Richard Anthony

Richard Anthony was born in Cairo, Egypt, to a Syrian Jewish family of prominent industrialists and diplomats. He lived in Egypt, Argentina, and England as a child, and studied at Brighton College and Lycée Janson-de-Sailly. He started playing saxophone in Paris nightclubs and became a singer in 1958, adapting American pop hits to French lyrics. He was one of the biggest French pop stars in the 1960s, with hits such as “Let’s Twist Again”, “C’est ma fête”, and “Et j’entends siffler le train”. He also recorded songs in English, German, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic, and reached the British charts with “Walking Alone” and “If I Loved You”. He was the first European artist to sign with Motown Records in 1965. He recorded the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” as “Fille sauvage” in 1966, and his song “Aranjuez mon amour”, based on Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, became one of his biggest international hits in 1967. He remained popular in France, with another hit in 1974, “Amoureux de ma femme”. He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s, but returned to France in 1982. He continued to record, perform, and appear on TV shows until his death from cancer in 2015, at the age of 77. He sold over 50 million records and wrote an autobiography, Il faut croire aux étoiles, in 1998. He was married four times and had eight children. He was buried in Cabris, Alpes-Maritimes, France.