Serge Gainsbourg

Очень странно, что нет темы про этого прекрасного композитора, поэта, режиссёра и любителя...

Вот, решил создать...

Сам его открыл благодаря не так давно...

Немного из био:

Gainsbourg was born Lucien Ginzburg in 1928 to Russian immigrants in Paris. His father Frenchified their Jewish name and Lucien became Serge Gainsbourg. His father played piano in Pigalle night clubs and Gainsbourg grew up with him playing Bach, Chopin, Stravinski, and Gershwin at home. Gainsbourg took up piano at a young age. And his father, bubbling with enthusiasm, insisted that young Serge accompany him at the piano in Deauville's casinos and grand hotels. He was all of 8 and painfully shy. Excited by his son's interest in the arts, he enrolled Serge in art school near Montmartre, where Gainsbourg found himself roaming the exotic and tacky streets; dreaming and peeking into the clubs and bordellos. During World War II his family, as Jews, were forced to wear the yellow star. In 1941, his father arranged for falsified papers which allowed them to escape to Limoges. Gainsbourg was marked not only by the yellow star and the horrors of Nazism, but by the ease with which neighbors became cowards -- and collaborators. This would affect him for the rest of his life. After the war, Gainsbourg, now 19, continued his ramblings through seedy Pigalle. He grew increasingly disillusioned, gloomy, aimless -- a true cafe existentialist. He landed numerous deadend jobs in the area, including hand-coloring cinema publicity photos, played classical music at snooty balls but also played jazz in various smoky Pigalle dives.

A turning point came in the late 50s when his father landed him a gig in the hottest club in Paris, the Milord Arsouille where his idol, Charles Trenet, got his start. Gainsbourg devoured Django Reinhardt, Thelonious Monk, Art Tatum; sees Billy Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie and even Screamin' Jay Hawkins live. Years later he pays tribute to Hawkins with his Mambo Miam Miam. Gainsbourg however, doesn't get his first break until 1958 when, upon hearing him perform live, Boris Vian (jazz critic, trumpeter, poet, novelist, and social agitator) writes a glowing review of a Gainsbourg gig. Suddenly Gainsbourg is faced with the notion that he has great potential.

...
This propelled him headlong into songwriting which he had always despised.

But now he can't seem to stop; his songs dealt with his dissipated surroundings: alcohol, love, poets (Rimbaud, Prévert, Baudelaire), bohemia, love lost, everyday life. Vian's praise won him his first contract. He produced the 45 Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, a Goya-like portrait of a train conductor punching tickets all day long. Early song titles reveal his other concerns: "Alcohol," "12 Gals Under My Skin," "This Mortal Boredom" -- all "Jazzistiques," or heavy-into-jazz tunes of pop existentialism. Like Bob Dylan's early ability to fuse blues, French poetry, and the scene's zeitgeist Gainsbourg absorbed the day's chaotic cultural, musical, and political currents to create art in the form of a unique "voice." Gainsbourg even reinvented Dylan's "Ballad of Hollis Brown." Also like Dylan, Gainsbourg's early fame was due to poppier interpreters of his songs, himself claiming, "I thought I was too ugly to sing them myself." It began with Les Freres Jacques covering "Lilas" in a manner not unlike how Peter, Paul and Mary covered "Blowin' In The Wind." Other pop stars took notice and recorded his songs: Juliette Greco, Petula Clark, Claude François, France Gall, Michele Arnaud, Catherine Sauvage, Françoise Hardy, Dutronc, Brigitte Bardot, Dalida, Deneuve and even Isabelle Adjani among many others. Jacques Brel suggested he start singing more himself. He did. By 1960 Gainsbourg was heavily into rock and roll. Requiem Pour un Twisteur is his tribute to its silly liberational possibilities. In 1963 he "introduces" the electric guitar sound to France. The intrepid Gainsbourg, with his voracious appetite for sound, introduced French audiences to "new" musics -- soul, reggae, hippy guitar solos -- during his entire career. He infused his tunes with rock and roll, mambo, Afro-Cuban rhythms ("Couleur Cafe"), the Symbolist and rebellious poets he admired and interpreted: de Musset, Nerval ("Le Rock de Nerval"), Baudelaire (Le Serpent Qui Danse"). His ears devoured Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto. By which he drenched his chansons in heavy saxophone and sultry Brazilian samba and pursued the dramatic tension of feverish emotion that sizzles just beneath cool vocals. In 1964 Gainsbourg, in his own words "impregnated by American music," achieved his biggest vocal development -- the introduction of Anglo-slang (most deliriously evident in "Ford Mustang"). This enlarges his pallette, gives him new ammo, new freedom to scat and pun, poke fun, undermine expectation. All these influences, in his throat, become his own.

