Serge GAINSBOURG - Manuscript - "The Man with the Head of Cabbage"

Serge Gainsbourg (1928.1991)

Autograph manuscript – “ The cabbage-headed man ”.

A page in-4° (28 x 22 cm) in black ink. Slnd [1976].

Exceptional first draft manuscript, witness to the poet's creative work, and representing two thirds of the song.

Numerous corrections, variations, and erasures revealing the first drafts of this cult song and several variations as to the final text.

Provenance: Andrew Birkin.

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I am the cabbage-headed man

a quarter vegetable and three quarter guy

For Marilou's beautiful eyes

I went to carry my Remington and then my station wagon

And so I was at the end of my tether

Since I've been with her I've lost almost everything

My job at the cabbage leaf and my hair on the stone

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Testimony to the creative and poetic work of Gainsbourg, here directly influenced by the sculpture of Claude Lalanne, which he acquired in a gallery on rue de Lille in Paris.

Numbered sheet 1) in upper corner; the second sheet (to contain the last verses of the song) is missing from Serge Gainsbourg's archives and has never been found.

Who does not have in mind these two octosyllables which open the legendary album written and composed by Serge Gainsbourg in 1976? The extraordinary autograph manuscript that we present here is the first draft of the first track of this magnificent opus, having had little response upon its release and today considered cult. Erasures and variants, rejections, additions, and verses subsequently discarded plunge us into the genesis of the first and eponymous poem of L'Homme à tête de chou.

This page allows you to follow word by word and line by line the development of one of the French artist's major songs. The vigor of the writing, the annotations and the references testify to the spontaneity of the writing. There we see the verses literally thrown onto paper, and then taken up again; the music of each word tried, modified if necessary, and the order of the lines revised to provide the ideal ending and the transition to the next poem.

In this album, the instrumentalization continues to vary. The music of great beauty, symphonic at times, with reggae accents at others, punctuates the narration, stated rather than actually sung, following the "talk over" technique developed by Gainsbourg. In a game of mutual echo, texts with erotic features and music respond and merge, each giving the other its meaning.

Comparing the final text to this first draft manuscript allows us to discover what the poet's hesitations were. As an example, let us see in verse 2 Gainsbourg hesitate between a quarter of a cabbage and half a cabbage ; at the end of the text between sand and beach . Other erasures reflect stylistic research and the improvement of form and tone. Thus: “ From the day I got together ” is preferred to “ As soon as I got together ” and “ Since I got together ”. Above all, we understand that Gainsbourg already has the overall design of the album in mind. It is striking to see him renounce, or more precisely delay, the use of an erotic lexical field, to give a decidedly tragic tone to this introductory poem.

Everyone will take pleasure in detecting these changes, these imperceptible variations of the perfectionist poet constantly in search of the aesthetic absolute. Some modifications are eloquent, others surprise. Why delete, for example, the line “ And my hair on the stone ”? To undoubtedly preserve the balance of what is born under his pen: an absolute masterpiece.

The text before us is in reality the beginning of a crazy story – Concept Album – invented by Gainsbourg. The gallant story of a scandal journalist gone mad, first of all in love with Marilou, a shampooer with pagan beauty and soapy hands ; of rage then discovering adultery between two macaques of the festival type at Woodstock ; finally, of despair, of having split his skull with a fire extinguisher: from his split skull escapes ruddy blood identical to the bloody red of the device. She has a final jolt on the linoleum, a final shock. I press the lever, Marilou's body disappears under the moss .

Gainsbourg himself recounted how the idea for this story came to his mind. Modestly, elegantly, he attributes the merit of his fertile imagination to a sculpture from his collection:

“I came across the Man with the Head of Cabbage in the window of a contemporary art gallery. Fifteen times I retraced my steps then under hypnosis I pushed the door, paid cash and had it delivered to my home. At first he scolded me, then he thawed out and told me his story. Scandal journalist who fell in love with a shampooer cute enough to cheat on him with rockers, he kills her with a fire extinguisher, gradually sinks into madness and her head turns cabbage. »

The story is authentic: Serge Gainsbourg walks the sidewalks of the Latin Quarter as usual, when one day he comes face to face, at number 17 rue de Lille, with L'Homme à Tête de Chou. It was from Paul Facchetti, a brilliant photographer converted into a gallery owner, that Gainsbourg acquired this work by Claude Lalanne. Sensitive to the poetry of his hybrid beings, Gainsbourg fell in love with the large seated man, who seems, like him, to eternally hold a gypsy woman in his hand. The sculpture is delivered to 5 bis rue de Verneuil.

If Claude Lalanne's great bronze undoubtedly inspired him, Gainsbourg owes this virtuoso work only to him. And if he confided so much that the Cabbage-Headed Man had whispered to him the words that we read on this leaflet, it is undoubtedly because in this large bronze figure he believed he saw his shadow.