Mike Brant

MIKE BRANT, from his real name, Moshé Michael Brand was born at February 1, 1947 by midnight, in Nicosie, on the island of Cyprus, Polish taken refuge parents of the camp of Auschwitz (Fichel and Bronia BRAND).

September 29, 1947. BRAND family obtains finally a passport for the
"Promised Earth".
They arrive little time after, but the mother of Mike did not plait herself... After one year and Community half of life with other Jews,  BRAND family sets out again and settles in Haïfa.

They live at the 9  Kibbutz-Galouiot street.
Here, Fichel obtains a stable employment with the town hall of the city.
This country is still called Palestine, but will become Israel on May 14, 1948.
It is at this same period, as our small Moshé, whose brown hair is cleared up more and more and of a timid temperament, taking his first steps.
January 7, 1950.  his parents "offer to him" a little brother  named Zvika.

Moshé and Zvi will remain very plain throughout their lives.
Moshé grows without problem, but he does not decide to speak.
Their elder son, so much wished, is dumb!
He can't say neither "dad", nor "mom", which afflicts his parents.
He can laugh, but all occurs as if he did not want to speak.
Whereas he has just been 3 years old, Bronia sends Moshé to see a specialist,
who affirms to her that her son is normal and that is only momentary.
Every morning, in the street Galouiot, a merchant of ices passes who shouts: - Kerach! Kerach! Freeze! Freeze! Small Moshé looks every day on this spectacle without saying word.
But one morning, whereas the merchant of ices passes, Bronia sees the lips of Moshé, who had a little more than 5 years, moving and saying:
- Ice!... Freeze!... At the evening of the delivery, a new sun floods small the two parts of the street Galouiot.
 

Tears of joy run on the cheeks of Fichel and Bronia. With the foot of the small bed, they thank the sky.
Hardly he started to speak, Moshé is expressed quite naturally by the song, like a revenge.
At 6 years, he enters to the school, discovers the reading.

he is contemplative which likes to settle with the window of the family residence to observe the comings and goings silently of the birds or of cats.
but he also adores to be the clown in front of his buddies of class.
His parents understood well that they dealt with original child, especially when this one says to them brutally one day: "later, I will be high-speed motorboat...
or a tramp!"
Continuous Moshé to brighten the family table, which needs some, because it is quite poor.
The family is merry, plain, harmonious, but the shade of the camps weighs despite everything, without the Brand boys being aware of it.
Finally, Moshé is returned school, in spite of its interest for the history and the reading.
It is, for him, of no importance; he discovered recently, with the synagogue of the district, the song, the music and a whole marvellous  world which is from now on he his.

At 11 years, Moshé is the only boy of the choral society of his school.
His parents send Moshé to continue his schooling and to work in the Gesher kibbutz, with the large air, in the green valley of the Jordan.
It finds nature, picking the apricots, corn sowings, milks the cows, is occupied of the farmyard, while singing, of course, with full voice!
Moshé adores its new life.

For his 15 years, Bronia offers in the its elder 45 turns of Platters,
MY PRAYER (My prayer).
The song touches so much the teenager who  will not sleep all the night.
One can advance today that it is it which determined its future career.
Later, Mike Brant will marvelously sing it in front of the cameras of French television, in the emission "Rousselle Junior".
Moshé remains, despite everything, an contained and tended personality.
It is even soon operated, in spite of its youth, of a stomach ulcer,
it is to say if it is distressed! That will socially deprive it of the military service,
if important in Israel.

After its operation, it becomes guide with the museum of the Navy of Haïfa.
The Brand family moves to the 10 of the street Sarah.

He decides to stop singing with the choral society of the synagogue.
his voice is so beautiful that one entrusts operatic arias to him, which he really does not like.
One evening of 1962, while returning at his place, it crosses in the staircase his  brother Zvi; this one, an accordion under the arm, will repeat with a band of buddies to the Academy of music.
But the small group is badly, the duet piano-accordion is not good, it misses a guitar and a voice.
Zvi invites Moshé to become the singer-guitarist about it:
"With you, I am sure that it will go..." Mike is not made request.
At 15 years, the elder son of Brand is not afraid of nothing.
He will propose to animate, in a large hotel of Haïfa, the midnight supper of New Year's Eve.

In Téhérann, Mike sings up to 150 songs by night! But his perfomance is not useless, he is noticed by beautiful blond a 22 year old, the singer Sylvie Vartan (who passes in the same program as him) and by her jovial Carlos secretary-partner.

