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Date: … June 2007 - TAHITI

Star Académie
What an excellent idea this tour was to pay tribute to Joe Dassin by the former students of "Star Académie" on the To'ata stage in Papeete!

What an excellent idea this tour was to pay tribute to Joe Dassin with former students of "Star Académie" on the To'ata stage in Papeete. A nostalgic and curious public was present and the success was higher than all expectations. Alexia, Mario, Houcine, Carine and the others were visibly moved by the welcome reserved to them for this concert "unlike any other". because after many years Joe Dassin had become a "son of the Fenua". Tahiti had become his new "Eldorado", his own "Amerique"... With many artistic influences, Joseph liked popular songs, more like country or folk style.

Having become "Joe", he took part in the French rock wave with a softer approach, on the path of Adamo for whom he was the opening act at the Olympia in 1967. But his influences are rather found on the side of Bob Dylan. After his worldwide version of "Guantanamera", successes came one after another. "the Daltons", "Siffler sur la colline", "L'Amérique", "Les Champs Elysées", "Les Petits Pains au Chocolat", "C'est la vie Lily", etc. Tours were getting more frequent and health problems began. Joe was fragile and needed some rest. But as a real professional, he filled his contract. He came to Tahiti for the first time in 1972 on advice of his friend Carlos. His private life was a fiasco. After a first divorce, he married Christine in 1978, a marriage from which Jonathan then Julien were born. But divorce was again not far. He came back to Tahiti where he bought a property. His last hit "L'Eté Indien" (Indian Summer), annouced his swam song. In july 1980 he received medical treatment in Paris and returned to Papeete to rest. But on August 20, at noon, at the table of a restaurant in downtown Papeete, he collapsed under a stroke. A memorial plaque remebers today this tragic event in Vaima Center at the "Retro Brasserie". All of Tahiti remembers but regrets that Joe Dassin is buried in Hollywood, near Charlie Chaplin, Valentino or Douglas Fairbanks... Tahiti's coconut trees are looking east toward Hollywood.

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