Sylvie Simmons - Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful Of Gitanes

Text copyright Sylvie Simmons 2001

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Photographs copyright see picture credits page

Design by Bold; Typesetting by Caroline Walker

All Serge Gainsbourg lyrics quoted are copyright Warner-Chappell, France

They are quoted for review, study or critical purposes.

Front cover photograph by J.L. Rancruel / O. Medias

Back cover photograph by Patrick Duval, reprinted with his kind permission

For Stan, who loved music

I highly recommend A Fistful of Gitanes by Sylvie Simmons, a highly entertaining biography of the French singer-songwriter and all-round scallywag. - J.G. Ballard

"Wonderful! Serge would have been so happy." - Jane Birkin

An excellent piece of writing. - Leonard Cohen

"A marvellous book." - Mariannne Faithfull

Gitanes is a stone masterpiece! - Stephen Davis, Hammer Of The Gods.

A wonderful introduction to one of the most overlooked songwriters of the 20th century. - The Times

"Anyone interested in learning more about Gainsbourg's ravishing, Gallic, (spell-binding too) degeneracy would be well advised to check out A Fistful of Gitanes." - Mother Jones

A riveting read. - OK Magazine

This dizzying biog recounts the holy-fool highs and sad-bastard lows of the French cultural icon. Converts will relish this ribald tale and newcomers will be correctly corrupted. Smoking! - Uncut

The most intriguing music-biz biography of the year. - The Independent

Sylvie, a fluent Francophone, brings him to life, guides us through the subtleties [and] perfectly evokes her subject. - MOJO

Impeccably researched and eminently readable. - The Guardian

Fascinating and superbly written, this proffers insight and constant entertainment. - Time Out

Exemplary, authoritative and compelling. - Jockey Slut

Superbly written." - The Jewish Chronicle

"Simmons's work will stand as the definitive take on a dizzying genius." - Goodreads

Contents

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Foreword by Jane Birkin

In England youre discovering him Like opening a Pharaohs tomb, you see wonderful things We stand outside whilst bright new faces shine lamps onto his brilliant world Our perfumed flowers have faded in the air You flash wild torches to light his gold sarcophagus Hieroglyphs, treasured words, his painted throne, guarded by silent leopards for years And in the dark his sweet face has always smiled at you, waiting, patiently, for you to find the door.

Jane Birkin, January 2001

INTRODUCTION

Its disgusting! An immaculately coiffed matron with matching mini-dog pushes past me as I stop on the narrow pavement to photograph the revolving art gallery outside number 5 Rue de Verneuil. In a display of fellow-feeling, the stunted animal cocks a tiny back leg to deposit a pipette of piss on the stubbly face that someone has lovingly painted on an empty spot at the bottom of the wall. The residents of this respectable street in the Saint-Germain area of Paris, a stones throw from the Seine the kind of place where the corner shops sell old masters and scarily priced antiques paid to have the walls whitewashed over just a matter of months ago, only for someone to sneak by in the night and spray-paint a slogan that marked the start of another round.

Ten years after Serge Gainsbourgs death, the palimpsest of paintings and graffiti that still covers every millimetre of his small, two-storey house has taken on a life of its own; it even has its own website and coffee-table book. A tossed salad of colours, styles and languages where messages of love sit alongside puns and poetry, comic-book caricatures of the artist nudge up against Realist portraits and phallic line-drawings of the Tube-Poster School, and an ongoing metaphysical debate as to the credibility of Einsteins proof of the existence of the soul after death concludes that Serge is not dead, he has ascended into heaven where he sits on the right hand of God The Hashish Smoker. If it werent already his house, Gainsbourg would feel entirely at home.

When he died here in his bedroom on 2 March 1991, a month short of his 63rd birthday, France went into mourning. Brigitte Bardot, whod slept with him, gave a eulogy; President Mitterand, who hadnt, gave one too. He was our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire, said the head of state. He elevated the song to the level of art. Flags were flown at half-mast a less fitting symbol for the priapic pop genius than the bottles of whisky and Pastis and packets of Gitanes cigarettes left as tributes by the crowds who descended, la Princess Di, on the police barricades erected around the Rue de Vernueil.

Ask anyone in Paris, said Nicolas Godin of French group Air, and they can remember what they were doing when they heard Gainsbourg had died. It was such a shock. Because he was always there, part of our culture. He was always on the television doing something crazy. He was a poet. He was a punk. And he wanted to fuck Whitney Houston.

The man who looked like an elegant turtle, cross-bred with a particularly louche, chain-smoking wolf was also a singer, songwriter, cutting-edge soundtrack composer, Eurovision Song Contest winner, novelist, photographer, actor, artist, drunk, director, screenwriter, populist, provocateur, sentimentalist, clown, lover, intellectual, and the man who single-handedly liberated French pop. In spite or because of a singular dedication to cigarettes, alcohol, sensuality and provocation (the then rheumy-eyed 56-year-olds infamous I want to fuck you offer to fellow-guest Whitney, in perfect English, on a live, prime-time French TV family-variety show, combined all four) his musical output over more than three decades was staggeringly prodigious. It encompassed a variety of reinventions that made David Bowie look stagnant classical, chanson, jazz, girl-pop, rock, reggae, disco, rap and displayed a profound knowledge of, and respect for, tradition while simultaneously giving it two fingers, then using them to remodel it into something entirely unique.

His lyrics were mind-boggling exercises in Franglais triple-entendres and rhythmic, onomatopoeic word-percussion. Literature, coprophagy, sexual obsession, farting, incest, philosophy, grammar, cabbages, Nazi death camps and the Torrey Canyon disaster were all considered perfectly reasonable subject-matter for songs songs both whistled in the street by lhomme dans la rue and printed in poetry books and studied in universities. And yet on this side of the Channel, Gainsbourg has really been known for just one song. His 1969 number one with the English actress Jane Birkin, Je TAime, Moi Non Plus. As Robert Chalmers wrote in The Independent, Gainsbourg has been cursed by an attribute which has proved a more powerful hindrance to rock stardom than being blind, tone-deaf or dead: that most fatal of adjectives, French.

The British prejudice against French pop music which runs every bit as deep and wide as the French prejudice against British food stems back to the Swinging Sixites when we had The Beatles, the Stones and scampi in a basket and France had (or at least all we got to hear of what they had was) Sacha Distel, the Singing Nun and pt de foie gras. Its a habit, sadly, that some Anglo music writers have found hard to shake off. (Witness The Guardians posthumous take on Gainsbourg: He had a typical French feel for rock: he was hopeless at it.)