La chanson de Jacky

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Jacques Brel (1963)

La chanson de Jacky (in German "Jacky's Song") is a French-language song of around 3:20 minutes in length, the Jacques Brel in early November 1965 and included initially on a 10 " - vinyl - album with Disques Barclay published. Other titles on it were Ces gens-là , L'âge idiot , Fernand , Grand-mère and Les désesperés . A year later the song, which was also only briefly referred to as Jacky on the record sleeves of those years , appeared on a long-playing record that contained ten songs. Brel wrote the text himself, the music was written by Brel's longtime composer Gérard Jouannest ; the orchestration was done by François Rauber , with whom Brel also worked for many years.

This song was written at a point in Brel's career when it was only rumored that the artist - despite the fact that he was only 36 years old - was tired of the stage. Outside of family and close circle of friends, he himself spoke to his colleague Charles Aznavour about his possible retreat from the concert halls and record studios for the first time the following year . Since Jacky is the trivialization of his first name, with which he was described as a child, and the protagonist in the song is about an aging singer, the question arose to what extent the chanson contained autobiographical traits , even then in the room, a however, it was not until much later that more intensive work was done.

More commercially successful than the French version, however, was the English-language cover version , translated by Mort Shuman , which Scott Walker published under the title Jackie at the end of 1967 and which made it into the British Top 30 . For the Arrangement drew Wally Stott responsible, who also conducted the orchestra. Marc Almond repeated this chart success in 1991. Nevertheless, La chanson de Jacky is one of the most important works of Jacques Brel, who died in 1978, and is considered a typical example of his poetry . It is also one of those of his songs that have been most frequently recorded by other performers and published on phonograms.

Content and artistic design

The text

In the chanson in the form of the first-person narration , a singer thinks about the course of his old age. As an aging interpreter in the casino in Knokke - le-Zoute , he fears having to recite love songs and tango songs every evening in front of groups of mothers who have dressed up like Christmas trees (mémères décorées comme des arbres de Noël) . He would be called Antonio, although he would be just a gasping Argentine from Carcassonne in the south of France, and he would have to get drunk every evening to be able to listlessly fool these pink elephants into his manhood (parler de virilité ... pour des éléphants roses) and to sing the songs from the time when he was still called Jacky.

He could also think of the alternative of becoming the owner of a gambling den in Macau , surrounded by women who love him (cerclé des femmes languissantes) who call him the beautiful Serge. Then he will be the one who forces others to sing for the guests - he himself is tired of it (lassé d'être chanteur) . He would sell shiploads of drugs and whiskey from Clermont-Ferrand , have real gays and fake virgins bought for himself (je vende de vrais pédés, de fausses vierges) , become immeasurably rich and have his fingers in the politics of many countries. But even then, in his opium den , all alone or in front of a handful of Chinese, every night he would sing the songs from the time when he still called himself Jacky.

And even if - much to his surprise - he came to paradise at the end of his life , he would sing a hallelujah to the women with the white wings (chanteur pour femmes à ailes blanches) and regret the earthly life down there, wherever too not every day is a Sunday. If you call him God the Father - in the heavenly telephone directory somewhere between God the Merciful and God the Protective - (même si on m'appelle Dieu le Père, celui qui est dans l'annuaire entre Dieu le fit et Dieu vous garde) and he himself even let a full beard grow for it, his heart and pure soul would burst like an overripe apple at some point (trop bonne pomme, je me crêve le cœur et le pur esprit) . Because he knows that in the end he has to listen to all the angels, the saints and the devil as they sing him the song from the time when he still called himself Jacky.

Each of these perspectives follows as a refrain the threefold and fervently expressed wish to be this young Jacky only once more - even if it is for an hour, at least occasionally - followed by the sobering conclusion in the last line "so beautiful and so stupid at the same time" ( beau, beau, beau et con à la fois , in the English translation cute, cute in a stupid-ass way ).

Formally, the text consists of three three stanzas , each followed by a four-line refrain. The stanzas contain six, eight and four lines of verse one after the other . Different rhyme sequences are used, starting with pair and cross rhyme (AABCBC), then a sequence of cross and block rhymes (ABABCDDC), in the third stanza another block rhyme. The refrain is again written in cross rhyme. Almost all stanzas begin with an anaphora (Même si → Even if) , a stylistic device that serves to structure and rhythm the text; for Patrick Baton this leads to a “gradual rise in arousal” within each stanza, comparable to a crescendo in music.