Both sing their tube then DEUX MINUTES TRENTE-CINQ DE BONHEUR.
The meeting proves to be decisive.
"It had such a will to succeed and seemed so ambitious that we brought back it with us", Sylvie Vartan say's later.
Mike will join them later only a few weeks, at the end of its contract.
It takes a Téhéran/Tel-Aviv/Paris ticket; mike does not speak French, hardly English.
And Sylvie Vartan even engages, in the event of disappointment, to pay him her ticket return.
1969: Mike Brant arrives as in a dream to Paris.
Unfortunately, it is impossible for him to join at the telephone with Carlos and Sylvie Vartan.
he is made deposit under the rain, close to the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, because it is the only place about which it intended to speak in Paris.
he rents a small room and drag in the Latin Quarter.
he is about to return to Israel after one difficult week.
At the time to embark, with the airport of Orly, he tries the last phone call.
Sign destiny, Carlos, who returns of round, takes down.
He immediately invites mike to dine at his place and lodges it in its apartment of the street Saint-Benoît... We failed well never not to know this extraordinary singer...

Thanks to Carlos, Mike occurs with the Bistingo club, where this Méditerranéen young person, beautiful like a god, really does not pass unperceived!
Carlos presents him one evening to Jean Renard, one of the type-setters of Johnny Hallyday and Sylvie Vartan.
Mike sings the traditional one of Gershwin to him, SUMMERTIME: Jean Fox and his entourage are reversed.
Very quickly, he proposes a song to him:
LAISSE MOI T'AIMER.
 
The editor Gerard Tournier and Jean Renard sign it without any hesitation for five years on their catalogue discographic distributed by CBS.
The career of Mike Brant in France seems indeed left...
Monique Marcis, director of the programming of RTL, is the first to be believed in him.
He becomes the pet of the station.
 
At the time of the first passage of the title, the standard of the radio change:
large the adventure has just started!
For the summer, Mike publishes its second disc, Un grand bonheur (A GREAT HAPPINESS) .
In 1970, the French public starts to adopt this beautiful unknown man.
Mike Brant answers English interviews initially; but hurries to learn our language with the Berlitz method like in company of some young people and beautiful French... But, nostalgic of its origins, he telephones every days with he's family and runs Paris to find the restaurants and the culinary products of he's country.
Mike Brant liked France, but professionally, he's heart was in the United States
(it raffolait American successes), and personally in Israel, where he's family lived.

1970. Before the twelve blows of midnight, the speakrine Jacqueline Huet presents for the first time Mike Brant at the French television.
And the standart the tele one explodes, the thunderbolt is instantaneous!
The large tele producers of the time, Jacques Martin, Philippe Bouvard, Guy Lux, help him to make known themselves.
Soon Mike, presents his first album lengthily matured during 265 meetings of recording (!).
he bursts literally with the eyes of the European televiewers who saw him singing, October 28, 1970, MAIS DANS LA LUMIERE and to gain Great international Price RTL.

Happy,he passes the end of evening in discotheque in company of Dalida.
Met in 1969 with the festival of the Song of Venice, Dalida impresses much Mike,
he will become her friend.
She even proposes to him to pass by "English high-speed motorboat" in her next spectacle to Olympia of Paris!
In Israel, the radios and the newspapers seize the child of the country then more to release it.
In France, Mike becomes the pet of the young people.

THE ACCIDENT !

At the beginning of 1971, Mike makes a triumph in Midem.
This year there, he leaves three 45 turns:
NOUS IRONS A SLIGO, SANS AMIS, LA FILLE A AIMER, and an album which will be sold with 380,000 specimens.
he sings with the festival of Layered branches and records its the first two German songs and LAISSE MOI T'AIMER in Italian.
However, February 14, 1971, he is victim of a terrible car accident on the road of Borough-in-Bresse.
Suddenly his car stalls and a truck which emerges cannot avoid it.
It undergoes a cranial traumatism.
France-evening titrates that Mike Brant lost the memory!

It is not true, but he is left there very shaken! Monique Marcis, say's retrospectively that after the accident, he was perhaps not correctly neat:
all his later problems would have come from there.
November 23, 1971, Dalida passes by high-speed motorboat to the Olympia of Paris, and Mike in "the English high-speed motorboat" during seventeen days.
From now on, Mike is not any more one unknown.
His mother is in the forefront, happy.
The more so as her son bought to her, with his first seals, a white house with the blue shutters with Haïfa.
This passage to Olympia however will detach Mike of its producer, Jean Renard.

 For him this Olympia comes too early in the career from Mike, which is not yet completely at the point.

QUI SAURA !

QUI SAURA is the true beginning of an insane career and a great collaboration between Mike and Michel Jourdan.
Mike discovered this title with the festival of the Song with San-Remo (Italy), where it was interpreted by the singer Jose Féliciano.
QUI SAURA will be one of his greater successes.
 
