Jennifer Radulovic
Gainsbourg - Scandale!

When we talk about Serge Gainsbourg, we immediately think of a disheveled man, an alcoholic with a scruffy and dirty look, that little belly squeezed by a belt that seems fastened too high. No, Serge, allow me to call him that, had legs too long in relation to his torso. Large head, protruding ears, jutting lips, an aquiline nose, crooked teeth, disproportionate and untrained body, droopy eyelids... He certainly wasn't a beauty, but he knew it. He himself self-proclaimed "tête de choux," cabbage head.
However, women went crazy for him. Not everyone knows that Serge "tête de choux" actually wanted to be a painter; it was his greatest passion. He was a loner, a disillusioned man, probably inheritances from a childhood as a Jewish exile, both from a Russian family origin and during the Second World War: he survived on stolen berries and apples as a child, spending several months in a forest with his brother when a boarding school expelled them in anticipation of the imminent arrival of the SS in that French region. After the war, he grew up in his reunited and musically committed family in Paris. His father played in piano bars, so Serge put his brushes aside and embraced the path of the seven notes, accompanying the old man to the evenings.

I'll get to the point.
The first woman to fall head over heels for him was Edith Piaf. The French sparrow urged, helped, and promoted Serge with great conviction, and it was thanks to her - thank you Edith - that he became the greatest French singer-songwriter. At least, in my opinion, he was a genius with words and notes.

I don't think it's necessary to list his greatest hits, some of which were so scandalous that they made all of France gossip for years, like those sung with Charlotte, his daughter. Nor do I mention the lesser-known songs, little gems of poetry, musical watercolors, delicate symphonies, and interesting contaminations. Finally, I'll spare you the list of his small and grand female conquests, which, despite his ungainly presence and awkward physical stature, he successfully achieved. Considered a great swine, Serge, in truth, won over women because he was a gentle man. And because he was a man lost in the dark forest of his fugitive childhood. With him, women felt like lanterns capable of lighting the path back. But he never returned.

Then there was his slow, tragic decline that led to his premature death, years when everyone abandoned him, when he was invited and interviewed on television only out of voyeurism, to push him to say and do things to "épater le bourgeois," immersed in his alcoholic fumes and the endless swirls of countless Gitanes, in a kind of virtual bullying he endured only to defeat loneliness and despair.

I bought this book six months ago.
In the last two years, I have listened to everything by Serge, watched many interviews (some in real-time on French TV), read articles (I am a native French speaker), and I can say I am an expert on this Artist. When I happen to hear the first notes of Je t'aime, moi non plus, it's as if I step into a time capsule; I return to childhood when I called it the "stomach ache song."

Ah, the book, I was saying. It seems to be the best biography available, at least the only decent one translated into Italian. Did you want the book review?
I haven't read it yet, and who knows if I ever will. Perhaps you will.