Amanda Lear biography
Amanda Lear was born 18 November 1939, she is a French-Italian singer, lyricist, painter, television presenter, actress and former model. Lear grew up in the south of France and in Switzerland, and studied art in Paris and at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London.
She began her professional career as a fashion model in the mid-1960s and went on to model for Paco Rabanne and Ossie Clark among others. Around that time she met the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí and would remain his closest friend and muse for the next 15 years.
Lear first came into the public eye as the cover model for Roxy Music’s album For Your Pleasure in 1973. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, she was a million-album-selling disco queen, mainly in Continental Europe and Scandinavia, signed to Ariola Records. Lear’s first four albums earned her mainstream popularity, charting in the Top 10 on European charts, including the best-selling Sweet Revenge (1978).
Her biggest hits included “Blood and Honey”, “Tomorrow”, “Queen of Chinatown”, “Follow Me”, “Enigma (Give a Bit of Mmh to Me)” and “Fashion Pack”.
In the mid-1980s Lear positioned herself as one of the leading media personalities in mainland Europe, especially in Italy and in France where she hosted many popular TV shows. She had also developed a successful painting career, regularly exhibiting her works in galleries across Europe for the next three decades, and continued to make music, earning minor hits such as “Incredibilmente donna” and “Love Your Body”. Amanda’s 1980s musical output saw her experimenting with different genres and trying to revive her career by re-recording earlier hits to various levels of success. 1980s also saw her release two books: an autobiography My Life with Dalí and a novel L’Immortelle.
Since the 1990s her time has been divided between music, television, movies and painting. Despite frequent album releases, she failed to achieve success on charts with her music. However, her television career remained successful, with Lear hosting numerous prime time TV shows, occasionally making guest appearances in French and Italian TV series.
She has also performed acting and dubbing roles in independent as well as major film productions. In the late 2000s Lear would reinvent herself as a theatrical actress, performing in long-running stage plays in France. To date, she has sold over 25 million singles and 15 million albums worldwide. Lear is also a widely recognized gay icon.
Amanda Lear age
Lear’s origins are unclear, with the singer herself providing different information about her background and keeping her birth year a secret even from her long-term husband. Contested facts include her birth date and place, her birth gender, names and nationalities of her parents, and the location of her upbringing.
Most sources claim 18 November 1939 to be her birth date, including GEMA, but Lear has variously given her date of birth as 1946, 1948 and 1950. During a 2010 interview with a French newspaper Libération, Lear presented her identity card to a journalist, which read: “born 18 November 1950 in Saigon”. This date seems to be age fabrication, as public records show that she began university in September 1964, and that she married in December 1965.
As for her birthplace, Saigon and British Hong Kong appear to be most credible versions, but places like Singapore, Switzerland or even Transylvania have also been rumoured as the singer’s birthplace by different sources. She was an only child to her parents who later divorced.
Most sources, including Lear’s 1965 wedding certificate, confirm that her father was a French army officer, possibly of British origin. Her mother appears to have had a Russo-Asiatic background. In a 1976 interview with Carmen Thomas for a German television show, Lear confirmed that her father was British and mother was Russian, and that they had already both died. However, she would later claim her mother had a French background.
Amanda Lear young
Amanda Lear David Bowie
Amanda Lear transsexual
Lear’s alleged transgender background has been commented upon in the media and in the biographies of those who knew Lear earlier in her life, including Salvador Dalí, with Dali’s biographer Ian Gibson even devoting an entire chapter to her.
April Ashley, a famous transgender entertainer and model, has long claimed that in the 1950s and early 1960s, she and Lear, whose birth name she claimed was Alain Tap, were working together in transvestite revues in Paris at Madame Arthur and Le Carrousel. In her book, April Ashley’s Odyssey, she recalls Lear performing drag acts under the stage name Peki d’Oslo.
Similar facts have been reported by Romy Haag, a transgender artist living in Germany, who ran a popular nightclub Chez Romy in Berlin and knew Amanda closely, and Bibiana Fernández, a Spanish transgender actress and singer. Some sources even insinuate that it was Dalí himself who sponsored Lear’s sex reassignment operation in Casablanca in 1963, carried out by doctor Georges Burou, and also that it was he who invented her stage name based on the pun of the Catalan language “L’Amant de Dalí” (Dalí’s lover).
Rumours claiming that Lear was a non-operative transgender woman or intersex were circulating at the beginning of her singing career, which stopped after she posed nude for Playboy in the late 1970s.
Despite Lear herself contradicting transgender rumours already in the 1970s and explaining they were a part of strategy to draw public attention, they have persisted to date. When asked by Carmen Thomas in a 1976 interview whether it was true that she was assigned male at birth, Lear replied that it was “a crazy idea from some journalist”.
