Georges Brassens

So it was nearly 90 years ago – when Sète was still called Cette – when Brassens sung his first note, and nearly 30 years since his pipe went out for the last time.

George Brassens year is already alive and kicking both here and in Paris. Concerts, exhibitions, films…don’t miss them. These many tributes, these awards by the dozen - who would have thought it, up there, stroking his cat (contrary to dogs - there are no “police cats”, he used to say)? He who avoided honours like the plague? It’s easy to guess: “What a load of idiots…”.

It would also be amusing imagining his reaction to the poster of the Worldwide Festival.

Just think, he probably would have needed an interpreter. English was never really his cup of tea: at college, he preferred German, and this was in the dark years of the 1930s. Jo, as his mates called him, had already set himself apart as a teenager, through his strong will to “go his own way”.

And being passionate about poetry at a young age didn’t stop him from mixing with the wrong crowd, and in the fateful year of 1939, he was involved in a series of thefts. This not only led him to give up studying for good, but also to leave Sete. He found himself in exile living with his Aunt in Paris. Mortified but motivated, he wanted to become a poet, and he did. He seemed destined to live what we’d call nowadays a ‘precarious life’ for a dozen or so years, but above all he seemed destined to read and write.

However he didn’t shut himself away from others. He went out a lot, hanging around with anarchists. He even wrote articles in the ‘Libertaire’ newspapaer. He saw his old friends from Sete again, who had stayed faithful to him. Friends like Victor Laville (still with us, living life to the full), who put him in contact with Patachou. Impressed, this post-war star encouraged him to perform his own songs. Brassens became a singer quite late. This was the case with his guitar playing as well: it wasn’t until 1951, at the age of 30, when he took it up. Brassens was the self-taught eccentric. The “naughty boy of French chanson”. The ruthless destroyer very much enjoyed by the clear minds of “the brave”. The thorn in the side of the French middle class. Politicians, priests, servicemen, police officers, judges…Everyone was given a dressing down by this trouble maker who was erudite yet saucy, literary yet licentious, ferocious (the song “Hécatombe” was the 1952 equivalent of gangsta rap!) yet lyrical. But he never lacked tenderness for “low-life women”, bad boys, poor wretches, lonely people…Nor for friends (initially). And no-one  celebrated love better than Brassens.

So thirty years later, what remains of Brassens? The essential elements: Anti-conformism, non-violence, humour and humanism. And a universal body of work. Almost 150 songs translated into around 50 languages, still covered by hundreds of disciples, and often turned into jazz numbers. A prolific composer of course, but what a melodist as well. “Long after the poet left us”, as Charles Trenet, the idol of his youth, said “his gentle soul still runs through the streets”. In Sete (from La Corniche, where he liked to go swimming, to the Chateau d’eau, to the Py Cemetery where he still lays) and elsewhere.

“I left this world with no hard feelings/I will never have toothache again”.

Brassens, thirty years after? The sauciness is still there – he’s still very much alive in spirit!  .»