The other Trenet

Serge Hureau reveals the hidden face of Trenet

Paris 

23/02/2001 - 

Jacques Higelin explains why, even though he has great admiration for Charles Trenet (he was responsible for Trenet’s 1977 comeback at the Printemps de Bourges festival), he has not contributed to the stream of tributes to the late star: "I think its only right that a country should pay tribute to its artists, but personally, I can’t, its not something I feel comfortable with. It’s the people who should be paying tributes, you have to talk to the people! This is something which should be between the artist and the public."
If you admired (or hated) the Fou chantant, France's Singing Jester, share your views with us , we'd like to hear your tributes or recollections of Trenet whose music, underneath the light-hearted swing and joie de vivre, had a thousand hidden, subtle, even taboo aspects. The singer Serge Hureau¹, writer of the 1998 show Au bon p'tit Charles, reveals this other side of Trenet, his pain and solitude.

"What interested us, when we were putting together Au bon p'tit Charles, was reaching the places where there was no joy, where everything wasn't just sunny smiles. We wanted to show that hidden behind Trenet’s clownish smile, was a lot of pain and sensitivity. We only chose those songs which touched on taboos - people have a tendancy to take Trenet too lightly - or songs which referred to his childhood. We wanted to find out more about what he tells us in his songs about who he was as a child. We dug into his very early stuff and discovered a real treasure trove.

There's one song called le Petit pensionnaire which describes his unpleasant childhood experiences as a boarder. Trenet’s parents divorced when he was quite young. He was born in 1913 and his father quickly went off to the war. He hardly saw him throughout his early childhood and when his father returned after the war he was practically a stranger to Charles. His parents got divorced soon after, and you’ve got to realise that at that time in the provinces it wasn’t easy for a woman to leave her husband. Not long after that, his mother met a filmmaker, Benno Vigny. Trenet describes how, as a result, he suffered through boarding school, feeling somewhat like an orphan. This side of Trenet, the child of divorced parents, is of key importance. Its contemporary."

"What we wanted to do with Trenet, was to look inside the man and get away from all the clichés, like: he was the man who brought jazz to France, for example, which is simply not true, jazz existed in France before Trenet. Words to describe him come too easy: the singer of swing and all that - we often tend to overlook the fact that he’s also a very brilliant man. His mentality, his insight make his work an inspiration.

So, we showed this side of him, all the sadness, and people found it incredibly touching. I think this was because we did it in a respectful way, even though we were quite tough and brought everything out into the open - all the things people have been whispering about Trenet for years, like about his homosexuality. There was a song which came out in the 60s l'Abbé à l'harmonium with obvious references to a homosexual clergyman and which evokes that disturbing atmosphere which we are all too familiar with today with all the cases of paedophilia and which disturbed him as child attending boarding school. I think he had unbelievable strength and courage to say things like that. Nobody seems to take it into account though. The light-hearted swing of his music overshadowed the strong underlying message. We decided to delve into this side of his music and what we found was way beyond what we had suspected."

"We were also interested in the whole Mediterranean influence. Was he influenced by tarentella (Southern Italian music), by the rhythms of sardanes (Catalan music), or by all those groups from the Perpignan region known as cobles ? Its obvious that he was, because he refers to all this in his songs and he talked a lot about it. We wanted to show the kid from the country who came up to Paris with a wild fascination for the capital. Trenet even sent us a charming note. He was delighted that we had dug up stuff he'd done in the early years, back from when he used to sing with Johnny Hess.

