Record company offends fans and morality with release of chanteur's final repertoire

Jacques Brel
Brel: seen as the inspiration for musicians such as David Bowie, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.
Racked with pain and enfeebled by prolonged illness, France's best-loved singer, Jacques Brel, still managed to make his last wishes very clear to his family: his final recordings were unfinished and unworthy of his oeuvre, and should never be released.

For 25 years, his testament was respected. Compilations printed the lyrics of the five final songs but the recordings remained unobtainable and unbroadcast. Until now.

The decision of his record company, Universal-Barclay, to include these final hidden works in a tribute LP released yesterday has shocked his most loyal fans and unsettled the French music industry.

Brel was only 49 when he died but he had already won a reputation as one of the 20th century's most talented singer-songwriters. Widely seen as the inspiration for musicians such as David Bowie, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, Brel brought intelligence and a social conscience to his lyrics.

His last five songs were recorded in autumn 1977 as he struggled with ill-health caused by a lifetime of smoking and drinking. He was undergoing radiation therapy for lung cancer. Dissatisfied with his work, he made sure the songs were excluded from Brel, his last, and most successful LP.

"These songs were not successful and Jacques Brel wanted to rework them, which is why they have not been released," his producer once said. Brel never explained why he felt the songs had failed.

To his fans, he was a genius whose idiosyncrasies should be humoured. The seductive power of his songs about love, passion and loss transcended his unprepossessing physical appearance (skinny, gawky with buck teeth) transforming him into an unlikely sex symbol, both in Belgium where he was born, and in France.

His peculiar wishes were already familiar to his fans, who 11 years earlier had been forced to accept his premature decision to retire from performing in public, on the grounds he no longer wanted to battle against vomit-inducing stage fright.

Brel Infinitely marks the 25th anniversary of his death on October 9. With the surge of interest in Brel from this date, his record company appears (with the family's support) to have decided that commercial potential outweighs any moral duty to adhere to his wishes.

Ludovic Perrin, a music writer for Libération, was dubious about the songs' merits. "On the whole, and in the current climate in particular, this is not a particularly bad song. But, when technology takes precedence over creativity, it's not Brel as Brel wanted to be."

One of the singer's younger fans, student Cèline Goncalves, 20, said: " If he decided not to release the songs because he thought they were no good, then they shouldn't be released now. It's not for the family to take decisions for him."