William Sheller’s musical influences and history are as diverse and complicated as his life. He was born in Paris in 1946 as William Desboeuf, spawned by an American GI of Scottish origin (Colin Thomas Macleod) and a French woman Paulette Desboeuf. When his father returned to the US to divorce his American wife, his mother absconded with William. He never knew his birth father or even learned his name until his mother’s death in 1998. Shortly following his birth, his mother fell in with an American jazz musician named Jack Hand. Between 1949 and 1952 they lived near Cleveland, Ohio where he was known as William Hand. During that time, they rubbed elbows with numerous American jazz musicians.
In 1953, William and his mother returned to Paris where they lived with his grandparents. Both grandparents were employed at prominent Paris musical theaters (Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and l’Opéra Garnier) where William had the opportunity for exposure to many performances. He learned piano and left school at age 16 to study composition with Yves Margat, a disciple of Gabriel Fauré, and he enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire to study harmony, fugue and counterpoint. Shortly afterward, he fell under the influence of The Beatles and turned his head towards pop music. Consequently, like few “chansonniers” besides Léo Ferré, William was classically trained as a musician and, like Ferré, developed a sophisticated musical blend of classical music/rock/and pop. In 1968, he wrote “My Year is a Day” for a boy-band of students at the American School in Paris named “Les Irrésistibles,” which became quite a hit.
He followed “My Year as a Day” in 1969 with “Lux Aeterna” (“Eternal Light”), an instrumental fusion of rock and orchestra written as a marriage gift to friends. It was recorded and released in an expanded version only in 1972. It sold only 2000 copies at the time but caught the attention of the established singer Barbara. At the time, Barbara had relocated east of Paris to the small town of Précy-sur-Marne and was re-formulating her musical orientation. She engaged William for orchestral arrangement of her upcoming album “La Louve,” released in 1973, and encouraged him to take ownership in singing his songs, which basically changed his trajectory.
Postscript: William Sheller’s piece “Lux Aeterna” (“Eternal Light”) lay mostly fallow after its release in 1972, but rose to see the light of day again 50+ years later. In 2023, Luc Rosier, professor of music at the conservatory of Saint-Omer in France, arranged a shortened version that re-captured Sheller’s original vision. His students presented it twice that year. In 2025, professor Philippe Gonin at the University of Dijon and his students recorded it at “La Musiquerie” in Beaune with the title “The Mass.” The full Mass runs 22 minutes. Although it is hardly “chanson,” the 3 minute “Introit” (below) allows one to appreciate Sheller’s musical catholicity and the song’s novelty when he wrote it in 1969 at only 23 years of age during an era of mostly pop-corn music.
In 1975, William’s solo vocal debut came in the satirical song and album “Rock’n’Dollars” for which he adopted the stage name “Sheller,” drawing on the mashed-up names of poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Friedrich Schiller. The unexpected success of this album and song (it reached #33 on the charts) sucked the aspiring classical musician into the hectic world of pop music. Quickly disillusioned with the enervating scene of TV and radio engagements, he turned mainly to composition and musical arrangements for other artists.
During the early 1980s, William discovered the appeal of stage performance with voice and piano. In 1981 he played at Bobino and in 1982, he played a live concert at the renowned Olympia music hall, releasing an album titled “Olympia 82.” Over subsequent years, Sheller produced a wide range of diverse musical compositions in an output that reached more than 25 albums from classical music to pop, film scores, and arrangements for other artists like Barbara, Joe Dassin, Francoise Hardy and Dalida. The many faces of William Sheller are reflected in the artworks that grace some of his albums as seen below.
Sheller’s contributions did not go unrecognized. He received several awards from Victoires de la Musique (VdM) (French Grammies): in 1992 (“Song of the Year” for “Un homme heureux” and “Album of the Year" for “Sheller en solitaire”), 1994 (Original Cinéma/TV Soundrack), and a lifetime achievement award in 2016 (Victoire d’honneur) when he was fêted onstage by singers Jeanne Cherhal, Louane and Véronique Sanson. In 2006, he was the honoree of "Les Fous Chantants Alès" at their annual musical spectacular.
Sheller’s dizzying array of personal identities (Desboeufs, Hand, Sheller) and assorted musical incarnations led him in 2021 to distill his complex story in a published autobiography of nearly 500 pages that carried a deceptively simple title and disarming image: “William.”
That year, 2021, he announced his formal retirement from vocal performance. Since Sheller’s musical production extends well beyond the boundaries of classical “chanson,” this post focuses on his singular enduring song from 1991, “Un homme heureux.”