Jacques Brel: Amsterdam

Brel wrote and first performed "Amsterdam" in 1964 while he was living seaside in a villa at Roquebrune Cap-Martin in Provence overlooking the "Côte d’Azur." The performance was live at the Olympia in Paris; Brel never did a studio version and actually never liked the song. It recounts imagined exploits by Flemish sailors, drunks and whores in the Dutch port of Amsterdam (Brel was Flemish). Brel once commented that he wanted to create a “sea-song which resembled a Breugel painting” and he largely succeeded with his debauched imagery.

Detail, Pieter Breughel Elder,"Fight Between Carnival & Lent," 1559

Brel also clearly expresses criticism at immoral behavior. The melody borrows a 16th century English folk song “A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves” (commonly known as “Greensleeves”) and traces a powerful musical crescendo (“Brelian Crescendo”) that transports listeners from the song’s opening with languorous ocean torpors to its culmination in frantic, sweaty, unbridled sex.

The song has a strong structure of 4 groups of 4 stanzas each with varied rhyming schemes. The emphatic words “dans le port d’Amsterdam” introduce each group and are peppered throughout. Translation of Brel’s obscure words, metaphors and images is notoriously difficult (“décroisser la lune?” “croquer la fortune?” “bouffer des haubans?” “langueurs océanes?” “soleils crachés?”) so one is forced to take interpretive liberties. One wonders occasionally if some of the obscurity may arise from a dogged search for matching rhymes.

“Amsterdam” exemplifies the contribution of an artist’s live “performance” to the overall impact of a song’s music and words on an audience. Simply reading the lyrics or listening to a recording of “Amsterdam” provides only half a meal. Perhaps not coincidentally, Brel never recorded a studio version of the song, which survives only in a live video recording from the historic Olympia music hall in Paris. Brel’s “performance” comprises his elocution, the robust sounds and syllabic structure of words, his urgent tone of voice, gesticulations, and the dynamic musical crescendo.

The word “Amsterdam,” re-iterated almost accusingly 11 times throughout the song takes on a life of its own with its 3-syllable structure and the repetitive “ah” sound. Reportedly, the original setting for the song was the town of Zeebrugge, but the sonority of the word Amsterdam took precedence. The plural structure of verbs (ending in “ent”) recounting sailors’ exploits creates a verbal and visual rhythm that would have gone missing had the subject (sailors) been singular. Many words contain explosive “eur,” “ss,” “v” and rolling “r” sounds that punctuate the narrative and support Brel’s prominent mouth, lips and teeth in their leading role.

Dans le port d’Amsterdam
Y’a des marins qui chantent
Les rêves qui les hantent
Au large d’Amsterdam

Dans le port d’Amsterdam
Y’a des marins qui dorment
Comme des oriflammes
Le long des berges mornes

Dans le port d’Amsterdam
Y’a des marins qui meurent
Pleins de bière et de drames
Aux premières lueurs

Mais dans le port d’Amsterdam
Y’a des marins qui naissent
Dans la chaleur épaisse
Des langueurs océanes

Dans le port d’Amsterdam
Y’a des marins qui mangent
Sur des nappes trop blanches
Des poissons ruisselants

Ils vous montrent des dents
A croquer la fortune
A décroisser la Lune
A bouffer des haubans

Et ça sent la morue
Jusque dans le cœur des frites
Que leurs grosses mains invitent
A revenir en plus

Puis se lèvent en riant
Dans un bruit de tempête
Referment leur braguette
Et sortent en rotant

Dans le port d’Amsterdam
Y’a des marins qui dansent
En se frottant la panse
Sur la panse des femmes

Et ils tournent et ils dansent
Comme des soleils crachés
Dans le son déchiré
D’un accordéon rance

Ils se tordent le cou
Pour mieux s’entendre rire
Jusqu’à ce que tout à coup
L’accordéon expire

Alors le geste grave
Alors le regard fier
Ils ramènent leur batave
Jusqu’en pleine lumière

