Biography
Novelist and editor Jacques Lanzmann earned his greatest renown in France through his extended role as lyricist for pop idol Jacques Dutronc, crafting a string of enduring hits that captured the spirit of the student revolts in the closing years of the 1960s. Born on May 4, 1927, in Bois-Colombe as the second child of Jewish parents whose marriage dissolved just before World War II, he spent a short period laboring on a farm in the Auvergne before enlisting at sixteen with the Resistance, where he fought next to his elder brother Claude, the future director of the landmark Holocaust film Shoah. Captured by German forces and condemned to execution by firing squad, he succeeded in fleeing, then took up residence in Paris as a truck driver and welder who devoted his spare time to fiction. Once the manuscript was finished he departed for Chile to work in copper mines; meanwhile Claude delivered the work to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, who brought it out in 1954 under the title La Glace Est Rompue. The following year Lanzmann issued his second novel, Le Rat d'Amérique, a fictionalized account of his South American years. Over the course of his life he produced roughly fifty books at a pace of about one annually while also contributing as theater critic, screenwriter, and broadcaster. In 1963 he joined fashion photographer Daniel Filipacchi to launch the men’s magazine Lui, the French edition of Playboy; for the next five years the periodical served as his chief creative platform and became a lasting emblem of the emerging French youth counterculture.
Although Lanzmann supplied material to major figures such as Sylvie Vartan and Sacha Distel, his partnership with Dutronc stands as his most lasting mark on French pop. The two men met in 1965 when Vogue Records A&R director Jacques Wolfsohn required a fresh lyricist and Filipacchi put forward Lanzmann’s name; for the ensuing demo session Wolfsohn placed his assistant Dutronc behind the microphone. The results so pleased Wolfsohn that he released the demo recording of “Et Moi et Moi et Moi” as a single in 1966. Its insolent, mock-protest lyrics and coolly debauched vocals swiftly reached the top of the French charts and spread Dutronc’s reputation throughout western Europe. With his tailored suits and silk ties the singer embodied the worldly, sophisticated male ideal that Lanzmann had promoted in Lui, and the follow-up single “Les Play Boys,” winner of the Prix de l’Academie Charles Cros, reinforced Dutronc’s standing as the model of cosmopolitan elegance. After the million-selling debut album Les Cactus, Lanzmann and his then-wife Anne Segalen spent 1967 producing one hit after another, among them “J’aime les Filles” and the timeless “Il Est Cinq Heures, Paris S’éveille,” which in 1999 was voted the definitive French song of the century. While “L’Opportuniste” reflected the political upheavals of May 1968, most of the lyrics centered on Dutronc’s outsized persona; both “L’Hôtesse de l’Air” and “L’Aventurier” distilled the singer’s cynical, swaggering image through sharply inventive lines that simultaneously mocked and championed the generation that adopted Dutronc as its unofficial spokesman.
Once Dutronc turned his attention toward cinema the songwriting partnership entered a hiatus. The tracks prepared for the 1975 album L’Ile Enchanteresse marked the close of their ten-year association. Following several commissioned assignments, notably the French adaptation of the countercultural musical Hair, Lanzmann likewise stepped back from pop, taking up professional gambling while sustaining his literary output with growing commercial and critical acclaim through such best-sellers as Memories of an Amnesiac, Rue des Mamours, and Imagine the Promised Land. Tax difficulties later prompted renewed travel; late in life he adopted the Internet and maintained his own web blog. In early 2006 he released his final novel, the autobiographical Une Vie de Famille. After a prolonged illness he died in Paris on June 21, 2006; French President Jacques Chirac observed, “Jacques Lanzmann’s songs will stay in French hearts for a long time. This generous writer led his life as an adventure novel, throughout the roads of the world.”
Although Lanzmann supplied material to major figures such as Sylvie Vartan and Sacha Distel, his partnership with Dutronc stands as his most lasting mark on French pop. The two men met in 1965 when Vogue Records A&R director Jacques Wolfsohn required a fresh lyricist and Filipacchi put forward Lanzmann’s name; for the ensuing demo session Wolfsohn placed his assistant Dutronc behind the microphone. The results so pleased Wolfsohn that he released the demo recording of “Et Moi et Moi et Moi” as a single in 1966. Its insolent, mock-protest lyrics and coolly debauched vocals swiftly reached the top of the French charts and spread Dutronc’s reputation throughout western Europe. With his tailored suits and silk ties the singer embodied the worldly, sophisticated male ideal that Lanzmann had promoted in Lui, and the follow-up single “Les Play Boys,” winner of the Prix de l’Academie Charles Cros, reinforced Dutronc’s standing as the model of cosmopolitan elegance. After the million-selling debut album Les Cactus, Lanzmann and his then-wife Anne Segalen spent 1967 producing one hit after another, among them “J’aime les Filles” and the timeless “Il Est Cinq Heures, Paris S’éveille,” which in 1999 was voted the definitive French song of the century. While “L’Opportuniste” reflected the political upheavals of May 1968, most of the lyrics centered on Dutronc’s outsized persona; both “L’Hôtesse de l’Air” and “L’Aventurier” distilled the singer’s cynical, swaggering image through sharply inventive lines that simultaneously mocked and championed the generation that adopted Dutronc as its unofficial spokesman.
Once Dutronc turned his attention toward cinema the songwriting partnership entered a hiatus. The tracks prepared for the 1975 album L’Ile Enchanteresse marked the close of their ten-year association. Following several commissioned assignments, notably the French adaptation of the countercultural musical Hair, Lanzmann likewise stepped back from pop, taking up professional gambling while sustaining his literary output with growing commercial and critical acclaim through such best-sellers as Memories of an Amnesiac, Rue des Mamours, and Imagine the Promised Land. Tax difficulties later prompted renewed travel; late in life he adopted the Internet and maintained his own web blog. In early 2006 he released his final novel, the autobiographical Une Vie de Famille. After a prolonged illness he died in Paris on June 21, 2006; French President Jacques Chirac observed, “Jacques Lanzmann’s songs will stay in French hearts for a long time. This generous writer led his life as an adventure novel, throughout the roads of the world.”