Michel Colombier died on 14th november 2004 in Santa Monica. He was born in 1939. Colombier’s father was a shoe repairer from Lyon and also a violonist amateur. Colombier moved to Paris when he was 18. After his military service he started to work as a composer, turning the french musique de variété into pop (« Messe pour un Temps présent » with Pierre Henry, « Anna’s » soundtrack with Gainsbourg ; more recently Colombier worked with Air and Madonna). This is what some official biographies say.

Michel Colombier was un ami d’enfance of my father, they were in the same school in Mulhouse and shared the same bande de copains. My dad told me that Colombier’s father was a musician at l’Orchestre de l’Opéra de Mulhouse…

Coming back to Paris, I was thinking about it in the train (the last non-TGV train in France for such a long distance). I found it strange that the different bios are not clear about the father's profession, as if it was better to recompose the past with a shoe-repairer mélomane instead of a violonist (who used to be a shoe-repairer). Thinking more and more about it for almost 5 hours, I noticed that both instruments, the shoe and the violin, have strings.