The classic Gallic orchestral pop number Transit à Marilou is a sort of passing of the baton from Serge Gainsbourg to Alain Bashung.  Bashung found it natural to rework numbers written by his favourite accomplice in chanson, and the result is forceful and superb.

L'homme à la tête de chou Alain Bashung 2000 Listen

The cancer was already eating away at Bashung, and he was losing breath, but he carried out his task as a disciplined rock ‘n’ roller paying tribute to the king of destruction. It’s tempting to see a kind of analogy, a symbolic circle closing in Bashung’s decision to lend his magnificent voice to the stories that make up L'homme à tête de chou. Gainsbourg liked to use a singing-speaking style because he lacked the vocal force to reach the high notes, the same goes for Bashung. Fags and booze took their toll on both men’s vocal cords.  

On the second listen, the Alsatian’s deep voice resonates and blends with Serge’s. The big brother’s rounded lyrics take on a dryer tone in Alain’s mouth, more atmospheric, but more muted, at times even martial. Bashung seems to be holding back. There is deep respect and a lightness that purposefully distances it from the original version. Composer and arranger Denis Clavaizolle only needed two more days and a few more sound takes of Bashung’s voice to perfect the marvellous project.

Dark story, bright sounds

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In this dark story of a forty-something gutter journalist looking for a scoop and a nymphomaniac hairdresser, Bashung slots perfectly into Gainsbourg’s favourite semantic style (Bashung used sexual word play in Ma petite entreprise, Madame Rêve, Osez Joséphine and Vénus) and dons the narrator’s cloak with polish.

Gainsbourg used to tell this love story with an unhappy ending as if he were whispering a children’s poem. His version of Marilou sous la neige is an Eddy Mitchell-style pop hit in a La dernière séance version. Clavaizolle focused on reproducing the specific atmosphere that the songwriter was trying to create, using backing vocals by Cocoon’s Morgane Imbeaud, a few percussion instruments and a violin to revamp a sound that already sounded bright 35 years ago.  

For the cover version of Lunatic asylum, Clavaizolle integrates percussion by the musician and producer Jean Lamoot and gives Erik Truffaz’s trumpet the space to launch into a mad outburst of conversation with Bashung. Marilou Reggae reminds us how Bashung and Gainsbourg could marry their voices with just about any kind of exciting music produced in the twentieth century. Yet the Bashung/Gainsbourg analogy only goes so far, because the singer of Gaby ! oh Gaby appears to have found peace before he died, and his version of L'homme à tête de chou is the joyful, sensitive high point of a record and film producing career with barely a false note.  

*Play blessures, album by Alain Bashung released in 1982

Alain Bashung L'homme à tête de chou (Barclay) 2011

Translation: Anne-Marie Harper