Mort Shuman's English version of the text adheres very largely to Brel's textual specifications, but is not a literal translation of them. While playing , he also occasionally with the same sounding words like stupid-ass / stupid ass in the chorus. On the other hand, for example, the Argentinian bandoneon player from Carcassonne is a guitar-playing Spaniard who does not perform in Knokke, Belgium, and his whiskey does not come from Clermont-Ferrand in central France, but from the London district of Twickenham . Both cities, however, have in common the fact that they are not exactly synonymous with strongholds of whiskey distillation ; For the Brel connoisseur and literature professor Stéphane Hirschi, this is one of the “contradicting images” that Brel uses quite deliberately.

Interpretation and classification

Age and childhood

In addition to love and Belgium , the country of his origin, with which he had a very ambivalent relationship throughout his life, aging up to death as well as, associated with it, separation and farewell were among the themes that recur particularly frequently in Brel's songs, for example in La mort from 1959, Le moribond from 1961, Les vieux from 1963, La chanson des vieux amants from 1967 and Orly from 1977. Childhood and adolescence were also repeatedly the subject of his lyrics. For Brel, people in their early years still have freedom, energy and the gift of dreaming; especially in his later chansons like L'enfance it is not an idealizing, but a more and more nostalgic look that an adult throws back on the 'lost paradise' of childhood.

These issues come together in Jacky . Because regardless of which of the future scenarios will occur and with which name the lyrical self is addressed in old age - Antonio, Serge or even God the Father - in the end it always comes down to the name he bore as a child. For Bruno Hongre and Paul Lidsky the most important finding of the song is that Brel flatly refuses to sell himself or to fool himself into something beyond his own limits: “By leaving the closed universe in which he has nothing more to say [ and] returns to the young Jacky [...], he remains true to [the ideals] of his childhood, in which the pursuit of success has no place. ”
The literature used above avoids speculation as to whether the author also explicitly expressed his withdrawal from the stage want to bring - in addition to the creed that it is impossible to escape one's own past and his fear of not being able to create anything really new in the future.

Hidden message about the end of Brel's career?

The Allmusic characterization of the song, according to this "was epic about a dissolute life and bacchanalische widespread claims [...] interpreted as at least partly autobiographical." However, there are no lyrically disguised indications as to which of the vices promised in it the young, dreaming protagonist actually longs for.
The author Jérôme Pintoux considers this chanson to be one of Jacques Brel's most convincing texts on a “vibrating melody”. It is a "refreshing hysteria", as Brel imagines his own future and that he does not shrink from being taken for a "limitless megalomaniac " - wrongly, because even when "his wildest dreams come true, his craziest, the most hidden delusions in this chanson would become reality ”, the“ boring song from the time when he still called himself Jacky ”would always catch up with him in the end. When composing the text, Brel seems to have felt more like a kind of Cyrano - this literary figure in France represents someone with a good core behind an unsightly facade - and someone who has been disapproved of by the audience.

In fact, 1965 was a time of upheaval for Brel; as early as 1964, after an appearance at the Olympia , "the rumors of the singer's withdrawal from the stage are growing". During this time, according to Gilles Verlant, the artist was on stage almost every day and performed up to 300 appearances per year, in the dance and event halls (salles des fêtes) somewhere in the French provinces as well as immediately before and after the studio recordings of this chanson a five-week tour through the Soviet Union and the USA . That could explain his increasing stage fatigue, although he was only in his mid-30s. While he was in the summer of 1965 in Evian the time for York The New writing Jeremy Bernstein only minutes after the concert, backstage , out of breath "One hears day that the" whispering what Bernstein then held for an expression only momentary exhaustion, Brel expressed In 1966, compared to Charles Aznavour - as was previously the case in response to a question from his composer Gérard Jouannest  - with the reasoning "I also quit because I don't want to become a veteran" much more clearly in this direction. It was similar in the summer on the sidelines of a performance in Vittel , when he explained to his orchestra conductor François Rauber : “I have nothing more to say. I don't want to get worse, I just don't want to. ”For Brel's biographer Olivier Todd, there was no question of a“ creative crisis ”during these years either. Brel registered the copyright for twenty new texts with SACEM in 1964 and 1965 alone , including other sophisticated masterpieces such as Un enfant , Les désespérés , Jef , Mathilde and Ces gens-là . Nevertheless, Jacques Brel's farewell tour began in October 1966, again at the Paris Olympia, and ended in May 1967 in Roubaix . Then "[he] took flight from this milieu" and turned to another art, namely film . However , there is no clear evidence in the literature that he deliberately wanted to announce his upcoming departure with Jacky a year and a half earlier.