He emerged more and more the outrageous scoundrel, a devil-may-care idiot-savant who inspired with his ability to foment hilarious controversies, getting away with pranks we only dream of, even as he croaked his way out of the role of singer-songwriter and into that of cultural icon. "Without controversy it would all be very boring." He observed. In 1967 he began dueting with chanteuse-actresses not particularly known for their singing abilities, converting their liabilities into charming attributes. Anna Karina (famous from early Godard films) helps him discover the sing-and-respond tension of the eternal man-woman conflict. Then a bombshell -- he, the eternal dissheveled scruff, begins work with the very image of voluptuousness -- Brigitte Bardot. This only magnifies his mythic stature. Their first hit, the enduring and hilariously breathtaking "Bonnie and Clyde" continues to seep into our psyches via the recent sampling of MC Solaar and Renegade Sound Wave. In the highly inventive (pre-virtual reality) "Comic Strip" Gainsbourg invites Bardot into his comic while she ululates all the POWs and Sh-bangs one sees in comic strip balloons. Their "Harley David Son of a Bitch," a true outlaw ode to insoucianct posturing -- "Hey, what the hell you doin' on my Harley?" Gainsbourg grunts at Bardot straddling a Harley in leather hot pants, assuring us all that the coming revolution will be a sexy one. In 1968 he met love of his life, Jane Birkin, on a film set. And there you have it -- crusty old perverted rebel meets innocent gal. She takes France by storm with her heroically flawed pronunciations of French. This offers Gainsbourg another witty tool for wringing meaning from language. He added female choruses, ala Otis Redding, to inject sarcastic responses to his bravado. He eventually dispensed with singing altogether, to develop his latterday signature tobacco-alcohol-inflected gravelly talkover, sometimes employing sarcastically heavy, heaving Kostelanetz-style string sections, at other times foregoing musical accompaniment altogether. He got the lead in Cannabis, did the soundtrack and dedicated it to Jimi Hendrix and Bela Bartok. He's named "Don Juan of the Year" by various women's magazines. Then wrote several songs influenced by Nabokov, seemingly mirroring his real-life affair with Birkin -- "Jane B" is best described as Lolita + Chopin.

In 1975 his album "Rock Around the Bunker" ruffled feathers because he hurled his legendary sarcasm at political ghosts. Gainsbourg insists that Nazism does not stop at the German border, and pokes fun at I-love-a-man-in-uniform chic. He, a Jew who wore the yellow star, is denounced as anti-semitic. Gainsbourg is by now everywhere -- TV, film, scandal sheets, he publishes a novel, has a photo exhibit, does more soundtracks -- at least everywhere in France. In 1976 he became the first white guy to do major recording in Kingston, Jamaica, beginning a long stint with the great reggae rhythm duo, Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare. He also employs Marley's Wailers. In 1979, a feisty Gainsbourg produces "Aux Armes Etcetera," which parodies the militaristic overtones of the "sacred" "La Marseillaise," to a reggae beat, much the way Hendrix reconfigured the "Star Spangled Banner" as antiwar song. Denunciations by generals, priests, and politicians follow. Former paratroopers and crusty war vets protest at his concerts, threaten fans. In Marseilles the protests led to cancellations. In Strasbourg, a bomb threat and 400 paratroopers vowing vengence spooked the Wailers so much that they refuse to play. So Gainsbourg took the stage alone, singing "La Marseillaise" without musical accompaniment. The goons join in to sing along and afterward file meekly from the hall. Gainsbourg has charmigly blindsided them. His album sells over 500,000 copies, goes gold -- his first. He wins "best male performer" and "best album" awards at that year's music awards in Cannes. Eugenie Sokolov, his first novel, describes the turbulence of this time. "Eugenie Sokolov" is also a great nose-tweaking "song" -- a series of farting sounds, "scat flatulence" if you will, set to a reggae beat.

