album rating: ★★★★☆
a) Genre
Chanson / Chanson a texte. Ne me quitte pas is Jacques Brel's thirteenth studio album (counted as twelfth on some sources), and is a collection of re-recordings of his best-known songs, originally recorded for Philips Records, now newly arranged for his current label Barclay. The album belongs to the tradition of the French chanson d'auteur -- the song as literary and dramatic art form -- which Brel had helped define across a career of over fifteen years. The new arrangements by Francois Rauber represent a significant departure from the spare, intense style of Brel's classic recordings: they adopt a more contemporary, sometimes breezy pop-rock orientation, with elements of funk, clean jangling guitars, and choir of flutes appearing on tracks such as 'Les biches' and 'Le moribond'.
b) Release
Original French release: Barclay Records (1972; catalogue 80 470 for vinyl LP, and 80145 for an alternate pressing), a division of Barclay/PolyGram. The back cover of all original pressings carries the legend 'Nouveaux Enregistrements Realises en Juillet 1972 dans les Studios Barclay' (although the recording session dates -- 12, 20, 23, and 27 June 1972 -- establish that July refers to the date of the press's printing or manufacture rather than the actual recording). International editions were released in Spain under Movieplay-Barclay (catalogue S-26160), and in multiple other territories under Barclay's PolyGram distribution network. The album was reissued on 23 September 2003 as part of the 16-CD box set Boite a bonbons (Barclay: 980 817-6), which anthologised Brel's complete Barclay discography. High-resolution digital audio masters (96 kHz / 24-bit PCM) have been made available through ProStudioMasters from the Barclay (France) studio masters.
c) Production
No individual producer is credited on the original release. The album was recorded at Studios Barclay, Paris, under the direct musical authority of arranger and conductor Francois Rauber. Rauber (born 26 November 1933, Liege, Belgium -- died 18 February 2003, Paris, France) was a Belgian composer, arranger, and conductor who had been Brel's principal musical collaborator since the late 1950s, arranging and conducting virtually all of his studio recordings. The specific impetus for the album is understood to be contractual: Barclay held rights to Brel's catalogue going forward, but several of his most celebrated songs had been recorded for his previous label, Philips; by re-recording them with new Rauber arrangements, Barclay could publish and distribute versions of the canonical Brel repertoire within their own catalogue. Music was composed by Brel (credited as J. Brel on the label) on most tracks, with tracks by Gerard Jouannest (Brel's pianist and long-standing collaborator) also credited. Recording engineer was Claude Achalle (not Gerhard Lehner, as incorrectly listed on some pressings).
d) Recording
This is a re-recording compilation. All sessions took place at Studios Barclay, Paris, France, across four specific dates in June 1972: 12 June (tracks 'Je ne sais pas', 'On n oublie rien', 'Les prenoms de Paris', 'Les flamandes'); 20 June ('Le moribond' and the first variant of 'Ne me quitte pas'); 23 June ('Le prochain amour', 'Marieke', 'Les biches', and the second variant of 'Ne me quitte pas'); and 27 June ('Quand on n a que l amour', 'La valse a mille temps', and the album version of 'Ne me quitte pas').
e) Reception
Ne me quitte pas has attracted sharply divided critical opinion. Specialist critical opinion -- particularly among devotees of Brel's earlier Philips recordings -- has been consistently negative toward the album's core concept: the re-recording of classics with contemporary pop-rock arrangements is seen as an artistic misstep. A detailed Rate Your Music review in Spanish characterises the album as 'una maniobra inexplicable' (an inexplicable manoeuvre), arguing that Barclay exploited a contractual technicality to force Brel into re-recording songs he had already perfected, resulting in 'sbiadite, mortificate' (faded, diminished) versions. The same reviewer concedes that 'Les biches', with its 'clean, jangling guitars and choir of flutes', and 'Le moribond', which 'chugs along in a way almost exactly opposite to what you'd think appropriate to its title', are 'startling departures' that make the album 'more than worth it.' A more enthusiastic Rate Your Music review describes the album as 'A Master at Work', calling the music 'wonderful and the performance sublime.' Rate Your Music rates the album at approximately 331st best album of 1972. A French-language reviewer on Rate Your Music argues that Brel's voice on the re-recordings 'se fait plus sentencieuse, plus claironnante, plus theatrale', at the expense of the understated intensity that defined the originals. Commercially, the album was part of Brel's contracted output for Barclay and was issued without the promotional activity that would have accompanied a new recording.
Jacques Brel
Jacques Romain Georges Brel (born 8 April 1929, Schaerbeek, Brussels, Belgium -- died 9 October 1978, Bobigny, France) was a Belgian singer-songwriter and actor, universally acknowledged as one of the greatest figures in the history of French-language song. He grew up in a conservative Flemish Catholic family in the Brussels suburbs; his father co-founded a cardboard box manufacturing company in which Brel worked during his early twenties. He began performing as an amateur and semi-professional in Brussels Catholic youth circles in the late 1940s. In 1953 he moved to Paris, where he began performing at small cabarets and signed with Philips Records. His early recordings attracted little attention, but from 1956 onwards he established himself as the defining chansonnier of his generation, celebrated for the theatrical intensity of his performances -- during which he would sweat profusely, gesticulate wildly, and transform entirely into his characters -- and for the literary quality of his lyrics, which addressed death, bourgeois hypocrisy, masculine cowardice, the sea, Flanders, God, and political injustice with devastating directness and irony. He composed and recorded a series of masterworks including 'Ne me quitte pas' (1959), 'La Valse a mille temps' (1959), 'Les Flamandes' (1959), 'Le Moribond' (1961), 'Quand on n a que l amour' (1956), 'Amsterdam' (1964), 'Les Bourgeois' (1962), 'Ces gens-la' (1966), and 'Jef' (1964). He retired from performing in 1966 at the height of his fame, pursuing a career in theatre and cinema (directing two films: Franz, 1971, and Le Far West, 1973) and eventually in 1974 sailing his yacht to the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, where he settled. In 1977 he returned to the recording studio for what proved to be his final, self-titled album (Barclay, 1977), which was a massive commercial and critical success. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1974; he died in Bobigny on 9 October 1978, aged 49. An English-language stage musical, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (1968), introduced his work to anglophone audiences. Numerous songs have been translated: the English-language adaptation of 'Ne me quitte pas', titled 'If You Go Away' (lyrics by Rod McKuen), has been recorded by over 200 artists. He was awarded the Grand Prix national du disque numerous times and has received numerous posthumous honours in Belgium and France.
This text was generated by Claude (Anthropic). It may contain errors or inaccuracies.
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