Melody
Nelson lived fourteen autumns and fifteen summers when she was struck by the
front end of a Silver Ghost. The driver, who we can only assume is some extension
of the artist in question, was met with confusion and inexplicable lust. Melody
survives the incident, but not without being subjected to the narrator’s
bizarre, Nabokavian tendencies. Gainsbourg, with the help of partner
Jean-Claude Vannier and guest musicians Alan Parker and Dave Richmond among others,
spends just under 28 minutes unfolding a musical narrative to which there are many
dark, euphoric, and ambiguous sides.
Histoire De Melody Nelson is a landmark
record looked upon by countless musicians as a sonic reference point, and by critics
as a benchmark in the field of concept albums. It is perhaps the most
influential French rock album ever released and has been covered, and to some
extent copied countless times in the 48 years since its release. Beck, who
notably paid homage to the album’s title track on his 2003 breakup bummer, Sea Change, called the album “one of the
greatest marriages of rock band and orchestra” he’d ever heard. Upon listening,
it’s not difficult to understand why. The record opens with a plodding, quiet
bassline over jagged guitar riffs that are soon met with the sinister vocal
delivery of Serge Gainsbourg relaying in spoken word the story of hitting
Melody on her bicycle as he (or the narrator) haplessly drives his Rolls Royce.
The darkness of it all becomes quickly euphoric as a swelling orchestra builds
over the track’s otherwise brooding atmosphere. Highlighted by production
that’s as rich as it is spacious, each musician is given their chance to shine
here, but no one instrument distracts from or overshadows its counterparts. The
tracks that follow act as vignettes, conveying the narrator’s increasing
affinity for the album’s title character. 
While the bookend tracks take most of the glory,
the sheer musicianship flourishes throughout, without the end product feeling like
homework or something that takes itself too seriously. The album’s studio
playfulness leads to wonderful, slightly less musical moments. On the track “En
Melody,” bursts of maniacal laughter break out over a ferocious drum beat as
Gainsbourg relates the story of a plane crash that ultimately takes the life of
young Melody. Violinist Jean-Luc Ponty adds a set of strings to the mix as tensions
rise toward the fatal crash. The laughter coming from the voice of the titular
character, played here by Gainsbourg’s then-wife Jane Birkin, was achieved by
Birkin being tickled in the recording booth during the session. Her cackles add
a layer of palpable anxiousness as Melody’s short story comes to a bloody,
abrupt end.
Below the surface, Melody Nelson is a tremendously complicated exploration of
masculinity and its dark, inherent sexuality viewed through the lens of tragedy
- though Gainsbourg doesn’t really to seem to offer answers to this complexity
here. Melody Nelson, like the strange relationship that unfolds through the
album’s story, is another question mark in the life of the story’s recounter.
Gainsbourg makes a point to state from the beginning that the story’s central
characters are involved in this accident through naivety; in terms of childlike
innocence via the story’s victim and by contrast, age and recklessness via its
narrator. In the middle somewhere lie love and lust: two timeless themes that
have been endlessly tackled by musician after musician. Perhaps Gainsbourg
understood this to be heavily trod thematic ground and saw an opportunity to
disclose a side of these feelings not often explored, and its provocativeness
is nothing more than that. Or maybe the story is somewhat autobiographical and
we’re getting a real look into the sinister, paranoid world of the musician in
question. Ultimately that truth wouldn’t serve or enhance anyone’s understanding
of the album, and its moral ambiguity factors heavily into the atmosphere of it
all. The underlying story plays more of a supporting role to Gainsbourg and his
band than it does actually try to say something about its subjects and their
interactions.
The record’s cinematic nature was, at the time
of release, unparalleled by anything else in its genre. While Melody Nelson isn’t exactly a rock opera
in comparison to something like The Who’s Tommy,
it does a brilliant job of creating a mood to match its subject and creates
fertile ground for linear storytelling.
- Blake Britton (Initials B.B.)
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