Dashiell Hedayat

An intriguing character and short-lived singer, Dashiell Hedayat recorded just one album under this name, the experimental Obsolete (1971), which is the subject of an enduring cult following. Born in Toulon on January 5, 1947, Daniel Théron made his name in 1969 as a journalist for Rock & Folk magazine, author of the novel Being, and member of the progressive jazz-rock band Melmoth, which released the album La Devanture des Ivresses, which won the Grand Prix de l'Académie Charles-Cros. Author, composer and performer, he adopts the pseudonym Dashiell Hedayat and reunites the members of the group Gong - guitarist Daevid Allen, saxophonist and flautist Didier Malherbe, singer Gilli Smyth and drummer Pip Pyle - for the recording of the psychedelic album Obsolete (1971), which also includes a contribution by the writer William Burroughs and the title track "Chrysler rose". Despite confidential sales of the record with its embossed sleeve, published by the Shandar label and now a rarity, it was subsequently the subject of numerous reissues and a growing cult following outside France. Although he abandoned the musical adventure, the author reinvented himself in literature under the name of Jack-Alain Léger, and saw one of his best-selling novels, Monsignore (1976), adapted for the cinema in 1982. After other works such as Autoportrait au loup, which caused a scandal, the writer adopted the pseudonym Ève Saint-Roch in 1988, then Paul Smaïl in 2000. On July 17, 2013, 66-year-old Daniel Théron committed suicide by defenestration in his Paris home.

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