The art of confusion

Stéphane Hirschi also briefly addresses the above aspect (“You know that Brel will leave the stage on the day he feels that he can no longer honestly give his best”), but otherwise this question is not in the Foreground of his detailed, more intrinsic analysis of this chanson. Rather, he explains a number of techniques that are used in it, and places the song, which he describes as a “staged work from a series of picturesque paintings”, above all in connection with Brel's lyrical oeuvre.
According to him, the lyricist also plays with words and their multiple meanings , occasionally even inventing new ones that are difficult to translate into other languages. Hirschi sees plenty of examples of this in the first part of Jacky : A Frenchman easily associates the Argentine with the word for money (Argentin / argent) , which contributes to the condensation of the impression that the aging singer can ultimately be bought by his elderly listeners; this is also paraphrased in the second stanza by je brûle mes derniers feux en échange de quelques cadeaux (“I'll burn my last fireworks in exchange for a few presents”). Brel adds a sexual aspect to his singing “with a voice like a bandoneon player ”: the new word bandonéante can also be understood as a combination of bander and néant (“erect” / “nothing”). The text conveys that the singer has to get drunk every evening with a slight understatement -  hydromel is honey water, also mead  - and another word creation ( ma saoulographie → my drunkard story). And the maître chanteur from the second part of the chanson is not only a master singer , but also, colloquially , a blackmailer.

For Hirschi, however, the central feature is how Brel plays with the different levels of the song - reality and dream - (“a game of illusions”) by switching back and forth between them. The listener can never be quite sure which of the two states a statement should be assigned to. Because the author and singer celebrates the future of a singer who, like Brel himself, is also called Jacky and appears in the Knokke casino. For Hirschi, however, this is primarily an artistic means that “gives the chanson a dynamic effect, because] the dream for [Brel] is also its reality. […] This mixture, this confusion is characteristic of Brel's linguistic universe… ”. This ambiguity is also caused by the lack of the subject in the refrain - whose “last hour” is meant, and who or what is described as beautiful and stupid at the same time? The last part of the song also contributes to this, leaving the realm of what can still be imagined as realistic. With sometimes ironic images like the heavenly telephone directory, the agnostic Brel expresses his criticism of the promise that there is a perfect paradise. Rather, it shows that reality and imagination coexist in different ways.

All in all, these confusing games in Jacky are at the same time also Brel's wink, with which he makes people understand that he is not hiding, but is personally involved, and with which he encourages them to play along. The images from this chanson "offer a dream world populated by people who are capable of change, while preserving their original character traits, overlaid by new ones."

From Michaela Weiß’s point of view, Brel has artistically staged his own professional ethos with this “metachanson” - as she describes songs that deal with the real person of the singer or author - which “resists the temptations of star comfort”, albeit in " Caricatural overdrawing ". La chanson de Jacky is a fantastic fiction in both senses of the word, with which, like Hirschi, she emphasizes the simultaneity of reality and the illusory world.

The music

In the four-four time melody held opened with an instrumental Intro in G minor , close to one of the blowers dominated ink whose rhythm and instrumentation the impression of a galloping horse convey the played by the wind instruments syncope revive the musical sequence and build additional voltage.

