Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Gainsbourg: The Biography

Gainsbourg: The Biography

Verlant, Gilles
Knobloch, Paul

Paperback

ArtistsEntertainment & Performing Arts

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0966234677
ISBN13: 9780966234671
Publisher: Tamtam Books
Published: Jul 31 2012
Pages: 400
Weight: 1.96
Height: 1.24 Width: 6.57 Depth: 9.30
Language: English

Gilles Verlant's biography of Serge Gainsbourg is the best and most authoritative in any language

When Serge Gainsbourg died in 1991, France went into mourning: François Mitterand himself proclaimed him our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire. Gainsbourg redefined French pop, from his beginnings as cynical chansonnier and mambo-influenced jazz artist to the ironic yé-yé beat and lush orchestration of his 1960s work to his launching of French reggae in the 1970s to the electric funk and disco of his last albums. But mourned as much as his music was Gainsbourg the man: the self-proclaimed ugly lover of such beauties as Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin, the iconic provocateur whose heavy-breathing Je t'aime moi non plus was banned from airwaves throughout Europe and whose reggae version of the Marseillais earned him death threats from the right, and the dirty-old-boy wordsmith who could slip double-entendres about oral sex into the lyrics of a teenybopper ditty and make a crude sexual proposition to Whitney Houston on live television.

Gilles Verlant's biography of Gainsbourg is the best and most authoritative in any language. Drawing from numerous interviews and their own friendship, Verlant provides a fascinating look at the inner workings of 1950s-1990s French pop culture and the conflicted and driven songwriter, actor, director and author that emerged from it: the young boy wearing a yellow star during the German Occupation; the young art student trying to woo Tolstoy's granddaughter; the musical collaborator of Petula Clark, Juliette Greco and Sly and Robbie; the seasoned composer of the Lolita of pop albums, Histoire de Melody Nelson; the cultural icon who transformed scandal and song into a new form of delirium.

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