Wednesday November 6, as part of his tour where he mixed his own repertoire with that of his father, David Hallyday will perform in Longuenesse near Saint-Omer in Pas-de-Calais. This will be his second concert following the launch of his tour on November 2 at the Millesium in Epernay near Reims. In Epernay, no incidents marred the show. In Saint-Omer, the atmosphere could be less festive. Before the two-hour concert, the atmosphere in the vicinity of the Sceneo concert hall will be one to watch. Activists from the audomarois feminist collective are planning to leaflet when the 2300 spectators arrive. They announced this Monday morning in the regional daily newspaper La Voix du Nord . “Authorization was issued on October 31 by the Saint-Omer sub-prefecture.explains one of their activists to the Figaro. Our aim is not to disrupt the concert, but to raise awareness of sexual and gender-based violence in strict compliance with the law. It’s a completely peaceful approach. The last thing we want is any trouble with Johnny Hallyday fans or far-right militants who might have the idea of coming to fight.”

These Ch’tis activists, who usually stick up posters with black letters on a white background to denounce sexual and sexist violence, have nothing to reproach David Hallyday for, apart from the name chosen for his tour. According to their interpretation, Requiem pour un Fou “poeticizing feminicide.” This collective of “descendants of pétroleuses” has around 400 subscribers on its account Facebook. Saint-Omer and neighboring towns have been mourned by several recent feminicides, and several trials are underway.

Released in February 1976, this hit written by Gilles Thibaut and composed by Gérard Layani was a huge success, topping the charts with over half a million copies sold. On the death of the rocker in December 2017, Requiem pour un Fou returned to the sales charts. As music critic Bertrand Dicale recalled in September 2022, the polls at the time showed that this was the 9th best-selling album of the year.^e French people’s favorite Johnny song. “So you know it, but you may not know why this man is locked up, obviously armed and threatening to shoot anything that moves…”, he explains in a column. The song contains a chorus that has not gone down well since the Me Too movement: “I loved her so much that to keep her, I killed her/For a great love to live forever/It must die, die of love.”

In its written reply sent to Figarothe collective specifies that it “is not asking for the censorship of this song, but we feel that we must inform people about these violent messages conveyed in song, in film…”

Contacted by Figarothe venue’s management explained: “We have no position on this subject. We haven’t heard back from the Prefect yet. We’ve never had this kind of problem before. We don’t know if we’ll need more security.” While the Sceneo’s walls are privately owned, the venue is managed by a subsidiary of Fimalac, owned by Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière. “The tour has just started, there have been no incidents so far”explained a spokesman for Richard Walter Productions, the company that manages David Hallyday’s concerts. Now that the name of the tour appears on the entire poster campaign, it will be complicated or at least costly to change it.