Gainsbourg en anglais

The most memorable (and oddest) English translations of Serge's music

You never know what you might find when you’re not looking. I was watching a collection of shorts by Funhouse interview subject Mike Kuchar at Anthology Film Archives a few weeks back, and suddenly encountered a melody that I knew quite well….

It was a melody written by the late, irreplaceable Serge Gainsbourg. I’ve sung Serge’s praises on the Funhouse TV show several times, but I’ve never dealt with that odd, little-known side of his work where he tried to reach out to English-speaking record buyers. Sadly, he never had the kind of cross-Atlantic fame that Aznavour and Brel found in the U.S. Serge wrote gigantic hits for himself and an insanely talented roster of French singers, but he never had a hit in the U.S. (Although the original version of “Je t’aime moi non plus” by Serge and Jane Birkin did got to No. 1 on the U.K. charts, while it was banned from the radio!)

He didn’t speak English fluently but he toyed with it in his songs, in some of the early titles (“Intoxicated Man,” “Negative Blues,” “New York U.S.A.”) and then some of the later ones (songs in French with titles like “Sorry Angel,” “Overseas Telegram,” and the dark humor tune “Rock Around the Bunker”). His most memorable song title in English, “Harley David Son of a Bitch,” is also the chorus of a song with French lyrics.

His earliest attempts to re-record his songs en anglais found him translating the lyrics to two of the songs he wrote as duets sung by himself and the ultimate sex symbol, B.B. Thus, we have English versions of one of his silliest songs, “Comic Strip,” and one of his more unusual songs, “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde,” which was adapted and translated by Serge into French in the first place from the original poem “Trail’s End” by Bonnie Parker herself. (A bit of it is recited by Faye Dunaway in the 1967 film.) The English version of that song becomes a solo by Serge (no Brigitte), delivered as a spoken-word track. (I will leave out of this piece a number of English-language parodies of “Je T’Aime, Moi Non Plus.”)

Serge didn’t return to recording English versions of his songs until the disco era, when he released a pretty drab disco single with two very forgettable songs, both of which he translated into English, presumably for the international market that was buying anything disco back in 1978. Voila, “Sea, Sex, and Sun” and “Mr. Iceberg” in English. (Only for Gainsbourg completists.)

After Serge’s death, Anglo artists did try to translate his songs for the U.K. and U.S. market. Mick Harvey (of the Birthday Party and the Bad Seeds) made it a cornerstone of his solo work to translate Gainsbourg, releasing four albums over 22 years (!), each one containing his own translations of the songs. Some of the songs don’t quite survive the translation (since Serge worked with internal rhyme schemes and other poetic devices that need to be taken apart and reassembled in the second language). But some tracks by Harvey were superb, as with “Initials B.B” (which has an official music video featuring Harvey and collaborator Anita Lane).

One later excursion in translating Gainsbourg was the 2006 album Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited, which contained English versions of Serge’s songs by Marianne Faithfull, Jane B. (singing with Franz Ferdinand), and a host of younger rock and dance-music artists. Two favorite tracks on the album: “The Lollies” by Keith Flint (an aggressive version of “Les Succettes” that I think Serge would’ve liked) and Jarvis Cocker’s own translation of “I Just Came to Tell You That I’m Going.”

Before I turn to the Mike Kuchar short that inspired this piece, let me also point to a unique and truly odd assignment: Gainsbourg translating an American song based on a cartoon. It happened as a weird reversal of “Seasons in the Sun,” the song that Jacques Brel wrote and performed as an up-tempo number about a man looking backward at his life and forward to his death. Rod McKuen translated that song into English, adding a more wistful tone in his version. And Terry Jacks, of course, had a massive hit in 1974 with a “suicide note” revision of the song, getting rid of the verse in which the narrator talks about haunting his unfaithful wife.

Serge’s coincidental reversal of that? (A few years before Terry Jacks took over AM radio with “Seasons.”) He somehow was given a singular task: translate one of Rod McKuen’s own songs for the French release of the musical cartoon feature A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969). The title tune is a solemn little number (orchestrated as if it were a love song) by McKuen. Serge keeps the romantic backing and sings his translation of McKuen’s lyrics — making this a Gallic sentimental ballad about the kid with the spherical head.

Now for the “discovery” I found tucked away in a short film by Mike Kuchar called “Tales of the Bronx” (1970). It was what might well be the first time a Gainsbourg song was translated into English, in 1964. The song in question was Serge’s absolutely beautiful “La Javanaise,” which was a big hit in France by Juliette Greco. It’s an exquisite love song, one of Serge’s best ever, and one that became a show closer for Jane Birkin when she would do her Serge tribute shows. (On the subject of translation and Jane, she noted to me when I interviewed her for the Funhouse TV show that she had written to Stephen Sondheim to ask him to experiment with translating Serge’s lyrics; she never heard back.)

It was most moving when Jane would ask the audience to sing along, as happens here. There’s an even better version done by Jane on the same talk show right after Serge died, but INA has not put that up on YT; the audience doesn’t have the lyrics in front of them — they just spontaneously sing the song with her as she does the number a capella. Post it now, INA! UPDATE: INA did indeed post the entire program I was writing about (but the song titles apparently aren’t searchable). The show is called “Serge, si tu nous regardes,” and this is the very moving a capella rendition of “La Javaniase” by Jane and the show’s studio audience.

So, what could possibly be hiding in a Mike Kuchar 16mm short from 1970? The English translation of the song, sung by none other than Pussy Galore herself (aka the kinky-booted Cathy Gale, for those who follow all the reruns of “The Avengers”), Ms. Honor Blackman. Her version of the song (translated by some inventive wretch), which appeared on the 1964 album Everything I’ve Got, is a cautionary tale for women titled “Men Will Deceive You.” The song is so catchy that it even works with a set of utterly goofy English lyrics, having nothing to do with Serge’s original.

Even though the song was never a hit in English (it wasn’t even released as a single by Blackman), the people surrounding Serge’s musical legacy remembered it. In 2003, a bunch of dub versions were made for the first Gainsbourg reggae album Aux Armes et cetera (1979). Since Serge had redone “La Javanaise” on the album itself, the double album released in 2003 included a newly recorded version of “Men Will Deceive You.” The artist who sings it isn’t identified online.

Perhaps it’s best this English translation has been buried by time, as the various versions of the French original are so beautiful. Then again, I was completely surprised hearing a Gainsbourg song in a Sixties “underground” short, oddly translated or not. Finding out that Honor Blackman was the artist who recorded it made it even more of a pure kitsch joy. Listen to her version here.