Dans le port d’Amsterdam
Y’a des marins qui boivent
Et qui boivent et reboivent
Et qui reboivent encore

Ils boivent a la santé
Des putains d’Amsterdam
De Hambourg et d’ailleurs
Enfin ils boivent aux dames

Qui leur donnent leur joli corps
Qui leur donnent leur vertu
Pour une piece en or
Et quand ils ont bien bu

Se plantent le nez au ciel
Se mouchent dans les étoiles
Et ils pissent comme je pleure
Sur les femmes infidèles

Dans le port d’Amsterdam
Dans le port d’Amsterdam

In the port of Amsterdam
There are sailors who sing
The dreams that haunt them
Off the coast of Amsterdam

In the port of Amsterdam
There are sailors who sleep
Like battle standards
Stretched along gloomy riverbanks

In the port of Amsterdam
There are sailors who die
Full of beer and dramas
At the day’s early light

But in the port of Amsterdam
There are sailors who are born
In the clammy heat
Of oceanic torpor

In the port of Amsterdam
There are sailors who eat,
On tablecloths too white
Their dripping fish

They show you their teeth
To chew up fate
To chomp on the moon
To devour shrouds

And it smells like codfish
Into the core of (French) fries
That their big hands invite
To come back for more

Then they rise laughing
In the noise of a storm
Zip up their flies
And leave burping

In the port of Amsterdam
There are sailors who dance
While rubbing their bellies
On the bellies of women

And they turn and they dance
Like splattering suns
In the raucous sound
Of a rank accordion

They twist their necks
To better hear themselves laugh
Until suddenly
The accordion dies

Then a solemn gesture
Then a proud look
They sleep with their sluts
Until the full light of dawn

In the port of Amsterdam
There are sailors who drink
And who drink and drink again
And who still drink again

They drink to the health
Of the whores of Amsterdam
Of Hamburg and elsewhere
Finally, they drink to the ladies

Who give them their pretty bodies
Who give them their virginity
For a piece of gold
And when they’ve really drunk

Point their noses to the sky
Snort to the stars
And they piss like I cry
On the faithless women

In the port of Amsterdam
In the port of Amsterdam

NB:

“oriflamme:” an historic reference to the French royal scarlet banner or standard used in battle.
“batave:” means Batavian, an obsolete reference to Holland. Here it refers to Dutch women.

Adaptations

Jacques Brel’s song "Amsterdam” had at least two English language adaptations during the 1960s, by Mort Shuman and Rod McKuen. They introduced Brel’s music to the English-speaking world. The name of the song didn’t change much in its handoff from French to English, however, perhaps because no other port fit the description that Brel sketched in the song. But it was also due to the musical sonority of the word itself.

Shuman & Pomus

Mort Shuman: Like most Americans, Mortimer Shuman was born in Brooklyn. Like many in the music industry, he was also Jewish and his parents were Polish immigrants. He was a singer but mostly a songwriter and teamed up with Doc Pomus (Jerome Solon Felder), 13 years his senior, in New York’s Brill Building, a covey for the music industry. Together, they wrote a large number of songs for top performing artists with Shuman mostly composing music and Pomus writing lyrics.

Shuman & Brel

During the 1960s Shuman moved to London and continued working there with English artists. Shuman then moved to Paris where he met Jacques Brel and eventually returned to the US with a hoard of Brel records. He adapted them into English with Eric Blau and created the off-Broadway musical review “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.” It opened at the Village Gate on January 22, 1968, and played 1,847 performances. It included 26 songs and the show ran from 1968-1972 followed by regional and international spinoffs, revivals and a French-Canadian musical film. In the film, Shuman sings "Amsterdam" in a bar while Brel nurses a beer in a corner. The Off-Broadway show provides the “origin story” of many English adaptations of Brel songs.

