Jacques Brel - Belgium's most famous son remembered (updated - see end)

On Wednesday a little bit of music history will go under the hammer at Sotheby's in Paris.

Personal memorabilia of the late Belgian singer, Jacques Brel, will be up for auction, including some of the most intimate souvenirs charting the life and work of the man.

And among the treasures will be a little yellowing exercise book containing the first draft of the lyrics for one of his best-known songs, "Amsterdam". Its guide price is €50,000.

Brel - for those who you who aren't familiar with the name - is arguably one of the greatest French-language songwriters of the last 50 years.

His work has often been described as "brooding", "dark" and "deep" and at the height of his success in the 1960s and 70s he composed songs that have more than stood the test of time and influenced many who followed.

Along with his contemporaries, Georges Brassens and Serge Gainsbourg, he was widely and critically acclaimed and considered as one of the outstanding songwriters of his generation.

His songs have been covered by countless (Francophone) artists and Brel even made a name for himself in the English-speaking world.

Brel died of cancer at the age of 49 in 1978 and Thursday will mark to the day the 30th anniversary of his death, with television, radio and press tributes both here in France and in Belgium.

And on the eve of that anniversary comes - as far as his family is concerned - the untimely auctioning off of some of his personal effects.

Concert posters, records, personal memorabilia, manuscripts and guitars are among the objects up for sale, and they've been on show in the run up to the auction since last weekend.

The majority of the items coming under the hammer on Wednesday are from the house he shared in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in southern France during most of the 1960s and 70s with his partner at the time, Sylvie Rivet.

She died in 2002 - and it's her nephews and nieces (she had no children) who have decided to put everything up for sale to the highest bidder.

Brel's family (his former wife Thérèse Michielsen, nicknamed "Miche", now in her eighties and his three daughters, Chantal, France and Isabelle) is far from happy that the auction is taking place at all, and the middle of his daughters, France, tried to prevent the break-up of the collection and keep it in the family by proposing an undisclosed sum beforehand.

The offer was rejected.

She's in charge of Editions Brel, which looks after the Jacques Brel foundation as well as much of the copyright and his musical legacy. And she had some harsh words to say about the auctioning of her father's personal effects and the fact that she thought Rivet's relatives seemed more interested in making money than the importance of what her father had left behind.

"One day Jacques walked out on a woman and went to buy a packet of cigarettes. He never returned," she is quoted as saying.

"When that woman died, her relatives discovered an enormous number of things that they're now putting up for auction.

"They're going to sell manuscripts that will end up in a safe or in a drawer. That's deplorable."

The auction is expected to raise between €340,000 and €470,000 with that small yellowing exercise book containing the original manuscript to "Amsterdam" being the most sought after.

But other items include a poster from 1965, when he played New York's Carnegie Hall and was billed as "The Popular French Singer" giving rise to Brel's rather tart retort "it's not easy being Belgian."

There's also a recording of the last concert he held at Olympia in Paris in 1966

Although Brel died in Paris, he is today buried on Hiva Oa one of the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia - his home for many years - in the same cemetery as the French painter Paul Gaugin.

And it was on Hiva Oa that a flying club - Brel was also a passionate pilot - has recently been opened bearing his name.

Even if you neither speak nor understand a word of French, click on to the two videos accompanying this piece and listen to a couple of haunting, but beautiful songs, "Ne me quitte pas" and "Amsterdam".

I know that probably counts as an opinion - but I challenge anyone to argue otherwise.


Ne me quitte pas




Amsterdam




Update Thursday October 9, 2008

The auction surpassed the expected €340,000 - 470,000 total, with the whole collection going for a whopping €1.27 million. And that at a time when the financial markets are nosediving!

The manuscript for "Amsterdam" alone fetched €110,000.

The reaction from Brel's widow; "It's an inheritance - not something that should be sold. It's a shame and rather embarrassing."