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Relax Baby Be Cool by Jeremy Allen
£14.95
Available
Product Ref. (e.g. ISBN, SKU)
9781911036654
Published:
12 Feb 2021
Format:
Paperback
Number of pages:
304 pages
Dimensions:
216x152x22mm
Weight:
0.528kgs
Author:
Why has Serge Gainsbourg crossed over to the English-speaking world when so many of his contemporaries have remained largely confined to the Francosphere? What is it about this unshaven provocateur that so appeals to us? And who was the real Serge Gainsbourg anyway? Was he the sensitive seducer and songwriting colossus of the 60s and 70s? Was he Lucien Ginsburg, the son of Russian Jewish refugees who had to wear a yellow star during the Nazi Occupation of Paris? Or was he Gainsbarre, the deplorable, attention-seeking drunk who shamelessly propositioned Whitney Houston on live TV?
"Relax Baby Be Cool is a trip into unraveling the mind and genius of one of the greatest artists of all time. Although Gainsbourg's music has been discovered by new generations, his life has rarely been illuminated and contextualized with such style and insight." BECK
Why has Serge Gainsbourg crossed over to the English-speaking world when so many of his contemporaries have remained largely confined to the Francosphere? What is it about this unshaven provocateur that so appeals to us? And who was the real Serge Gainsbourg anyway? Was he the sensitive seducer and songwriting colossus of the 60s and 70s? Was he Lucien Ginsburg, the son of Russian Jewish refugees who had to wear a yellow star during the Nazi Occupation of Paris? Or was he Gainsbarre, the deplorable, attention-seeking drunk who shamelessly propositioned Whitney Houston on live TV?
Gainsbourg's cult has only grown since his death in 1991, and Histoire de Melody Nelson is now regarded as a classic in France and internationally. The 1971 album had only sold eighty thousand copies by 1986, when it finally went gold fifteen years after its release; its canonical elevation is a remarkable story, and there are many more remarkable stories attached to all of Gainsbourg's genre-defying, transgressive long-players. In Relax Baby Be Cool, writer Jeremy Allen takes each studio album in turn while exploring themes pertinent to Gainsbourg's life and music: performance, provocation, theft, dandyism, avantgardism, muses, Nazis, film and TV, Surrealism, vice, posterity, and fame.
French pop music is more popular than it's been since the mid-90s, when the French touch was breaking. Gainsbourg's influence has also been huge on alternative music: from Pulp to Massive Attack, De La Soul to Danger Mouse, Black Grape to Kylie, David Guetta to Die Antwoord, Air to Iggy Pop. This book is full of new interviews from people who knew him, but also younger artists who discovered him after his death. Contributors include Jane Birkin, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jacqueline Ginsburg (Gainsbourg's sister), Anna Karina, Mike Patton, Etienne Daho, Sly Dunbar, Alan Hawkshaw, JeanClaude Vannier, Tony Frank, Mick Harvey, Bertrand Burgalat, Acid Arab, Jehnny Beth, Alan Chamfort, Metronomy, David Holmes, Blonde Redhead, Nicolas Godin of Air, Russell Mael of Sparks, Will Oldham, and many more.
About the Author: Jeremy Allen has been a music and culture journalist for the best part of two decades, writing for publications like the Guardian, Vice, the Quietus, BBC, NME, and Electronic Sound. As a French pop specialist who lived in Paris for five years, he has interviewed the great and the good across La Manche, as well as legends like Lou Reed, Lemmy from Motörhead, and Amy Winehouse for various publications. His first book Relax Baby Be Cool: The Artistry And Audacity Of Serge Gainsbourg (Jawbone Press) received universally good reviews in the UK music press, and a recent essay on the French nouvelle vague of cinema in the anthology We'll Never Have Paris (Repeater Books) was lauded by the TLS.
| Number of pages | 304 |
|---|
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