Histoire de Melody Nelson
Encyclopedia
Histoire de Melody Nelson is a 1971 concept album by French
songwriter Serge Gainsbourg
. The Lolita
-esque pseudo-autobiographical plot involves the middle-aged Gainsbourg unintentionally colliding his Rolls Royce
Silver Ghost into teenage nymphet Melody Nelson's bicycle, and the subsequent seduction and romance that ensues. Histoire de Melody Nelson is considered by many critics and fans to be Gainsbourg's most influential and accomplished album.
At just under twenty-eight minutes, the short running time and the stylistic consistency and similarity throughout the album gives it qualities more in line with an EP or an extended musical piece with a number of movements. Histoire de Melody Nelson‘s mix of freewheeling guitar
, funk
style bass guitar
, near spoken word
vocal delivery, and lush, deep orchestrated
string
and choral arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier
who composed almost the entire music in collaboration with Gainsbourg for the album, have proven to be highly influential amongst later francophone and anglophone musical performers including the French band Air, David Holmes
, Pulp
's Jarvis Cocker
, Portishead, and Beck
, whose 2002 track "Paper Tiger" from Sea Change is extremely close to the distinctive Histoire de Melody Nelson sound.
After the release of the album, a music video was made for each song, and released all together as "Melody" a short musical.
Jean-Claude Vannier
performed the album live at London's Barbican on October 21, 2006 with guest vocalists Jarvis Cocker
, Badly Drawn Boy
, Brigitte Fontaine
, The Bad Seeds’ Mick Harvey
and lead singer from Super Furry Animals
, Gruff Rhys
. Vannier performed the album in its entirety alongside his own solo album L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches.
Publicity for the Barbican concert revealed that the musicians used for the album were Dougie Wright, Big Jim Sullivan
, Herbie Flowers
and Vic Flick
who all joined Vannier for the concert. The BBC Concert Orchestra, the Crouch End Festival Chorus and a children’s string quintet were part of the show.
In October 2008 22nd & 23rd Jean-Claude Vannier performed the album live at the Cité de la Musique with guest vocalists Mathieu Amalric, Brigitte Fontaine, Brian Molko (Placebo), Martina Topley Bird, Daniel Darc, Clotilde Hesme, Seaming To. Also performing were Herbie Flowers (bass), Claude Engel (guitar), Pierre-Alain Dahan (drums). Jean Claude Vannier also performed the L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches. The Lamoureux Orchestra, the Yound Choir of Paris and a children’s string quintet were also part of the show.
On August 28, 2011, Jean-Claude Vannier participated in A Tribute to Serge Gainsbourg at the Hollywood Bowl. The artists that performed Gainsbourg's songs that evening included Beck
, Sean Lennon
and Charlotte Kemp Muhl, Mike Patton
, Zola Jesus
, Victoria Legrand
(singer of indie band Beach House
), Ed Droste
(singer of indie band Grizzly Bear
) and Serge's son Lulu Gainsbourg. The second half of the evening included a performance of the album with Vannier conducting. Each of the album's songs were performed by different combinations of the evening's artists, backed by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and the Cal State Fullerton chorale. American actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt
also participated in the album's performance.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
songwriter Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg, born Lucien Ginsburg was a French singer-songwriter, actor and director. Gainsbourg's extremely varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize...
. The Lolita
Lolita
Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...
-esque pseudo-autobiographical plot involves the middle-aged Gainsbourg unintentionally colliding his Rolls Royce
Rolls-Royce (car)
This a list of Rolls-Royce motor cars and includes vehicles produced by:*Rolls-Royce Limited *Rolls-Royce Motors , which was owned by Vickers between 1980 and 1998, and after that by Volkswagen...
Silver Ghost into teenage nymphet Melody Nelson's bicycle, and the subsequent seduction and romance that ensues. Histoire de Melody Nelson is considered by many critics and fans to be Gainsbourg's most influential and accomplished album.