She would later claim in Interview magazine that it was David Bowie who started the rumour. She would also address these rumours in her songs “Fabulous (Lover, Love Me)” and “I’m a Mistery” (deliberately misspelled as to reference the word “mister”). Despite some sources claiming her transgender background is an open secret, she would always flatly deny it, even when confronted by the Dalí biographer Ian Gibson during a TV show.
However, an excerpt from an article from an Italian newspaper surfaced online in November 2011, including a reproduction of a copy of Lear’s birth certificate, which states that she was born Alain Maurice Louis René Tap on 18 June 1939 in Saigon, and a picture of Lear before her transition.
It is believed she spent her early childhood in Switzerland. Raised speaking French and English, she learned German, Spanish and Italian in her teens, languages she later was able to use in her professional life. She relocated to Paris at the end of elementary school to study at Académie des Beaux-Arts, then went to Saint Martin’s School of Art in London in 1964.
On 11 December 1965, she married Paul Morgan Lear, a Scottish architecture student, and took his name. The name of the bride was registered at the Chelsea registry office as “Amanda Tap daughter of André Tap, retired Captain of the French army”.
Amanda Lear enigma
Artist: Amanda Lear
Album: Sweet Revenge
Released: 1978
Genre: Pop
Amanda Lear songs
Lear contributed vocals for a cover of Giorgio Moroder’s 1970s hit “From Here to Eternity”, recorded in 2000 with Eric D. Clark. The song was a minor club success in the USA. In December 2000 Lear’s husband, Alain-Philippe, died in an explosive accidental fire at their house in the South of France, which was left in ruins. 20-year-old cat breeder Didier Dieufis was also killed in the fire, and a number of Dalí’s works were lost.
In 2001 Lear threw herself back into work and put on an art exhibition in 2001 entitled Not a. Lear, followed by a new album Heart, dedicated to the late husband. The album offered club-friendly tracks like “I Just Wanna Dance Again” and a cover of “Love Boat”, the title song from a cult 1970s TV series of the same name, both issued as singles and featuring remixes by some prominent names in the world of French dance music such as Laurent Wolf and Junior Vasquez.
Containing new dance-oriented tracks as well as ballads and a number of cover versions, Heart was greeted as a long overdue return to form.
In 2002 Lear starred in Le Défi (Dance Challenge), a musical movie written and directed by choreographer Blanca Li about an eighteen-year-old dropout who dreams of becoming a star in breakdancing and the ensuing conflicts with his conservative mother. Lear played the mother’s understanding and encouraging best friend and a fashion victim, what gave her an opportunity to demonstrate her comedic talent.
She also cut a title song for an Italian TV show Cocktail d’amore which she hosted at that time and released a single “Beats of Love” with a Belgian boy band Get Ready!, which became a minor chart success. Both tracks were included on a re-release of Heart, newly titled Tendance, in 2003. Next year Lear worked on a dubbing for French and Italian versions of a Disney/Pixar’s blockbuster The Incredibles, while her 1978 song “Enigma” enjoyed a massive success in Central and Eastern Europe after being featured in a Kinder Bueno TV advert.
In 2005 the singer became a judge on Ballando con le stelle, the Italian version of Dancing with the Stars, and released two new dance singles, “Paris by Night” and a remake of Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana”, as well as two compilations, Forever Glam! and Sings Evergreens. In 2006 Lear opened another art exhibition in New York, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s Amanda Lear, and in July was decorated with the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres in recognition of her contributions to French arts and sciences.
A new compilation was released, the 3 CD The Sphinx – Das Beste aus den Jahren 1976–1983, fully covering the singer’s Ariola output. In October, the album With Love was released in France, and consisted of covered evergreens and jazz standards by Amanda’s favourite divas, such as Eartha Kitt, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan and Nina Simone.
With Love won critical acclaim in France and was released in the rest of Europe in early 2007. Lear made several appearances in movies, including acting in Oliviero Rising and dubbing for the French version of Dragon Hunters, and hosted television shows such as La Folle Histoire du Disco in France and Battaglia fra Sexy Star in Italy.
In 2009, Amanda reinvented herself as a stage actress, accepting the part of Cécile in a comedy Panique au ministère, which debuted in Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris. The show was so successful that it was taken on tour and has been broadcast live on French TV.
Her next album, Brief Encounters, was released in autumn 2009, preceded by the single “Someone Else’s Eyes”, a duet with Italian singer-producer Deadstar. The album consisted of two discs, with down-tempo songs and ballads on the first one, and a set of dance tracks and remixes on the other. Next month, Lear released an autobiography Je ne suis pas celle que vous croyez… and an EP Brand New Love Affair, this time featuring purely dance-oriented material. The title song was released as the lead single, with an animated music video.
