Léo Ferré (1916-1993) was a poet, composer, and performer born in Monaco where his father was staff manager at Monte-Carlo Casino and his mother a dressmaker of Italian origin. Unlike many of the artists under consideration, he came from a wealthy family and had an early interest and educational exposure to music. He joined the choir of Monaco Cathedral and attended classical music performances with his uncle at the Monte Carlo Opera. He experienced a childhood under stern parentage and tutelage for 8 years in a Catholic boarding school in Bordighera, Italy. During high school, he gained exposure to artists and performances as a freelance music critic for a newspaper in Monaco. Between 1935-39, he studied at university in Paris (his father forbade attending the Conservatory), returned to Monaco and married after serving with the military in Algeria. With Edith Piaf’s encouragement, in 1946, he “went up” to Paris for yeoman’s work in the basement venues of the Latin Quarter’s cabaret circuit (“caves à chansons”) where many French singers made their debut.
His lifestyle was exotic and peripatetic and his music was equally eclectic and esoteric. A self-proclaimed anarchist with long, unkempt hair and black garb (which reportedly inspired Juliette Greco), his anarchist professions fit strangely with his subsequent choices of residence. From 1959, he bought and lived in a medieval fort (Fort du Guesclin) on a small tidal island in Brittany (accessible only at low tide). It sat off the coast at St. Malo where exposure to the North Atlantic seacoast nourished his songwriting. Between 1963-68, he lived at the dilapidated 14th century Chateau Pechrigal in the Lot region of southwestern France between Toulouse and Bordeaux. While there, he and his second wife Madeleine (Rabereau) raised a veritable “Noah’s Ark” menagerie of chimpanzees and other animals that eventually got out of control and took over the asylum.
After the 1968 student upheavals in Paris and the death of his pet chimp Pépée, at age 52 Ferré experienced a career renaissance propelled by a younger generation in sync with his left-wing views, “hippy” demeanor, and the libertarian spirit of Ferré’s songs like “C’Est Extra.” The latter became a cult song. His celebrity peaked in January 1969 with a joint radio interview with Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel pictured below, two other pillars of the “chanson” tradition. It was an incongruous encounter, because they had seldom met and had little in common musically. Nevertheless, photos like the one below captured the rare meeting and remain cultural icons.
Jacques Brel, Léo Ferré, Georges Brassens
Eventually, disillusionment set in on all sides (his concerts were disrupted by left-wing activists). Beginning 1969, Ferré spent his final 25 years with his third wife, Marie-Christine Diaz. She was a daughter of Spanish Basque immigrants who worked in the Ferré household in Pechrigal and was 30 years younger than Léo. They moved to a farmhouse in Castellina, Tuscany, now known as the Azienda Agricola San Donatino, between Florence and Siena.
During his career, Ferré released some forty albums in highly varied styles, composing the music and most of the lyrics. Especially during the early years, singer Catherine Sauvage was a regular vocal interpreter of his songs. He had many hit singles, especially between 1960 and the mid-seventies when he worked with arranger Jean-Michel Defaye. He released several albums with musical arrangements for the “poètes maudits” (poet outcasts) Louis Aragon, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine and Paul Rimbaud. In later years, he served frequently as an orchestral conductor.
His classic songs of the “chanson” repertoire populated the music scene in France for more than 30 years. These included “Paris Canaille,” “Jolie Mome,” and the songs featured on this site: "Avec le Temps," “C’Est Extra,” and "Pauvre Rutebeuf," These last three works are actually poems, with rhythmic structure, (mostly) rhyming lines, and evocative language. In each case, the title of the song is a refrain that punctuates the stanzaic structure. Given the imaginative language, segments of “Avec Le Temps” and “C’est Extra” are challenging for translation not simply because the words and expressions are difficult but because their intended meaning remains obscure.
Léo Ferré Songs:
C'Est Extra (It's Great)
Avec Le Temps (With Time)
Pauvre Rutebeuf (Poor Rutebeuf)