Jacques Brel: La Vie Bohème

by Alan Clayson

From his childhood days in Belgium in the early 1930s to the final reclusive years on a remote Pacific island in the late 1970s, this expansive study chronicles the life of the iconic Belgian chansonnier Jacques Brel. With new and rediscovered information, the narrative presents an extremely candid exploration of both a figurehead and a respected authority of modern songwriting whose global impact comes not from one or two standard songs—such as Seasons in the Sun and If You Go Away—but from myriad items spread over decades of translated covers and revivals. The survey examines the artist’s determination to avoid a legacy with the family cardboard business and develop a cultural life; it follows Brel's metamorphosis from a modest success as a vocalist in Belgium to a professional singer and songwriter in Paris and, ultimately, an international star. In addition to detailing the artist's parallel fame as an actor and director, the biography provides insight into Brel's attempts to sail around the world in a yacht and his enchantment with flight. The artist’s influence on later artists, including David Bowie, Judy Collins, and Scott Walker, is also detailed along with a recognition of his ongoing impact on modern-day musicians such as Marc Almond, Tom Robinson, Glen Matlock, and Nick “Momus” Currie.

Genres: Biography, Music

300 pages, Paperback

First published January 25, 1996

About the author

Alan Clayson (Dover, England, 1951) is of a late 1970s vintage of composer-entertainers that also embraces the likes of Wreckless Eric, Tom Robinson, Elvis Costello and John Otway. While he is still making regular concert appearances, he has become better known as an author of around thirty books - mostly musical biography. These include the best-sellers "Backbeat" (subject of a major film), The Yardbirds and The Beatles book box.

He has written for journals as diverse as The Guardian, Record Collector, Ink, Mojo, Mediaeval World, Folk Roots, Guitar, Hello!, Drummer, The Times, The Independent, Ugly Things and, as a 'teenager, the notorious Schoolkids 0z. He has also been engaged to perform and lecture on both sides of the Atlantic - as well as broadcast on national TV and radio.

From 1975 to 1985, he led the legendary Clayson and the Argonauts - who reformed in 2005, ostensibly to launch Sunset On A Legend, a long-awaited double-CD retrospective - and was thrust to 'a premier position on rock's Lunatic Fringe' (Melody Maker).

As shown by the existence of a US fan club - dating from an 1992 soiree in Chicago - Alan Clayson's following grows still as well as demand for his talents as a record producer, and the number of versions of his compositions by such diverse acts as Dave Berry (in whose backing group, he played keyboards in the mid-1980s), New Age Outfit, Stairway - and Joy Tobing, winner of the Indonesian version of Pop Idol. He has worked too with The Portsmouth Sinfonia, Wreckless Eric, Twinkle, The Yardbirds, The Pretty Things, Mark Astronaut and the late Screaming Lord Sutch among many others. While his stage act defies succinct description, he has been labelled a 'chansonnier' in recent years for performances and record releases that may stand collectively as Alan Clayson's artistic apotheosis were it not for a promise of surprises yet to come.

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alan Clayson's subject matters are always interesting, yet the book themselves suck. I got the impression that he is told by his publisher to do a book on so-so and he probably delivers that book within 6 months. I don't get the impression he really knows the subject that well. I didn't really like this book nor his book on the great Serge Gainsbourg. If you want to read it for some 'facts' that's ok, but his work is not that good.

[Dan Brookes · Rating 1 out of 5]

Brel was masterful. And, in the story of his life and career, there is probably a good biography to be written. From the factory floor to the stage, renewing the vitality of Francophone music as a Flem, meeting the camera eye with his unrestrained passion. It's not quite Motley Crue as a lifestyle, but there's something to work with.

Clayson's book is miserable and overwrought. He loves Brel, possibly a little too much, so I understand the temptation to meet the sensual and lovelorn poetry of Brel with a poetic form that matches. But it doesn't work precisely because Clayson is a British fan, working in a language that generates eye-rolls when you attempt to inject too much poetry into exercises that, at their heart, are functional.

