Peter Critchley

Apr 16, 20208 min read

The Woman With a Million Unwritten Poems in Her Voice

The Woman With a Million Unwritten Poems in Her Voice

Juliette Gréco has long been a favourite singer of mine. I have a number of her records on vinyl and on CDs. I haven’t listened to her for a while, so I went through my music books from the 1990's, in which I have a track listing for all the artists in my collection. I then went through the songs identified there as her key tracks. In truth, I need to listen to the full collection again. It often takes time and growth to appreciate the qualities of many songs that you initially overlook.

They say that Gréco was for the intellectuals and that Piaf was for the people. Don’t ask me who this ‘they’ are, though. I have heard this distinction made a few times. It could just be lazy repetition. It makes sense, though. I can see why Serge Gainsbourg appreciated Gréco but was cool on Piaf. Gréco's approach seems to be more political, philosophical and more consciously intellectual, and Piaf's more direct. That doesn’t mean that one is better or more authentic or more truthful than the other. They approach the same truth from different directions. I love them both and don't feel the need to rank and order.

Life in postwar France was tough, but Gréco revelled in the feeling of freedom brought by liberation. "We were poor, but it didn't matter, for we were free at last, and we all shared the little we had." Gréco was a communist and, like all the artists and intellectuals of the time, lived on the left bank.

Dressing in black, and with her long black hair and fringe, Gréco became the muse of the left bank. "Black provides space for the imaginary," she told the German weekly "Die Zeit" in 2015. Aznavour recounts a tale of when he brought Je Hais Les Dimanches to Edith Piaf. Piaf hated it and told him in no uncertain terms to go and ‘give it to an existentialist singer!’ He did, and it made Gréco’s name. ‘You gave my song to that girl!’ Piaf complained. It is now remarkable to think that ‘that girl’ is now 93.

She wanted to be an actress, but her life took another course when she started to sing. "I wanted to be a tragedian, but a friend suggested I use my voice differently. I loved poetry and literature, so why not voice poems?" ‘Voicing’ is a good way of describing the way Gréco wraps herself around a lyric. Jean Paul Sartre extolled her virtues. Sartre, the world's most acclaimed intellectual of the time, described Gréco as a woman with a million poems in her voice: "It is like a warm light that revives the embers burning inside of us all. It is thanks to her, and for her, that I have written songs. In her mouth, my words become precious stones." "Her voice carries millions of poems that haven't been written yet," he said. Gréco became friends with Sartre, who proceeded to write lyrics for her songs. As did Albert Camus. I quite like Sartre and Camus, but always thought Maurice Merleu-Ponty had more depth and the more substantial, and enduring, ideas. Not to worry, he fell in love with her too. So, too, did Miles Davis. She became friends with the painter Bernard Buffet. All of this activity described the post-war generation's hunger for life. That said, Gréco has left dozens of heartbroken men in her wake, two of whom committed suicide, with a number of others making attempts. She doesn’t feel responsible. "I don't care what they say," she said about press accounts of her role in all this drama, "I don't believe I can inspire such passion." (in her 1982 autobiography, Jujube). "What do I care what other people think?" was her typical response to anyone who dared to make an issue of her affairs.

She married her third husband, pianist and composer Gérard Jouannest, in 1988. He wrote with and played for Jacques Brel, co-authoring 35 of the great songs for which Brel is known. Jouannest died in 16 May 2018. With the death of Charles Aznavour in 2019, Juliette Gréco may be the last icon of French chanson who is still with us. "I met Brel in 1954," she says. "He was a gentle genius. His world, unlike mine, is violent and coarse, but the great thing about being a woman is I don't have to imitate him. I can be myself." I like her way with a song. My introduction to Gréco was her album La Femme from 1968, which I found in the box of French vinyl albums that were kept under the shelves at Hairy Records in Bold Street, Liverpool. I found her voice and her style most beguiling. On that album is one of my most favourite songs by anyone, Je Suis Bien. I learned that it was a Jacques Brel song. I love Brel but didn’t know this song. I still don’t have it on my fairly substantial Brel collection. It remains elusive. As far as I can tell, Brel wrote it specifically for her. You can find Brel giving a demonstration of the song on You Tube, but I've never been able to find a definitive Brel recording. Most impressed by Gréco, I went in search of her records (this was before the Internet, you have to use shoe leather to get anywhere. I loved visiting the vinyl shops, a major hobby of mine.). I visited another favourite record store of mine in Liverpool and asked if they had any of her records. The assistant looked perplexed and told me to look under ‘Exotica.’ Which made some kind of made sense, I suppose.

'The stage is my home'

She’s a survivor, a singular personality, untamed and untameable. She was arrested by the Gestapo at the age of 16, along with her sister. Her mother was in the French Resistance, and had vanished shortly before. Later in life she performed a concert of anti-war songs in front of General Pinochet in Chile. She also threw Miles Davis out of her flat, physically. She was still performing live in concert at the age of 88. She launched her emotional farewell tour, "Merci," in 2015. And then a stroke forced her to cease live performance.