Michel Jourdan had adapted it, Claude Francois, Richard Anthony, Régine had thought of recording it, but it is finally Mike Brant which will make a success of them.
This disc will leave only in spring 1972, because the producer Jean Renard had refused to publish it.
And it is necessary to await the arrival of the new producer of Mike, Charles Talar, to discover this success, soon international number 1 with the "hit-parade".
From now on Alain Krief, his friend of Israel and his confidant, become the realizer of his discs.

In 1972, one had to expect it, Mike exceeds Johnny Hallyday and Claude François in the annual referendum of the "Hit" magazine!
Certain fans continue in the street, of the scissors to the hand, to steal a wick of hair to him.
Consequently, Mike Brant does not circulate any more but in Mercedes armoured. He is truly the French singer number 1.
Solitary seducer but, it does not have history of love in his life.

Mike launches out a new challenge: to write itself musics of his songs.
he has habit to say: "Which does not try anything... God that I it lime pits!".
Then, he is only locked up whole nights with its guitar.

Ihis first melody is equipped with words by Richard Seff and becomes It
C'EST MA PRIERE, a title not very distant from MY PRAYER of Platters that Mike likes so much.
This eighth disc becomes n°1 sales; it is a new triumph.
With this moment, Mike Brant called to the press:
"I want to go up, but slowly, I have to learn much. Each time I sing on scene,
I make progress... "
From now on, Mike will distil with its lyric writers its musics with the liking of its rounds.
Often by telephone or on quickly recorded cassettes.
Michel Jourdan becomes an essential collaborator, because he affectionne,
like Mike, the a little pathetic songs.
Mike likes to go to Toulouse to record.
Over there, he has peace, a studio and musicians available 24 hours a day;
and then, he likes the province, more human in his eyes than Paris.
his three successes of 1973 are:
RIEN QU'UNE LARME, TOUT DONNE- TOUT REPRIS and VIENS CE SOIR.

As soon as he can do it, for ressourcer, Mike leaves on a journey to the sun.
Mike Brant knew many women, but those which will hold a place with share in his heart are
Guitta, a Danish air-hostess, emigrated in Canada
(which will require of him to choose between it and its trade);

Corinne, a Swiss woman;
Christine, a Frenchwoman (the ex-wife of Claude Lelouch);

Michal Tal, an Israeli singer,
and Lena, Danish, his last love.

Opinion of all those which one known, Mike Brant had a large heart and had a superficial sensitivity.
But for this trade, he sacrificed his private life.
his successive apartments in Paris, Neuilly, are always almost empty:
some tables painted by him, of the cushions, a bed, a guitar and it is all.
Its passions are the failures, painting and the jazz.
But, side heart, Mike perhaps never yet knew the great love.
However it permanently is requested, tracked by the fans, the girls, the women. To be protected, Mike must unceasingly change address and telephone number.

his private life becomes a hell!

His mother smelled well are distress, her evil of living and its sentimental disappointments that it sings in TOUT DONNE, TOUT REPRIS.
For it, Mike is a too sensitive and too fragile boy to move in the world of the show business.
To come to him to assistance, it then proposes with Mike to join her in Israel to spend some time in family, as  good old days.
She realizes that her son is truly disturbed by the life of star whom he carries out in France and thinks even of making it examine by a specialist.
But Mike refuses. It is thrown, as it sings it, A CORPS PERDU in his trade, where he always one of the n°1.
his distressed fragile, is assoiffé of love, likes nature and the animals, of which it cannot occur: dogs, cats, birds and horses.

it arrives to him even sometimes of going to its go with a kitten in its wind-breaker! To reassure his mother, and to please to him, Mike and Michel Jourdan write: ELLE A GARDE SES YEUX D'ENFANT.

In 1973, Mike connects turned on round and 70 official receptions during the summer.
On scene, he likes to sing SERRE LES POINGS ET BATS-TOI, whose energy enables him to offer another facet of its personality, another image.
In spite of its considerable success, it did still not pass to Olympia in the high-speed motorboat and makes more scene in province than in Paris.
"I turn at a rate of 250 official receptions per annum.
My heart becomes a clock, I am happy, but I cannot about it any more... "
will say Mike Brant.
Even if he sings ET JE SUIS HEUREUX, Mike loses the sleep and fall into the infernal round from the sleeping pills, especially after his car accident in 1971.
Too much pure, too vulnerable, Mike are "fragile in inside",
like wrote Michel Joudan.
Whereas it is complexed and always in evil of love, Mike is more than ever jalous... Mike Brant smells itself for always the foreigner, even in his native land. he regret for not to have been able to take part, in 1973, with the defense of its native land and the war of Kippour, for medical reasons, is immence.
That will be arranged by its precarious psychological situation.
Then Mike leaves to sing on the Israeli face for its compatriots and he visits the military hospitals...

