In an issue of "Historically yours" devoted to missing poets, Stéphane Bern tells the story of the life of the author, composer and performer Serge Gainsbourg.

The artist, who marked the history of French song as much by the songs he sang as by those he wrote to others, died on March 2, 1991, just 30 years ago .

As part of the special day that Europe 1 dedicates to Serge Gainsbourg for the 30th anniversary of his death, Stéphane Bern

 tells the story of Lucien Ginsurg, a student at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, who will become the author

in 

Historically yours.

, composer and performer Serge Gainsbourg, one of the major artists of 20th century French song.

A story to listen to on the antenna of Europe 1 Tuesday, from 4 p.m.

We all have in mind one of his songs, a chorus, or an image.

He sang

Eau à la Bouche

,

Bonnie and Clyde

,

La Javanaise

or

La chanson de Prévert

.

His texts were sometimes provocative, sometimes moving, often both, in the image of their author.

Here is the fate of a major poet, who passed away 30 years ago, Serge Gainsbourg. 

>> Find the shows of Matthieu Noël and Stéphane Bern in replay and podcast here

Beginnings in transformist cabarets

Let's go back to 1950s France, heading for the Parisian district of Pigalle.

Serge Gainsbourg is still called Lucien Ginsburg.

He walks on the Place Pigalle, a guitar on his back and a drawing board under his arm.

The student of Fine Arts, who is destined to become a painter, makes a little money in the evening, playing a few notes in the local cabarets.

And the least we can say is that Lucien does not feel like a fish in water!

At "Madame Arthur", a burlesque cabaret renowned for its transformist acts, the shy petit bourgeois does task in the decor and the cheeky atmosphere.

His style of a young man from a good family, who has never worn "blue jeans" before, offers a funny contrast to the transvestite dancers who surround him.

The ambition to become a great painter

Lucien has been working on music since his childhood: one hour of piano a day, alongside a father who rocked him to the notes of the greatest virtuosos.

In the gramophone of the family apartment, his father Joseph Ginsburg plays Stravinsky, Debussy or Chopin records.

But, for the moment, Lucien's real passion, his only ambition, is painting, a major art that far exceeds the finest scores.

He despises popular music, which he considers a minor art.

So with a few tickets in his pocket, the student pays for brushes, pencils and colors and locks himself in his small attic studio, very close to Avenue Foch.

There, drowned in the white curls of his cigarettes, he pencils, corrects, paints ...

But soon Lucien writes, too.

In his small notebook, he writes song lyrics for popular performers, just to collect some royalties by depositing his works. 

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In fact, Ginsburg wields words as well as the brush.

And, with the passing years, hopes of making a living from his paintings dwindle.

But the idea of ​​becoming a singer is gaining ground.

Lucien clicked while listening to a famous poet of the time.

One evening in 1954, when he was hired as a pianist-guitarist at Milord l'Arsouille, a cabaret on the right bank, Ginsburg was captivated by Boris Vian's performance, his lyrics, his hallucinating presence.

And by his cynicism, too.

What was a simple livelihood becomes a vocation.

This minor art of music, he will do something with it.

In anger not to break into painting, Lucien Ginsburg burns his canvases, and moves like Serge Gainsbourg.

Songs for others, feminine

The artist then begins to sing a character well known to Parisians in a hurry: the puncher of the RATP.

But, on the stage of Milord l'Arsouille, Serge Gainsbourg is paralyzed by stage fright.

He does not glance at the public.

The public is amused by this sad scrawny guy, his cyranian nose and his huge protruding ears.

Serge finds only one remedy for stage fright, alcohol.

However, drunkenness is never enough to evacuate this visceral fear from the scene, you always need an extra dose.

So this scene, Serge Gainsbourg abandons it for a while.

But the little notebook is always at hand.

He scribbles it with rhymes, precise puns and onomatopoeias.

With his writing without punctuation, he delivers texts to the great names of French song.

Starting with the muse of all Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the one everyone is tearing off, Juliette Gréco.

In 1963, he wrote to her La Javanaise.

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The first successes of the uninhibited poet arrive, with songs written for others: Serge Gainsbourg writes for women, for Françoise Hardy, for France Gall.

But there is another for whom the artist would like to write songs.

She is the most famous blonde in the world.

His initials?

BB.

Determined to seduce her, Serge picks up his phone to call Brigitte Bardot.

That day, Beauty and the Beast got drunk with glasses of champagne in front of the piano.

This is the start of an 86-day passion.

One night, she asks him to write the most beautiful love song.

With the first rays of the sun, his wish is granted by the scandalous four minutes of amorous groans of 

Je t'aime, moi non plus

.

Up to 50 Gypsies per day

One morning in the 1970s, while Serge Gainsbourg put on his iconic bet of white Repetto to spin in the studio, he was seized with uneasiness.

Her heart is crying for help.

But while waiting for help, the man with the head of cabbage does not lose the sense of priorities.

He may suffocate, Serge Gainsbourg does not forget to stuff several packs of cigarettes in his briefcase.

What would he do without his faithful brunettes?

La Gitane is his best friend.

He consumes at least 20 per day.

Gray days are more like 50. During his convalescence in hospital, the artist overcomes boredom by summoning journalists to his bedside.

He persists: he will treat himself with a cocktail in his hand, a cigarette in the other. 

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Its excesses are wreaking havoc, and not just on its damaged carcass.

Serge Gainsbourg had loved him for twelve years, but Jane Birkin left him.

She leaves from 5 bis rue Verneuil never to set foot there again.

The fear inspired by the dark Gainsbarre took over the love she had for Serge.

Especially since this double ethyl takes up more and more space.

Serge Gainsbourg admits it, he put on a mask that sticks so strongly to his skin that he can no longer remove it: that of the cursed poet.

Jan Birkin left, he wrote to her among his most beautiful songs:

Fleeing happiness lest it run away

Chic underwear

... He will give her songs until his death.

The 1980s were the decade of all excess, but also of all provocations.

Gainsbourg exhibits himself on television as a neglected man, with his graying beard of three nights and his air never really sober.

The Pastis 51 flows freely every evening and plunges Gainsbarre into parallel worlds.

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The neighborhood police have become good friends.

They often bring the tipsy night owl home.

Rumor has it that a sergeant has a duplicate of his bunch of keys.

In fact, since his scandalous version of

La Marseillaise

in reggae, Serge is inhabited by melancholy.

He saw himself as a misunderstood artist.

But Serge Gainsbourg always finds his pen and his piano, this Steinway on which a portrait of Frédéric Chopin alongside a photo of Sid Vicious, the scandalous bassist of the Sex Pistols.

This association is in his image.

Soaked in classical culture, Serge Gainsbourg has always liked to do something new with something old.

Listen

to Wax doll, sound doll

, you will hear Beethoven.

Listen,

Initials BB

, you might recognize Antonín Dvořák.

By dint of provoking the mower, she ends up surprising the poet.

His heart, which he called his "misfortune pump", told him "stop" for good on March 2, 1991. Serge Gainsbourg had written in a book that he would try to join Arthur Rimbaud, that he would find him one day .

Since his departure, the public has never stopped humming the lines, scandalous or sensitive, of Serge Gainsbourg.

A 20th century poet who has gone, as Verlaine says so well, to the bad winds.