 Vannier is regarded as an important musician in his native country; music critic Andy Votel noted his Eastern music influences and named him a pop-culture icon of 1970s France, alongside Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin.Vannier was born during a bomb scare in Courbevoie, Hauts-de-Seine.Self-taught, he began playing the piano at age 18, later arranging for Michel Magne and Alice Dona, his first notions of orchestration taken from the books of the "Que sais-je ?"