C'est la Hair

ROCK 'N' ROLL

The folk-rocker who calls himself Antoine has a shoulder-length coiffure, wears pastel flowered Pucci shirts and silky Courreges slacks. In some circles in the U.S. these days, that sort of getup hardly raises an eyebrow. In France, it's something new, and that helps to explain why Antoine is the biggest thing there since Scotch. His records are out selling Charles Aznavour, Yves Montand and Johnny Hallyday combined. Wherever he goes, the kids--the girls, especially -- engulf him. At Paris' Olympia Music Hall, it took 35 flics to keep back the girls, who retaliated by littering the stage with their panties. "Never in French show business," marvels Maurice Chevalier, who ought to know, "has an artist reached the top so fast." It may be carrying art too far to call Antoine an artist, but there is no doubt that he is on top.

Love, Modern-Style. He got there, in the past four months, singing unmelodious songs in a plain, unemotional, unmusical voice. His repertory is the same protest, parent-baiting message music that is now becoming passe in the States. One of his hits, La Guerre, sounds like a medley of Eve of Destruction and Blowin' in the Wind:

Our entire world is collapsing . . .

The bomb is ready to fall, the button to be pushed.

Sometimes children raise their voices to say

Let us make a truce before this alarming future.

But their voices fly off into the wind.

Perhaps more original are Antoine's reflections on love, modern-style. In France, there is a movement afoot to repeal a 1920 statute prohibiting contraceptives for women. While the law itself has never been much of an inhibiting factor in France, it does give Antoine and the kids something to protest about. He sings an anguished ballad about an impoverished young wife who winds up killing her nine children and herself. He makes the same point in a lighter strain in Antoine's Lucubrations, his hottest-selling record so far:

I received a letter from the President's office

Asking me: Antoine, you have good common sense.

What can we do to make the country richer?

Antoine's answer:

Put the Pill on sale in the dime stores.

Revolutionary Refrain. Offstage, Pierre Antoine Muraccioli, 21, is not at all in the same alienated, humorless bag with his U.S. precursors. His constant refrain is "Je m'en fous" (I don't give a damn) but actually he does; he spends his days conscientiously studying engineering. "I don't figure on revolutionizing the world," he says. Obviously he is enjoying it too much to change it. After graduation, he figures on packing his guitar and Puccis for a fall concert tour of the States.

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