Paris (AFP)
"I came to tell you that I'm going" ... March 2, 1991, Serge Gainsbourg leaves this time without warning.
A heart attack, devastating, while he is at home, alone, in Paris.
"The Man with the Cabbage Head" is 62 years old.
It's the weekend of the end of the Gulf War.
The news fell in the night from Saturday to Sunday: "Serge Gainsbourg is dead, we learn from a good source from the firefighters of Paris," AFP announced at 00:35.
In the evening, in front of the house at 5 bis rue de Verneuil, Bambou, his last companion, was worried when he did not answer - no one has the keys when he was dialing - and alerted the emergency services.
We find him lying naked on the ground.
A shock but not a surprise as the author of "Je t'aime moi non plus" burned his life at both ends.
In recent years, Gainsbourg has given way to Gainsbarre, his Mr Hyde, further increasing his consumption of alcohol and gypsies and sinking into the nightlife.
There have already been alerts, death knocked on his door.
1973, first heart attack;
1989, heavy liver operation;
then another heart attack and new hospitalization.
Lately, however, the king of provocation has tried to find peace and rest.
To compose his last album, which he will record in the spring in New Orleans, he takes refuge for six months with the starred chef Marc Meneau in Vézelay (Yonne).
He talks a lot about death, omnipresent in his life - as a child, he wore the yellow star - and his work.
She terrorizes him.
Like a final snub, he scripted a real-fake posthumous interview that Liberation publishes when the day comes.
"Well, I'm dead (...) It's the heart that gave out. No, it's more of an overdose of lead. It was quite overwhelming. And then, I was exceptionally weak", presages- there then.
Many do not learn of his death until early in the morning.
On Sundays, hundreds of people, silent, come to lay flowers or write messages on the white facade of the house already full of graffiti.
Soon a place of pilgrimage.
"We are far from the large crowds gathered in front of the homes of Piaf, Claude François or Dalida, a few hours after their disappearance. Rue de Verneuil, no scenes of hysteria, no sobs, no brandished portraits. Rather a resignation to this death long announced by Gainsbourg himself ", testifies an AFP journalist.
- Between Baudelaire and Sartre -
Relatives parade, his ex-partner Jane Birkin in the lead.
A rabbi comes by to say the ritual prayers.
President François Mitterrand welcomes in a telegram "his love of the language and his musical genius".
One of his muses, Brigitte Bardot, the interpreter of "Harley Davidson", mourns from a distance an "irreplaceable man who had been destroying himself for a long time".
Le Canard enchaîné republished its first article devoted to Gainsbourg in 1958, following the release of "Poinçonneur des Lilas".
A song "dark, feverish and beautiful", vibrated Boris Vian.
On March 7, after a tribute at the Nanterre funeral home, where his coffin is on display for two days, it is time for the last farewell to the Montparnasse cemetery.
In sobriety.
Under a spring sun, the artist is buried with his parents Joseph and Olga Ginsburg, Russian Jewish immigrants.
A gray plaque with these simple words: "Serge Gainsbourg 1928-1991".
In the midst of relatives, his youngest children, Charlotte and Lulu, and personalities, Catherine Deneuve, for whom he composed "God is a smoker of havanes", reads as a homily the text of a song written for Jane, "Run away from happiness before it runs away".
"When I have disappeared, throw at least a few nettles on my grave, my little Lulu", pleaded the artist in the preface of a song dedicated to his son.
The coffin is covered with a mountain of white flowers ...
On a wreath, we can read "His friends from the 6th district", a tribute to the police officers he visited at night.
Between Baudelaire and Sartre, it rests in the "hole" sung by the "Poinçonneur des Lilas": "Make a small hole, one last small hole and I will be put in a large hole".
© 2021 AFP