Jacques Brel (1929-1978) was a Belgian singer, actor and icon of modern chanson. He wrote “wry, tortured songs…not to be sung but to be performed…with pained and profound emotion.” With Brel, “performance” was “The Thing” (including “flailing arms and guttural exclamations”). He made successful appearances in 10 feature films and directed two pictures and carried his theatrical skills into his vocal performances. His physical gyrations closely mapped lyrical and musical progressions in songs that express intense emotionalism. Original videos of his melodramatic and sweaty performances can be painful to watch. The contrast is dramatic with the understated performances of his contemporary, Georges Brassens.
By his own admission, his preferred range of subjects inclined towards things that were “ugly and sordid” or, as the Financial Times observed in 2023, “the seamy and the seedy…the depraved and diseased.” Although many consider him a poet, largely because of the clear poetic structure of his songs, he famously demurred: “I don’t write poetry. I am no poet. I write songs…A song has to be straight. It is written in order to be sung. Poetry is something you must look at below the surface, and savor in peace.”
Although Brel was a poor student in Brussels (except in French language study where he excelled), he experimented early with poetry and theatrical performance. He was strongly influenced by classical music, especially Franz Schubert and Maurice Ravel. His musical career began as a side gig in 1953 while working at his father’s cardboard factory in Belgium. It ended abruptly only 14 years later in 1967 at the height of his career. He was a protegé of Phillips Records' talent scout Jacques Canetti who took him on grueling concert tours and he made the usual rounds of the Paris cabarets. By June 1957 he won the prestigious "Grand Prix du Disque" award by the "Académie Charles Cros."
Despite unpromising beginnings, Brel managed to write over 150 songs during his career, lived a nomadic existence performing hundreds of shows each year and became an acclaimed star of the French musical world. In 1968, he mounted a musical "L'Homme de La Mancha" in Brussels, playing the lead role of Don Quixote. Eventually, tired of his grueling concert schedule, he turned to film and other pursuits including flying and sailing on his 60+ foot long yawl Askoy II. His plans to spend 3 years circumnavigating the world were prematurely sidelined by diagnosis of advanced lung cancer.
Nevertheless, his influence continued to grow. The obscure nature of Brel’s output led many interpreters to wholesale re-works of his songs rather than efforts at strict translation. As described below with the song "Ne me quitte pas," American poet Rod McKuen introduced him to a large swath of the American public. Scott Walker adapted Brel’s music in three successive albums between 1967-69 and a compilation in 1981 (“Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel”). In 1968, an off-Broadway musical revue, “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,” presented 25 of Brel’s songs in English that were adapted by playwright Eric Blau and singer/songwriter Mort Shuman. It ran for 4 years and spawned numerous regional and international productions and eventually a film in 1975, thereby ensuring Brel's enduring impact on music and culture. David Bowie covered Brel’s songs “My Death” and “Amsterdam” during the 1970s and in 2003 Bowie cited the cast recording of the off-Broadway production in a list of his 25 favorite albums. Brel’s songs have seen numerous translations with wide variations. Covers of Brel songs by other artists make listening to original, filmed versions an exercise in the recovery of authenticity.
Brel had a tortured relationship with his ethnic identity, his social class, and family members. Born in a Belgian Flemish family but raised in French, he rattled between admiration of the Dutch countryside (“le plat pays”) and disgust at his Flemish roots. He had contempt for his family’s bourgeois social and economic values, which he equated with security and mediocrity, and its patriarchal structure. He left his family and spent his most productive years (1961-71) in a villa at Roquebrune Cap-Martin on the French Riviera with his mistress Sylvie Rivet. He took up sailing later in life and spent much time on the open sea. His personal relationships ended in a tangle of controversy with his wife, whom he never divorced, his 3 children, and his mistress’s relatives. A smoker, drinker and philanderer, Brel died in 1978 at 49 from lung cancer and was buried on Hiva Oa in the Marquesas, French Polynesia, a mere stone’s throw from Paul Gauguin. The epitaph by his tomb reads in part:
Homme de voiles
Homme d’étoiles
Ce troubadour
Enchanta nos vies
De la Mer du Nord
Aux Marquises
In the songs featured here, Brel's emotional range stretches from love ("Quand On N'a Que L'Amour") to despair ("Ne Me Quitte Pas") and disgust ("Le Port d'Amsterdam").
