair with Minnelli, which began when she was just 17 and he was 39. “She had the ability to love fantastically,” he later said.
For her part, Minnelli recalled: “The first time I saw him, I couldn’t breathe for two hours.”
The ensuing relationship was short but passionate. “Her work was in the U.S. and mine was in France,” he said. “You can’t have a long love affair with somebody who’s 3,000 miles away.”
The two stayed close, though, and would later perform together. “I don’t usually end things badly with people I’ve been with. I don’t mean I’m faithful in love but I’m faithful as a friend, faithful in general.”
For her part Minnelli said: “He really taught me everything I know about singing — how each song is a different movie.”
Long before Minnelli there was Edith Piaf, France’s great post-war singing star.
Of all the women in his life, he said he had only been “absolutely” in love three times. Piaf, his mentor, was one of those three.
But while he loved her very much, he said they were never lovers. “I never had an affair with Edith,” he insisted. “I lived in her house for eight years and saw many boys coming and going. I dried her tears when she was in love, but that’s it.
“If I’d married Piaf we’d have destroyed each other. Too many crocodiles in the same pond.
“What we had in common was that she was raised in the streets and my parents left me and my sister Aida
to fend for ourselves because they’d fled to Paris from Armenia and didn’t speak French.’
An undistinguished nightclub singer, his fortunes changed in 1950 when he was spotted by Piaf. She heard him perform to an almost empty club and took him under her wing.
She taught him how to deliver his songs — he opened for Piaf at the famous Moulin Rouge — and persuaded him to have a nose job. The chanteuse paid for it and as he recalled: ‘The day after they took the bandages off, she looked at me and said, “I loved it better before.’ She was not joking.”
Nevertheless Aznavour lived with her as chauffeur, confidante and protégé but, he insists, not as her lover. ‘It was not sexual, she wasn’t my type. It’s very important to have a type.’
At just 5ft 2in what he lacked in height he made up for in stage presence. Aznavour had his first number one hit in 1956 with “Sur Ma Vie” (In My Life). That was followed by one of his biggest hits, ‘Je M’voyais Deja’ (It Will Be My Day).
Huge success arrived in the early 1960s with his leading role in Francois Truffaut’s film “Shoot the Piano Player’ that catapulted Aznavour to international fame.
Buoyed by its success he took a sold-out Carnegie Hall in New York by storm in 1963 before touring the world and seeing his songs recorded by stars from Ray Charles to Liza Minnelli and Fred Astaire.
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