Dick Rivers (born Hervé Forneri, 24 April 1945 – 24 April 2019) was a French singer and actor who began performing in the early 1960s. He was an important figure in introducing rock and roll music in France. He is known for being an admirer of Elvis Presley, who highly influenced both his singing and looks. His stage name
came from the character Deke Rivers that Presley played in his second film, Loving You (1957). During his fifty-five year career, he recorded 33 studio albums and 3 live albums.Rivers was born in Nice, France, and started his music career in 1961 as the lead singer of the band Les Chats Sauvages, cutting his first record on his fifteenth birthday. In 1961, the British music magazine, NME, reported that a Rivers concert with his group Les Chats Sauvages at the Palais des Sports de Paris, whilst headlining with Vince Taylor, had turned into a full-scale riot. Rivers left Les Chats Sauvages in 1962 to pursue a solo career.
In November 1964, Dick shared the bill with the Beach Boys at the Olympia in Paris, during a Musicorama . The following year, the singer released the French version of the Moody Blues hit, Go now which reached the first place in the hit-parade of Hello friends , the famous TV show.
Dick Rivers was the only French artist to be invited by John Lennon and Paul McCartney to appear on their show "The Music of Lennon & McCartney" for Granada TV in Manchester on December 17, 1965. In 1967, he received a gold record for “Viens me faire oublie” which reached No. 1 in Canada. While he had already some 5 million records sold to his credit Dick Rivers left for the United States in 1967, and recorded an album with rhythm and blues musicians. The “Dick Rivers story” was recorded in the Muscle Shoals studios in Alabama and remains one of the best albums of that era. In 1969, he met his idol Elvis Presley after a concert in Las Vegas for a chat.
On several occasions, Dick Rivers has tried to break his image of a rocker by animating a musical program for several years between 1982 and 1992 on Radio Monte Carlo. In the early 90s, he realized his American dream and recorded in Austin, Texas, a tribute album to Buddy Holly, rock pioneer, Holly days in Austin (1991).
In the cinema, he acted under the direction of Jean-Pierre Mocky, in The candid Madame Duff (1999) and The Furet (2003) . In 2004, he went on stage for Jean Genet's play Les paravents, played at the Théâtre national de Chaillot.In 2006, the new generation of French songs appeared on his album soberly titled Dick Rivers, on which Benjamin Biolay, Matthieu Chedid, or Mickey 3D collaborated. In 2011, he celebrated his 50-year career with the release of an album and a confession book, Mister D , and then toured all over France.
He died of cancer on April 24, 2019, the day he turned 74.
(Edited from various French translations mainly from Wikipedia & Gala magazine)