Shuman and Blau adapted Brel’s song, “Amsterdam” into English with “The port of Amsterdam” as a title. From there, first Scott Walker (1967) and then David Bowie (1973) recorded versions of Shuman's adaptation. As for Shuman, he returned to Paris for 15 years during the 1970s, married a French woman, became a pop star and in 1986 they relocated to London. He lived an extraordinary life that ended in 1991, a bit short of his 53rd year. He is buried in a Bordeaux, France, cemetery. In 1992, he was inducted to the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

McKuen Too: Rod McKuen moved to France in the early 1960s and made his own adaptations of Brel songs (like "Amsterdam" and "Ne me quitte pas") and those of other French singers and released his own recordings. The McKuen version of "Amsterdam" was something of a personal poetic fancy, but a few other artists like John Denver did "covers" of McKuen's adaptation.

Comparing Adaptations (click here for a look at side-by-side lyrics by Brel, Brel translation, Shuman, and McKuen)

Shuman’s version is not a literal translation of Brel. It hews pretty closely to the course of Brel’s narrative but takes significant liberties with the content. McKuen, on the other hand sails off on a different ship entirely but in the same direction. The structure of Shuman’s version replicates Brel’s 4-line stanzas and McKuen’s text can also be coaxed into 4-line per stanza. While Brel’s rhyme sequence is ABBA, Shuman manages at best to capture 2 end-line rhymes each stanza but varies the pattern. McKuen’s rhymes are mainly ABCB but some stanzas have none. Shuman converts Brel’s sailors to a single individual while McKuen includes both. This may not matter in English, but in French plural word forms matter. Describing individual sailors rather than plural sailers in French would undermine the musicality of Brel's language (try "qui dort" instead of "qui dorment") throughout the song.

Vocal Renditions

The song presents an interpretive challenge with its stanzas that repeat the same chord progression and the rising crescendo and quickening tempo of the madcap “Brelian” pace. Nobody does it better than Brel in his live performance at Olympia from 1966, but both Walker and Bowie deal with it by modulating their vocal delivery and beginning the crescendo gradually only after the 4th stanza. Walker brings a fulsome baritone and orchestral accompaniment while Bowie relies on acoustic guitar and plaintive articulation. McKuen’s delivery is less agile and seems hurried.

While it's a bit much to digest, after the outline above it seems right to present the 3 leading English language vocal versions of "Amsterdam" in succession: Walker, Bowie and McKuen.

Scott Walker (Shuman Adaptation)

Scott Walker: Scott Walker (born Noel Scott Engel) began his career as a member of the Walker Brothers trio who were neither brothers nor Walkers. They were Californians who decided to swim against the invading British tide in the 1960s and went to London and became huge stars with Scott as the lead singer. Beginning 1967, Scott hived off on a solo career with his debut album “Scott” that included his rendition of the Shuman-translated “Amsterdam” as well as two other Brel songs "Mathilde" and "My Death." Walker also included Brel songs on his next two albums "Scott 2" (1968) and "Scott 3" (1969).

David Bowie (Shuman Adaptation, BBC 1970)

David Bowie first heard Brel’s songs on Scott Walker’s album “Scott.” In 1968, Bowie also attended the London performance of “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.” He became a big fan of Brel, leading to a number of eerie coincidences in their careers. Bowie recorded his own rendition of “Amsterdam” in 1971 and released it in 1973 as the B-side of his single “Sorrow.” It is an instrumentally spare version with only acoustic guitar. Over the years, Bowie made several different recordings of "Amsterdam." Bowie also recorded a McKuen adaptation of Brel's "La Mort" ("My Death"). Both songs became part of his repertoire and in a 2003 interview with “Vanity Fair,” he cited the original cast album of “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris” (released 1968) as one of his 25 favorite albums.

Rod McKuen (McKuen Adaptation)

Rod McKuen included 12 Brel songs including “(The Port of) Amsterdam” on his album “Rod McKuen Sings Jacques Brel” in 1968. This combination of two especially distinctive artists on one record made a strange brew that some fans of each artist found hard to swallow. McKuen also included “Amsterdam” on a live album recorded October 15, 1971 at the “Concertgebouw” in Amsterdam and released by Stanyan Records.

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