In 1984 "Love on the Beat" touches on homosexuality and incest. "Beat" is a homonyn for "bite" which is French slang for penis. This is not lost on his audience. In 1985 he does the notorious video "Lemon Incest" with young daughter, Charlotte -- in a bed. The delirious provocations continue. But by now he's more than a singer, he's a national treasure that refuses to stop tarnishing. His scatalogical and bufoonish sense of satire still offers youth a prime tool for resisting the stultefying aspects of a normal consumer existence. Even the dillapidation of his physical body through self-abuse became a kind of heroic dissipation, a sabot tossed into the gears of the proverbial assemblyline. "I have succeeded at everything except my life." He once wistfully said. At the time of his death, March 2, 1991, I thought of how self-depricatingly and appropriately wrong he was.

Взято из - http://www.wfmu.org/~bart/sg.html

У кого есть ещё какие-нибудь ссылки не на французском унд инфо унд картинки, пишите:)




ps Просьба модераторам не переносить эту тему в тему про Францию, ибо я считаю, что этот человек достоин отдельной темы.

>Сам его открыл благодаря не так давно...

Открыл его благодаря своему другу (не так давно оставившему этот бренный мир:'( ...), большому поклоннику Сержа.

Вот артисты, исполнявшие его песни:

Brett Anderson of Suede with Jane Birkin
Françoise Hardy
Brigitte Bardot
Jacques Dutronc
Catherine Deneuve
Isabelle Adjani: in 1983, Gainsbourg wrote an entire album's worth of
compositions including the bizarre homage to Bowie "Beau Oui Comme Bowie".
Many years prior, Adjani, only 19, visited Gainsbourg's house and
declared, according to Gainsbourg that "if I ever decide to sing, it will
be Gainsbourg songs."
Petula Clark
Vanessa Paradis
Juliette Greco
Black Grape
Momus
Valerie Lagrange
Anna Karina
Marie Blanche Vergne
Zizi
Etienne Dao
Twinkle
Lady Atomika
Philippe Dauga
Michelle Mercier
Alain Chamfort
Alan Bashung
Mirielle Darc
Martin Circus
Julien Clerc
Bijou
Toubib
Jo Lemaire
Gloria Lasso
Regine
Dominique Walter
Claude Franзois
Michelle Torr
France Gall
Les Mercenaires
Les Freres Jacques
Michelle Arnaud
Pia Colombo
Jean-Claude Pascal
Philippe Clay
Catherine Sauvage
Alain Brunet
Nana Mouskouri
Dalida

-

Вот ещё инфо:

It would be a mistake to think of Gainsbourg as just a scandalous figure, a creature of the popular press. His impact on French music is inestimable, and his admirers include many who found his lifestyle objectionable. With over 200 songs recorded by everyone from Juliette Gréco and Yves Montand to Alain Chamfort and Vanessa Paradis, Serge Gainsbourg reached an audience that spanned generations and musical eras.

Gainsbourg was born Lucien Ginsburg in Paris in 1928. (For a complete astrological interpretation of his chart click here). His father was a musician who had come to France from Russia just after the 1917 revolution. With false papers, quick wits and constant vigilance, the Ginsburg family managed to survive the German occupation. Coming of age during such a time of fear and repression, it's not surprising that Gainsbourg would develop a cynical and fatalistic approach to life, best summed up by this line from his 1979 album Aux armes et caetera, "Moralité: eau et gaz à tous les étages."

Lucien Ginsburg was trained as an artist, but devoted much of his time to the piano and guitar. During the early 50s he earned his living as both a musician and by painting advertising signs for movie theaters. Rapidly approaching thirty, Ginsburg took his father's advice and took a steady job as a pianist at the Milord l'Arsouille, a cabaret located near the Palais Royal. It was there Gainsbourg encountered Boris Vian.

Gainsbourg was more than just a pianist, he was a character. Full of cynical charm and dark humour, Boris Vian recognized Gainsbourg as someone with great talent, and encouraged him to write songs.

