Ma Petite Entreprise : The Life of Alain Bashung

I have a rather bad habit of discovering a new artist, buying one of their records, promptly falling in love and then absorbing the rest of their back catalogue in the space of a week. It’s a bad habit. It’s gorging. It causes indigestion. You end up missing the nuances, the hidden textures. And then I get full, I can’t stand anymore and I cast my new favourite aside.

I have nearly committed that sin again this week, taking in four Alain Bashung albums since last Monday. I have decided to stop, four albums in, so I don’t have his entire discography on my shelves two weeks after hearing his name. Stop and consider. Ruminate on what I've heard. And what I have heard is frankly quite amazing.

Alain Bashung is a name lost to most English people. He hasn’t entered the British cultural lexicon in the same way he bear hugs the French cultural lexique. He now most probably never will, having died earlier this year, too young at the age of 61. Lung cancer gets even the cool, from time to time, after a lifetime of cigarettes.

He is in many ways the successor to Serge Gainsbourg, who was himself the successor to George Brassens and many others, the line stretching back to the conception of the French love song, the chanson. A word that can strike fear into some. People hear it and think of Charles Aznavour and his unique brand of cod emotion, Jacques Brel and his wonderful mouth frothing gurgling, spread eagled over swells of strings and crashes of percussion cascading out of the Olympia Theatre. They associate it with Edith Piaf, for being the irrepressible Edith Piaf.

Alain Bashung is chanson updated. Its chanson with the gentlemanly lilt removed, absent are the lounge suit, cigarette and obligatory glass of whisky (not always obligatory).  This is chanson with swagger. Sometimes Dylanesque, sometimes punk, sometimes orchestral and sometimes electronic in a way that you never thought the French could muster.

In the 1980’s he was heavily influenced by British-post punk and new wave, releasing a string of critically and popularly acclaimed albums such as 1979’s Roulette Russe and 1980’s Pizza. His 1983 album Figure Imposee saw him collaborating with his hero Serge Gainsbourg, setting him on an experimental path from which he wouldn’t relent. Except for Passe le Rio Grande in 1986 which directly followed the latter and pandered a little too much to the musical styles of the day. The album saw Bashung coating his songs in synths and appearing on the cover in a kind of New Romantic style pose, which ended up making him look like a cross between Boy George and Julian Clary.

But it is his 1998 album Fantasie Militarie, that is often considered his "masterpiece", it is difficult to track down, especially if you don’t want to pay shockingly erratic sums. I ordered it cheep of Amazon France, for a pocketful of Euros, only for it to be dispatched from Halifax. How that works, I have no idea.

The album is a cacophony of styles from sweeping strings and confessional melodies to electronic landscapes and modern day Scott Walker experimentalism. Backed by many famous musical luminaries including Adrian Utley from Portishead, Bashung displays so many musical styles that it is quite extraordinary. On some of his albums his style turns on a sixpence. Take his early 90’s album Chatterton, which see’s a number of experimental electronica tracks, complete with solo David Sylvianesque trumpet flourishes, but then begins to develop Country style tinges as the album concludes. A bizarre twist, dubbed by the French press as “New Wave Country”.

Album Cover : Fantasie Militarie

I love the French language, it’s graceful and beautiful to enunciate, but after numerous attempts to try and master it, my efforts tend to become mired in the fine details of feminine and masculine verbs and the like. Throw that kind of confusion in with my sometimes rather strong northern accent and I end up sounding a little bit like John Prescott mixed with an intoxicated Alain Delon. Par-laay-vuwe, eh up-eh-up.

I can however deceiver some of the lyrics and they prove themselves to be inventive, mysterious and wry. For example the bridge in his hugely successful (in France) single 'Osez Josephine' goes “A l'arrière des dauphines, Je suis le roi des scélérats, A qui sourit la vie” which roughly translates as “Standing behind the Dauphins (medieval French princes) I am the king of the villainous. At whom, life smiles”.

You have to hear the song to get it, the rocky melody, which is complemented by extravagant guitar riffs. It’s also got a wonderful video, featuring Bashung playing guitar in an Elvis costume accompanied by a beautiful woman, in the middle of a circus ring, while a white horse gallops around the arena edge. Baffling, yet so original.

Being able to understand the lyrics of course has no real bearing on whether you like a song, the only bellwether is for lyrics to sound genuine, to sound like the singer is trying to emote something that they desperately want you to hear. Bashung has a kind of threatening intimacy, even in his more upbeat songs there is a sense of foreboding and when his emotions do cascade forward like in Fantasie Militarie’s 'Le Nuit Je Mens', it produces an extraordinarily high voltage moment. The same is true even in his more experimental work such as on 2002’s critically acclaimed album L’imprudence.

