I read Sylvie Simmons’ decent biography Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes (Da Capo Press, 2002) years ago, but these must have really stood out enough in my mind at the time for me to think them worth recording in one of my notebooks.
Quoting Jane Birkin: “Serge would go to buy the newspapers every day just to see if we were in them. We were in them constantly. He adored it. He used to say, ‘Nous sommes mythiques’ – we’re mythological – therefore what people say about you, what they get right or wrong, doesn’t really matter as long as you’re there, and the lies are probably better than the truth half the time.” (pg 61)
“(As [Serge] once told Actuel magazine, showing the journalist around his house with its framed pictures of Marilyn Monroe on the walls, his fixation with the actress had come about ‘because she is dead’ and thus could never be corrupted or spoiled).” (pg 64)
