michelle ma belle
Sound les mots qui vont très bien ensemble
MichelleThe Beatles (1965)
On the magnificent CD series of French covers of Beatles songs, La France et Les Beatlesdives Michelle no less than four times. Logically. If the best band in history expresses itself in your language, then as a Frenchman you can’t let that pass you by.
But where The Beatles only smuggled a few French phrases into the song, this involved four completely Frenchified versions. There was singer Dominique, as well as one ‘Bob Smart’ and an ‘artist unknown’. Danielle Denin changed with Michele even the gender. There were also many French editions outside this series Michelle† like from the Canadian beat band Les Atomes†
It was also not nothing what happened in France Michelle Happened: A song composed mostly of English lyrics reached the top of the pop charts. That was not an everyday occurrence in February 1966, when Charles Aznavour and Adamo still ruled the French charts.
The song itself had been in Paul McCartney’s head for some time, peppered with French gibberish. It dates back to the late 1950s when he moved in artistic circles in Liverpool, where they thought they were true French existentialists, wearing a goatee and a black turtleneck.
When at the end of 1965 the lp Rubber Soul was recorded, suggested John Lennon to get started with ‘that French thing’, the unfinished song. For a good mouthful of French, McCartney visited Jan Vaughan, a French teacher and the wife of the man who once brought John and Paul together, Ivan Vaughan. In the biography of Barry Miles, Many Years From Now, Paul McCartney reported that meeting with Jan.
‘I said, ‘I like the name Michelle. Can you think of something in French that rhymes with Michelle?’ And she said, “Ma belle.” What does that mean? I asked. ‘My beauty’. I said, ‘That’s good, then it becomes a love song. Awesome.’ Jan Vaughan also handed him the translation of ‘Those words go together well† It became ‘Sound les mots qui vont très bien ensemble†
Michelle, released in December 1965, became a worldwide hit. McCartney thought that Jan Vaughan also earned a penny, given her contribution. ‘I was in the hospital after the birth of my son,’ she said afterwards, ‘when Paul came by and left a pile of notes on my bed, much to the surprise of the nurses.’
Unsolved question in the Beatles universe: How did McCartney get the name Michelle in 1965? Did he know a Michelle? Or was it a secret message to Françoise Hardy, the French singer every pop star had a crush on at the time? Wasn’t her sister’s name Michel(l)e?
Evidence of this was her overnight visit in the summer of 1965 to a Paris hotel where McCartney (and his mates) slept. That same summer, Hardy dined with Paul McCartney (and George Harrison) in London. But the story doesn’t go any further. Hardy later recalled in her autobiography that he was especially fascinated by a Rolling Stone: Mick Jagger.
John & Paul