About Serge Gainsbourg
part 5
back to part 4
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 .» 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."
start
source:francevision.com
