In 1967, French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg created the breathy, dreamlike Bonnie And Clyde for himself and his on-off lover, the actress Brigitte Bardot. Inspired by the groundbreaking neo-noir movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, it was Gainsbourg’s response to Bardot’s challenge – after a row – to write for her “the most beautiful love song you can imagine”. But Gainsbourg wrote another song in the same session – and his true partner in crime was on her way.
Born on December 14, 1946, in London, Jane Birkin’s early life primed her for a promising career on stage and screen. Her mother Judy Campbell, a prominent actress throughout the 1930’s and 40’s would encourage her children’s artistic pursuits during childhood holidays through recording home movies on Super 8. These early experiments would go on to inspire Jane and her elder brother Andrew, though it wouldn’t be until 1964 when Birkin would first emerge into the world of acting.
Though many of her initial appearances were unremarkable, Birkin’s career would steadily progress through the swinging sixties, gaining notoriety for her nude appearances in Blow-Up (directed by Michelangelo Antonioni) and Wonderwall (Joe Massot). Married – unhappily – to composer John Barry, Birkin would find a leading role in Slogan (Pierre Grimblat) which would lead to her serendipitous encounter with the film’s other lead, Gainsbourg.
By now, Gainbourg and Bardot had released Bonnie And Clyde and, in a two-hour session in a Paris recording studio which eyewitnesses claimed contained “heavy petting”, another song – Je t’aime… moi non plus (I love you… me neither, inspired by Salvador Dalí comment: “Picasso is Spanish, me too. Picasso is a genius, me too. Picasso is a communist, me neither”).
The story leaked, much to the displeasure of Bardot’s then-husband. Gainsbourg knew the track was one of his finest, but agreed not to release it. “The music is very pure,” he later said. “For the first time in my life, I write a love song and it’s taken badly.”
Though Birkin was initially repelled by her co-star – “When I first met him, the way he acted I thought was… horrible,” she said – she quickly began an affair with Gainsbourg, who was still looking for a partner to re-record Je’ t’aime. According to Marianne Faithfull, Serge “asked everybody”, including Valérie Lagrange, Mireille Darc and Faithull herself.
Birkin heard the track and later remembered: “It was heavy, erotic, and thick like a perfume. I thought to myself, ‘My god, if he gets inside that recording booth, all tight up against some beauty, I’m screwed.’”
She later added: “I only sang it because I didn’t want anybody else to sing it. So when Serge heard me singing rather brightly in the bath, he said ‘I’m going to write Jane B and then on the other side, perhaps you’d like to sing Je t’aime… moi non plus’, but in an octave higher than the Bardot version so you’ll sound like a little boy’. I said yes immediately.”
Birkin determined to make the song her own. The version she recorded with Gainsbourg in London’s Maida Vale became an anthem of sensuality and passion, largely due to Birkin’s enchanting delivery. Her breathy whispers intertwined with Gainsbourg’s deep, seductive voice creating an intense and intimate atmosphere that seemed to capture every aspect of their passion.
Birkin said: “I got a bit carried away with the heavy breathing – so much so, in fact, that I was told to calm down, which meant that at one point I stopped breathing altogether. If you listen to the record now, you can still hear that little gap.”
Birkin always denied that her version contained real-life sex. “Thank goodness it wasn’t, otherwise I hope it would have been a long-playing record,” she joked. But the orgasmic moaning, and lyrics that translate as “I go and I come, Between your loins”, shocked even the most liberated of listeners
“I don’t know how he got Jane to do it because she was such a lovely English upper-class schoolgirl,” Faithfull later said. “But of course, he would have got her to do it by f**king her brains out! And ‘Je t’aime…’ was perfect for Jane. She was born for it.”
When the track was played in public for the first time – in a Paris restaurant straight after their return from Britain, Birkin said that “all you could hear were the knives and forks being put down” Gainbourg told her: “I think we have a hit record.”
He was right – it sold three million copies and topped the chart in the UK despite being withdrawn once it reached No.2. In France it was apackaged in an plain sleeve only featuring the words “Interdit aux moins de 21 ans” (banned for under 21s) and it was banned in Italy after an intervention by the Pope, who “Serge just called him ‘our greatest PR man’,” said Birkin.
Though the track brough Birkin fame and fortune, you can argue that it also overshadowed a career that spanned 70 films, of which the best is arguably 1969’s La Piscine, where she plays opposite. Alain Delon. She worked with great directors – Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, James Ivory and Bertrand Tavernier.
So when it came time to bid farewell to Jane Birkin, as we did in the summer of 2023, we didn;t just celebrate her masterful performance in “Je t’aime… moi non plus”. We remembered the gifted actress who had to fight for a more positive culture, the mother who raised talented women who each made their own impact in the world of art. We remembered all of Jane Birkin, as all of it deserves to be remembered.