For a song written about a very particular set of circumstances, Jacques Brel’s “Ne me quitte pas” has proved to have universal power. There’s not just an English translation for this song. You can be heartbroken in Hebrew, Afrikaans, Arabic, Finnish,West Frisianand most languages in between. For who, at some point in their life, has not been so inconsolably, desolately, unbearably heartbroken that they are willing to lose all dignity and echo Brel’s plea: “Don’t leave me”?
Brel recorded “Ne me quitte pas” on September 11 1959, for his fourth album La Valse à Mille Temps, and drew from his own misery for what he called “a hymn to the cowardice of men”. It had been written after the singer and actress Zizou ended their relationship. Her reason? She had become pregnant, and Brel — already a married father — refused to acknowledge the child, leading her to have an abortion. At which point Brel wrote his song, ostensibly ridiculing men for their willingness to debase themselves before women, though it’s hard not to read the lyrics and view the narrator as the victim: no mention of unacknowledged children or abortions here, just doomed passion.
The song transcended its origins, though: Brel’s melody was for the ages, and there is a delicious contrast between the sombre verses and the choruses, where the music swirls into life like leaves caught on an autumn breeze, in a melody borrowed from Liszt.
Simone Langlois recorded the first cover version, also in 1959 (the chronology is unclear, but some believe her version predated Brel’s release). French-language covers were commonplace through the 1960s, not always by French singers. Nina Simone sang it in 1965, her voice grand and disappointed, wintry in its distress. There’s no need to understand French to appreciate what Simone is singing of: her despair is an unending deep, an ocean trench of sadness.
Brel’s particular sensibility — dissolute, faintly nihilistic, wholly embracing of altered states and contemptuous of bourgeois sensibilities — was very much in tune with that of the rock scene of the late 1960s, even if his music had nothing in common with most of the bands of that era. Two different songwriters in the United States, Rod McKuen and Mort Shuman, set about translating his work. The versions by Shuman, a rock’n’roll-era songwriter who brought Brel’s work to the New York stage in the revue Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris, are regarded as better translations, but it was McKuen who redefined “Ne me quitte pas” as “If You Go Away”.
McKuen released his version of the song in 1966, with its now familiar lyrical structure contrasting what happens if she goes away with if she stays (“I’ll make you a day / Like no day had been / Or will be again”). It crossed immediately into the mainstream. Shirley Bassey tackled it in 1967 (cheekily introduced on TV by McKuen as “a song I wrote”), stretching the syllables at the end of each verse disconcertingly. Sandie Shaw, meanwhile, clung to the French lyrics. Dusty Springfield split the difference, and recorded a wonderful bilingual version.
Frank Sinatra, entering a difficult phase of his career and sometimes seeming like the granddad who was slightly baffled by this newfangled kids’ music, took on the song for his 1969 album My Way, and it suited him perfectly — at the very bottom of his range, a slight wavering around some of the notes emphasising his vulnerability. From the sublime to the ridiculous: it was followed on the album by a jaw-droppingly terrible, point-missing version of “Mrs Robinson”.
Scott Walker, meanwhile, was using Brel to ease his passage from heart-throb to a walking, talking existential crisis, and his first three solo records were littered with enough Brel songs that they would later be compiled in their own right on an album (Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel). His “If You Go Away” was lush and opulent, but given context by the other covers. “If You Go Away”, on its own, was a sad love song; placed alongside “Next” and “The Girls and the Dogs” and “Amsterdam”, it gains meaning as just one part of a dissolute life.
The versions never stopped coming. Young artists will continue to hear Scott Walker or Nina Simone and want to add to that legacy. And so Lauryn Hill recorded “Ne me quitte pas” on a tribute album to Simone; Marc Almond, like Walker, took to exploring the Brel songbook early — his first stab at “If You Go Away”, a dramatic and brittle piano version, was recorded in 1982, with Almond gloriously overwrought.
You could spend days listening to all the versions of “Ne me quitte pas”, from obscure foreign-language recordings through to Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion.
“Ne me quitte pas”? This is a song that will never go away.
What are your memories of ‘Ne me quitte pas’? Let us know in the comments section below.
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: The Restoration Project; Visart; Select Musiek; Warner Music Finland; Decca; ISIS Sarl; Philips; Universal; Mercury; Columbia; Genepool Records; Sony
Picture credit: Corbis via Getty Images