Nino Ferrer was born on 15 August 1934 in
Genoa, Italy, but lived the first years of his life in
New Caledonia (an
overseas territory of France in the southwest
Pacific Ocean), where his father, an engineer, was working.
Jesuit religious schooling, first in Genoa and later in
Saint-Jean de Passy, Paris, left him with a lifelong aversion to the Church. The suggestion to take up solo singing came from the
rhythm 'n' blues singer
Nancy Holloway, whom he also accompanied. His first solo success came in 1965 with the song "Mirza". Other hits, such as "Cornichons" and "Oh! hé! hein! bon!" followed, establishing Ferrer as something of a
comedic singer. The
stereotyping and his eventual huge success made him feel "trapped", and unable to escape from the constant demands of huge audiences to hear the hits he himself despised. He started leading a life of "wine, women and song" while giving endless provocative performances in theatres, on television and on tour. (the French version is "Je voudrais être un noir" ["I'd like to be a black man"]). This
soul song, with its quasi-revolutionary lyrics imploring a series of Ferrer's
black music idols to gift him their
black skin for the benefit of music-making, achieved long-lasting iconic status in Italy. "La pelle nera" was followed by a string of other semi-serious Italian songs, which included two appearances at the
Sanremo Music Festival (in 1968 and 1970). In 1970, he returned to France and resumed his musical career there. Ferrer rebelled against the "gaudy frivolity" of French
show business, filled with what he perceived as its "cynical technocrats and greedy exploiters of talent" (he had considered leaving show business altogether in 1967, when he left France for Italy). In his lesser-known songs, which the public largely ignored, he mocked life's absurdities. He agreed with
Serge Gainsbourg and
Claude Nougaro that songs are a "minor art" and "just background noise". In 1975 he started
breeding horses in
Quercy, France. In 1989, Ferrer obtained French citizenship, which he explained as his "celebration of the
bicentenary of the
French Revolution." He went on to record the
French national anthem, accompanied by a choir. A couple of months after his mother died, Ferrer, on 13 August 1998, two days before his 64th birthday, took his hunting gun and walked to a field of corn, recently cut, near the neighbouring village of
Saint-Cyprien. There, he laid down in a grove nearby and shot himself in the chest. His wife Kinou, with whom he had two sons, had already alerted the
gendarmerie after finding a farewell letter in the house. Next day, there were front-page headlines in most French and Italian newspapers, such as "Adieu Nino!," "Nino Ferrer Hung Up His Telephone," "Our Nino Has Left for the South." They called him the
Don Quixote and the
Corto Maltese of French show business. ==Discography==