Performed by Michèle Arnaud, house singer for Milord l'Arsouille, Gainsbourg's early songs attracted the attention of other singers and soon he was writing for many of the major figures of that school of chanson called St. Germain-des-près.

Deciding that no one could sing his songs as well as he could himself, Lucien Ginsburg changed his name to something he felt to be a bit more French, and as Serge Gainsbourg he signed with Philips Records. His first album, released in 1958, was not a great commercial success, but the critics and his peers adored it. Here's how Boris Vian announced it to the worls: "Allez, lecteurs ou auditeurs toujours prêts à brailler contre, contre les fausses chansons et les faux de la chanson, tirez deux sacs de vos fouilles et raquez au disquaire en lui demandant le Philips B 76447 B...C'est le premier 25 cm 33 tours d'un drôle d'individu nommé Gainsbourg Serge."

Many of Gainsbourg's songs had already been recorded by les Frères Jacques, Michèle Arnaud and Jean-Claude Pascal. Soon Juliette Gréco would turn songs like «Le poinçonneur des lilas» and «La chanson de Prévert» into classics. Gainsbourg had an ear for fine melodies, and his lyrics, full of worldly cynicism, struck a cord with the fashionable Left Bank crowd.

At one time Gainsbourg's early recording were true collectors items, 25cm monophonic disks pressed in the late 50's. But with the advent of the compact disc and Gainsbourg's huge following, all his earliest recordings have been digitally re-mastered and included in a series comprising his entire recording career.

The first CD in the series, Le poinçonneur des Lilas, contains 24 songs recorded between 1958 and 1960. They run the gamut from 50's cabaret tunes to early 60s pop. The title track is a lament on the work-a-day world. What better way to depict the "horror of the mundane" than to show us the world through the eyes of a subway ticket puncher. " J'suis le poinçonneur des Lilas / Le gars qu'on croise et qu'on n'regarde pas / Y'a pas de soleil sous la terre / Drôl'de croisière / Pour tuer l'ennui j'ai dans ma veste / Les extraits du Reader Digest / Et dans ce bouquin y a écrit / Que des gars s'la coulent douce á Miami / Pendant c'temps que je fais l' zouave / Au fond d'la cave / Paraît qu'y a pas d'sot métier / Moi j'fais des trous dans des billets (131k)." The poinçonneurs have been gone from Paris's subways for many years now, but when Gainsbourg's character describes his days punching "des petits trous toujours des petit trous (92k)" we have no trouble relating.

Gainsbourg has often been cited as a misogynist, and these tendencies are evident in even his earliest recordings. Songs like «Sois belle et tais-toi», «La femme des uns sous le corps des autres» and «Indifférent» reflect an attitude towards women that is far from being enlightened. "Comme le chien de monsieur Jean de Nivelle / Tu ne viens jamais à moi quand je t'appelle / Qu'importe le temps / Qu'emporte le vent / Mieux vaut ton absense / que ton inconséquence (107k)," he sings in «Indifférent». And then he goes on to mourn her lack of interest!

One may well wonder how Gainsbourg got away with his excesses, both in his life and in his music. Where his songs are concerned, one can point to his musicianship and to his humor - many times he is making fun of his attitudes as well as those of the so-called prudes he was deliberately trying to offend.

Gainsbourg's wicked sense of humor is evident throughout his work, but no more so that in the song «Judith», written in 1960 for the film L'Eau à la bouche. The song sounds like something Paul Anka or Franky Avalon would have recorded - like rock beat, fuzzy saxophone and female chorus. Even the lyrics sounds like something for the Bobbie-soxers: "Judith que veux-tu de moi / Que veux-tu / Judith je n'aime que toi / Le sais-tu (88k)." But after six stanzas of declairing his undying devotion, we get the Gainsbourg twist: "Mais si de guerre lasse / Un jour je me lasse / Judith ce jour-là vois-tu / Je te tue (85k)."

Throughout the 1960s, Gainsbourg divided his time between his own records and writing songs for others. It was a career, but he remained a somewhat minor player in the music scene of les années yéyé. All this changed forever when he tied up with the 18 year old France Gall.

