After half a century as a rebel rocker and national hero, Johnny Hallyday, the “French Elvis”, began taking his leave last night with a farewell tour that has sent his army of fans into mourning.

Hallyday, who is nearly 66, may be a bit of a joke outside the French-speaking world but the retirement from stage of the evergreen star is being marked as the end of an era, complete with an issue of commemorative postage stamps.

The faithful camped for days by the stadium in Saint-Etienne for the opening night of Tour 66 — I’m Stopping Here, his sold-out six-month, £20 million show. More than a million people will watch the tour, more than expected for any other act in France this year.

“Johnny is our God. We live and breathe him,” said Jacky, a sixtysomething fan of the guitar-slinger, who is fondly admired by everyone from President Sarkozy to left-wing intellectuals. “We couldn’t stand being without him,” said Christine, Jacky’s wife.

Hallyday, who cultivates the outlaw style of his heroes James Dean and Steve McQueen but lives in tax exile in Switzerland, said that life on the road had worn him down. “I have had enough playing Johnny Hallyday,” he said last week. “I want more and more to be Jean-Philippe Smet.”

That was his real name before he was swept up by the rock’n’roll craze of the Fifties. “I love singing but I’m tired of sleeping every evening in a different hotel,” he said. “I don’t know how I will be in five or ten years. I saw Frank Sinatra sing at 80 and despite his immense talent, I was disappointed.”

The comparison with Sinatra might sound presumptuous but for France, Hallyday is as much a patriotic emblem as Ol’ Blue Eyes is for America or Sir Paul McCartney for Britain.

Hallyday, who has sold about 100 million records since 1960, made his name imitating US stars before the young Beatles and Stones did the same. While Britain’s American-style acts worked with the common language, Hallyday managed to turn America into a parallel French universe. Generations of French identify with the sound and the style of the Harley-riding chanteur du blues.

The stadium erupted when Hallyday opened the show with his classic Bon Vieux Temps du Rock’n’Roll and then followed with Quelque Chose de Tennessee and his anthem, Que Je T’aime.

The thinking classes may smile at his cheesy pastiche of an imaginary America and his lack of songwriting talent, but they have long credited him as a powerful entertainer who has touched something in the collective soul. Le Figaro likened his sound recently to the nostalgia evoked by Marcel Proust’s madeleine cake in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.

“He is our travelling companion, a piece of the history of France,” it said. Hallyday, who plans to carry on recording from time to time, is winning critical praise for his latest acting role, as an old gangster in Vengeance, a new film by Johnnie To.

The acclaimed Hong Kong director is presenting the film in competition at next week’s Cannes festival. He said in yesterday’s Le Monde newspaper that he had never filmed an actor with such piercing eyes.

The Idole des Jeunes, as Hallyday is still called, has acted for several star directors, including Jean-Luc Godard. Jean-Philippe, his previous film, is set in an alternative modern France that has never known Hallyday. He plays an elderly salesman called Jean-Philippe Smet who is urged to turn his hand to singing.

Two generations of French pop stars have followed Hallyday but none has really filled his rocker shoes.

Pushed recently to name the one he most admires, Hallyday cited Christophe Maé, a 33-year-old star who performs a mix of soul and R&B in the style of Stevie Wonder — but the fans say there is no new Johnny.

Interviewed by his son, David, for Paris Match this week, Hallyday said that times had moved on. “Even if they are doing rock’n’roll, the music of the 60s and 70s is not what they are doing in the 2000s. We should not fall into nostalgia.”

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