Background
Gérald de Palmas was born in France. His father was a land surveyor from Britanny and his mother was a French teacher from Réunion.
Gérald de Palmas was born in France. His father was a land surveyor from Britanny and his mother was a French teacher from Réunion.
At the age of 10, De Palmas" family left Réunion, to live in Aix-en-Provence, France. At the age of 13, he discovered ska music, and became a fan of the United Kingdom band The Specials. Then he met Étienne Daho and formed a group called Les Max Valentin together with Edith Fambuena and Jean-Louis Pierot.
They released the single "Les Maux Dits" in 1987, but De Palmas was uncomfortable with this group, and went solo.
In 1994, Gérald de Palmas, or just De Palmas as an artistic name, released his first album Louisiana dernière Année (The Last Year), which contains the hit song Sur la Route (On the Road). De Palmas released his second album Les Lois de la Nature (Laws of Nature) in 1997.
The album was less successful than his debut album, probably due to the dramatic change in his style. He was in the slumps for two and a half years, until 2000.
That"s when Jean-Jacques Goldman restored his confidence and wrote a song for him titled J"en rêve encore (I still dream about it).
De Palmas composed and wrote 10 of the 12 songs in his third album Marcher dans le sable (Walking in the sand). His songs even crossed the Atlantic, when Céline Dion sang his hit song Tomber (falling) in English, titled Ten Days. At the end of that year, Live 2002 was released on Digital Video Disc and on Civil Defense, to commemorate his great tour of 2002.
Two years later, De Palmas returned with his fourth album Un homme sans racines (A man without roots), a more intimate album with less music, but still in the same melancholic style.
After having problems with Universal, Gérald de Palmas is going to come back in November 2009 with his new album of which the first single is expected to be aired in May. Personal life Gérald de Palmas is married and has two children, a boy, Victor (born in 1996) and a girl, Rose (born in 2003).