Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Jacques Brel's possessions up for auction

Dozens of records, notebooks, guitars and knick-knacks that once belonged to singer Jacques Brel will go under the hammer on Wednesday (local time) in Paris, despite protests from his family.

The Sotheby's sale, on view to the public since Saturday, coincides with a raft of newspaper articles, book and album releases dedicated to the giant of French chanson, who died of lung cancer on October 9, 1978.

Photographs from his childhood or snapped while on tour, interview recordings, three guitars, a pilot's licence, a signed Serge Gainsbourg record, a pen and a pipe are among the items up for grabs.

The 94 lots are expected to fetch up to 470,000 euros ($903,000), including a schoolboy's notebook in which Brel jotted down the rough draft of the song Amsterdam. It is estimated to fetch well over 50,000 euros.

Officially, the objects come from the private collection of an anonymous seller.

Reports say most were recovered from the Riviera home Brel shared with Sylvie Riget, one of his many mistresses, and were split between her nieces and nephews following her death.

Brel's widow and three daughters - who hold full rights to his work and say they attempted in the past to buy the Riget archives - have tried to block the sale, after managing to do once before in 2003.

"It is so hateful and mean. We tried all sorts of ways to have it banned," the singer's daughter France told Le Figaro newspaper.

She also warned that any manuscripts or notes bought at auction "are unusable because we are the only people allowed to hold them."

Born in Brussels in 1929, Brel abandoned the family cardboard business as a young man to try his luck on the Paris cabaret stage.

He cut his first record in 1952. But it wasn't until 1959 that he hit the big time, after the release of an album featuring one of the most poignant French songs of all time, Ne Me Quitte Pas - a man's plea to his lover not to leave him.

After a decade on the road - playing 200 to 300 dates a year - he abruptly left the stage in 1967, spending the rest of his life in a mysterious retreat in the Marquises islands in French Polynesia. he is buried there.

- AFP