Dutronc may look like Le Lurch de la France on the cover of his self-titled 1966 debut-either the most arrogant or least imaginative l’homme in the world, Dutronc’s following six LPs were self-titled as well-and he’s wearing a shirt so bright green I suspect it’s a product of photosynthesis, but the rad hair says it all. Martijn suggested I give the coolly named Jacques Dutronc a listen, so I did, and I’m sold like the Eiffel Tower for 10 Euros to a rube. Chanson modifié? Whatever you label it, it beats most rock by a hasty French retreat.Īnd thanks to my Dutch pal Martijn, I have a new name to add to my list of superchic French pop-toners. It’s what Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot do on “Bonnie and Clyde” and Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin do on “Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus” and Francoise Hardy does on “Il Vaut Mieux Une Petite Maison Dans Les Nuages” (my rough translation: “I Live in a Small House with Ted Nugent”) and it’s cool as shit. They can write like mad motherfuckers, as anybody’s who’s ever read Arthur Rimbaud or Louis-Ferdinand Celine or Alfred Jarry knows, and I would never impugn their oral skills (“The French they are a funny race they fight with their feet and fuck with their face”) but rock? As in roll? Don’t make me le har har har.īut if the French can’t rock per se-and I know there are exceptions such as Les Négresses Vertes, whom I saw once in Philly and got hit in the head with a filled water bottle-they can do something every bit as interesting, it’s just I don’t have a word for it. Who says the French can’t rock? I do, mon ami, I do.
Celebrating Jacques Dutronc, born on this day in 1943.
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