Mojo - The Music Magazine

They met in 1968 on the set of Pierre Grimblat's oddball French rom-com Slogan and they didn't, immediately, hit it off. He was the great French songwriter, broken-hearted after being dumped by Brigitte Bardot; nonchalant but intrigued by this beautiful English girl who couldn't read the script. She spotted his vulnerability. Their first date was at Rasputin's nightclub, where the pavement musicians played Sibelius, and Serge pushed 100 franc notes into their violins, calling them prostitutes, like him. Then on to Madame Arthur's transvestite club - where everybody kissed him; Regine's - where Jane danced with Baryshnikov and Serge spilled peppermint frappé on Mick Jagger's jeans; champagne with the blood-spattered butchers in the 5am markets and home with the dustbins at six.

After Serge rewrote the love song he'd written for Bardot - Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus - and re-recorded it with Birkin, it changed their world. Gainsbourg and Birkin become France's dissolute Burton and Taylor. They cut records like this, appeared in public looking like this, and the evenings carried on the same, every night for the next decade, until she left, exhausted and defeated by his nocturnal lifestyle, chainsmoking and obsessive tidiness. "He was so insecure," said Birkin. "He had the satisfaction of dying, knowing he was the most adored man in France. But he wanted [to be loved] by Britain. He loved Tommy Cooper, Morecambe and Wise, pantomime conjurors and London taxis. It would have meant so much if a major British artist - like the Stones - had covered just one of his songs. But it never happened." [AM]