Sex meets sentiment tonight at Royce Hall, when UCLA Live brings
Jane Birkin to perform a tribute to her late ex-husband, the
legendary French musician Serge Gainsbourg. Birkin will collaborate
with the Algerian group Djam & Fam to reinterpret
Gainsbourg’s songs in a North African folk context, a project
dubbed “Arabesque,” that Birkin has been touring the
globe with since 2002.
Birkin gained notoriety in the late 1960s and 1970s for pushing
the sexual envelope in the world of popular entertainment,
beginning with her brief but memorable nude part in Michelangelo
Antonioni’s controversial film “Blow-up.” Her
storied romance with Gainsbourg began in 1969; that same year, the
two recorded the infamous single “Je T’Aime … Moi Non
Plus.” The song topped charts throughout Europe despite a
radio ban in Birkin’s homeland of England ““ her
explicitly erotic sighs were deemed too racy for the airwaves.
“I used to curse “˜Je T’Aime … Moi Non
Plus,’ but now I rather bless it,” Birkin said of the
song’s international success. “I don’t think
people have forgotten it over the years, even when we’re
asked to do (performances) in places like Hong Kong and
Jakarta.”
But in the United States, the song only peaked, coincidentally,
at number 69. “I don’t know if sex was very much
appreciated by all the Americans,” she added.
Gainsbourg became an unlikely and divisive hero in Europe, both
admired and hated as much for his shocking behavior as his stylish
and complex music. His relationship with Birkin took on increasing
artistic significance over the years.
“He used me as a female version of himself,” said
Birkin, likening their relationship to that between Ingmar Bergman
and Liv Ullmann.
“I was his female side. He let himself be brash and
masculine. The sentiments that he found difficult to express, or
too tender, he gave to me to sing. He gave so many of his works to
me, (that) he once said, “˜You don’t need anybody
else.’ And of course he was right.”
The dynamic of their singer-songwriter relationship was most
poignantly put on display after Birkin left Gainsbourg in 1980.
Despite the split, Gainsbourg continued to write music for her,
including her personal favorite, “Les dessous
chics.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Birkin. “The
whole song is about not saying anything when you’re wounded.
I probably wounded him, but he asked me to sing it and he knew it
would be my signature tune.” So it makes sense that, in light
of Gainsbourg’s death in 1991, Birkin’s reinvention of
his songs with Algerian violinist Djamel Benyelles is not only a
tribute but also a kind of continuation of the spirit of
Serge’s music.
“It’s very attractive and strange; it would have
suited Serge’s character,” she said. “All the
songs have been rearranged with great charm and great style. Even
in France ““ where the songs are so well known I don’t
even have to sing them, because the audience sings for me ““
because of this strange orchestration, people listened to it as if
it were poetry, as if they were hearing it for the first
time.”