Serge GAINSBOURG – Autographed manuscript signed – “Les Goémons”.

Serge Gainsbourg (1928.1991)

Signed autograph manuscript – Les Goémons.

Three folio pages on paper with musical staffs.

Sacem stamps.

[Paris. February 1962]

“brown or red algae, beneath the wave the seaweeds move”

Exceptional manuscript titled in black ink, on the first sheet, LES GOÉMONS music lyrics by Serge Gainsbourg and bearing on the second and third sheets the original lyrics in the first draft (finally not retained and partially crossed out) as well as the original score.

Les Goémons , recorded at the Blanqui studio on March 16, 1962, will be the introductory title of the artist's fourth album entitled Serge Gainsbourg n°4 .

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seaweed

brown or red algae
under the wave move
seaweed
kelp or coralline

seaweed seaweed

what do they dance in the slow motion
of the cameras
the seaweeds
it is in the white foam
the posthumous pavane
of the seaweeds

brown or red algae
under the wave
the seaweeds
between two waters
two lovers who intrigue
the seaweeds sail

in the song of the sirens
came the policemen
to the seaweeds
of the cars the headlights
searched the black night
the seaweeds

brown or red algae
under the wave
the seaweeds
we found them together
chained together it seems to me
to the seaweeds

that their loves relive
in the lascivious dance
of the seaweed
in the cry of the seagulls
when the ocean rejects
the seaweed

brown or red algae
below the wave move
the seaweed

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At the beginning of 1962, Catherine Sauvage decided to devote, like Juliette Gréco three years earlier, an entire EP to Gainsbourg's songs. The silent rivalry between the two singers and the recent success of Accordéon encourage her in this direction. Always in search of recognition, Gainsbourg nevertheless embarked on this commission with caution, wary of the left bank positioning of Catherine Sauvage, more inclined to poetry set to music than to commercial songs […]

Les Goémons , a title with a maritime consonance, whose origin is revealed by Gainsbourg, who came to present the acetate of his freshly mixed album No. 4 on April 22, 1962 in "Avant-premières": "It was when he heard Damia. A while ago, she was singing "Les Goélands." This somber lament in memory of sailors lost at sea was, in 1912, the first success of the great Damia, the cheeky tragedian of realistic song. Beyond an almost similar meter, we find here in this first handwritten draft of Les Goémons , the image of souls (those of the sailors in Damia, of the lovers in Gainsbourg) reincarnated as seagulls, while their corpses are carried by the waves - an idea which will have disappeared in the final text.

Narrative and cinematographic, this first version plays on the double meaning of the word "mermaid", already used in the Ballade d'un fat major ("I would do everything like Ulysses / To the police sirens / The deaf ear [...]"). Catherine Sauvage will actively contribute to the modification of the text and the final version, finalized just three days before the recording of the playback for Gainsbourg's LP. The final version essentially focuses on following the throbbing movement of the seaweed in the waves, like that of bodies entwined in ecstasy.

 "Seaweed has the science of movement. And then it's also an erotic image, if you like," Gainsbourg observes to Luc Bérimont in "Avant-premières." The image would make its way to Gainsbourg: in 1967, with Je t'aime moi non plus ("Like the irresolute wave / I come and go...") and then, in 1984, in Love on the Beat ( "But you already are already pitching / To the ebb and flow of the tides"). Catherine Sauvage would record Les Goémons in a version transposed to the feminine on April 6, at the same time as the three other tracks on her EP. (Quoted in Le Gainsbook. S. Merlet. Éditions Seghers. 2019).

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Provenance: Lucien Merer (1927-2019), pianist, composer and arranger who accompanied Gainsbourg from his first steps. Merer collaborated with several other big names on the musical scene: Boby Lapointe, Jean Ferrat, Cora Vaucaire, Édith Piaf, Léo Ferré and Charles Aznavour, sometimes assisting them during their debuts or their singing tours in cabarets and concert halls. .

Bibliography: . The integral et cetera . YF Bouvier, Éditions Bartillat, 2005. / . The Gainsbook. S. Merlet. Seghers Editions. 2019