Georges Brassens

Georges Brassens walked into a recording studio in 1952 because a cabaret singer named Patachou literally pushed him there. He was thirty years old, terrified of the stage, and spent years living in a house with no running water or electricity. He didn't want to be a performer. He wanted to be a poet, but the words needed the wood of that cheap acoustic guitar to stay grounded. His voice sounded like a gravel pit, and his thumb technique on the strings was primitive, but it was the only way to deliver those dense, anarchic lyrics without the Parisian elite ruining them. He spent decades on the Philips label stubbornly refusing to change a damn thing. While everyone else was chasing the Yé-yé pop boom or polished orchestrations, Brassens stuck with Pierre Nicolas on the upright bass. That was the whole setup. If you listen to the records, the bass is the only thing keeping the songs from floating away into pure literature. He wrote about sex, death, and hating the police with the same dry, rhythmic precision. He stayed in the same small circle until the end, proving that if your rhymes are sharp enough, you don't need a string section to scare the hell out of the establishment.

Around the web

• YouTube
• AllMusic
• MusicBrainz
• Discogs