Histoire De Melody Nelson Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot

• 1Melody07:32
• 2Ballade De Melody Nelson02:00
• 3Valse De Melody01:31
• 4Ah Melody01:47
• 5L'Hôtel Particulier04:05
• 6En Melody03:26
• 7Cargo Culte07:36
• 8Melody09:25
• 9Ballade De Melody Nelson02:07
• 10Valse De Melody01:39
• 11Ah Melody01:54
• 12Melody Lit Babar01:03
• 13Melody Lit Babar01:11
• 14L'Hôtel Particulier05:10
• 15En Melody03:39
• 16Cargo Culte07:44
• Total Runtime01:01:49

Info for Histoire De Melody Nelson

This album 'Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire de Melody Nelson' is a 1971 concept album by French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. The Lolita-esque pseudo-autobiographical plot involves the middle-aged Gainsbourg unintentionally colliding his Rolls Royce Silver Ghost into teenage nymphet Melody Nelson's bicycle, and the subsequent seduction and romance that ensues.

Histoire de Melody Nelson is considered by many critics and fans to be Gainsbourg's most influential and accomplished album. At just under twenty-eight minutes, the short running time and the stylistic consistency and similarity throughout the album gives it qualities more in line with an EP or an extended musical piece with a number of movements. Histoire de Melody Nelson's mix of freewheeling guitar, funk style bass guitar, near spoken word vocal delivery, and lush, deep orchestrated string and choral arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier who composed almost the entire music in collaboration with Gainsbourg for the album, have proven to be highly influential amongst later francophone and anglophone musical performers including the French band Air, David Holmes, Pulp's Jarvis Cocker, Portishead, and Beck, whose 2002 track 'Paper Tiger' from Sea Change is extremely close to the distinctive Histoire de Melody Nelson sound.

'28 minutes of art-house rock that still stands unrivaled in the history of all recorded music.' (Record Collector Magazine, 5 stars out of 5)

Serge Gainsbourg, vocals, guitar, piano
L'Opera Comique, vocals
Jane Birkin, vocals
Jim Sullivan, guitar
Vic Flick, guitar
Jean-Luc Ponty, electric violin
Roger Coulam, keyboards
Jean-Claude Vannier, keyboards
Brian Odgers, bass
Dougie Wright, drums
Jeunesses Musicales of Paris

Engineed by Jean-Claude Charvier
Remastered by Dave Cooley

Digitally remastered.

Serge Gainsbourg
was the dirty old man of popular music; a French singer/songwriter and provocateur notorious for his voracious appetite for alcohol, cigarettes, and women, his scandalous, taboo-shattering output made him a legend in Europe but only a cult figure in America, where his lone hit "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus" stalled on the pop charts — fittingly enough — at number 69.

Born Lucien Ginzberg in Paris on April 2, 1928, his parents were Russian Jews who fled to France following the events of the 1917 Bolshevik uprising. After studying art and teaching, he turned to painting before working as a bar pianist on the local cabaret circuit. Soon he was tapped to join the cast of the musical Milord L'Arsoille, where he reluctantly assumed a singing role; self-conscious about his rather homely appearance, Gainsbourg initially wanted only to carve out a niche as a composer and producer, not as a performer.

Still, he made his recording debut in 1958 with the album Du Chant a la Une; while strong efforts like 1961's L'Etonnant Serge Gainsbourg and 1964's Gainsbourg Confidentiel followed, his jazz-inflected solo work performed poorly on the charts, although compositions for vocalists ranging from Petula Clark to Juliette Greco to Dionne Warwick proved much more successful. In the late '60s, he befriended the actress Brigitte Bardot, and later became her lover; with Bardot as his muse, Gainsbourg's lushly arranged music suddenly became erotic and delirious, and together, they performed a series of duets — including "Bonnie and Clyde," "Harley Davidson," and "Comic Strip" — celebrating pop culture icons.

Gainsbourg's affair with Bardot was brief, but its effects were irrevocable: after he became involved with constant companion Jane Birkin, they recorded the 1969 duet "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus," a song he originally penned for Bardot complete with steamy lyrics and explicit heavy breathing. Although banned in many corners of the globe, it reached the top of the charts throughout Europe, and grew in stature to become an underground classic later covered by performers ranging from Donna Summer to Ray Conniff.

Gainsbourg returned in 1971 with Histoire de Melody Nelson, a dark, complex song cycle which signalled his increasing alienation from modern culture: drugs, disease, suicide and misanthropy became thematic fixtures of his work, which grew more esoteric, inflammatory, and outrageous with each passing release. Although Gainsbourg never again reached the commercial success of his late-'60s peak, he remained an imposing and controversial figure throughout Europe, where he was both vilified and celebrated for his shocking behavior, which included burning 500 francs on a live television broadcast and recording a reggae version of the sacred "La Marseillaise."

Gainsbourg also created a furor with the single "Lemon Incest," a duet with his daughter, the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg. In addition, he posed in drag for the cover of 1984's Love on the Beat, a collection of songs about male hustlers, and made sexual advances towards Whitney Houston on a live TV broadcast. Along with his pop music oeuvre, Gainsbourg scored a number of films, and also directed and appeared in a handful of features, most notably 1976's Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus, which starred Birkin and Andy Warhol mainstay Joe Dallesandro. He died on March 2, 1991.

This album contains no booklet.