He was certainly an original character of that there seems to be no doubt, whether posing for photographs smoking a cigarette upside down, or growing vegetables in a Parisian rooftop garden, amid the chimney pots and spires, he seems to have had a certain presence. A kind of “Fuck You” attitude reigns thought-out his work and life. The French generally have an air of “Fuck You I’m better”, but it’s usually sugar-coated in corduroy and whispers. Here it’s straight up. In your face. Fuck You.

He died earlier this year on the 14th of March. It passed me by to be honest at the time, although France was apparently plunged into a state of mourning and his funeral attended by the cultural who’s who of Gaul. It’s easy to say these days, in a knee-jerk reaction to the sometimes superfluous culture of today, that there are no living icons anymore, that they’ve all long since departed and all we’re left with is a second class art, that can only try and live up to what’s gone before. Sometimes I feel tempted to agree. But then you discover someone like this, an icon, up until a few months ago, a living icon, who sailed completely under my radar, yet utterly revolutionised his home culture. The greats are still there, you just have to look a little harder to find them

Words: Robert Leeming

Juliette
Posts: 3

Translations of Bashung
Reply #3 on : Mon January 25, 2010, 04:34:49

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Loved your article on Bashung. It's too bad his genius was not more embraced & appreciate by Anglophones, cause he really was a poet.
Your tanslation of "Osez Josephine" is one way of translating it, but what's amazing about Bashung, is that most, if not all of his songs, can be translated many ways. He does "word plays" so that the meanings are many, if not in spelling, then in sound when heard. The whole song is perhaps political, but also just plain sexual,(one of his favorite subjects!), as are songs like "J'ecume". "Osez Josephine", is also, "I dare you, Josephine!" A young brazen stud, daring his girlfriend to "give it up". A l'arriere des Berlines" ...in the back of station wagons..."On devine"...we see, a couple making out. "Juste un pair de demi-dieux"... just a pair of demi-gods (teenagers always think they are gods, but he adds, half-gods), ""ils font des petits, il fonts des envieux"...they make babies, they make us envious (of their reckless youth, their passion, their lust for life). So, when you get to "a l'arriere des Dauphines" (french feminine version of Dauphin, BUT also the Dauphine (car), in the back seat of the Dauphine (car), je suis le roi, etc....it's all about talking Josephine into doin it in the back seat of a car! The video you're referring to, with the hot chick (who is the same, I believe, as the sexy topless girl on the album cover), and white horse galloping around the ring, refers to "Juste faire hennir les cheveaux du plaisir" making the horses of desire neigh...or, stroking the stallion", if you will. "Que ne durent que les moments doux...", may only tender moments last. There are so many layers to Bashung's lyrics, it's amazing. I didn't know he had died until several months after & I spent the better part of that month, pouring over his lyrics, photos, videos & listening to his songs...

Mark C
Posts: 3

Bashung le grand
Reply #2 on : Wed December 30, 2009, 14:37:20

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I so understand your gorging: it was a couple of years ago that i discovered Bashung and, in 30 days, I'd followed his 30 year career!

'Chatterton' and 'Fantaisie militaire' are, without any doubt, his best albums - though there are many other songs and the live albums that are well worth tracking down. The most annoying thing is that every album contains at least one and more usually two or three tracks that you really wish he hadn't included!

Just one other thing: 'a l'arriere des dauphines' is (also) a reference to the back of a very ordinary (wellknown French) car. As is the first line of that song: 'a l'arriere des berlines' - i.e. a very posh car. Such punning often gets out of hand with Bashung, but it's generally a real delight as you find more and more layers of it.

Above all, Bashung's probably the very best musician of all those Frencies. No mean feat!

laura tattoo
Posts: 3

bashung article
Reply #1 on : Fri December 18, 2009, 19:38:41

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liked your article very much! i'm working today on my new blog "bashung in english", for which i will translate album by album his entire oeuvre. i was just flipping around different sites when i found your article.

i was fortunate in that i speak/read french and discovered him in 2003 with "l'imprudence", just after he learned that he was sick. saw him in brussels in oct 2003 and again in may 2008, knowing it would be the last time.

hope you follow my blog when it is announced. for now, this is my blog of my own poetry, but i feature news, work and thoughts about bashung often. http://moineauenfrance.blogspot.com.

take care. glad you appreciate him too! ~laura

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