\ new Score {<< \ new Staff {\ relative c '' '{\ clef "treble ^ 8" \ key g \ minor \ time 4/4 \ tempo 4 = 116 \ set Staff.midiInstrument = # "piccolo" d2 ~ d8 f16 g16 a16 g16 f16 c16 d8 d16 c16 d4 ~ d8 f16 g16 a16 g16 f16 c16 d2. (~ d8. f16 d1)}} \ new PianoStaff << \ new Staff {\ clef violin \ key g \ minor \ time 4/4 r8 <d 'g' bes '> 8 r8 <d' g 'bes'> 8 r8 <c 'f' a '> 8 r8 <c' f 'a'> 8 r8 <d 'g' bes '> 8 r8 <d' g 'bes'> 8 r8 <c 'f' a '> 8 r8 <c' f 'a'> 8r8 <d 'g' bes '> 8 r8 <d' g 'bes' > 8 r8 <c 'f' a '> 8 r8 <c' f 'a'> 8 r8 <d 'g' bes'> 8 r8 <d 'g' bes'> 8 r8 <c 'f' a ' > 8 r8 <c 'f' a '> 8} \ new Staff {\ clef bass \ key g \ minor \ time 4/4 g, 4 bes, 4 a, 4 d, 4 g, 4 bes, 4 a, 4 d, 4 g, 4 bes, 4 a, 4 d, 4 g, 4 bes, 4 a, 4 d, 4} >> >>}
Gérard Jouannest (2009), composer of La chanson de Jacky

The cheering mood ( Vivace ) created by this, which continues in the background during the first two stanzas, stands in clear contrast to the singer's decline described in the text. Within the following stanzas, the key changes from minor to G major . The transition to the short third verse takes place through a few trills played exclusively on the piano , before the melody takes on a somewhat more subdued, nostalgic, reflective character when the chanson from his Jacky days is mentioned. The chorus is accompanied by an accordion and castanets . This atmosphere changes first through the particularly strong emphasis on the fourth to last word ( con [dt .: crazy]), and already with the last text phrase of the refrain consisting of three monosyllabic words ( à la fois [dt .: simultaneously]) then the initial musical mood returns, which Stéphane Hirschi describes as resembling a triumphal march .

The few deviations from this basic scheme can be found particularly in the refrain. In the first two refrains, the tone type changes from G major back to G minor, while in the third the melody remains in major, only changing from G to D major . And the last chorus was performed by Brel on stage almost like a prayer with folded hands and in a pleading tone - extremely coherent for Hirschi, because this "marks the absolute low point to which the singer fell".

\ new Score {\ new Staff {\ relative c '' {\ autoBeamOff \ key g \ major \ partial 4 a8 b8 c2 b8 c8 b8 a8 c1 d4 r8 d, 8 d8 d8 e8 fis8 \ key g \ minor g1} \ addlyrics {Être une heure rien qu'une heure du - rant Beau beau et con à la fois. }}}

Dave Thompson emphasizes the coherence with which the conceivable future scenarios "trickle out of Brel's deliciously rotten vocals", while the instrumental accompaniment in shrill colors underlines the sung-about atmosphere. Robert Dimery describes the song - with reference to the musically very close to the original Scott Walker version - as "rapid" and a "real gem".

Successes and covers

In France and other French-speaking countries , the song did not score high in the charts . However, the six-track album was one of the three best-selling long-playing records in France with the first release of La chanson de Jacky in the Christmas business in 1965. In this respect, this chanson also contributed to the fact that in 1966 the singer received a good 24,000 new francs in royalties from record sales from his former company Philips and around 300,000 new francs from Barclay, which has been publishing its chansons since 1962 - a sum that was at the time was around 265,000 DM (the equivalent of 135,000 euros ). For comparison: the statutory minimum wage in industry (SMIG) was around 5,000 francs a year in the mid-1960s. Especially after Brel's death (1978), La chanson de Jacky is included in numerous compilations of his greatest hits and his most important musical milestones, including on the album Quinze ans d'amour , which was first re-released in 1988 and then several times (most recently in 2014) , according to Allmusic contains its "twenty most popular titles in their most famous versions".

Scott Walker (1968)

In English, Scott Walker (actually Scott Engel) , who had already made a name for himself with the Walker Brothers in Europe before starting his solo career , brought Brels Chansons closer to a larger audience, especially in Great Britain. Of these, Jackie made it in the translation of Mort Shuman and arranged by Wally Stott as a single on the Philips label in December 1967 to number 22 in the British charts , making it the best-selling Brel title in Walker's interpretation in the United Kingdom . In addition, the song was included on the album Scott 2 , which even reached number one in the British charts in early 1968. At least the BBC refused to broadcast the song on their radio and television channels due to the explicit mention of pimping and brothels, drug deals and some hearty formulations. Walker responded to this censorship with praise to Brel and Jouannest: "I published Jackie because it is so noble and beautiful (refined and beautiful) ." Conversely, Brel is said to have described Walker as the most important other interpreter of his chansons.
In addition to a Brel tour through the United States in 1967, Shuman was also instrumental in making Jacky and other titles by the chansonnier better known in the United States. Together with Eric Blau, he wrote the musical Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris , which premiered in January 1968 at New York's off-Broadway theater Village Gate and in which the cast of the performance, including Elly Stone and Shawn Elliott counted, among other songs also Jacky had performed. The revue ran there continuously for a good four years.

