Serge Gainsbourg is the stage name of Lucien Ginzburg, the legendary French composer, actor, chansonnier, poet and film playwright. He was a man of unique talent, scandalous reputation and extraordinary performance.
During his life, Serge Gainsbourg, as a poet and composer, has released more than twenty records with copyright songs, recorded about forty soundtracks for films. As an actor, he starred in almost two dozen films, as a director he shot four films.
Childhood
Lucien Ginzburg was born in Paris on April 2, 1928 in a family of Jews who left Russia immediately after the 1917 revolution. The family was very musical, parents graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Father, Joseph Karlovich, a talented pianist and composer, mother of Lucien, Olga Borisovna, chamber singer.
A cult of music reigned in their Parisian apartment. Every morning, my father sat down at the piano and played classical pieces, and my mother accompanied her voice. Children from a very early age received home music education, learned to play music and engaged in choral singing. There were three children in the family: the eldest daughter Jacqueline and twins Lucien and Liliana. Lulu and Lily, as they were called by relatives.
Then Lucien awaited study at the Condorcet Lyceum, one of the oldest and most prestigious Paris lyceums. The education in it was refined and elitist; it was not in vain that Paul Verlaine, Jacques Cocteau, Boris Vian, Louis de Funes studied at Condorce. Within the walls of this lyceum, Lucien realized that he wanted to become an actor, and a poet, and a composer, and an artist. And in order not to choose, he decided to prove himself in all these forms.
Painter
In addition to music, Lucien had another passion - painting. Since childhood, he enthusiastically painted, not afraid to experiment, mastered different styles, copied the masters. In 1947, he entered the Paris Academia Monmartre, where he studied painting and met Elizabeth Levitskaya, who later became his first wife. Levitskaya was also an artist, like Lucien, came from a family of Russian emigrants. This gave their relationship a special emotional closeness.
One of the teachers of Gainsbourg was Fernand Leger, a famous artist, sculptor and decorator, a well-known communist in France. Then, at the academy, Lucien changed his usual ordinary name to a bright and sonorous - Serge. It was a tribute to the beloved Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov. Then he changed his name in the French manner, with an emphasis on the last syllable - Gainsbourg. He never became an artist; moreover, he destroyed all his drawings. With Elizabeth they lived together for six years, from 1951 to 1957, then their paths diverged. Only the song “Eliza” reminds of those times, because Serge Gainsbourg devoted all his best songs to women.
Chansonnier
Gainsbourg is a recognized master of beautiful, catchy tunes. They still sound on the radio, have not left the lips of performers and admirers for half a century now. Serge Gainsbourg wrote music for films throughout his life. His songs were performed and performed by many French pop stars - Catherine Deneuve, Vanessa Paradis, Isabelle Adjani, France Gal, Michel Mercier and others.
Serge wrote easily. The music clung to him himself, he whistled the texts at first, and only then he put on words, periodically dragging on the Zhitan cigarette. Gainsbourg smoked a lot, sometimes lighting every next cigarette from the previous one. Without cigarettes and alcohol, he could not imagine his songs. Serge Gainsbourg combined cigarette smoke and frank, full of shocking poetry, the taste of whiskey and touching gentle melodies. It coiled spirals of wine vapors and Baudelaire sonnets, and the astringent smell of Zhitan permeated the exquisite aromas of the spirits of his beloved women.
Poetry
All the women of Serge Gainsbourg were beautiful, and ordinary and inconspicuous avoided him. After all, a short man with a humpbacked nose and protruding ears could interest only real beauties. And to interest him was what - endless versatile creativity.
His music enveloped in its simplicity and erotic message. His poems seemed to mock the French language, they had a hidden meaning, allusions and metaphors, virtuoso rhymes and dazzling puns.
The theme of Serge’s songs was often violence, death, drugs. In each line, Gainsbourg told all listeners the story of his life, his love. He talked about the rejection of his reflection, his ordinary and ugly appearance. He complained about the injustice prevailing in the world, pointed to it frankly, distinctly. He hid his vulnerability behind the image of a brawler and vulgarity. He was extremely honest.
Women
The second wife of Serge Gainsbourg was Francoise-Antoinette Pankrazzi, but their marriage was short-lived, from 1964 to 1966. This marriage left wonderful songs and two children, Natalya and Pavel. Gainsbourg never officially married again.
In 1967, the general public was shocked by his love affair with Brigitte Bardot. The piquancy of this story was added by the fact that at that time Brigitte was married to millionaire Gunter Sachs. That is why Bardot refused to perform the song Je t'aime written for her ... moi non plus, and a few months later, frightened by the incineration of passion, she ran away from Gainsbourg.
The new muse was not long in coming. The young Englishwoman Jane Birkin, singer and actress, reassured Serge for the whole twelve years and gave him her beloved daughter Charlotte.
His relationship with Birkin made a splash in France, they instantly became the most fashionable couple. The French in them liked freedom and a challenge to established norms. And they liked the light beauty of Jane and her grace, and Serge next to her was transformed and became beautiful in his own way. But happiness was eternal. At some point, tired of the impudent and shocking tricks of Gainsbourg, from his long drunken swirls, Jane left. Serge was once again left alone.
The last love in his life was the actress and singer Caroline von Paulus, better known under the pseudonym Bambu. She was the granddaughter of the very Friedrich Paulus captured by Soviet troops near Stalingrad. Bambu brightened the last decade of the life of Gainsbourg and gave birth to his son Lucien.
Care
Serge Gainsbourg died of a fifth heart attack in his office. He was so busy with creativity that he did not notice his own departure.
March 2, 1991 ended his life as a genius, a great chansonnier, a brilliant intellectual, an outstanding poet. A subtle romantic, hiding behind a mask of cynicism and badass.