Gilles Verlant's biography of Serge Gainsbourg is the best and most
authoritative in any language
When Serge Gainsbourg died in 1991, France went into mourning: François
Mitterand himself proclaimed him "our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire."
Gainsbourg redefined French pop, from his beginnings as cynical
chansonnier and mambo-influenced jazz artist to the ironic "yé-yé" beat
and lush orchestration of his 1960s work to his launching of French
reggae in the 1970s to the electric funk and disco of his last albums.
But mourned as much as his music was Gainsbourg the man: the
self-proclaimed ugly lover of such beauties as Brigitte Bardot and Jane
Birkin, the iconic provocateur whose heavy-breathing "Je t'aime moi non
plus" was banned from airwaves throughout Europe and whose reggae
version of the "Marseillais" earned him death threats from the right,
and the dirty-old-boy wordsmith who could slip double-entendres about
oral sex into the lyrics of a teenybopper ditty and make a crude sexual
proposition to Whitney Houston on live television.
Gilles Verlant's biography of Gainsbourg is the best and most
authoritative in any language. Drawing from numerous interviews and
their own friendship, Verlant provides a fascinating look at the inner
workings of 1950s-1990s French pop culture and the conflicted and driven
songwriter, actor, director and author that emerged from it: the young
boy wearing a yellow star during the German Occupation; the young art
student trying to woo Tolstoy's granddaughter; the musical collaborator
of Petula Clark, Juliette Greco and Sly and Robbie; the seasoned
composer of the Lolita of pop albums, Histoire de Melody Nelson; the
cultural icon who transformed scandal and song into a new form of
delirium.
