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A Thought for Today
We must continue to BELIEVE that many are the men of peace who
from time to time will set out to walk among us.
This
One Does It For Me!
Dear Ken,
I'm a big chanson and Becaud fan and I'm told Mr. McKuen worked with
Becaud in the past.
How can I get some of their work?
Steven Paynter
Great to meet another
Gilbert Becaud fan, Steven.
Probably the best album to
get your hands on would be Rod's The French Connection. Not only does it
include a number of Becaud songs but also songs by other world class
exponents of this genre.
You'll see what I mean when you read the following liner notes.
The French Connection (CD)
Everything about the way I heard songs changed when I began to listen to
French chansons. Early on my favorite French singers were Piaf, Montand,
Greco, Jacqueline Francois, Jean Sablon and Leo Marjane. I loved the
attitude of the songs these exotic people sang, there melodies and
drama. As for the lyrics, I was unable to understand or speak a word of
French but loved the lyrics anyway.
Later I discovered the chansonniers... those singers who perform their
works and tell about their lives and everyone else’s in the process;
Aznavour, Becaud, Brel, Charles Trenet, Leo Ferre and Brassens became my
early heroes. Later I added Geroges Moustaki, Barbara, Guy Beart, Alain
Barriere, Jean Ferrat, Michael Sardou, Polnareff and Hugues Auffray to a
still growing list. Some of these incredible talents even became my
writing partners and soon the way I wrote and performed my songs changed
completely too.
The songs in this collection are mostly of French origin with
translations and adaptations in English by me. Some are my own
inventions and were taken up and translated by French songwriters into
their language. About a hundred or so compositions have passed back and
forth in this manner, and there’s a stack on both sides of the Atlantic
still to be looked at or in mid process. These are not necessarily our
best songs or even a good cross section of what I’ve done with French
writers, but they represent for me the best of times in writing and
performing.
Petula Clark brought me the beautiful Francis Lai melody I turned into I
Think of You. It became a major hit for Perry Como and it’s the title of
Glenn Yarbrough’s first Stanyan / LaserLight CD ( 12 429 ). Don Costa
did the arrangement for both singers. This arrangement is by the late
Gareth Davies and is taken from my Warner Brothers album, Pastorale. The
great baritone Pedro Vargas has the number one record of I Think of You
in Italy.
I wrote the words to Paris for Gilbert Becaud’s first English language
album. Becaud’s romantic melodies are known the world over and include
What Now My Love, It Must Be Him, and The Day That the Rains Came.
Nathalie is another melody by the prolific composer and one I love
performing in concert. But no one sings it with the delightful charm
Becaud himself brings to it.
In the summer of 1964, with my old friend Ellen Ehrlich as my
pronunciation coach and Pathe-Marconi’s Jean-Jacques Timmel as producer,
I set out to record some of my songs in French. Je Viens De Loin ( poet
Frank Gerald’s translation of I’ve Been to Town ) was one of the first
results.
I wrote the English lyric, About the Time to Leo Ferre’s Avec Le Temps
for Marlene Dietrich. The olde rI get the more it turns out to be true.
Ah to do everything, all of it, all over again but better. In addition
to being a first class poet, philosopher and political activist, Ferre
was a friend to animals of all kinds and a lover of the unusual in
everything. He was also one of France’s true musical geniuses. He wrote
words and music to hundred of his own songs and produced lovely,
haunting musical settings for the poems of Baudelaire, Verlaine,
Appollinaire, Rimbaud and Prevert. His death a year ago give new meaning
to my last line of the song; about the time you learn about time you’ve
run out of time.
Like If You Go Away and Seasons in the Sun, Les Bourgeois is an adaption
of a work by my favorite writer and performer, Jacques Brel. It is a
funny, irreverent song that did not amuse some of the bourgeoisie in
Brussels and Paris, but delighted his audiences everywhere he performed
it. As friends and as musical collaborators Brel and I traveled, toured
and wrote - together and apart - the events of our lives as if they were
songs, and I guess they were. When news of Jacques’ death came I stayed
locked in my bedroom and drank for a week. That kind of self pity was
something he wouldn’t have approved of, but all I could do was replay
our songs ( our children ) and ruminate over our unfinished work
together.
