SERGE GAINSBOURG

MY CHERIE JANE…

by Duglas T. Stewart of the BMX Bandits.

Ready Steady Go is proud to present an exclusive article on the talents of JANE BIRKIN & SERGE GAINSBOURG written by Duglas Stewart.

For 30 years Jane Birkin has been a superstar in France. Her status as popular icon may be partly due to the more than 40 movies she has acted in,but it is due in the biggest part to her relationship with Serge Gainsbourg and the music they made together. Jane has just released her first ever British album '"The Best of Jane Birkin" and on April 15th 1997 played a triumphant concert of Gainsbourg songs in London. It seems Britain, and perhaps the rest of the world, has at last realised what a good thing it has been missing.

As a miniskirted teenager Jane embraced the excitement of the "Swinging Sixties" and featured in the most talked about scene in the movie that best captured London at that time, "BLOW UP". Jane wearing only a pair of lime green tights chases her friend in cherry pink tights round the studio of a hip young David Bailey like photographer. The tights don't stay on for very long. She also found herself in what would be a short lived and unfufilling marriage to Britain's greatest soundtrack composer John Barry."I met John when we did a rather jolly musical called "Passion Flower Hotel" that also starred Pauline Collins and Franscesca Annis. He got me to sing one song called "I must, I must improve my bust."remembers Jane."After that he only got me to do things like run his bath and heat his turtle soup for him", her voice then brightens,"then thank God he left." For then Jane made the fateful ferryboat journey to France with her daughter Kate, where she was destined to find Serge Gainsbourg.

Gainsbourg is known in this country primarily for three things: "Je T'aime.. .moi non plus",a duet with Jane, it was the first U.K. number one to be banned on national radio and is still the sexiest single ever made; saying to a very shocked Whitney Houston "I would like to fuck you" on a prime time French chat show; and the rather steamy video he made with his and Jane's then 13 year old daughter, now France’s most inspiring young actress, Charlotte for their duet "Lemon Incest." The infamy brought about by these and other incidents has unfairly obscured the brilliance and depth of Gainsbourg and his music. Serge's death in March 91 and 3 days later the death of her father left Jane devastated. She was then contacted by an unsymPATHETIC British tabliod journalist who's first question was "Have you made any other dirty records since "Je T'aime ?" She was incensed into action. "I thought he's talking about a man who's regarded as a national hero in France. His funeral brought the whole of Paris to a standstill". Jane contacted people that she knew couldn’t be ignored and asked them to send faxes saying what Serge meant to them. The impressive list of people who then faxed the journalist and Jane expressing their love and admiration for Serge included Catherine Deneuve, Yves Saint Laurent, Claudia Cardinale, Jacques Chirac and Bardot, with whom Serge had a scandalous love affair in the early sixties and also made some damn fine records with, including the pulsating gangst ballad "Bonnie and Clyde" and the first try at "Je T'aime." Most impressive however was perhaps the fax from President Mitter that said "He was our Apollinaire." Gainsbourg the great poet is now part of the syllabus for high school students across France.

Although it's been responsible for a rather narrow view of Serge, Jane and their work both as a unit and separate, Jane is still proud of that track, "I was recently told by a taxi driver during a recent visit to London that he'd had three children on that record. So pourquoispas, if you're going to be famous for just one thing it's a pretty nice thing to be famous for." The legend, which makes the sensual effect of listening to "Je T'aime" all the more pleasing, is they were really "doing it." "So..." I asked blushing, "was it real?" "No, no, no",replied Jane as if saying "silly boy " in a way you always fantasized about being called a silly boy. She didn’t actually say it but I sure felt it. "It was recorded in a studio near Marble Arch and during the take Serge kept giving me sign language to calm down the huffing and puffing. He was frightened I wasn’t going to make the highest note." Serge was to utilize some real Jane noises on a couple of later tracks. "We were on holiday in Yugoslavia. Serge hid a tape recorder under the bed and got my brother Andrew to tickle me. He was so naughty." Jane’s uncontrollable hysterical laughter was then added to funky guitar-led psychedelic backing and became part of what many regard as his greatest masterpiece 1971's "Histoire de Melody Nelson." On Jane's "Best of " C.D. is a heart breaking live reading of one of Gainsbourg's most beautiful songs "Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais (I have come to tell you I'm going)" performed a short time after Serge's death. The lyric now has gained an added poignancy. "The song was recorded at Le Casino de Paris and after I finished singing it I just put the mike down and walked off stage. I did no encore I felt like I was saying goodbye." Jane also featured on Serge's own 1973 original version only not singing but sobbing. "My daughter Kate had just left to visit England and taken my favourite cuddly monkey that I used to take everywhere with me. So I was sitting about the studio crying. Serge asked if I would mind going into this little room and he stood there handing me Kleenex while they recorded me for his track. When Serge died I put my monkey in his coffin and it was burned with him."