At just under twenty-eight minutes, the short running time and the stylistic consistency and similarity throughout the album gives it qualities more in line with an EP or an extended musical piece with a number of movements. Histoire de Melody Nelson‘s mix of freewheeling guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
style bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, near spoken word
Spoken word
Spoken word is a form of poetry that often uses alliterated prose or verse and occasionally uses metered verse to express social commentary. Traditionally it is in the first person, is from the poet’s point of view and is themed in current events....
vocal delivery, and lush, deep orchestrated
Orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
string
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
and choral arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier
Jean-Claude Vannier
Jean-Claude Vannier is a French musician, composer and arranger. He was born during a bomb scare in Courbevoie, Hauts-de-Seine. Self-taught, he began playing the piano at age 18, later arranging for Michel Magne and Alice Dona, his first notions of orchestration taken from the books of the "Que...
who composed almost the entire music in collaboration with Gainsbourg for the album, have proven to be highly influential amongst later francophone and anglophone musical performers including the French band Air, David Holmes
David Holmes (musician)
David Holmes is a Northern Irish DJ, musician and composer.-Career:Holmes began djing in Belfast from the age of 15. His first hit was the song "DeNiro", with Ashley Beedle, in 1992. In the early to mid 1990s he ran two club nights in the Belfast Art College known as Sugar Sweet and Shake Yer Brain...
, Pulp
Pulp (band)
Pulp are an English alternative rock band formed in Sheffield in 1978. Their lineup consists of Jarvis Cocker , Russell Senior , Candida Doyle , Mark Webber , Steve Mackey and Nick Banks ....
's Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis Branson Cocker is an English musician and frontman for the band Pulp. Through his work with the band, Cocker became a figurehead of the Britpop movement of the mid-1990s. Following Pulp's hiatus Cocker has led a successful solo career...
, Portishead, and Beck
Beck
Beck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
, whose 2002 track "Paper Tiger" from Sea Change is extremely close to the distinctive Histoire de Melody Nelson sound.
After the release of the album, a music video was made for each song, and released all together as "Melody" a short musical.
Jean-Claude Vannier
Jean-Claude Vannier
Jean-Claude Vannier is a French musician, composer and arranger. He was born during a bomb scare in Courbevoie, Hauts-de-Seine. Self-taught, he began playing the piano at age 18, later arranging for Michel Magne and Alice Dona, his first notions of orchestration taken from the books of the "Que...
performed the album live at London's Barbican on October 21, 2006 with guest vocalists Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis Branson Cocker is an English musician and frontman for the band Pulp. Through his work with the band, Cocker became a figurehead of the Britpop movement of the mid-1990s. Following Pulp's hiatus Cocker has led a successful solo career...
, Badly Drawn Boy
Badly Drawn Boy
Damon Gough is an English alternative music singer/songwriter. He was born on 2 October 1969, in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. He grew up in the Breightmet area of Bolton, Lancashire, England....
, Brigitte Fontaine
Brigitte Fontaine
Brigitte Fontaine, born in 1939 in Morlaix in the Brittany region of France, is a singer of avant-garde music. During the course of her career she has employed numerous unusual musical styles, melding rock and roll, folk, jazz, electronica, spoken word poetry and world rhythms...
, The Bad Seeds’ Mick Harvey
Mick Harvey
Michael John Harvey , is an Australian rock musician, composer, arranger and record producer. He is best known for his long-time collaboration with the singer and songwriter Nick Cave...
and lead singer from Super Furry Animals
Super Furry Animals
Super Furry Animals are a Welsh rock band that lean towards psychedelic rock and electronic experimentation. Since their formation in Cardiff, Wales in 1993, the band has consisted of Gruff Rhys , Huw Bunford , Guto Pryce , Cian Ciaran and Dafydd Ieuan Super Furry Animals are a Welsh rock band...
, Gruff Rhys
Gruff Rhys
Gruffydd Maredudd Bowen Rhys is a Welsh musician, performing solo and with several bands, including Super Furry Animals who obtained mainstream success in the 1990s. He also most recently formed the electro-pop outfit Neon Neon with Boom Bip. Their album Stainless Style was nominated for the 2008...
. Vannier performed the album in its entirety alongside his own solo album L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches.
Publicity for the Barbican concert revealed that the musicians used for the album were Dougie Wright, Big Jim Sullivan
Big Jim Sullivan
Big Jim Sullivan is an English musician, whose career started in 1959. He is best known as a session guitarist. In the 1960s and 1970s, Sullivan was one of the most "in-demand" studio musicians in the UK, and performed in more than one thousand charting singles over his career...
, Herbie Flowers
Herbie Flowers
Herbie Flowers is an English musician specialising in bass guitar, double-bass and tuba. He is noted as a member of Blue Mink, T...
and Vic Flick
Vic Flick
Victor Harold Flick is an English guitarist, most famous for playing the guitar riff in the "James Bond Theme".-Biography:...
who all joined Vannier for the concert. The BBC Concert Orchestra, the Crouch End Festival Chorus and a children’s string quintet were part of the show.