I finished the words to If You Go Away in a taxicab on the way to the
recording session. Such were the flights of the daring young men on the
high trapeze of yesteryear. There are dozens of recordings of If You Go
Away. Frank Sinatra, Jack Jones, Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield,
Johnnie Ray, Julio Iglesias, Freda Payne, Neil Diamond, Al Martino,
Scott Walker, Nana Mouskouri, Hildegarde, Pearl Bailey, Author Prysock,
Barbara Dickson, Terry Jacks, Tom Jones, Al Martino and Robert Goulet
are among the artists who have recorded it vocally. Ray Bryant, Acker
Bilk, Bud Shank, Stan Getz, Wim Overgraw, Al Hirt, Chet Baker, Helen
Merrell and Sarah Vaughan have done it with a jazz feel. It is
considered by the performing rights societies to be one of the most
recorded and performed standards in modern music. The original hit was a
poignant rendition by Damita Jo. The version here is different from the
ones I’ve recorded with large orchestras; Arthur Greenslade, piano,
Ronnie Verrile, guitar, Eric Ford, barely touching the base and Sylvette
Allart playing the Ondes Martenot form an unusual quartet and more than
making up for the missing strings and reeds.
In 1954, while I was in the army stationed in Korea, I spotted this
graffiti on a latrine wall;
soldiers who want to be heroes
number damn near zero
but there are millions
who want to be civilians
Norman Mailer recalls seeing a slogan to the same effect on a barrack
wall during World War II. It is, indeed, a sentiment suitable for all
times, all wars and ages. I never forgot the phrase and later put it
into a song.
The first recording of Soldiers Who Want to Be Heroes was made for
Capitol in the sixties by The Gateway Trio. Because of what was termed
its anti-Vietnam War sentiment it was banned by many radio stations and
sank into oblivion; though not before I made the Nixon suspect list by
continuing to perform it in concerts. One such performance, a concert at
The London Palladium, May 24, 1970 was recorded and released on record.
Without my knowledge a Dutch record company took ‘Soldiers’ off the
album and released it as a single. Hit status followed in England and
Australia and Holland.
I’ve enjoyed Les Compagnons de la Chanson since the 1950's when they
came through San Francisco on tour with Edith Piaf, so I was delighted
when their musical director Jean Broussolle came up with this lyric and
arrangement of ‘Soldiers’. Des Milliers de Soldats was the French title
and Le Campagnons record prompted a German version with Israeli actress
Daliah Lavi that went to the top of the charts in Germany, Austria and
the Middle East.
Jacques Brel wrote Le Plat Pays about the flat lands of his childhood in
Belgium. In adapting it I envisioned The Far West, my own home country.
In the song a man accesses his life as he nears its end. In that respect
it is not unlike Seasons in the Sun.
To You is the only Brel - McKuen song without a French lyric. It started
off as a guitar riff played by Jacques. After hearing it only a few
times I couldn’t get it out of my head, so I added a bridge, a second
chorus and an ending. The words came while I was working on the music.
It is certainly one of our lesser known efforts, but one I enjoy
singing.
The kindest and certainly one of the most talented Frenchmen I ever met
has the unlikely American sounding name Frank Thomas. This delightfully
amusing man refuses to speak any English, though I suspect he’s very
well versed in the language. If such a thing as a French leprechaun
exists, it’s Frank. In addition to The Far Side of the Hill we wrote If
I Could Fly together. The lilting melodies to both songs were composed
by Christian Chevalier.
Eddie Karam’s arrangement of Where Would I Be almost sings itself. It’s
one of the last recordings I made for RCA and was produced by Neely
Plumb. This is yet another Becaud melody. That it sounds a bit like an
American blues song is a tribute to Becaud’s endless musical diversity.
Incidentally, in addition to his many pop songs Becaud had written a
Christmas cantata and a full scale opera, L’Opera d’Aran, which was
given its world premiere at The Paris Opera in 1962.
Les Amants de Coeur is the only song other than the score for Man of La
Mancha ( which he translated and starred in ) that Jacques Brel ever
sang or adapted that wasn’t his own. In the notes for The McKuen / Brel
Songbook I go into some detail as to how it came about. His adaptation
is done in his own style, yet echoes my chorus each time around ( Les
Amants, Les Amants de Coeur / The Lovers, The Lovers of the Heart, The
Lovers ). He keeps it in verse, chorus, verse French style by dropping
the bridge, just as I made his Les Biches into a more conventional 32
bar American song by adding a bridge. I call my adaptation of Les Biches
( The Does ), The Women.
