It was June 19, 1986: the French learned the brutal disappearance of the humorist Coluche, carried away by a motorcycle accident. While driving on a country road not far from Grasse, in the Alpes-Maritimes, the artist had struck a truck head on which was making a maneuver. He died instantly. The announcement of the death of the artist, who had just created the Restos du Coeur a year earlier, had the effect of a shock. With the public, but also of his relatives. The news was all the more terrible for singer Renaud, friend of Coluche for over 10 years. In his book released in March 2025 entitled “Renaud, a life in songs”, the author Thomas Chaline explains that the interpreter of “Mistral Gagnant” learns the drama while he is abroad, in Quebec. The artist is then on tour and it is Dominique, who shared his life at the time, who keeps him informed of the details of the accident.
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Renaud struck down by the death of Coluche
This announcement is experienced as an absolute drama for Renaud, which collapses by learning the news. As Thomas Chaline explains in his work, Renaud, who hopes to release his 17th album in the coming months, then decides to write a title to express his sentence. This is “Fucking Truck”, a song published on the album of the same name, the eighth of Renaud, released in the Bacs in April 1988. In this five -minute song, written on music by the composer Franck Langolff (who had already collaborated with him on “Morgane de toi” and “Dead Les Enfants”), Renaud tells all his misunderstanding in the face of this accident and his suffering. “” You leave us with the dogs / with the bad guys, the morons / under a sun which shines less strong and less far / I would be loop me in a corner / with Marius, with Romain / Cry with them to Saint-Glinglin He sings, evoking in passing the sons of his missing friend.
Truck by Coluche’s death, Renaud will almost never manage to sing this song with such strong symbolism on stage. After a single performance in July 1986, just a few weeks after the disappearance of his friend, Renaud made a final cross on this title. Thomas Chaline also reveals in “Renaud, a life in songs” that the artist had skipped on the promotion of his album “Fucking truck”, so as not to have to approach the death of the actor in the media. The album, whose cover shows poppies, Coluche’s favorite flowers, on a black background, was later certified double platinum disc, for more than 400,000 copies sold at the time.