After more than decade together Jane and Serge split up. Jane recalls "about a year later Serge phoned me up and said "I suppose I better write a new album for you." He was under no contractual obligation to do it. You would think it would have been more difficult to work together after we split up but it was quite the opposite. When we were together he always wrote me rather light songs.I would be a sweet Lolita character, sometimes a little like a prostitute or a naughty hitch hiker picking up lorry drivers. Afterwards the songs became darker and had more depth. I was singing the real him in songs he would never record himself because they revealed too much about him. He would be so funny and cheeky as only he could but inside was this shy and sad man." Songs like "Baby alone in Babylone" reveal a man in real turmoil. Jane recalled seeing him perform these personal songs live and he was so sad he had bubbles coming out of his nose.

The closing track of the new C.D.brings back memories of a return to the former Yugoslavia. This time to visit French troops during the recent troubles. She found herself in an underground shelter with three soldiers who asked her to sing "La Javanaise" a song Serge had recorded more than 30 years earlier. She didn’t know all the words so they wrote them down on an envelope for her and the four of them sang the song together underground.

Things have changed a lot since the incident with the ignorant tabloid hack."I don't feel I have to explain Serge to people in other countries anymore and it, as my mother would say, feels very nice." This new increased understanding of Serge is perhaps due to Jane's triumphant '93 London show; Mick Harvey's superb English translations of Gainsbourg's songs on "The Intoxicated Man" and three superb reissues of some of his finest work that were released last year. Worthy recent versions of his songs have been recorded by HEAVENLY from Oxford, LUNA based in New York U.S.A. and Japan's PIZZACATO 5. He’s been cited as a primary influence by BECK, STEREOLAB and SUEDE's Brett Anderson. Brett pops up on an unlikely duet on Jane's new compilation. Laetitia Sadier vocalist with STEREOLAB remembers watching Gainsbourg performing on French T.V. "He projected a mixture of shyness, arrogance, vulnerability and forcefulness. These contradictions made him very intriguing." Stuart Murdoch of Britain's most poetic new band BELLE and SEBASTIAN remembers how he first discovered Gainsbourg."I was listening to John Peel and heard Bardot singing this wild motorcycle hymn "Harley Davidson." I can't speak French but I taught myself how to sing it and play it on the piano. My flatmate at that time was a French scholar and he would bring French friends round and they would laugh hearing me singing this great French song in such a funny Scottish/French accent. I got this compilation next and although I couldn’t understand the words it was filled with these amazingly different sonic sensations."Gainsbourg's music spans almost every genre imaginable from Mambo to Rock n Roll, from Jazz to Classical and Bubblegum pop, he wrote a Eurovision winner for France and was at 50 the first French artist to record a reggae album.

One of his last lyrics for Jane said "I gave the best of me to you." "It's so true",Jane tells me,"meeting him set me free." Serge Gainsbourg gave Jane his best. Jane Birkin continues to always give us her best in everything she does whether singing or acting, in a wide range of movies, starring alongside greats like Bette Davis, David Niven, Maggie Smith, James Mason and most memorably Dirk Bogarde in "These Foolish Things." "Dirk was a darling to my parents and me." She continues "Charlotte inspired me as an actor. She has such integrity. She doesn’t care about trying to make people like her, she just does her own thing. very like her father". Bogarde was in loyal attendance at the recent London show and Jarvis Cocker was spotted pre-show in the bar. Douglas Hart (ex-Mary Chain bass dude) helped me steal one of the rather tasty concert posters featuring Jane's alluring red lipsticked mouth and that exquisite gap in her teeth... WOW! He informed me he always carries a supply of elastic bands with him just incase. Thanks Douglas. Afterwards I enthused with Peter and Amelia of Heavenly about the show and Jane's totally mesmerizing stage presence. We all confessed to singing along to "Comment te dire adieu." It was a trully wonderful night. Now we all have our chance to get the best of Jane. Don't miss the ferry boat.