The French lyric to Becaud’s I’ll Say Goodbye ( Je Partirai ) was
written by the late Paris prefect of police, Louis Amade. Monsieur Amade
was more renowned as a literate and feeling songwriter than a cop.
Rightly so. Still for me he was enough of an official presence to cause
me to think carefully about how I translated his words.
I liked the phrase La Mer Sans Soliel, so I wrote words and music in
English using it. That happens with songwriters. I bought a Taurus
T-shirt in Paris once that had emblazoned upon it Je Suis Fort Mais
J’Aime la Rose and ended up writing two I’m Strong But I Like Roses
songs. At least one of them belongs in the next volume of this
anthology.
Un Par Un is another track from my Pathe - Marconi album, Rod McKuen en
Francais. I’m supported ably by Les Swingle Singers and Roland Vincent’s
juanty folk like arrangement. The lyric is by Eddy Marnay, another of
Becaud’s frequent lyricists. Again Mlle. Ehrlich was my French coach.
After all these years she has finally given her pupil a passing grade.
My Brother Edward and I go through ( and have gone through ) a lot
together. This song was written as a present for his 46th birthday. It
was 1982, I was in Australia recording while he stayed home in
California trouble shooting and house sitting the menagerie. The melody
is by Michel Sardou, one of the most popular singer - songwriters in
France and on the continent.
This recording of Seasons in the Sun was made for Capitol in 1964 when I
was just beginning to perform it in public. Somewhere along the line I
began to sing it much slower, so legato in fact that on my first
Carnegie Hall album, recorded five years later, it takes me exactly
twice as long to present the story. The tempo here is the one used for
reference by Terry Jacks who had a world wide hit with it in the 1970's.
Andy Williams, Ray Coniff, Floyd Cramer, Nana Mouskouri, Bobby Vinton,
Mark Lindsay, The Brothers Four, The Kiingston Trio, Pearls Before Swine
and James Last have also recorded it. Jacques Brel’s first recording of
it in the 50's and a stereo remake with a new Francois Rauber
arrangement from 1977 leave all of us in the dust.
I ought to close every album with something arranged and conducted by
Arthur Greenslade. He has worked with me more than any other musician
and over the years his arrangements have helped propel my songs and, his
conducting, define my performances. Without a Worry in the World is from
a 1971 concert we did at London’s Royal Albert Hall. The adaptation of
George Moustaki’s Le Meteque has been a success for me throughout
Greece, Italy, Germany and South America. In The Netherlands it went to
number one within three weeks of its initial release and stayed there
long enough for me to topple it with a follow up recording. I called
Moustaki The Grand Marshall of the guitar. He’s a husky gentle man with
a great bushel of a beard, every bit as adept at drawing and painting as
he is at composing and singing.
Of the songs I’ve written with Georges, and there have been too few so
far, Blessings of the Day is one of my favorites. Another is Solitude’s
My Home. I finished this lyric in Amsterdam. As I recall it was at the
end of a disastrous love affair ( another one ? ) and it also produced a
book Moment to Moment.
So many years. So many memories. So many songs. I still haven't gotten
the Anzavour adaptations down the way I want them to be. There are songs
to write with Vera Baudey and I’ve yet to meet and work with Jean
Jacques Goldman.
In the world press it is popular to describe The French as unfeeling,
remote, self absorbed and aloof to everything non Francophile. Not the
French people I know. The songwriters, the artists, the publishers and
producers. I love ‘em and I love working with them. And, hey, the flower
sellers, taxi drivers and hotel clerks aren’t so bad either, once you
buy a flower, take a taxi or check into a hotel.
Rod McKuen, August 1994
I'm not sure if
Stanyan House have this album
in stock anymore so try eBay if you're not successful.
As a bonus you can download
one of Rod's most popular Becaud adaptations, The Importance of the
Rose, from this very web site. Follow the link to our jukebox and you'll
find it there along with a host of other free downloads.
Rod's Jukebox
You'll also find the lyrics
to this terrific song posted below.
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