"I am not afraid of dying," she had previously told "Die Zeit," "I'm only afraid of having to stop singing. But you have to know when something is over."

Jean-Paul Sartre based the singer in his Les chemins de la liberté trilogy on Gréco. The Beatles' "Michelle" was inspired by Gréco and the Parisian Left Bank culture. Paul McCartney reasoned, "We'd tag along to these parties, and it was at the time of people like Juliette Greco, the French bohemian thing. They'd all wear black turtleneck sweaters, it's kind of where we got all that from, and we fancied Juliette like mad. Have you ever seen her? Dark hair, real chanteuse, really happening. So I used to pretend to be French, and I had this song that turned out later to be 'Michelle'. John Lennon wrote in Skywriting by Word of Mouth, "I'd always had a fantasy about a woman who would be a beautiful, intelligent, dark-haired, high-cheek-boned, free-spirited artist à la Juliette Gréco." Marianne Faithfull said of Gréco, "When I was a young girl, Juliette Gréco was my absolute idol… She’s my role model for life. If I want to be anybody, I want to be Juliette Gréco".

Juliette Gréco, the muse of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, one of the greatest artists ever, and a living legend of chanson. There is an official site for those who wish to know more.

I shall give an outline of her stellar career below:

1949: Gréco's first public concert performance at 'Le Bœuf sur le Toit', singing songs by a.o. Raymond Queneau, Jules Lafforgue, Jacques Prévert and Joseph Kosma.

1949 Gréco stars in Cocteau's film 'Orphée'.

1951: Gréco's debut single 'Je suis comme je suis', written by Prévert & Kosma.

1952: successful appearance in the 'April in Paris' show in the United States.

1954: legendary and triumphant performance in the famous Olympia hall in Paris.

1954: the French Association of Songwriters and Composers (SACEM) awarded the singer their prestigious 'Grand prix' for the song 'Je hais les dimanches', written by Florence Véran and Charles Aznavour.

1954: Gréco marries French actor Philippe Lemaire and the couple have a daughter, Laurence-Marie.

1956: Gréco and Lemaire break up and she leaves for the United States where she performs several successful concerts and works with famous Hollywoord stars like Henri King, John Huston and Orson Welles. Brief relationship with American film producer Darryl Zanuck.

1962: Successful recitals at the Bobino and Olympia in Paris.

1963: Gréco sings 'La Javanaise', penned by Serge Gainsbourg thus launching the career of this new singer/songwriter.

1965: Gréco stars in the famous French television series 'Belphégor'.

1965: Gréco marries French actor Michel Piccoli.

1967: Gréco performs a series of highly successful concerts in Berlin.

1975: Recitals at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris.

1976: Gréco starts to work with Gérard Jouannest, pianist, compositeur, arranger and long-time collabotaror of legendary Belgian star Jacques Brel.

1982: publication of Gréco's autobiography 'Jujube'

1983: release of the album 'Gréco 83'

1989: Gréco marries Jouannest, her long-time musical and personal companion

1991: tribute by the Printemps de Bourges

1992: successful recitals in the Olympia hall in Paris

1993: release of the album 'Juliette Gréco', featuring contributions from Etienne Roda-Gil, Julien Clerc, Caetano Veloso and Joao Bosco, among others.

1998: release of the album 'Un jour d'été et quelques nuits', written by Jean-Claude Carrière and arranged by Gérard Jouannest.

1999: recitals at the l'Odéon theatre in Paris.

1999: French minister of Culture, Catherine Trautmann, presents Juliette Gréco with the 'Ordre National du Mérite'.

2000/2001: international tour followed by heart problems during a performance in Montpellier

2003: release of the album 'Aimez-vous les uns les autres, ou bien disparaissez' with songs by Serge Gainsbourg, Jean-Claude Carrière, Louis Aragon and Bernard Lavilliers, Gérard Manset, Marie Nimier, Jean Rouaud, Art Mengo, Christophe Miossec, Benjamin Biolay and, of course, Gérard Jouannest.

2003/2004: international concert tour.

2004: release of the double CD/DVD 'Olympia 2004'.

2006: Gréco releases the album 'Le temps d'une chanson', which contains her interpretations of famous French songs.

2012: Gréco signs to the German classical label Deutsche Grammophon for 'Ça se traverse et c'est beau'.

Here are a couple of concerts well worth watching. Juliette Gréco is a compelling performerand artiste.

Live in Concert in 1970

live (26-1-1962) • Club Domino

I made a list of all my old favourite songs of hers and went through You Tube to find them, studio recordings and live performances. I shall start with the songs I love most of all and work my way down. All of these recordings are worthy of being heard and appreciated.

Paris Canaille

Paris Canaiile live

Sous le Ciel de Paris

Les pas Réunis

Non Monsieur Je n'ai pas 20 ans

Non Monsieur Je n'ai pas 20 ans live

Je Suis Bien 1968