Life

Children of French rocker Hallyday go to court over album

February 18, 2018



PARIS - The biological children of French rock legend Johnny Hallyday have launched court action to get access to his planned posthumous album, their lawyers said Sunday, in the latest battle in a case that has transfixed France.

Tensions between the feuding members of the country's first family of showbiz blew up into full-scale war earlier this week when his children Laura Smet and David Hallyday challenged his "rewritten" will, in which he left everything to his fourth wife Laeticia, 32 years his junior.

Hallyday's 51st studio album has now become part of the spat, after the "French Elvis" spent much of 2017 recording 12 songs for the record, which remained unfinished when he died of lung cancer in December.

Smet will go to court to "get to know the posthumous album project in order to exercise her rights as heir, to be able to confirm that the artistic integrity of all its contents were respected in this album, which the press has announced would be completed soon," her lawyer Emmanuel Ravanas said on Sunday.

Smet was "mainly pre-occupied with defending her father's work," Ravanas said, adding that Laeticia had "sharply opposed" an amicable plea to end stonewalling over the finalized album, "about which she knows little".

Along with David, Smet has urgently appealed to a court in Nanterre, to the west of Paris, to receive information about the album project within 48 hours.

They also demanded Hallyday's real estate holdings, which include several luxury villas, be frozen ahead of a hearing scheduled for March 15. - AFP


February 18, 2018
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