Jacques Brel

Brel, Jacques (1929-78). Singer-songwriter, also actor, film director. Fleeing the bourgeois conformity of the family cardboard factory in Brussels, in the early 1950s Brel brought his guitar and his songs of naïve Catholic idealism to the Montmartre cabaret Les Trois Baudets. His early love-songs (‘Quand on n'a que l'amour’, 1956) became more bitter (‘Ne me quitte pas’, 1959) and soon gave way to songs of existential despair and revolt (‘Le Moribond’, 1960) as well as caustic satire (‘Les Flamandes’, 1959). In the early 1960s Brel's records present a gallery of portraits, often caricatured but also compassionate (‘Amsterdam’, 1964). At the same time his performing style developed to a high pitch of dramatic intensity as he conquered the audiences of the Parisian music-halls (Bobino, 1959; Olympia, 1961). With François Rauber, his arranger, and Gérard Jouannest, his pianist, he created an original, hybrid musical style which combines classicial music, brass band, and the accordion in a way sometimes reminiscent of Kurt Weill. At the height of his fame in 1967 Brel abandoned his music-hall career for the cinema, first as an actor, then as a director. His last years of failing health were spent sailing around the world, eventually settling in the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific. He returned to Paris in 1977 to record one last album of songs which sum up in exacerbated form the themes of his writing.

— Peter Hawkins