Serge Gainsbourg / Jane Birkin: Jane Birkin et Serge Gainsbourg (original) (raw)

In 1967, during his torrid but brief affair with Brigitte Bardot, Serge Gainsbourg wrote a song for the two of them to sing together, titled "Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus". It translates to "I Love You... Neither Do I". Confusing and ambiguous, it may simply have been an acknowledgement that their love couldn't last (she was still married to Gunter Sachs), but in any event, Bardot asked that he not release it, and it stayed hidden until it was finally compiled in 1986. In 1968, the 40-year-old Gainsbourg met 22-year-old English actress and model Jane Birkin on the set of the film Slogan. On their first night alone together, he took her on a tour of Paris clubs, including a transvestite bar, and fell asleep drunk. They were married within a year.

Gainsbourg was a complicated guy, outwardly arrogant and lecherous, but also introverted and wildly intelligent. He understood pop music on a very basic, almost instinctual level, what worked and what didn't, and what could cause a sensation. He was an inveterate experimenter, exploring ways to marry the French chanson to jazz, African music, exotica, reggae, electronic music, funk, and British art-rock (check his Cannabis soundtrack). And he must have known he had something sensational on his hands with "Je T'aime". He asked Birkin to record a new version with him, and she agreed, as she admits in the liner notes to Light in the Attic's new reissue of the Birkin/Gainsbourg album, only to keep him from singing it with someone else.

That a little bit of jealousy motivated it makes the final recording just that much more delicious. Where the Bardot version was pillowy, her vocal almost too humid, Birkin brings to it a playfulness that balances Gainsbourg's debauched deadpan. If you haven't heard it, it goes basically like this: She says she loves him, he enigmatically responds "neither do I," they matter-of-factly describe the rhythm of sex, and she very convincingly simulates a climax. It's a stunning song in every respect, from the dreamy organ to the strings that simulate billowing bedsheets to Birkin's goose-bumpy falsetto, and it caused quite a sensation indeed. Country after country lined up to ban it from the radio, but none could hold it back, and it sold like crazy all over Europe. In the UK it occupied two spots on the chart simultaneously after Fontana got cold feet and withdrew it, allowing another label to get in on the action.

Thing is, we like to think of the 60s as a liberated time, when hippies convinced people that sex was okay, but it's not true. For most of the people still running things, this song was too much. Hell, I wonder what would happen if it came out today. Of course, "Je T'aime" was just one song from the album, and it gets the most ink for a reason, but there's plenty of other amazing stuff here, not least of which is "69 Année Érotique" ("69 Erotic Year"). Yeah, the title is a cheap pun, which is a classic Gainsbourg move, but the shuddering piano and snapping bass provide deep atmosphere for his sing-speak, and while we're at it, Arthur Greenslade deserves major credit for the opulent and moody arrangements on this record. The combination of Gainsbourg and Greenslade is nearly as sharp as Gainsbourg's collaboration with Jean-Claude Vannier two years later on his masterpiece, Histoire de Melody Nelson.