Polley show: the music of Serge Gainsbourg

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Polley Music Library radio program on KZUM. For those
unfamiliar, the Polley Music Library is a public music library located on the 2 nd floor of the Bennett
Martin library downtown at 14th and N streets. The Polley Music Library is a service of Lincoln City
Libraries funded by the Lillian Helms Polley Trust. We have books about classical music, jazz, rock, pop,
blues, musicals, folk, hip hop, sacred music, and musical traditions from around the world. And we have
books about music education, music therapy, environmental sound and field recordings, music
production, recording, mixing and mastering, record collecting, music theory, the ins and outs of the
music business—you name it! Stop by any time Bennett Martin Public Library is open, and you can check
out materials with your library card!

We’ve been talking about some a lot of classical artists in the last few episodes, so I thought this week
we could take a detour and talk about an important figure in 20 th Century pop music, particularly in
France: Serge Gainsbourg. While he never fully become a household name on this side of the pond,
Gainsbourg is regarded as a pivotal artist in French pop, with a career that spanned the 50s to the 80s.
And even when he wasn’t working as much in the 80s, he continued to enjoy a kind of star status,
appearing frequently on French talk shows in his final years until his death in 1991. And unlike a lot of
pop artists, he has somehow continued to rise in popularity posthumously. Some of his 70s albums that
only sold copies in the five figures during their initial run ended up going gold in the decades after his
death, and there have been lots of tribute albums featuring his work in recent years as well.

What has been lacking is an English-language biography describing his unusual and varied musical
career, but now that issue has just been addressed with the publication of a great new book by Jeremy
Allen called “Relax Baby Be Cool: The Artistry and Audacity of Serge Gainsbourg.” We have the book in
Polley for you to check out, and I thought I’d talk a little about it today and play some Gainsbourg-
related music.

In many ways, Gainsbourg’s popularity, even in earlier times within France, is a little surprising: his voice,
though one grows to enjoy it, isn’t particularly noteworthy. He doesn’t cut the most handsome figure for
a pop star. And it’s said that he wasn’t a remarkable performer, either, seeming a little stiff and
uncomfortable on the stage, and struggling with stage fright as well. But he was a phenomenal
songwriter, who is said to have raised the modern chanson (or “song”—a chanson in the modern sense
is basically any French-language song) to a true art form again. As an aside, I’d say Edith Piaf also
deserves credit for the elevation of the modern chanson, but indeed Gainsbourg was a great songwriter.
And his lyrics were clever, layered, and sometimes controversial, all of which surely contributed to his
reputation.

In “Relax Baby Be Cool,” we first learn that Gainsbourg came to a music career relatively late as pop
artists go. In the mid-1950s, when he would have been in his mid to late 20s, he was making his way as a
fairly low-key jazz musician, following in the footsteps of his father. The book doesn’t get into this much,
but at the time he still considered himself more of a painter. A chance meeting with novelist and
songwriter Boris Vian, however, gave him the courage to give performance of his own music a try. He
tried out different stage names as a musician, too: born Lucien Ginsburg and known as Lucien Guimbaud
during the Occupation, he first chose Julien Grix as his stage name around 1954. By ’58, he was
registering songs and performing as Serge Gainsbourg, when he recorded his first record, “Du Chant a La
Une!” This record was followed by three more that all found him working in a very jazz-influenced idiom.
None of them were big hits in France upon release, but now some of the songs on them are among his
best-regarded.

By the early 1960s, he was transitioning from jazz toward the French style of rock and roll-influenced
pop music of the time, often called ye-ye. While he still wasn’t seeing a lot of success for his own
albums, he was writing songs for other performers that were getting popular. In his own music, he
experimented with African percussion on his 1964 album Percussions, and of course lots of his other
music, from jazz to rock and roll influences, was heavily inspired by American music, which had already
started to dominate international approaches to pop music by that decade. And we learn that 1965 was
a pivotal year for Gainsbourg’s popularity as a songwriter, when he wrote “Poupee de cire, Poupee de
son,” which won the Eurovision Song Contest as performed by France Gall. He began to write more
music for television and movie use, and appeared on French screens as well, which began to raise his
level of recognition. The rest of his career was kind of a combination of music and television
appearances—as mentioned earlier, he was a regular guest on French late-night shows in the 80s.

The “Relax Baby Be Cool” book starts out more or less chronologically, but by the middle of the book, it
becomes divided into a variety of different perspectives for understanding Gainsbourg: the “aesthetics”
chapter looks at the very particular form of organized disorder he maintained in his home. “Muses”
investigates the three women with whom he spent most of his time, and how they affected his work.
Several chapters focus on specific albums throughout his career. And later chapters like “Fame” and
“Provocation” investigate his later year tendencies, when he has created a “Ganesbarre” alter-ego to
represent his more boorish tendencies.