In October 2008 22nd & 23rd Jean-Claude Vannier performed the album live at the Cité de la Musique with guest vocalists Mathieu Amalric, Brigitte Fontaine, Brian Molko (Placebo), Martina Topley Bird, Daniel Darc, Clotilde Hesme, Seaming To. Also performing were Herbie Flowers (bass), Claude Engel (guitar), Pierre-Alain Dahan (drums). Jean Claude Vannier also performed the L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches. The Lamoureux Orchestra, the Yound Choir of Paris and a children’s string quintet were also part of the show.
On August 28, 2011, Jean-Claude Vannier participated in A Tribute to Serge Gainsbourg at the Hollywood Bowl. The artists that performed Gainsbourg's songs that evening included Beck
Beck
Beck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
, Sean Lennon
Sean Lennon
is an American singer, songwriter, musician, guitarist and actor. He is the only child of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. His godfather is Sir Elton John.-Early life and education:...
and Charlotte Kemp Muhl, Mike Patton
Mike Patton
Michael Allan "Mike" Patton is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and actor, best known as the lead singer of the metal/experimental rock band Faith No More. He has also sung for Mr...
, Zola Jesus
Zola jesus
Zola Jesus is the stage name of Russian American singer/songwriter Nika Roza Danilova . Having released three EPs and two full-length albums, combining industrial, classical, electronic, goth and experimental rock influences, she received generally good reviews and was regarded as one of the names...
, Victoria Legrand
Victoria Legrand
Victoria Legrand is a singer-songwriter and keyboardist for the indie-pop band Beach House and a niece of famous French composer Michel Legrand...
(singer of indie band Beach House
Beach House
Beach House is a dream pop duo formed in 2004 in Baltimore, Maryland, consisting of French-born Victoria Legrand and Baltimore native Alex Scally. Their self-titled debut, Beach House, released in 2006, was critically acclaimed. This was followed by their second release, Devotion, in 2008...
), Ed Droste
Ed Droste
Edward "Ed" Droste is an original member of the Brooklyn-based indie-rock group, Grizzly Bear. The group began as the solo effort of Droste with the release of 2004's Horn of Plenty, originally released on Kanine Records. All songs were written and performed by Droste...
(singer of indie band Grizzly Bear
Grizzly Bear
The grizzly bear , also known as the silvertip bear, the grizzly, or the North American brown bear, is a subspecies of brown bear that generally lives in the uplands of western North America...
) and Serge's son Lulu Gainsbourg. The second half of the evening included a performance of the album with Vannier conducting. Each of the album's songs were performed by different combinations of the evening's artists, backed by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and the Cal State Fullerton chorale. American actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt is an American actor whose career as both a child and adult has included television series and theatrical films....
also participated in the album's performance.
Track listing
All Lyrics written by Serge Gainsbourg.- "Melody" 7:32 (Music by Serge Gainsbourg)
- "Ballade de Melody Nelson" 2:00 (Music by Jean-Claude Vannier)
- "Valse de Melody" 1:31 (Music by Serge Gainsbourg)
- "Ah! Melody" 1:47 (Music by Jean-Claude Vannier)
- "L'hôtel particulier" 4:05 (Music by Serge Gainsbourg)
- "En Melody" 3:25 (Music by Jean-Claude Vannier/Serge Gainsbourg)
- "Cargo culte" 7:37 (Music by Serge Gainsbourg)
Personnel
- Alan ParkerAlan Parker (musician)Alan Parker is a British guitarist and composer. Parker was trained by Julian Bream at London’s Royal Academy of Music....
- guitar - Dave Richmond - bass
- Dougie Wright - drums
- Jean-Claude VannierJean-Claude VannierJean-Claude Vannier is a French musician, composer and arranger. He was born during a bomb scare in Courbevoie, Hauts-de-Seine. Self-taught, he began playing the piano at age 18, later arranging for Michel Magne and Alice Dona, his first notions of orchestration taken from the books of the "Que...
- arrangements, Orchestra Director - Jane BirkinJane BirkinJane Mallory Birkin, OBE is an English-born actress and singer who lives in France. In recent years she has written her own album, directed a film and become an outspoken proponent of democracy in Burma.- Early life :...
- vocal parts (and posed for front cover art)