To play our sound files, you need XingSound audio software(Windows version/Macintosh version). You will find directions for downloading and installing these software items by following the appropriate links.
Her first hit had been «Sacré Charlemagne», released the previous year. But when she appeared on television, lollipop in hand, singing Gainsbourg's «Les sucettes», both of their careers went through the roof. Ostensibly the song of a young girl who loves anis flavored lollipops, «Les sucettes», in realitiy it was a vulgar joke made fully evident when Gainsbourg recorded the song himself. «Annie aime les sucettes / Les sucette's à l'anis / Les sucett's à l'anis / D'Annie / Donn'nt à ses baisers / Un goût ani / Sé quand ell'n'a sur sa lange / Que le petit bâton / Elle prend ses jambes à son corps / Et retourne au drugstore (132k).» Once the joke was explained to Ms. Gall, she never worked or spoke with Gainsbourg again!

Suddenly Gainsbourg was in hot demand. After years of being the darling of the left bank, he was now main stream, a crafter of hits. By 1968, Serge Gainsbourg was known throughout France. He had appeared on television in his musical comedy, Anna, with Anna Karina and Jean-Claude Brialy and his liaison with Brigitte Bardot provided a media field day.

In her autobiography, Initiales B.B. (éditions Grasset 1996), Brigitte Bardot writes of her affair with Gainsbourg: "Ce fut un amour fou - un amour comme on en rêve - un amour qui restera dans nos mémoires et dans les mémoires." Together they performed such Gainsbourg classics as «Bonnie and Clyde», «Harley Davidson» and «Contact». But after recording «Je t'aime...moi, non plus» (which sat on the shelves at Philips unreleased for 17 years!), the two split permanently.

Bardot felt that «Je t'aime... moi non plus» was too daring and prevented it from being released. Gainsbourg, of course, found someone else.

British actress Jane Birkin was not at all put off by «Je t'aime...moi non plus». She made her mark in world cinema three years earlier in Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow-Up. Her part in film was small, but featured nudity that was extremely daring by Anglo-American standards.

«Je t'aime... moi non plus», version Gainsbourg-Birkin was released in 1968. Canal+ journalist Marc Toesca described the reaction to the song as follows: "Surprise et succè en France. Mais les soupires et halètements provoquent un scandale... chez nos prudes voisines anglais." The outcry was such that the original label in England, Fontana, dropped the record despite its being number 2 on the charts. A small company, Major Minor, immediately bought the rights and saw the song climb to Number 1, the only French song to ever do so.

Here in the States, there was never a question of putting the song on the radio. It may have been the era of free speech and free love, but not on the American air waves. It wasn't the lyrics to the song that caused the trouble - after all it was sung in French, but one listen to even a breif passage and you'll understand: «Je vais, Je vais et je viens / Entre tes reins / Je vais et je viens / Entre tes reins / Et je / Me re- / Teins… (153k)» Across the country, copies of the 45 kept popping up at colleges and Universities. A sophomore at the time, I recall it as the most played song on the juke box in our student center. At least until faculty pressure forced its removal. Despite the lack of air play and no coordinated marketing effort, Serge Gainsbourg became the most successful French singer in America since the Singing Nun!

Gainsbourg closed the 60s with his album 69, année érotique and opened the 70s with his first concept album, Melody Nelson. These albums are combined in the disk Gainsbourg Vol. 5, Je t'aime… moi non plus. The success of these two albums recorded with Jane Birkin was such that Ms. Birkin, despite possessing a singing voice with no redeeming qualities what-so-ever, has enjoyed a lasting career as a singer in France!

The seventies saw Gainsbourg experiment outside music, releasing a feature film of Je t'aime... moi non plus, and directing television commercials for such products as Lux and Woolite. He continued to write songs for others, but his best work was for himself on albums such as Vu de l'exterieur, Rock around the bunker, L'homme à tête de chou and Aux armes et caetera.

