1960s In 1960, Dutronc formed a band with himself as guitarist, schoolfriend Hadi Kalafate as bassist, Charlot Bénaroch as drummer (later replaced with André Crudot), and Daniel Dray as singer. They auditioned in 1961 for Jacques Wolfsohn, an artistic director at
Disques Vogue, who signed them and gave them the name El Toro et les Cyclones. The group released two singles, "L'Oncle John" and "Le Vagabond", but disbanded when Dutronc was obliged to undertake military service. After being discharged from the army in 1963, Dutronc briefly played guitar in
Eddy Mitchell's backing band and was also given a job at Vogue as Jacques Wolfsohn's assistant. In this capacity, he co-wrote songs for artists such as
ZouZou, Cléo, and
Françoise Hardy. Wolfsohn asked Dutronc to work with
Jacques Lanzmann, a novelist and editor of
Lui magazine, to create songs for a
beatnik singer called Benjamin. Benjamin released an EP in 1966, featuring songs written with Dutronc and a Lanzmann–Dutronc composition, "Cheveux longs" ("Long Hair"). However, Wolfsohn was disappointed by Benjamin's recording of a song titled "
Et moi, et moi, et moi". A second version was recorded, with Dutronc's former bandmate Hadi Kalafate on vocals. Wolfsohn then asked Dutronc if he would be interested in recording his own version. The single reached number 2 in the French charts in September 1966. Cultural historian
Larry Portis describes the arrival of Dutronc on the French music scene, along with that of
Michel Polnareff at around the same time, as representing "the first French rock music that can be considered a musically competent and non-imitative incorporation of African-American and African-American-British influences". For Portis, Dutronc marks a break with the literary tradition of French
chanson in his creative use of the sounds, rather than just the syntax, of the language. Dutronc's
self-titled debut album, released at the end of 1966, sold over a million copies and was awarded a special
Grand Prix du Disque by the
Académie Charles Cros, in memoriam of one of its founders. A second single, "
Les play boys", spent six weeks at number one and sold 600,000 copies. Dutronc was one of the most commercially successful French music stars of the late 1960s and early 1970s. During that period, he released seven hit albums and more than 20 singles, including two further number ones: "
J'aime les filles" in 1967 and "
Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille" in 1968. According to music critic Mark Deming: "Dutronc's early hits were rough but clever exercises in European garage rock ... like Dutronc's role models
Bob Dylan and
Ray Davies, he could write melodies strong enough to work even without their excellent lyrics, and his band had more than enough energy to make them fly (and the imagination to move with the musical times as psychedelia and hard rock entered the picture at the end of the decade)".
Steven Spielberg reportedly considered Dutronc to be the best French actor of his generation, and had the role of
René Belloq in
Raiders of the Lost Ark written with him in mind. Dutronc was not given the role, however, because it transpired that his English was not adequate.
1980s In 1980, Dutronc began work on a new album under the direction of Jacques Wolfsohn, now an executive at . Wolfsohn proposed that Dutronc write with both Jacques Lanzmann and Serge Gainsbourg. During recording, Wolfsohn proposed to Lanzmann and Gainsbourg that they each work on alternative lyrics to go with one of Dutronc's instrumental demos. Lanzmann objected to being placed in competition against another writer and dropped out of the project. The resulting album,
Guerre et pets ("War and Farts" – a play on the title of
Tolstoy's novel), consequently includes only two Lanzmann–Dutronc compositions and is mainly written by Dutronc and Gainsbourg. The album's lead single, "L'hymne à l'amour", received little airplay because its lyric consists primarily of racial epithets (the opening line, roughly translated, is "gook, wog, towel-head, yid"), and the album was only a moderate commercial success. The follow-up, 1982's ''C'est pas du bronze'', was written with Anne Ségalen, by now divorced from Jacques Lanzmann, and was released to a frosty critical reception. Dutronc's acting career continued during the 1980s, and he appeared in films such as
Malevil and
Barbet Schroeder's
Cheaters (
Tricheurs). In 1987, he released a further album,
C.Q.F.Dutronc. Most of the songs were written by Dutronc without a partner, although he collaborated with
Étienne Daho on one track and with Jean-François Bernardini of the Corsican folk group
I Muvrini on another.
1990s In 1992, Dutronc was awarded the
César for
Best Actor for the title role in
Maurice Pialat's biographical film
Van Gogh. Critic Christopher Null commented that Dutronc "manages to embody the obvious manic depression from Van Gogh's later years, all exuding from his scraggly face, sunken eyes, and bony frame... the searing Dutronc is the real reason to sit through the film".
21st century Dutronc starred in
Claude Chabrol's 2000 film
Merci pour le chocolat. He was awarded the Best Actor prize at the 2001
Marrakech International Film Festival and was nominated for the César Award for Best Actor for his performance in
Jean-Pierre Améris' ''C'est la vie''. In 2002, he starred in
Michel Blanc's
Summer Things. In 2003, Dutronc reunited with Jacques Lanzmann for ''Madame l'existence'', an album described by rock critic Christophe Conte as "surpassing, without much apparent effort, everything that [Dutronc] has created in the last two decades". In 2005, Dutronc was awarded an
Honorary César. Since then, he has appeared in films by directors including
Gabriel Aghion and
Alain Corneau. In 2010, Dutronc toured for the first time in 17 years, and released recordings from the tour as a live album and DVD,
Et vous, et vous, et vous. Dutronc's 41st film,
Les Francis, was released in 2014. In November 2014, Dutronc performed a series of concerts with
Eddy Mitchell and
Johnny Hallyday at
Paris Bercy, under the name "Les vieilles canailles" ("The Old Gits"). It was reported that, following these performances, Dutronc intended to begin recording a new album with his son Thomas. Said album,
Dutronc and Dutronc, was released on 4 November 2022 and features 13 songs originally released by Jacques Dutronc during his early career. Father and son rearranged the songs and both sing on the album. ==Reputation and influence==