An icon of the yéyés years is gone. On the night of July 18 to 19, Dani died at the age of 77, his agent Lambert Boudier announced to AFP. Victim of a heart attack, it was in her home in Tours where she had been living for 2 years that she breathed her last.
Born in 1944 in Castres under the name of Danièle Graule, she is the eldest of a family of three children raised by their parents in Perpignan. When she left the south to go to Paris in 1963, Dani began a modeling career and frequented the social evenings of the capital. She rubbed shoulders with the cream of show business and made her acting debut. From Roger Vadim to François Truffaut via Claude Chabrol, the actress has toured with film greats between the 1960s and today, notably Olivier Marchal.
But, it is through music that Dani will gain notoriety during his career. From his debut to his last opus released in 2020, his hoarse and atypical voice has won over generations of fans. “I talk like that all the time, I can’t drive my voice. When I was younger, it was higher,” said the septuagenarian at the microphone of RTL. “With time and cigarettes, I have the voice of today. But you can’t change your voice or direct it”.
Among the outstanding songs of his career, Comme un boomerang (written by Serge Gainsbourg in 1975) is the flagship hit that allowed Dani to reconnect with success. While she was to participate in Eurovision with this title, the controversial lyrics of the song will force her to be excluded from the competition by Antenne 2. It will be necessary to wait 26 years for her friend Etienne Daho to encourage her to go back on stage in sharing the duet with him. “He’s my little brother. I can’t do anything without talking to him about it. His look is fair, his advice is precious,” she told AFP in 2016.
Like many French people affected by his disappearance, the singer and musician Etienne Daho paid tribute on July 19 to his friend Dani. “We talked to each other again last night. You were really into your next album and you wanted us to record it together. The title ‘Attention, Départ!’ like a premonition. I only saw a new chapter in it. So many memories, laughs, friendship and music come back to me. This story Begins. And this ‘Boomerang’, like a sign from Serge and that we have carried so high”, he wrote on Instagram in the caption of a series of vintage photos.
And, to continue with tender and touching words about the star. “You the unclassifiable, free, so young. Model, actress, magazine leader, singer, rose gardener. You have done everything with the elegance of dilettantes, surfing, off the beaten track, without letting yourself be locked up in the boxes in which we wanted to lock you up, charming your world with your mischief and your deep, sensitive voice, hidden in the wisps of smoke from your cigarettes. So rock, but you for real”, concluded his friend. Back in pictures on the moments of Dani’s career through our slideshow.