Vingt ans [English translation]

In those days I lived

Like a bird in the trees

In front of the movie lines

I busked

It was "Friends first of all"*

And the first radios

Sidney Bechet, "little flower"*

The bruises on your heart*

At that time on the pavements

Were demonstrations and my guitar

In fact, it's always like that

In those days I was twenty years old

On the black and white telly

We discovered rock'n'roll

Elvis Presley and the idols

Ripped-out seats in all the music-halls

In those day in Paris

It was the Algerian war

In the bars on Banlieue Nord

We didn't always agree

To go or not, agreeing or disagreeing

In those days of your life

You dreamed of getting your degree

And of going to Paris

To enrol in university

And then we had the month of May

Which prepared its streets

It's there that we met

Handkerchief on your nose.

The world had to start over

And in your room in Nanterre

That's exactly what we did

By that time I was twenty

And you, you were almost as old

You had a scent of lemongrass

And tear gas

And above all you mistook me for Verlaine

Suddenly it was us

Like a thunder clap, a mine explosion

There was more than us in our jackets

There was more than us in our songs

In the speeches on Carrefour de l'Odéon

At that time I was twenty

I was twenty for a very long time

Love sang its carmagnole~

Going down the Rue des Ecoles

Poster in one hand, a pot of glue in the other

In those days I was twenty

I was twenty for a long time

Ferré was on the radio

It was the holidays in a deux chevaux^

And all the girls thought they were Bardot

It was the telly that turned on

For the first step on the moon

At that time it was rock

But we were already changing era

And the Beatles were going to split up

In those days I was twenty

I was twenty eternally

Love sings its carmagnole

Going up the Rue des Ecoles

You had your hand laid on my shoulder