Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg
Je T'aime... Moi, Non Plus
- Brand new liner notes with French/English lyrics, insightful and telling interview with Jane B on the Jane/Serge record, as well as original renderings of the images that made the couple so notorious
- Each LP features 180-gram wax, and gatefold jacket
Description
Without a doubt, Serge Gainsbourg is agent provacateur and Gallic soul brother #1. His sensual work is championed by all in the know and still resonates quite frankly in these sexually exaggerated times. Building on the North American re-introduction to the maestro’s work with 1971’s masterpiece concept album Histoire de Melody Nelson, Light In The Attic Records is thrilled to announce their follow-up Gainsbourg reissue. 1969’s Jane Brikin/Serge Gainsbourg (often referred to as Je t’aime… Moi, Non Plus).
Recorded as a series of duets and solo performances, with lover, actress, and model Birkin, the pair’s chemistry-enhanced collaboration was thrust about the record buying public to much shock and horror, but indeed found global success. The disc quickly shot its cigarette brandishing author and fresh-faced vocalist in to the international spotlight; and although the lead-off single “Je T’aime” and it’s seductive purrs reached top slot in the UK charts, no one other than the Pope branded the tune offensive and blasphemous. Ever the conversationalist, Gainsbourg wittily replied, “we couldn’t have gotten a better PR man!” Indeed Serge, indeed.
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Artist Bio
For years, Birkin had harbored a secret desire to be a singer, despite having a frail and untrained voice. “My luck was when Serge wanted me to sing, he wanted me to sing very high, and he didn’t think that me having a very small voice was a defect”.
Recorded at London’s Marble Arch Studios in that erotic year of 1969, the Birkin-moaned version of “Je T’Aime…Moi Non Plus” is nothing short of notorious. “It was two takes at the most,” Birkin recalled. The couple knew they had nailed it, but what would the record executives and the record-buying public think?
Jane says the couple rushed back home to Paris: “Serge couldn’t resist putting it on in the restaurant of Hôtel d’Alsace, now known as L’Hôtel, which was where Oscar Wilde died. And he put on ‘Je T’Aime’ in the downstairs restaurant and all the customers’ knives and forks were all suspended in the air! And he said “I think we have a hit record!’”
-Excerpt by Andy Beta written Fall 2009
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