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PATRICK HERNANDEZ

“BORN TO BE ALIVE”

(PATRICK HERNANDEZ, Herve Tholance)

Columbia 10986

No. 16   September 28, 1979

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Patrick Hernandez’s name is forever linked to his then unknown but briefly contained back-up singer­

Madonna Louise Ciccone, Madonna.

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Pat’s Spanish dad had been a big-band guitar player; his Austrian/Italian mom had been a singer.   With

that kind of background, it would seem nearly impossible for the young man (b. 1949, Guadeloupe,

France) not to have developed an interest in music.

 

From 1963 through 1966, Hernandez attended school in England, where the pervasive audio backdrop

was the Beatles sound.   Patrick took notice.   He later moved to Paris and decided to give singing a try.

After more than a decade of getting by on the bar circuit with a succession of rock bands, Hernandez met

“the Two Jeans,” Jean Van Lieu and Jean Claude Pellerin who­ acting in the dual roles of producers/

managers gave the lad the chance to tape some songs, in particular a vibrant, dancey thing that he and

Herve Tholance had written called “Born to Be Alive.”

 

The response was awesome.   The disk topped or nearly topped music charts in Australia, Brazil, Canada,

Mexico, and a number of countries in Europe.   “Born to Be Alive” it is reported by author Christopher

Ander­sen, Madonna: Unauthorized, became an international hit, “grossing more that $25 million.”

 

In support of this tremendous success, the record label and the two Jeans searched for talented bodies to

flesh-out Hernandez’s world tour.   Madonna, in re­sponse to an ad in a trade publication, attended the

New York audition.  “Van Leiu and Pellerin were so impressed with her passionate delivery that they

offered to bring her to Paris and mold her into a star,” wrote Andersen. It’s disputable how much work

she put into the “Patrick Hernandez Show” before her departure from the two Jeans three months later.

“I kept saying, ‘When are you going to do something with me?’   And they were busy with Patrick,” said

Madonna to the author.

 

Madonna most likely did travel with Hernandez’s trek to Tunisia.   About Madonna, Hernandez is quoted

by Andersen as saying, “She once told me, ‘Success is yours today but it will be mine tomorrow.”