Later cover versions from the Anglo-American region come from Momus (1986, under the title Nicky ), Marc Almond , who even reached number 17 in the British charts in 1991 with his dance single - written in Jacky but also in English - The Divine Comedy (1999) and Secret Chiefs 3 and Mike Patton (2012).

Michael Heltau (2012)

In German, Klaus Hoffmann , who also wrote the text, made the song known as early as the 1970s and released it on his LP Klaus Hoffmann singt Brel (1997) and again in 2017 on the live album Glaube Liebe Hoffmann . Jacky is also rarely absent from one of his stage appearances. Also in the 1970s a version was created under the title Joe by Werner Schneyder , which he and Michael Heltau had in their repertoire. A five-and-a-half-minute recording by Konstantin Wecker from 1984 (on the long-playing record Inwendig warm along with a single release) also uses Schneyder's translation. In 2011 a Jacky version by Sven Ratzke was made , and Jan Böhmermann also performed the chanson under the title Janni in live performances.

Further cover versions were published in French, among others, by Pierre Vaiana (1996), Nicolas Peyrac (1998), Dominique Horwitz (2000), Maria Bill (2001) and Les Croquants (2004), in Dutch by Henk van Ulsen (1974) and David Vos (2001) ), in Italian Duilio del Prete (2002, posthumously ) and in Finnish Marku Riikonen (1984). Measured against the total number of times this chanson was so attractive to other artists that they sang it themselves and distributed it on phonograms, La chanson de Jacky is one of Brel's most important works. Admittedly, in this quantitative analysis, Ne me quitte pas (around 1,470 cover versions), La chanson des vieux amants (570), Amsterdam (540), Quand on n'a que l'amour or Le moribond (each over 400 versions ) approach; but with more than 130 covers in at least 13 languages ​​and dialects - in addition to the ones already mentioned above, also especially often in Japanese - it occupies a place among the 15 titles of the chansonnier that are particularly popular with other performers.

literature

  • Stéphane Hirschi: Jacques Brel. Chant contre silence. Nizet, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-7078-1199-8 .
  • Olivier Todd: Jacques Brel - a life. Achilla-Presse, Bremen and Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-928398-23-7 (first in French 1984).

