Serge Gainsbourg -- A Fistful of Gitanes

This biography by Sylvie Simmons (one of the only Gainsbourg biographies written in English) was my airplane/hotel room reading for the past week. As far as biographies go, it is fairly brief (~ 140 pages), and is therefore light on character/musical analysis and criticism. Many events and people in his life aren't covered in great detail, which is something of a shame because the few times that Simmons does elaborate (i.e. life during wartime, the breakup of Serge and Jane) are the most poignant parts of the book. Nevertheless, it's an engaging page-turner and made me want to desperately hear almost all the music mentioned in it. When a piece of music writing can do that to you, then you haven't got much to complain about.

The final one-third of the book, in which Serge spends the last twelve years of his life essentially mourning Jane Birkin, is horrifically sad. Massive car crash/can see it coming/can't look away/etc. His descent into alcohol-soaked melancholy and years of longing, coupled with his glamourized suffering and gargantuan guilt trips struck me as a most Jewish trait. At several junctures in the book, she invoked the Slavic/Jewish clause in order to contextualize his behaviour, but strangely, did not during the post-separation years.

And regarding "Je T'Aime, Moi Non Plus", the Bardot version kills the Birkin version. Both the singing and the arrangement. "With Bardot he said 'It was a horrifying kind of copulation, which was, I believe, too much'". Nope. The Birkin duet is pretty, the Bardot duet smoulders.