This last album was recorded with musicians from Bob Marley's Wailers, and introduced reggae to France. It also introduced Gainsbourg to the wrath of the Legion d'Honeur, who took as a serious insult Gainsbourg's reworking of the National Anthem. «Allons enfants de la patrie / Le jour de gloire est arrivée / etc. (178k)»

Gainsbourg's career is full of remarkable ironies. Despite his reputation, he was tapped to write the lyrics for the French version of "You're a good man, Charlie Brown", and in 1987 was asked to write an anti-drug song. After a life of such excess, it's pretty hard to imagine what people were thinking of, but Gainsbourg managed to produce a very power and uniquely Gainsbourgian song: «Aux enfants de la chance / Qui n'ont jamais connu les transes / Je direai en substance / Ceci / Touchez pas à la poussière d'ange / Angel dust / Zéro héro à l'infini / Je dis dites-leur et dis-leur / De casser la gueule aux dealers / Qui dans l'hombre attende l'heure/ L'horreur / de minuit (170k).» Gainsbourg's own thoughts on the subject are illuminating: "Tout le monde pense que je suis un junkie, parce que j'ai un regard...comme ça... étoilé. Je ne le suis pas. J'en ai connu, des petites junkies, mais moi, j'touche pas à ça et j'veux pas qu'on y touche. Le leitmotiv, c'est «casser la gueule aux dealers», c'est normal, ce sont eux les assassins, ils vont à la sortie des écoles communales et des lycées."

Whether you listen to Gainsbourg from the fifties, sixties, seventies or eighties, you hear the music of a man totally connected to his time. One of his last albums, You're under arrest is solid 80's dance-beat rock, his music from the late 60s rings of fuzz-box guitar and blues riffs not unlike Buffalo Springfield. And when you listen to the full range of his music, both the songs written for himself and those for others, there is no denying the man's talent.

"Inculpation: Détournement de mineures," reads the rap sheet on the cover of You're under arrest. To Gainsbourg's detractors, that could be a fitting epitaph. Others might prefer Gainsbourg's favorite quote from Oscar Wilde: "J'ai mis mon génie dans ma vie et mon talent dans mon oeuvre."

Взято из - http://www.francevision.com/nsltr/vf14/gains.htm

Тут есть немного про одну из его знаменитых жён - Джейн Биркин и немного про самого Сержа - http://www.ready-steady-go.org.uk/serge.html

А здесь ещё био - http://www.rfimusique.com/siteEn/biographie/biographie_6305.asp

.

SG Initials

да Серж- поэт, киноактёр, певец, бабник - легенда Франции 60-х и 70-х!
\фото взяты из буклета к сд *Serge Gainsbourg*. Philips 562 757-2. 2000й год.

more

more\

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2Cloud9:

О! Спасибо за фотографии, Cloud9!

Мне давно интересны жизнь и творчество этого незаурядного и талантливого человека. Впервые узнала о нем может быть лет 15 назад: услышала по радио Je t'aime moi non plus, и диктор немного рассказал об авторе и исполнителе этой песни. Очень смутно помню какую-то передачу о нем по ТВ, показанную где-то в начале 90-х (?). Это, пожалуй, были те немногие "следы присутствия" Gainsbourg'a в России. Еще пару лет назад Культура показала передачу, посвященную Сержу, из серии Легенды французского шансона (или что-то этом роде), да в прошлом году в Москве прошел фестиваль фильмов Gainsbourg'a. Показывали по-моему Je t'aime moi non plus, Шарлотту форева и Stan the Flasher.
Трудно объяснить, что привлекательного в этой неоднозначной, порой одиозной личности, это нужно почуствовать. Послушайте что-нибудь из Генсбура, может и вы почуствуете эту магию.

Для тех, кому это интересно.
Ссылки на статьи о Генсбуре на русском языке:
http://muscadomestica.narod.ru/gainsbourg.html
http://spb.afisha.ru/article?name=serge_gainsbourg
http://www.inostranets.ru/cgi-bin/materials.cgi?id=14142&chapter=12

Иностранные сайты, посвященные Генсбуру:
http://sergegainsbourg.artistes.universalmusic.fr/1024/push/ (официальный сайт)
http://www.gainsbarre.com/
http://www.tetedechou.com (совершенно роскошный сайт!)

2Rosco:
>Вот артисты, исполнявшие его песни:
Ну их побольше будет:-)
как минимум, Джона Зорна с компанией забыли :-)
Вот еще пара релизов (люди из "тусовок" Ника Кейва и Джона Зорна):
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:0mddyl61xpnb
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:cj90s36ua39g