Akira Inaba -- Alain Delon（あらんどろん）

 

Alain Delon, French screen god, passed away today at the age of 88. He got a quick mention on the local news reports and news scrolls here but I'm sure that it was a "Stop the presses!" moment in France. Moreover, I'm fairly sure that he got a similar tribute in Japan because he was quite the attraction for a certain generation of young Japanese folks back in the day. When I first went to Japan in 1972 as a 6-year-old moppet, I was rather confused when acquaintances of my relatives kept jokingly referring to me as "Alain Delon", a name that I obviously didn't know back then. As everyone who has seen KKP via my Twitter and Facebook feeds already knows, my real first name is Allan and I've always wondered whether I was given that name since Mom may have been a fan of Delon. It's kinda tragic then that I never got my French namesake's good looks, charm, wit, charisma, rugged coolness...etc. etc.

Well, I decided to take a chance to see if a kayo kyoku singer had actually created a song with "Alain Delon" as part of the title. Looking through the JASRAC database, it was almost obscenely easy to find this song by singer-songwriter Akira Inaba（因幡晃）titled simply "Alain Delon" which was a track on his January 1979 5th album "Honoo"（静炎...Quiet Blaze）. Inaba's lyrics whimsically weave a story of a decent fellow who just can't seem to wrap his head around the fact that a young lady has the hots for him. He finally caves in at the end of the song by sheepishly stating that he's rather far from being the iconic actor from Sceaux, France but if the lass is more than welcoming, then how can he refuse?

Mitsuo Hagita's（萩田光雄）arrangement of the original melody by Inaba was done as if it had taken a vacation in some of the sunny climes where Delon himself filmed his scenes. I guess it hovers between a classy form of New Music and City Pop. But more interestingly, "Alain Delon" sounds not only like a prototype of what Tomita Lab（富田ラボ）would do twenty years later but a tune that Tomita Lab had made by traveling in his own TARDIS to the late 1970s. Go figure on that.

In any case, I offer my condolences to the family, friends and fans of Alain Delon.