Serge Gainsbourg; Histoire de Melody Nelson
Polydor; 1971 French Pop Music Rereleased by Light in the Attic
Mar 5, 2009
Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and others gain special places in our hearts for releasing semi-pornographic music. Serge Gainsbourg-hero for many, sexual deviant for some- was an undisputed musical genius. He was as innovative as he was controversial, and later this month,Light in the Attic records will be releasing the most influential and controversial record of his career- Histoire de Melody Nelson.
Having spent most of the sixties scoring chicks and scoring hits for the brightest and best of French pop, as well as topping the charts in his own right, Serge produced his concept album Histoire in 1971. Enlisting the services of Jean-Claude Vannier a top orchestral arranger and the musical talents of some of England’ best studio musicians, Serge created a highly experimental sound, blending funk and rock styles with lush orchestration.
Histoire de Melody Nelson: Controversial
The record describes a lurid tale following along the same lines of Nabokov’s Lolita- though a little more fantastical. Man knocks down teenage girl; Man becomes obsessed with teenage girl; teenage girl dies in a blaze of glory in airplane crash on her way back to Sunderland. For a man that polluted the air waves with “Je t’aime…mon non plus” and renamed “Serge Forward” by the British press, an album of this bent was seemingly not beneath him.
Jane Birkin, one of the many unfeasibly beautiful women Serge hooked up with over the years, makes an appearance on the record as young temptress Melody Nelson. Serge plays the role of the lecherous old man hopelessly enamoured of her.
Experimental Genius
Subject matter aside, this album is Gainsbourg’s finest hour. We knew from his earlier releases that his music always had something aurally arresting which pulled the tracks out of the ordinary; like the shimmering guitar lead on “Soixante Neuf”, or the weaving harmonies of violin over the piano line on “Initials BB”, or the fabulous interchange of drums and bongo’s on “Requiem Pour un Con”.
But with this album Gainsbourg and Vannier created a suite of seven cohesive songs, each of them thematically linked with the next but all displaying their own distinctive imaginative touches. They also managed to perfectly marry rock and funk with orchestration, and the fact the album sounds as fresh toady as it does pays testament to these two composers.
The musicianship on the album is incredible, which is not surprising given the fantastic array of top session musicians who lent a hand to the recording. Vic Flick, the man who played the lead riff on the “James Bond Theme” makes an appearance on guitar, as does Big Jim Sullivan, who once recorded his own legendary solo album under the name Lord Sitar.
Also present is bassist Herbie Flowers, a mainstay of many hit records including Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and Lou Reed’s “Walk on Wild Side”, and along with drummer Dougie Wright, deserves the plaudits for making this album such a success.
The Album
From the very first bars of opener “Melody”, the listener knows they’re in for a good time. Flowers’ sliding bass line weaves into Wright’s steady snare hits, laying a slow and steady groove for Serge to deliver his dead pan poetry. Later sampled by the Beatnuts, “Melody” moves sinuously over its 7 mins, building and evolving into rearing beast as more instruments and textures are added to the groove, until Serge brings about a climatic frenzy with the words: “En Anglais: called The spirit of Ecstasy”.
From there we move into Ballade de Melody Nelson, beginning again with another glorious bass heavy groove. One can instantly hear where Beck got the inspiration for “Paper Tiger”, and the circling acoustic guitar patterns coursing through the mix form the ideas Air would later apply on Moon Safari.
Elsewhere on the album "L'hôtel particulier" is all brooding sensuality with incessant guitar scratches and organ stabs topped off with sighing strings; and “En Melody” is a brilliant psychedelic dance number, with an infectious groove and viciously loud guitar lines.
Conclusion - Gainsbourg as Don Juan
It’s hard not too write about Serge Gainsbourg without making him seem a ludicrous and laughable figure, a modern day Don Juan; a stereotypical French man hopelessly obsessed with sex. However in truth he was a superb musical composer and a poetic lyricist.
One can forget that Gainsbourg’s concepts and ideals were founded upon the culture of France at the time; a country of Satre and Goddard, Henry Miller and William Burroughs, existentialism and sexual liberation. His lyrics were never overly gratuitously or obscene. They possessed a poetic sensibility which presented sexuality with a frankness and a touch of humour far removed from the clichéd sentiment of western love songs.
Coincidently, filming has just commenced on a biopic of Gainsbourg entitled “La Vie Heroique”. No title is surely more apt for a man who smoked heroically, drank heroically and courted controversy heroically. Histoire will forever bear testament to his genius.
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