You can look at Trenet's work in a thousand different ways, and that's what makes it so rich. Take Je chante for example. Its the opening song in the show, but we just use the words, not the music. I’d appear in the aisles, a bit like someone begging on the underground. Suddenly, the words take on a whole other dimension and you can hear the real story, the story of a boy who ends up in a police station and hangs himself, the story of a beggar who's starving, who's asking for something to eat «Pitié, je suis tout léger, léger» (Please, I'm so light, so light) and then he collapses, the police pick him up and he thanks them, but in the station he hangs himself saying to the cord «Ficelle / Tu m’as sauvé de la vie / Sois donc bénie / Car grâce à toi, j’ai rendu l’esprit / Et depuis, je chante, je chante soir et matin / je n’ai plus faim». (You saved my life / You are blessed / Thanks to you, I gave up life / And ever since, I sing night and day / I'm no longer hungry). He managed to do something incredible here: while he's singing brightly to lively music, he's saying that the only way to avoid going hungry is to hang yourself. Its astounding and yet so typical of Charles Trenet: laughter and despair go hand in hand. Its wonderful material for a performer because you can interpret his words in so many different ways, like with any of the great poets. You can always find new meanings and that's what makes him the great man he is."
"He truly is a great. It's true he was best known for his American swing period, but before swing he had other styles - for better or for worse. He definitely got around! In the Pétain era, his songs reflected Pétain ideals, in the Mitterrand era, his songs reflected Miterrand ideals. He changed with the times. Like Gainsbourg, he knew how to catch the atmosphere of an era and make it his own. He was an illusionist. He has sung patriotic songs and made parodies out of colonial songs, most notably with Cœur de palmier, a terrifying text where he derides everything he grew up hearing as a child. You can see how he was influenced: there were those brass bands which were very present in the Perpignan, region he grew up in, brass bands which turned to jazz pretty quickly, and the carnaval festival feel. There's a lot of the Mediterranean in him. And he has a terrible image of women: they're all mothers and airy girls.

Another influence in his work is his homosexuality. Most people prefer to ignore this side of him, and that’s fine, but as far as his work was concerned it really is very important. He sang a lot about desire, admittedly it was disguised, but only because in those days it had to be. In la Folle complainte, we get a glimpse of a young man with a lot of complexes. The words are sublime «Je n'ai pas aimé ma mère./ Je n'ai pas aimé mon sort / Je n'ai pas aimé la guerre / Je n'ai pas aimé la mort / Je n'ai jamais su dire pourquoi j’étais distrait, je n’ai jamais su sourire à tel ou tel attrait». (I didn't like my mother / I didn't like my fate / I didn't like the war / I didn't like death / I never knew why I was so detached / I never knew why nothing attracted me). Strong stuff. He stood apart as a child, and as a man he withdrew. He was a very solitary man, he saw himself as a kind of exceptional beggar, a kind of angel. He knew how to have fun, enjoy himself, be sociable, go out with friends, get drunk but he always returned to his solitude. He withdrew because he was different. Insults were thrown at him all his life. He was called a "queer" and a "fairy". He had an affair with a 19 year old in the 60s and back then, a 19 year-old was a child and a minor. Times have changed. "

"Finally, what I find most touching and admirable in Trenet, was his passion for singing, his desire to succeed, his coming up to Paris in the early 30s. How important his mother was to him. She used to take him to film shoots. And he loved the cinema, and painting. In his youth, like Gainsbourg, before he turned to singing he was a painter. He also wrote two novels (Dodo manières, published by Albin Michel, 1940 and la Bonne planète, published by Brunier, 1949). He even went to see the poet Max Jacob to show him his writing. Jacob advised him to try his hand at something else - but to keep at the writing. So he began to write songs.

People could identify with him. Georges Brassens, who came from Sète not far from Narbonne, says that the first songs he loved were Trenet's. He recognises himself in Trenet, he has the same kind of pseudo-light heartedness. Higelin is also mad about Trenent, even if, and its true of Brassens too, you don't really hear Trenet’s influence in his songs, with the exception possibly of Tombé du ciel. Many others shared his swing and lightness: Mireille, Jean Tranchant - but Trenet's music had something else as well, something more complex, more subtle, a kind of great cruelty. But its now that we’ll really see the difference he made. "

Interview: Catherine Pouplain

1- Serge Hureau is the director of the Hall de la Chanson (le Centre national du Patrimoine de la Chanson, des Variétés et des Musiques actuelles) (the national music heritage centre ).

And don't forget, if Trenet made an impression on you, tell us about it.