But on his return, Mike does not go so well and everyone realizes there...
In 1974, Mike which continues to seek its way, changes producer.
He leaves Charles Talar to sign with Simon Wajntrob.
This producer knows the whole ground.
Mike is not a businessman and it is easily let impress by Wajntrob which it meets one evening in the club of his Dani friend.

With this producer, Mike, which seeks to break his loneliness and to know new horizons, discovers another world even more insane, that of the billionaires,
the yachts and the private ports, the racing stables and the stud farms,
the manors in Normandy, the pretty women aristocrats... but how to keep firmly the feet on the ground in this cut medium of the life?
Did Mike make the good choice? Its close relations doubt it!
Does this same Mike year leave C'EST COMME CA QUE JE T'AIME,
SERRE LES POINGS ET BATS-TOI,
ON SE RETROUVE PAR HASARD and QUI POURRA TE DIRE?
To Christmas, Mike leaves a new disc, its fourteenth and last album.
Il seeks new artistic horizons and informs:
"... my career is taking a watershed".
his behavior becomes strange.

May 4, 1974, at the time of an official reception with Boissy-Saint-Leger,
he stops with the fourth song, forsakes 4 000 médusés spectators and is run away in the night...
The 11, in Cambrai, he breaks the mirror of his cabin with blows of fist.
From now on, he cries in the cabins before entering in scene...
Mike is not well and everyone realizes there.
However Mike was never also popular.
he acknowledges at this moment with the journalist Monique Pantel whom it would like to turn a film and whom it does not love the hysterical iron ores because they shout while he sings, without really listening to it.
At the end of July 1974, mike will rest with the Seyne-on-Sea, close to Toulon, then during the autumn in Switzerland, with the mountain, in Saint-Cergues, close to Genèves.

HIS FIRST SUICIDE !

November 22, 1974, with end, Mike makes a first suicide attempt,
by throwing fifth stage of the hotel of Peace, in Geneva.
 
he owes his survival only with one sun curtain, which he had not seen on the floor with the lower part, which deadened its fall.
Near his friends, it is excused of his gesture, which exceeded it:
it is not endowed, for happiness.
"I like the life, I don't know why I did that!".

Finaly, Mike Brant is left there well, he is free for a cranial traumatism
(still one !) fractures of the two legs, including one opened, left, which will lose in the episode two or three centimetres.
Soon, at his great pride, he manages to go without crutches, but while tightening the teeth.

HIS FAMILY WORRIED !

His mother and his brother as he been engaged Lena arrive at his bedside.
Zvi, his brother, takes council  a professor of Jerusalem which says to him that Mike should come to be made look after in Israel.
But Mike does not want to return to the country and hiss family cannot oblige it to do it!  Unfortunately!

From now on, Mike becomes unstable and will oscillate more and more between euphoria and melancholy. 
his angers are terrible, his crises of abatement also.

February 1, in its small room of the hospital of Geneva, he celebrates, in good mood his 28 birthday, with his mother, his two nurses and his surgeon.
 
This one however announces to him a fifth operation of the left leg,
partially atrophied.
Mike and his lyric writers intensely work the phonetics of the texts of his songs,
in order to better serve his upsetting voice. 
he has the evil to live. 
he entrusts: "One day, I will have a child and he will be a rebirth..."
But he will not have the time of all to say.
In spring, Mike Brant records, in Toulouse, the adaptation of the famous tube of Morris Albert, FEELINGS, under the title of DIS-LUI.

With the listening of DIS-LUI, Mike is satisfied and he entrusts to his accomplice, Michel Jourdan, who wrote the words of them:
"We will go on Olympia with this song."
A few days later, he has just stopped the treatment which he followed and which made it grow bigger, Mike must make his re-entry with television at Guy Lux and with radio RTL and, must even visit an apartment with Lena, he's been engaged, Friday April 25...

This Friday however, after having listened to the first mixing of DIS-LUI,
Mike Brant throws sixth floor of a Parisian building...

 

When the new one falls, of the thousands of young people cry the death of their idol.
On all the lips and in all the glances the same question:
"Why such a young, such a beautiful and such a gifted man committed suicide?", "Why this gesture?", "That could one make for preventing some...?"
During the religious ceremony, with the synagogue of the 44 street of the Victories, in Paris, there is an insane world.
The sorrow which fills up the heart of the people present is insupportable.
Time stopped... forever.

Moshé Brand, known as Mike Brant, which dreamed to create a choral society of children of all the colors and all the countries, is buried on May 7, 1975 with the cemetery of Camp David of Haïfa.