I’ve been writing these blogs now since 2017, and so have covered a very decent number of subjects. Over the past couple of years, I have been getting requests for certain people to be written about which is great and in recent months, for reasons I’m not too sure of, Serge Gainsbourg  has been in demand. So, not being one to ignore my adoring fans, both of them, here’s my take on the rascal, and occasional musical genius, they call Serge!

He was born Lucien Ginsburg in Paris in 1928, the son of Ukrainian/Jewish parents. Father was Joseph, a classically trained pianist who made a living playing in casinos and cabaret night spots. Mother was Olga, who had  fled her homeland after the Russian Revolution in 1917. Little Lucien had a twin sister Liliane, and they both learned the piano under the tutelage of their father.

Growing up in Nazi occupied France, meant that the family were required to wear the yellow star signifying their Jewish status. In the hope of a quieter life, the family escaped from the capital down to Limoges where the Vichy collaborationist government were in power.

After liberation in 1945, Lucien Ginsburg left school, complete with his Baccalauréat, which then enabled him to go into further education . This he did by joining the Beaux – Arts de Paris, the renowned art school, and from there moved on to the Académie de Montmartre. It was there he met his first wife Lize, the daughter of wealthy Russian, who he would later marry in 1951.

Conscripted into the army in 1948, though he never saw any combat, he instead saw inside plenty of bars and brothels, with the heavy drinking that begun there, resulting in alcoholism later in life. Once out of the army, he taught art and music at a school set up by local rabbis, for Jewish orphans who had lost their parents during the Nazi regime.  He also tried his hand at being an artist, but failed to make a dent in that as a career, so instead turned to playing  the piano in bars, like his father before him. It was while completing an application form for the song writing society SACEM, that he changed his name to Serge, feeling it better represented his Jewish background.

Future partner Jane Birkin – ‘Lucien reminded him of a hairdresser’s assistant.’

Serge would later say ‘a losers name, Lucien’

He also adopted a new surname, Gainsbourg, which came from his admiration for the English artist Thomas Gainsborough.  

Inspired by the satirical songs of Boris Vian, Serge started to compose. His songs were discovered by singer Michele Arnaud and the director of the Milord l’Arsouillle club Francis Claude, whilst visiting Sege at home one evening. Claude then pushed on to the stage, a terrified Gainsbourg to perform his own work. Going down well however. he soon had his show. It was whilst performing that, that he was spotted by Jacques Canetti, who gave him another spot at the Theatres des Trois Baudets, and also put him on the road touring. 

Serge’s early recorded work from 1958, such as his first and second albums Du Chant a la Une and N° 2 flopped commercially and critically. Despite that, he made his film debut in 1959 in Come Dance with Me, where he met a future lover, Brigitte Bardot. That role led to many more offers, which usually saw him depicted as the ‘nasty’ in films.

Slowly, he began to have commercial success with his songs, such as L’Eau a la Bouche in 1960 from his much better received third album La Chanson de Prevert and  the tune La Javaniase, which was recorded first by Juliette Greco . Keen to experiment, with each album he tried a different musical style, moving from Latin and rock and roll, to the straight-ahead jazz of his fifth album, Gainsbourg Confidential in 1963.

He then found further success, writing songs for female performers such as Petula Clark, France Gall, Francois Hardy and Brigitte Bardot. Somewhat bizarrely during this period,  he wrote the Eurovision song contest winner in 1965 for Luxembourg, namely the catchy Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son, performed by Gall. Serge enjoyed nothing better than to get a saucy lyric woven into these whimsical songs, such as Les Sucettes, which Gall thought was about Lollipops, but was in fact about oral sex.
Then aged just 18, she later said she felt ‘betrayed by the adults around me’ and never spoke to Gainsbourg ever again. 

Naughty old Serge #1.