The Brief Encounters album was partly re-recorded and remixed, and subsequently released in Acoustique and Reloaded versions. Boy George remixed “Someone Else’s Eyes” in 2010, which was followed by a single “I’m Coming Up”.
In April 2011 a new single, “Chinese Walk”, was released, and the singer joined the judging panel of the Italian TV show Ciak… si canta! on Rai Uno. In September Lear returned to theatre for the lead role in Lady Oscar, an adaptation of Claude Magnier’s 1958 play Oscar, at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris. The play turned out another success and would run for over a year.
Her next studio album, I Don’t Like Disco, was released in January 2012, accompanied by another single, “La Bete et la Belle”, and promoted by several TV appearances in France. A deluxe version of the album was released the same year, with bonus tracks and the new single, “Love at First Sight”.
In September 2012, Lear appeared as a catwalk model on Jean Paul Gaultier’s fashion show in Paris and 2013 saw her playing the leading part in a play Divina in Paris. In November 2013, a compilation of her recent recordings was released. That same year she was cast in the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune.
Her 17th album, My Happiness was released in 2014, a tribute album to Elvis Presley. She releases a new album, Let Me Entertain You on 13 May 2016.
On 16 October 2016, interviewed in the Italian program “Domenica In”, Amanda Lear announces her official retirement from acting saying: “It comes a moment when you say: 40 years are enough, I want to enjoy my life a little bit. I tell my fans that maybe this is one of the last times they see me.”
- 1977: I Am a Photograph
- 1978: Sweet Revenge
- 1979: Never Trust a Pretty Face
- 1980: Diamonds for Breakfast
- 1981: Incognito
- 1983: Tam-Tam
- 1985: A L
- 1987: Secret Passion
- 1989: Uomini più uomini
- 1990: Tant qu’il y aura des hommes
- 1993: Cadavrexquis
- 1995: Alter Ego
- 1998: Back in Your Arms
- 2001: Heart
- 2003: Tendance
- 2006: With Love
- 2009: Brief Encounters
- 2009: Brand New Love Affair
- 2012: I Don’t Like Disco
- 2014: My Happiness
- 2016: Let Me Entertain You
Amanda Lear follow me
Artist: Amanda Lear
Album: Sweet Revenge
Released: 1978
Genre: Pop
Producer(s): Anthony Monn
Songwriter(s): Anthony Monn, Amanda Lear
Amanda Lear tomorrow
Artist: Amanda Lear
Album: I Am a Photograph
Released: 1977
Genre: Pop
Amanda Lear queen of china town
Artist: Amanda Lear
Album: I Am a Photograph
Released: 1977
Producer(s): Anthony Monn
Genre: Pop
Amanda Lear queen of china town lyrics
It was down in Chinatown that I met the opium Queen
Babyface girl from Shanghai never smile and never cry.
She now rules the underworld down in Chinatown
She runs all the opium den down in Chinatown.
Bring her your gold bring her your worries
And when life gets a bit too dreary to stand
Give a ring to the Queen of Chinatown.
Go down
Go down
To the Queen of Chinatown
She’ll pick you up when you’re feeling down.
Go down
Go down
To the Queen of Chinatown
And she’ll soon blow your blues away.
It was down in Chinatown
When I met the opium Queen
Babyface girl from Shanghai never smiled and never cried.
When love isn’t what it sounds go to Chinatown
When your friends have let you down got to Chinatown.
When life is pain
When love is sorrow
And it gets more than you can possibly stand
Give a ring to the Queen of Chinatown.
Go down
Go down
To the Queen of Chinatown
She’ll pick you up when you’re feeling down.
Go down
Go down
To the Queen of Chinatown
And she will blow your blues away.
It was down in Chinatown
When I met the opium Queen
Babyface girl from Shanghai never smiled and never cried.
Go down
Go down
To the Queen of Chinatown
When your life gets a bit dreary
When you’re down
When you’re feeling low
Give a ring to the Queen of Chinatown
Amanda Lear diamonds for breakfast
Diamonds for Breakfast is the fourth studio album by French singer Amanda Lear, released in 1980 by the West German label Ariola Records. The album turned out a commercial success and spawned two European hit singles, “Fabulous” and “Diamonds”.
Songs
- Rockin’ Rollin’
- I Need a Man
- It’s a Better Life
- Oh Boy
- Insomnia
- Diamonds
- Japan
- Fabulous Lover, Love Me
- Ho fatto l’amore con me
- When
Amanda Lear YouTube
Amanda Lear awards
- 1986: Amanda Lear – Artco France, Paris
- 2001: Not a. Lear – Gracie Mansion, New York; Allston Skirt Gallery, Boston
- 2006: Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s Amanda Lear – Envoy, New York
- 2008: Sogni Miti Colori – Galleria TempioArte, Pietrasanta
- 2009: Amanda Lear – Museum-Gallery Xpo, Bruges