First Interview: June 1966
- Serge Gainsbourg, you are a character apart in the music world. You’re the first to introduce a certain cynicism, a harshness, a violence that isn’t found elsewhere. Why?
- Why? Because I thought my looks were the antipode of
chanson de charme. That’s it.
- Only because of that?
- No, but also for personal reasons, secret reasons…
- And the misogyny you show, would it be for secret reasons too?
- Yes, the disappointments… with love. But that’s been a while!
- Even your latest songs, we find characters who are defeated, beaten by women. I’m thinking of “Docteur Jekyll and Mister Hyde”.
- I regret. Dr Jekyll isn’t a victim. He avenges himself, he becomes bad.
- And is it the real Serge Gainsbourg behind these songs? I have the impression that behind the misogyny, there is a certain romanticism. Do you believe in mad love?
- Yes, but in temporary mad love… short-term.
- What is a woman to you?
- Oh! It is something indispensable for a man, but isn’t amusing.
- A partner, not a companion.
- Not a partner, an adversary.
- That means each time you meet a woman, you start a battle?
- I start a battle that I know I’m going to win… A short-term battle… A long-term one will not work, because time is against her, unfortunately, and not against me.
- Are you sure you never find yourself hurt after a battle like that?
- Yes, later… when I go see ballets, the ballet students… I’ll be 65 by then. Maybe I’ll slobber. For now, because I’m also an idealist, and not a complete bastard, as an idealist, I have difficulties.
- You always feel solitary, you never find in any man…
- …any woman!
- …what you seek, a presence…
- Presence? What do you call a presence?
- A support for the hard times.
- Bah? That’s easy! I’ve been in a very bad state here alone for eight days. I’ve understood my solitude, a much more evident solitude than the usual… But if it is in these cases that we need a (male) friend, it’s too easy… Or a (female) friend… So it went well. Solitude evidently isn’t amusing, but that’s how it is.
- And you don’t believe that it can break off one day.
- No. I’m not generous enough to give something to someone. Well, if it’s not reciprocal.
- Are you sure you wouldn’t give anything to anyone?
- I believe I talked nonsense. I believe I’d give everything and then… (laughs)
- Once you told me you wanted to be a disquieting character in music. A bit like a certain movie actor …
- Yes, Anthony Quinn. Well, now it got normal, with the English bands, the “ugly mugs”, the Rolling Stones…
- The disquieting characters are accepted.
- Absolutely! And how! Except that these guys drug themselves to death, and I have always said I was on drugs. Although, ultimately, I’ve never been on drugs. It’s about the presence: maybe I have something in the eye, I don’t know…
- Maybe the fact that drugs appear in many of your songs?
- Oh, no. Because I was against drugs. That would have been a total phony.
- “Coco and C°”, for example.
- “Coco and C°”, that was the jazz. Once I said that I had abandoned the jazz a little because of this universe of drugs and that I was into rock. Then I realized there wasn’t anyone more into drugs than the guys from the English rock. But I like that.
- The rock, is it your latest musical discovery?
- It isn’t my latest discovery. It’s my first discovery. I have here in my record collection a Johnny Ray disc from 57, and a disc from 58, from a completely unknown guy who Boris Vian tried to launch and scared everyone, Screaming Jay Hawkins. That’s been a while, this rock thing! But I was still into jazz… But the current jazz, all of those who want to use it have a style that dates from 55…
- A style you consider outdated?
- Yes, absolutely! There have been the “free jazz” and all those sorts of attempts.
- And you don’t think it is possible to make songs with the “free jazz”?
- Oh! No.
- We have the impression that in your songs, the text loses its importance to the music.
- The text is more, say, schematic! Yes. I’m fed up with puzzling my head over elaborating texts that pass unnoticed. I’m thirty-eight years old, I have gray hair. In painting I’d like to be misunderstood, but not in music.
- Do you believe your texts pass unnoticed?
- Yes, in the long-plays, there is one or two songs that worked, and the others didn’t. The most beautiful ones, the ones I like don’t work. They’ve never worked. Never!
- Which ones do you like?
- Never “Intoxicated man”, never “Ces petits riens”, never “La Javanaise” that no one understood, never “Ce mortel ennui”. And then it sounds pretentious to say I work for a minority. One says: minority, one thinks: elite, and that isn’t true. You have to work for a majority in music.
- When you write for others, and I’m thinking of France Gall, your texts are permeated by an unusual mark in the world of mates*, of yéyés. Was “Baby pop” a harsh song? (*"dans le monde des copains", i didn't know how to translate that
)
- …and toned down. The text was quite terrible initially. I was censored. Bah! They are not so bad, all these: “La Gadoue”, “Les Incorruptibles”, “O Sheriff”… they are jokes.
- Yes, but “Baby pop” wasn’t, “Les petits papiers” wasn’t.
- Ok! There is a certain language, but… If in the end I was to remain elaborating texts and depicting a sophisticated world, with girls who are a bit dumb and quite rich, eh well! I’d be ruined!
- I’m not sure.
- You are not sure. Me, I’m sure!
- When we find ourselves here at Maison des Arts, we have the impression that it’s a key decor for your songs. It’s an ultra modern decor that exactly fits the style you have adopted.
- That’s completely fortuitous. I’m not here for nothing. Actually I have an English armchair. Gadgets, well!...
- A television, a Japanese electric clock, and then the shape of the windows, the shape of the studio, all that is a song decor.
- It’s no bad. It lacks one or two Picabia. Paul Klee, too… But that will come… I have hang-ups. Here, it’s the Cité Internationale des Arts. While walking through the corridor, I heard… Stravinsky, Chopin, then Bartok… and I said to myself: “I am alone in music”. And I didn’t dare playing rock and jerk on my piano. And then I realized – there is a floor for painters, a floor for engravers, a floor for musicians – I realized we find some really bad elements among the painters, some really bad elements among the engravers, some really bad elements among the musicians.
- And you feel less uncomfortable?
- I feel absolutely comfortable. There is no hang-up to have.
- You have a very clear taste for modern words in your songs, even brand names, words we commonly use.
- Yes, but English words. When I compose a melody, I jabber in English, whatever it may be, to see if it flows. English is a criterion. French is more guttural and corresponds, to an English ear, to what Yugoslavian is to us. We have difficulties with the tonic accent that English people don’t have! So I cheat and I put English words in my songs.
- What do you think of Etiemble?
- Eh well, tell him I said bonjour. But in English, of course!
In the end he is right: French is a beautiful language. But the world nowadays is under an English influence, not a French influence, we must not delude ourselves. And then, we must not be chauvinistic…
my translation from Serge Gainsbourg - Chansons d'aujourd'hui by Lucien Rioux | Editions Pierre Seghers, 1969.
My favourite Gainsbourg song is Initials B.B. It's just perfect (L)