Divorced from Lize in 1957, he married for a second time in early 1964 to Beatrice and they had two children, Natacha and Paul. They too divorced in 1966, though Paul was born in 1968. That same year, he had a brief affair with Bardot. As a result, he also wrote the songs  JeT’aime…moi non plus ( I Love you. Me Neither)  and Bonnie and Clyde for her . Bardot recorded the latter but asked for her version of Je T’aime  be withheld, due to her being married at the time. 

In mid 1968, he met and fell for the English actress Jane Birkin, then 18 years his junior, whilst working on the film Slogan. They would spend the next ten years together and have a daughter Charlotte, now a successful actress in her own right. He also re-recorded a version of Je T’aime with Jane, and this one went on to top the charts all over Europe in 1969. The overtly sexual heavy breathing on the single, plus its plain cover stating it was not for sale to anyone under 21, ensured along the way, it picked up a BBC ban, and was denounced by the Vatican. This, of course,  guaranteed it would then become a sure-fire hit. 

Naughty old Serge #2

Whilst researching this piece, I’ve not seen a video clip which hasn’t featured Serge smoking a fag – it is said he smoked five pack of unfiltered Gitane a day –  and as mentioned earlier, he certainly enjoyed a drink, so it’s not particularly surprising he suffered an heart attack in 1973 aged just 45. Despite the health warning to stop smoking, he continued even whilst in hospital.

Always experimental it seems in fear of boring himself, he released Rock Around the Bunker in 1975, which featured tracks about Nazi Germany. A year later, came The Man with the Cabbage Head, a nickname Serge had picked up, in light of his sticking out ears . The song was recorded in a reggae style, obviously . He must of liked what he heard coming back at him, because in 1978, he continued with that sound, by  working with legendary rhythm kings Sly and Robbie, and the singers,  The I – Threes in Kingston Jamaica on the album Aux Armes et Caetera. It proved immensely popular, going on to sell over one million copies.

By 1982, whilst continuing to still write songs and directing films, he also descended into more controversial situations, strongly fuelled by his alcoholism, but partly I suspect, because  he liked to stir things up. His 1984 album Love on the Beat featured Serge in drag on the cover, and the  song  called Lemon Incest, singing alongside his 12-year-old daughter Charlotte, which despite the resulting furore surrounding it and its highly provocative video, became his highest charting song in France. 

Naughty old Serge #3

Other moments of Serge chaos included setting fire to  three quarters of a 500 Franc note in protest at the 74% tax rate at the time. He then joined Whitney Houston on a TV show and said, ‘I want to fuck you’ to her. Asked by Whitney ‘what did he say,? the host of the show  corrected it to ‘He says you are great.’ He then had a spat with singer Catherine Ronge on another show, when he called her ‘nothing but a filthy whore’ to which she replied ‘ look at you, you’re just bitter old alcoholic . I used to admire you, but you’ve become a disgusting parasite.’

Naughty old Serge #4

He found love again with the model Bambou and they had a son which they called, yes you guessed it, Lucien.  He now performs as a musician under the name of Lulu. 

Naughty old Serge #5

His final album You’re Under Arrest was released in 1987, in which he used hip hop beats as the musical ‘bed.’

However, not surprisingly, his health had deteriorated as his smoking and drinking continued unabated, and he had liver surgery in 1989. Whilst bed bound recovering, he continued to write  – he totalled up over 300 songs –  and contributed the lyrics to the Variations album by Vanessa Paradis.

Sadly, that was about that. He died in March 1991, a month away from his 63rd birthday  He was buried in the Jewish section of the Montparnasse Cementry in Paris. His Parisian house at 5 bis Rue de Verneuil, in which Gainsbourg lived from 1969 until 1991, is now a celebrated shrine. The outside of the house is covered in graffiti dedicated to Gainsbourg, as well as with significant ‘others’ in his life, including Bardot and Birkin.

Former French President François Mitterrand – ‘He was our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire, He elevated the song to the level of art.’

I’ll leave the final words from the man himself

‘I’ve succeeded at everything except my life.’

 

The Mumper of SE5

Read The Mumper’s other weekly musings on ‘The Speakeasy’ blog page

 

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