On every page there is this purple lip smacking that blockades my desire to press on into the life of this curious force. I wish I had the book in front of me to copy out excerpts, but I left it on a desk in an office I don't go back to in the hope that someone will hoover it up.

It should be said that, generally speaking, I find music documentary and biography fairly prone to being mediocre. They often just reify the myth for understandable reasons: the implied reader is the super fan, not the discerning reader or viewer, so criticism of any kind is only going to convert into an unread or unseen product. Clayson isn't actually above the odd playful jab here and there, but ultimately this is a book for uncritical fans only.

[Eveline · Rating 1 out of 5]

Going to keep it short. I’m not finished with the book yet. I want to trudge through it but trudging it is. The writing style is so complex and hyperbole over the top. What a drag. I’m just so curious about him that I’ll try to stick with it. Author is apparently trying to make a short story long with a lot of unnecessary verbiage.

[Alec Downie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much time spent on similes not enough time spent on stories that got to the soul of Brel.

If anyone can recommend a good book on Brel, please do.

[Nick Sweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was always intrigued by Jacques Brel's music, but whenever I heard any of it, rendered into English by English-speaking acts, I was usually underwhelmed. I tried hard to like Bowie's renditions of My Death and Amsterdam, but really wasn't very impressed. I find Scott Walker unlistenable, and nor was I grabbed by Marc Almond's versions of Brel - again, another artist I really like. The dreadful Seasons in the Sun didn't do Brel any favours - actually, not true, as its being a huge smash got lots of money flowing into the Brel coffers - and I hated most of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, which made Brel into twee theatre music. I had to like one homespun attempt at Brel, and the Alex Harvey Band's version of Au Suivant/Next really got into the spirit of the tune. I also like Beirut's version of Le Moribund.

I find Brel's own recordings patchy, but all have moments of sheer brilliance. He is very much of the sixties, I think, though his recording career spans the fifties and seventies

I enjoyed Alan Clayson's book. For a start, he avoids that awful rock journalism style that usually puts me off 'this kind of thing'. He tells Brel's story very economically. He covers all the main points of Brel's life; his dread of becoming one of the bourgeoisie (and ending up in one of his own songs - though in fact he does write himself into several) and joining the family business. His early stabs at writing, and his early successes in Belgium and in France, and the gruelling life he spent on the road for a few years, for a ten-minute spot on a cabaret bill in the middle of nowhere. Clayson shows it all without pathos or sentimentality, and I think Brel would have approved of this aspect of the book.

Brel was not an easy man to get on with, to like, or to love. He wasn't outwardly egotistical on the subject of his genius; I think part of him realised that he was simply a singer of songs in a world that, increasingly, no longer needed them, and that his fame and fortune hung by a thread. With this love-him-or-hate-him character, he attracted only those who were willing to put up with his artistic temperament. He was a bit of a serial monogamist, and yet never left the lives of his long-suffering wife, Miche, nor that of his daughters Chantal and France.

Brel acted in 12 films between 1956 and 1976, and directed one. He was also a sailor and an aviator - had he not become a singer and writer, you feel, he would have been a great success in either of these fields. In his final years, these two particular metiers aided him in truly getting away from it all in the South Sea islands, a bit like Gauguin, and really helped him go where no paparazzi were willing to follow.

Brel still means little in the English-speaking world, and his story shows just how widely he was revered in the French-speaking one, and reminds us that there are other cultures out there that are worthy of investigation.

[Bret · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this to be a solid bio, written with great insight and wit. I salute Clayson for attempting a near-impossible task (writing an English-language bio of someone who was so iconically Belgian/French, and who didn't -- or chose not to-- speak English). It needed to be another 200 pages to fully explain the Brel phenomenon to those of us in the States who have had so little exposure to him and French pop culture (I, for one, was ignorant to the long history of the chansonnier). If only someone would publish a volume of Brel's lyrics, with French printed side-by-side with English translations (and detailed annotations). But then, as soon as you translate his lyrics into English, you begin to dissolve the originality of Brel's work. Sigh. I guess I just need to learn to speak French.