Web links

Evidence and Notes

  1. ↑ In the Discogs database, the record titled Ces gens-là from November 1965 with six chansons is referred to as a long-playing record (see the corresponding entry on discogs.com), although the number of tracks corresponds more to an EP . The EP, usually recorded with four or five titles, was the standard short format for sale in record stores in France and unlike in Germany, for example, until well into the mid-1960s; 7 ″ singles, on the other hand, were usually only intended to be used in jukeboxes and for advertising purposes. There was also such a promotional record from La chanson de Jacky (accessed on June 20, 2019).
  2. ↑ a b Gilles Verlant (ed.): L'encyclopédie de la Chanson française. Des années 40 à nos jours. Ed. Hors Collection, Paris 1997, ISBN 2-258-04635-1 , p. 49.
  3. ↑ French text at lyrics.com (accessed June 20, 2019).
  4. ^ For example, the German-language adaptation of the Brel text by Klaus Hoffmann (see the section on successes and cover versions ).
  5. ↑ Patrick Baton: Jacques Brel. L'imagination de l'impossible. Labor, Brussels 2003, ISBN 2-8040-1749-4 , p. 26 f.
  6. ↑ Based on the article “ Scott Walker: Jackie and the Inspired Translation ” from March 25, 2019 at wordpress.com (accessed October 25, 2019) “... Shuman understood the rationale of Brel's text and poured it into fluent, imaginative English. … Every word serves the music. ” .
  7. ↑ In the article " A-cute-cute in a stupid-ass way " from March 26, 2019 at wordpress.com (accessed on October 25, 2019), different ways of interpreting the two terms in American and British English are pointed out, which are mutually analogous translated as "stupid ass" or " donkey " -  ass is also a synonym for donkey (donkey).
  8. ↑ English text at songtexte.com (accessed June 20, 2019).
  9. ↑ Stéphane Hirschi, Jacques Brel, 1995, analysis of La chanson de Jacky on pp. 200–209, here p. 208; the author has taught at the Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France in Valenciennes since 1994 , where he completed his habilitation in 1998 (see Hirschi's résumé at uphf.fr, accessed on June 20, 2019).
  10. ↑ Olivier Todd, Jacques Brel, 1997, p. 9 f.
  11. ^ Carole A. Holdsworth: Modern Minstrelsy. Miguel Hernandez and Jacques Brel. Lang, Bern 1979, ISBN 3-261-04642-2 , p. 67 ( excerpt ), cites the autobiographical mon enfance as a representative of a more idealistic view .
  12. ↑ Olivier Todd, Jacques Brel, 1997, p. 535.
  13. ↑ Bruno Hongre, Paul Lidsky: L'univers poétique de Jacques Brel. L'Harmattan, Paris 1998, ISBN 2-7384-6745-8 , p. 76.
  14. ↑ a b c Dave Thompson: Commentary on La chanson de Jacky at allmusic.com (accessed June 20, 2019).
  15. ↑ Jérôme Pintoux: Les chanteurs français des années 60. Du côté de chez les yéyés et sur la Rive Gauche. Camion Blanc, Rosières-en-Haye 2015, ISBN 978-2-35779-778-9 , p. 59.
  16. ^ Siegfried P. Rupprecht: Chanson Lexicon. Between art, revolution and show - the songs and interpreters of a thousand feelings. Lexicon Imprint, Berlin 1999, ISBN 978-3-89602-201-1 , p. 62.
  17. ↑ Olivier Todd, Jacques Brel, 1997, p. 386.
  18. ↑ Jeremy Bernstein: The Singer and the Physicist. , December 1, 2004 article in The American Scholar (accessed June 20, 2019).
  19. ↑ Olivier Todd, Jacques Brel, 1997, p. 395 f.
  20. ↑ Olivier Todd, Jacques Brel, 1997, p. 399.
  21. ↑ Olivier Todd, Jacques Brel, 1997, p. 7.
  22. ↑ Stéphane Hirschi, Jacques Brel, 1995, p. 207.
  23. ↑ a b c Stéphane Hirschi, Jacques Brel, 1995, p. 201.
  24. ↑ Stéphane Hirschi, Jacques Brel, 1995, p. 202 f.
  25. ↑ To the westflandrischen Knokke Brel actually had a biographical relationship, and he has mentioned the place several times in songs such. B. in Knokke-le-Zoute Tango . In 1953 he took part in a singing competition there, in which he took 27th place out of 28 participants (Olivier Todd, Jacques Brel, 1997, p. 82). Hirschi (p. 202) thinks it is conceivable that the chansonnier wanted to take a "late revenge" for it in Jacky too .
  26. ↑ Stéphane Hirschi, Jacques Brel, 1995, p. 203.
  27. ↑ According to Hirschi (p. 203), the stylistic device known as ellipses , omitting parts of sentences, is part of the canon of typical language techniques in Brel's complete works.
  28. ↑ The ambiguous use of heure ("hour") runs like a red thread through Brel's texts; Hirschi (p. 205 f.) Gives two further examples: In L'ivrogne it is also used in the sense of "last hour", in Regarde bien, petit, however, more generally in the sense of "it is time".
