Serge GAINSBOURG – Story of Melody Nelson – Eric Losfeld.

Serge Gainsbourg (1928.1991)

The Story of Melody Nelson.

Very rare booklet published by Éric Losfeld (rue de Verneuil) in 1971.

Volume in-12° (14 x 11cm), paperback, without pagination.

Cover illustrated with the famous portrait of Jane Birkin by Tony Frank.

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A few weeks after the release of the album Histoire de Melody Nelson , on March 24, 1971, Éric Losfeld, a lover of Gainsbourg's verses and his neighbor on rue de Verneuil, decided to publish the entirety of the verses composing the work without further detail.

Losfeld's booklet was hardly more successful than Gainsbourg's album, and almost all of the 10,000 printed copies remained inert in the publisher's reserves until they were pulped a few months later.

The book – which has become almost impossible to find – is considered the most valuable in the entire Gainsbourg bibliography.

Note: For more information on the mysterious fate of this work, see the remarkable podcast produced by Anne Lamotte for France Culture, Looking for Melody Nelson.