Throughout the book, various controversies follow Gainsbourg around: he was a fascinating but very
flawed person, and author Jeremy Allen tries to portray that total picture of his work and his sometimes
poor behavior. And it’s an interesting time for a fairly thorough biography on Gainsbourg to appear:
issues of cultural appropriation, or the inappropriate relationships that many male pop artists had with
much younger women in the 60s and 70s are discussed with acknowledgement of the contemporary
discussions we’ve all been having. Books about Gainsbourg or 60s pop figures more generally written 10
or 20 years ago often lacked a lot of the more worldly nuance that attempts to bring balance to this
book. Perhaps we’ll start to see more books about the icons of those days with more of a broad social
conscience in the coming years.

Now let’s check out some of Gainsbourg’s music, both as performed by him, and as others have
interpreted it. As I mentioned earlier, there have been lots of tribute albums featuring musicians trying
out his songs, and we should hear a few of those, too. The songs themselves, though often very short
and fairly simple, are incredibly memorable, which no doubt has led to their unusual longevity as pop
music goes. Let’s start with a playful recording from Gainsbourg’s jazz years as he performed it. This one
is from his first album in 1958, and the tune is called “ce mortel ennui,” or “this mortal ennui.”

Serge Gainsbourg – ce mortel ennui – du jazz dans le ravin – 1996, Mercury/Phillips 2:55 starts at

Some of Gainsbourg’s coolest tunes were done as part of film soundtracks. Here’ a very 60s rock
sounding one called “requiem pour un con” or “requiem for a jerk,” that was featured in the film “le
pacha.”
Serge Gainsbourg – requiem pour un con – comic strip – 1996, Mercury/Phillps 2:50 starts at

In the mid-1990s, Mick Harvey, likely best known for playing in Nick Cave’s bands, was so smitten by the
songs of Serge Gainsbourg that he recorded two albums of them, with lyrics translated from French to
English. At the time, Harvey observed, the music of Gainsbourg remained almost unknown outside of
France, and he thought that by re-recording a selection of his favorite songs in English translations, it
might help to broadcast the songs further. I don’t know how much it really did help at the time, but they
are great versions of these songs, many featuring the recently-departed Anita Lane on vocals with
Harvey. Here’s his take on “New York USA” on his album “Intoxicated Man.”

Mick Harvey – New York USA – Intoxicated Man – 1995, Mute – 2:23 – starts at

In 1997, NYC composer John Zorn invited a number of downtown scene artists to contribute to a
compilation of covers in tribute to Serge Gainsbourg. A diverse range of artists responded with an
equally impressive range of approaches to the music. Here’s singer Mike Patton, best known for his work
with rock band Faith No More, contributing his take on the Gainsbourg classic “Ford Mustang.”

Mike Patton – Ford Mustang – Great Jewish Music: Serge Gainsbourg – 1997, Tzadik – 2:41 – starts at

Perhaps the most famous Serge Gainsbourg tune is “je’taime mo non plus,” a quirky and controversial
song with a complicated history. Originally the song was written to be a duet with his then-girlfriend
Bridgette Bardot at her request—she asked Gainsbourg to write her his greatest love song. The two of
them recorded it in 1967, and it was prepared for release when Bardot’s husband Gunter Sachs became
aware of it and was furious. The release was cancelled. Two years later, Gainsbourg re-recorded the
song with his new girlfriend, Jane Birkin, and this release proved to be a huge success. However, the
singing approach proved to be controversial—Birkin and Gainsbourg sung the song from the perspective
of two lovers at an intimate moment, a concept far too racy for radio stations in that era, and the song
was banned from airplay in many countries, while still topping the charts all over Europe. Strangely, at
one point it occupied two positions in the top-10 in the UK, the only time that’s happened for the same
song. This occurred because the original label that released it decided to drop the record because of the
controversy, and another label took it over. For a moment, both copies remained available in stores,
selling like hotcakes.

It's still a pretty racy song today, frankly, so instead of the original, we’re going to listen to a cover
version done by Cat Power and Karen Elson, who have tamed the lyrics a little, while still turning in a
really nice rendition of the song.

Cat Power and Karen Elson – I Love You (Me Either) – Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited – 2006, Barclay –

5:14 - starts at

And here’s a good final Gainsbourg tune to check out in this episode, that kind of sums up his brand of
elevating the chanson to poetry. Here’s it’s being performed by the rock and roll duo The Kills, and the
song is called “I Call It Art.” The translation of the lyrics is pretty far away from the original, but I think it
sums up his work nicely.

The Kills – I Call It Art – Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited – 2006 Barclay – 3:10 – starts at
I hope you enjoyed this introduction to the work of Serge Gainsbourg! And remember: we have lots of
other music books, histories, biographies, and much more for a huge variety of musical styles. And it’s all
free with your library card! Any questions? I’m always glad to help. You can reach me at
polley@lincolnlibraries.org, or call the Polley Music Library at 402-441-8520. Thanks for tuning in, and I
hope to see you at the library soon!