By his own admission, his preferred range of subjects inclined towards things that were “ugly and sordid” or, as the Financial Times observed in 2023, “the seamy and the seedy…the depraved and diseased.” Although many consider him a poet, largely because of the clear poetic structure of his songs, he famously demurred: “I don’t write poetry. I am no poet. I write songs…A song has to be straight. It is written in order to be sung. Poetry is something you must look at below the surface, and savor in peace.”
Although Brel was a poor student in Brussels (except in French language study where he excelled), he experimented early with poetry and theatrical performance. He was strongly influenced by classical music, especially Franz Schubert and Maurice Ravel. His musical career began as a side gig in 1953 while working at his father’s cardboard factory in Belgium. It ended abruptly only 14 years later in 1967 at the height of his career. He was a protegé of Phillips Records' talent scout Jacques Canetti who took him on grueling concert tours and he made the usual rounds of the Paris cabarets. By June 1957 he won the prestigious "Grand Prix du Disque" award by the "Académie Charles Cros."
Despite unpromising beginnings, Brel managed to write over 150 songs during his career, lived a nomadic existence performing hundreds of shows each year and became an acclaimed star of the French musical world. In 1968, he mounted a musical "L'Homme de La Mancha" in Brussels, playing the lead role of Don Quixote. Eventually, tired of his grueling concert schedule, he turned to film and other pursuits including flying and sailing on his 60+ foot long yawl Askoy II. His plans to spend 3 years circumnavigating the world were prematurely sidelined by diagnosis of advanced lung cancer.
Nevertheless, his influence continued to grow. The obscure nature of Brel’s output led many interpreters to wholesale re-works of his songs rather than efforts at strict translation. As described below with the song "Ne me quitte pas," American poet Rod McKuen introduced him to a large swath of the American public. Scott Walker adapted Brel’s music in three successive albums between 1967-69 and a compilation in 1981 (“Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel”). In 1968, an off-Broadway musical revue, “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,” presented 25 of Brel’s songs in English that were adapted by playwright Eric Blau and singer/songwriter Mort Shuman. It ran for 4 years and spawned numerous regional and international productions and eventually a film in 1975, thereby ensuring Brel's enduring impact on music and culture. David Bowie covered Brel’s songs “My Death” and “Amsterdam” during the 1970s and in 2003 Bowie cited the cast recording of the off-Broadway production in a list of his 25 favorite albums. Brel’s songs have seen numerous translations with wide variations. Covers of Brel songs by other artists make listening to original, filmed versions an exercise in the recovery of authenticity.
Brel had a tortured relationship with his ethnic identity, his social class, and family members. Born in a Belgian Flemish family but raised in French, he rattled between admiration of the Dutch countryside (“le plat pays”) and disgust at his Flemish roots. He had contempt for his family’s bourgeois social and economic values, which he equated with security and mediocrity, and its patriarchal structure. He left his family and spent his most productive years (1961-71) in a villa at Roquebrune Cap-Martin on the French Riviera with his mistress Sylvie Rivet. He took up sailing later in life and spent much time on the open sea. His personal relationships ended in a tangle of controversy with his wife, whom he never divorced, his 3 children, and his mistress’s relatives. A smoker, drinker and philanderer, Brel died in 1978 at 49 from lung cancer and was buried on Hiva Oa in the Marquesas, French Polynesia, a mere stone’s throw from Paul Gauguin. The epitaph by his tomb reads in part:
Homme de voiles
Homme d’étoiles
Ce troubadour
Enchanta nos vies
De la Mer du Nord
Aux Marquises
In the songs featured here, Brel's emotional range stretches from love ("Quand On N'a Que L'Amour") to despair ("Ne Me Quitte Pas") and disgust ("Le Port d'Amsterdam").
Love: The Kiss, Robert Doisneaux, 1950
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Despair: Ne Me Quitte Pas, Czar Catstick, 1915
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Disgust: Le Port d'Amsterdam
Jacques Brel Songs:
Quand On N'a Que L'Amour (When We Only Have Love)
Ne me Quitte Pas (Don't Leave Me)
Amsterdam (The Port of Amsterdam)
Quand On N'a Que L'Amour (When We Only Have Love)
Ne me Quitte Pas (Don't Leave Me)
Amsterdam (The Port of Amsterdam)