  29. ↑ Stéphane Hirschi, Jacques Brel, 1995, p. 206 f.
  30. ↑ Stéphane Hirschi, Jacques Brel, 1995, pp. 208 f.
  31. ↑ Stéphane Hirschi, Jacques Brel, 1995, p. 209.
  32. ↑ Michaela Weiß: The authentic three-minute work of art. Léo Ferré and Jacques Brel - Chanson between poetry and commitment. Winter, Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 3-8253-1448-0 , pp. 26 and 217 ( excerpt ).
  33. ↑ A sheet music for this song can be found at musicnotes.com (accessed June 20, 2019).
  34. ↑ Stéphane Hirschi, Jacques Brel, 1995, p. 205.
  35. ^ Robert Dimery (Ed.): 1001 albums. Music You Should Hear Before Life Is Over. Ed. Olms, Zurich 2009, 4th edition, ISBN 978-3-28301-112-3 , p. 153.
  36. ↑ Brel was not alone in this, because the very high sales "hardly any of the most renowned chansonniers ever achieved, not even Chevalier , Trenet , Gréco , Piaf , Patachou ", as Pierre Saka, himself the author of chanson texts and books on this genre, stated - Pierre Saka: 50 ans de chanson française. France Loisirs, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-7242-5790-1 , p. 78.
  37. ↑ Discogs.com refers to a statement in Billboard dated January 29, 1966 (accessed June 20, 2019).
  38. ↑ Olivier Todd, Jacques Brel, 1997, p. 500.
  39. ^ Alfred Wahl / Pierre Lanfranchi : Les footballeurs professionnels des années trente à nos jours. Hachette, Paris 1995, ISBN 978-2-0123-5098-4 , p. 170.
  40. ↑ Quotation, tracklist and publications by Quinze ans d'amour at allmusic.com (accessed June 20, 2019).
  41. ↑ Donald Clarke (Ed.): The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Penguin, London / New York 1998, 2nd edition, ISBN 0-14-051370-1 , p. 1345.
  42. ↑ Information on the Scott Walker single at 45cat.com (accessed June 20, 2019).
  43. ^ Paul Gambaccini / Tim Rice / Jonathan Rice: British Hit Singles. Guinness Publishing, Enfield 1993, 9th Edition, ISBN 0-85112-526-3 , p. 312.
  44. ↑ Scott Walker's chart positions at everyhit.com (accessed June 20, 2019).
  45. ^ Lewis Williams: Scott Walker - The Rhymes of Goodbye. Plexus, London 2006, ISBN 978-0-85965-395-4 , p. 68; Chris Tinker: Keyword “Brel, Jacques” in Melissa Hope Ditmore: Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work. Greenwood, Santa Barbara 2006, ISBN 978-0-313-32968-5 , Volume 1, pp. 65 f.
  46. ↑ In the 1960s it was anything but unusual for certain taboo subjects such as sexuality, death and others or the use of explicit expressions to lead to broadcast boycotts on many European radio stations. So it happened around the turn of the year 1959/1960, for example, Teen Angel by Mark Dinning , which was characterized with the words "Blood Runs in the Grooves" (blood runs through the record grooves), in the USA and Great Britain (Fred Bronson: The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. Billboard Publications, New York 1992, 3rd edition, ISBN 0-8230-8298-9 , p. 65), and this is how it happened in 1968 in Michel Polnareff's chanson Le Bal des Laze in France (Fabien Lecœuvre: 1001 histoires secrètes de chansons. Éd. du Rocher, Monaco 2017, ISBN 978-2-2680-9672-8 , p. 294).
  47. ^ Pat Gilbert: The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion. Canongate, Edinburgh 2007, 4th edition, ISBN 978-1-8419-5973-3 , p. 393 ( excerpt , accessed June 20, 2019).
  48. ↑ Donald Clarke (Ed.): The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Penguin, London / New York 1998, 2nd edition, ISBN 0-14-051370-1 , p. 162.
  49. ^ Paul Gambaccini / Tim Rice / Jonathan Rice: British Hit Singles. Guinness Publishing, Enfield 1993, 9th edition, ISBN 0-85112-526-3 , p. 15.
  50. ↑ Hoffmann's live version from 1998 on YouTube (accessed June 20, 2019).
  51. ↑ Article “ Quiet signs: stories of a mature nostalgic ” from December 18, 2017 in the Flensburger Tageblatt (accessed June 20, 2019).
  52. ↑ Heltau version from 1978 on YouTube (accessed June 20, 2019).
  53. ↑ Tracklist of the LP and single , both at discogs.com (accessed June 20, 2019).
  54. ↑ Information on Ratzke's cover version at secondhandsongs.com (accessed June 20, 2019).
  55. ↑ Article “ In my battle, I'm the star ” from January 27, 2019 on tagesspiegel.de; see also Jan Böhmermann sings Janni on YouTube (both accessed on June 20, 2019).
  56. ↑ see the detailed list of all Brel cover versions at brelitude.net (accessed on June 20, 2019).
This article was added to the list of excellent articles in this version on June 23, 2019 .