Pierre Vassiliu
Face B 1965-1981

LA RECENSIONE

Pierre Vassiliu (1937-2014) was a French singer-songwriter who enjoyed his greatest success during the 1960s and the early part of the following decade. The son of a Romanian immigrant, Pierre was a sensitive and very unique artist. Sponsored by Georges Brassens, a collaborator with the great director Claude Lelouch, he lost himself at the height of his success, like many others, in the euphoria of the moment and excesses of vanity, until he began having problems with alcohol, and his wife Marie decided to leave him due to too many infidelities. He left France, traveled to India, and then moved to Africa, to Senegal. He remarried a younger woman, Laura, and regained a certain vitality, but by then his golden period was over. His son Clovis recounts that from the mid-1980s, even though he continued to play a lot and wrote much new material, he stopped publishing because he could never finish what he started.

It is probably because of this "gap" that separates us from the year 1976, the year in which Pierre released his last successful record, a self-titled LP released by Barclay-Disques, that this singer-songwriter is not well-known today, at least outside French borders. This LP released on Born Bad Records is a collection of twelve b-sides from his releases on 45 records between 1965 and 1981: the sound is mostly pop and rich in the nuances of the 1960s sound, with a central use of the electric organ and mixes of bossa nova and psychedelic sounds and special and sophisticated arrangements, however still very simple. His writing is visionary ("Une fille et trois garcons"), melancholic ("En vadrouille à Montpellier"...), even dramatic ("Alentour de lune"). "On imagine le soleil" sung with Catherine Philippe-Gérard is dedicated to Marie, as is "Ne me laisse pas"; "Sophie" is a song written for his daughter; "Il était tard ce samedi soir" and "Je suis un pingouin" are two divertissements. The best moments are perhaps "En réponse à votre lettre du 2.11.72", written when his career began to enter a declining phase; but above all "Film", a song of a desperate search for love performed by Vassiliu with an intensity equal to that of Serge Gainsbourg and our Piero Ciampi.

Pierre Vassiliu entered the music world by chance together with his brother Michel (lyricist). Over the years, he reinvented himself multiple times. According to those who knew him personally, he was as much a free spirit as he was burdened with anxieties and had ruined his career and sabotaged his talent. From what we can hear on this record, on this latter aspect, he evidently should have put more effort because these songs are indicative of a liveliness and creativity worthy of an artist who has rightfully been defined as a true poet.