JEAN-EMMANUEL DELUXE

COOKING FOR CHAPS

Music

Gustav Temple meets the musical impresario who revived the obscure French genre of ye-ye with such conviction that one of the tracks he championed ended up on the soundtrack to a film by Quentin Tarantino

We first got in touch because you recommended an artist named Bertrand Burgalat. Why did you think we’d like him?

I’ve been a long-time reader of The Chap and Bertrand is a long-time friend. He is one of these French artists who is about to cross the Channel. His new album Rêve Capital was blessed by BBC Radio 6. Bertrand has his own special universe, musically and as a character. I don’t like the word ‘dandy’. Bertrand is some kind of modernist, from the original term of the word – not the mods who want to stay in 1966 their whole lives.

Bertrand is the essence of a French aesthete and gentleman. He saw the Pink Floyd when he was very young and became influenced by bands

“Bertrand was one of the first people to revive Burt Bacharach but at the same time he was listening to Kraftwerk, Debussy and Ravel. He has no notion of good or bad taste. If there is a hit song he likes, he isn’t ashamed to add it to his influences from more obscure artists”

Bertrand Burgalat

like Gong and Can, kind of a free form sound. Later on I introduced him to April March and he worked with her, using the Ye-Ye Girl sound with a modern twist. He also worked with your British Count Indigo and picked up the ‘Easy Listening’ tag, but that was just one teeny part of his music; he wasn’t a revivalist at all. He was one of the first people to try and revive Burt Bacharach, but at the same time he was listening to Kraftwerk, Debussy and Ravel. What I like about Bertrand is he has no notion of good or bad taste. If there is a hit song he likes, he isn’t ashamed to add it to his influences from more obscure artists.

Perhaps you should explain to our British readers what you mean by Ye-Ye?

In the early sixties there was an invasion of British and American pop music in France. French newspaper Le Monde coined the term ‘ye-ye’ because the French artists trying to imitate the British and American sound always sang ‘yeah-yeah-yeah’. These girl singers started out doing faithful copies but there were also some big French arrangers behind them, and it was the start of the careers of singer/ songwriters like Francois Hardy. After a while it was no longer a copy but something uniquely French and slightly more risqué in the lyrics. 1963-68 was the heyday of ye-ye. After the uprising of ’68, the singer/songwriter became more popular in France. American publisher Feral House wanted to publish my book on ye-ye before anyone in Britain, and then it was finally published in France by Cocorico.

Serge Gainsbourg

“I think Gainsbourg was a very clever, talented guy who borrowed a lot of ideas from others, like Babatunde Olatunji, a Nigerian musician who he didn’t credit on his first album Percussion, although the songs from Olatunji’s Drums of Passion album are all the same”

Jacques Dutronc was the best-known male singer in the ye-ye genre. He was covered in England by lots of bands. It was a French take of rock and pop with its own personal attitude, a humorous, modernist distance. The lyrics to many ye-ye songs was important. There was a lot of irony, especially in the work of Dutronc, for example in a song about ‘les minets’, mods living in the 16th district of Paris trying to be British. Someone like Johnny Halliday was more of a carbon copy of British pop music, but the ye-ye artists were doing something more French. Jarvis Cocker is a big fan of this sort of music. The revival of ye-ye was never a mass movement, though.

Serge Gainsbourg is the biggest French cult figure in the UK. He’s been covered by everyone from Nick Cave to Scott Walker. Does he still have the same status in France?

In the eighties he had a reputation a bit like Oliver Reed in Britain. Nowadays he would have been absorbed by the #metoo campaign. Some of his lyrics were very dodgy and wouldn’t be tolerated

today. Also we mustn’t forget his arrangers Jean Claude Vannier, Michel Colombier (who worked with the Beach Boys in America later) and Alain Goraguer, and the singers he worked with like France Gall. Gainsbourg sometimes forgot all the people who helped him and tried to dismiss them. But without them he wouldn’t have made it so far.

Gainsbourg in the late 70s sang Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and by then he’d become a caricature of himself. He was known as Gainsbarre and he was more known for being drunk all the time. People would give him more drinks to be sure to make a spectacle. I don’t think Gainsbourg was a genius; he was a very clever, talented guy who borrowed a

lot of ideas from others, like Babatunde Olatunji, a Nigerian musician who he didn’t credit on his first album Percussion, although the songs from Olatunji’s Drums of Passion album are all the same. Before ye-ye, Serge Gainsbourg was considered very Rive Gauche (Left Bank), playing a kind of sophisticated jazz. But the women like Brigitte Bardot, France Gall and Francois Hardy reached a much wider audience. They took ye-ye out of the seedy nightclubs and into the rooms of French teenagers.

So how did you end up credited on the soundtrack to Death Proof by Quentin Tarantino?

They asked April March for the rights to use one of her songs because Tarantino had heard her record. I was part of the process of securing the rights but didn’t earn any money from the soundtrack.

“Quentin Tarantino seems to use music in his films that he genuinely likes. As well as being a film geek, he is also a pop music geek. I don’t think he has a team of people researching the music”

Did you have to deal with Gainsbourg’s estate to bring about Chick Habit, the song that was used in Death Proof?

We had to ask permission from the estate for the April March version of Gainsbourg’s song Laisse Tomber Les Filles, which became Chick Habit. We didn’t deal directly with the family, but a whole string of lawyers and music publishers. It got very complicated and stuck, but Bertrand was very helpful because he knew some key people. The Gainsbourg family ended up saying it was ok to use the song, but they kept nearly all the money earned by it!

Does Tarantino use researchers to find the songs on his soundtracks?

No, he seems to use music that he genuinely likes. As well as being a film geek, he is also a pop music geek. I don’t think he has a team of people researching the music.

Did you think Death Proof was not his strongest movie?

There are some good parts but it isn’t his strongest. I think the soundtrack proved more popular than the movie itself! Pulp Fiction is probably the best of all his films.

Chick Habit was the English version that April March had originally recorded in French. Is that her real name?

No, her real name is Elinor Blake and she’s American, from Francophile parents. She recorded the Gainsbourg covers in both French and

April March and Olivia Jean

English. It is interesting because Gainsbourg is untranslatable, with all his plays on words, so it’s more of an adaptation than a cover version. The original song was called Laisse Tomber Les Filles. It’s a bit like the adaptations that Boris Bergman did for Marianne Faithfull in the sixties. He told me that he took the meaning of the song and its atmosphere rather than a literal translation.

When April March and I first met, she gave me a cassette of some obscure ye-ye artists I had never heard of, and I’m supposed to be the expert! Then people like Wes Anderson and Sofia Coppola’s brother Roman used some of the ye-ye songs on their soundtracks, and one of them turned up in Mad Men. So for some reason a few people in Los Angeles knew about these obscure French artists.

But doesn’t Tarantino do the same thing as Gainsbourg, borrow everything from other people’s work?

Yes, but at least he credits it; he’s open about his sources. With Django Unchained he invited Franco Nero from the 1966 original Django to be in the movie. These days it’s more difficult to hide, whereas Gainsbourg didn’t have the internet to reveal his sources. These days, it’s like being in a fancy restaurant where, in the old days, you couldn’t see the kitchen. But today we can see the kitchen. If you can’t see the kitchen, you are free to idealise the work. n