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You are here: Home Leisure Arts & Culture Aznavour's long goodbye – 83 and still singing

08/10/2007Aznavour's long goodbye – 83 and still singing

Charles Aznavour hummed and tapped a few bars before sitting down to talk about his latest tour.

8 October 2007

PARIS (AFP) - As he would, Charles Aznavour, uncontested star of French song, hummed and tapped a few bars before sitting down to talk about his latest tour, a seemingly gruelling affair for an 83-year-old -- 20 Paris concerts followed by 28 in France, Belgium and Switzerland.

Charles Aznavour

After announcing his retirement in 1999, then again in 2000, and crooning through a farewell foreign tour in 2006, the French press reckoned the concerts kicking off next week were the singer's last good-bye.

"I never said farewell, never!", said an indignant Aznavour, still sprightly though a little hard-of-hearing. "But it's true the tours are getting shorter. Only 20 concerts in Paris this time against nine full weeks in the past. Next time it'll only be three or four days."

"It's like cutting back on cigarettes to stop smoking," said the musician who's composed close to a mammoth 1,000 songs, sold more than a million records, and played in some 60 films.

"There'll come a day when I forget the words and stumble on stage -- then I'll stop."

Nicknamed "Aznovoice" at the beginning of his career by English critics because of his raspy delivery, the slight and easy-going showman is the last of a generation of French "chanson" masters -- where the lyrics are king, the tune a prop.

"It's the words that count," he said. "It's a French genre. Our chansons say more than anyone else's."

Born in Paris in 1924 to Armenian immigrant entertainer parents who hoped to get to America but were never granted a visa, Aznavour -- original name Aznavourian -- grew up in the poorer neighbourhoods of the city, pulling himself up by the bootstraps to a career on stage.

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