Jacques Brel
b. 8 April 1929, Brussels, Belgium, d. 10 October 1978. Brel remains both a figurehead and grey eminence of modern songwriting, despite a reluctance to either sing in English or, owing to his bitter opposition to the Vietnam war, perform in North America—or anywhere else after retiring from concert appearances in 1966. Although Flemish, he conversed in French. After studying commercial law, he married and spent several years in the family cardboard merchandising business until, nauseated by bourgeois convention, he made a new start in Paris as a singing composer. Buck-toothed and lanky, his deficit of obvious mass appeal was thrust aside by impresario Jacques Canetti who presented him regularly at Pigalle's Theatre Des Trois Baudets where he was accompanied by his own chord-slashing on guitar and a small backing combo. An instinctive sense of dramatic construction resulted in performances that, embracing fierce anger, open romanticism and world-weariness, captivated an audience that spread into a wider world after Quand On N'A Que L'Amour, his first record success. Other domestic hits such as Le Valse De Mille Temps, Les Bourgeois, Les Dames Patronesses and Les Flamands gave vent to social comment via a wryly watchful, literate lyricism. This remained intrinsically Gallic until US recording manager Nat Shapiro became evangelical about Brel to his CBS superiors, who authorized the issue of 1957's AMERICAN DEBUT from which a substantial English-speaking following was to snowball. Brel was to leave his mark on the output of such diverse wordsmiths as Mort Shuman (an early and lifelong disciple), the Kinks’ Ray Davies, Leonard Cohen, David Bowie and—also the foremost interpreter of his work—Scott Walker. Brel was to reach a global market by proxy when his material was translated—and often emasculated as instanced by the Kingston Trio's 1964 rendition of Le Moribund as Seasons In The Sun (a UK number 1 for Terry Jacks a decade later), and the evolution of If You Go Away into a cabaret ‘standard’. He played two sell-out Carnegie Hall shows but was keener on extending himself through roles in movies like LES RISQUES DU METIER and LA BANDE A BONNET (an account of a French anarchist movement at the turn of the century). 
After he withdrew to the Polynesian Islands he would return fleetingly to Paris for one-take recording sessions but his work was kept before the public through a three-year Broadway run of the JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS musical (that later became a film), and smaller tributes such as the Sensational Alex Harvey Band's use of Next as title track of a 1975 album. In 1977, Brel was back in France for treatment for the cancer that would kill him the following year—a passing marked by a million-selling compilation album and a posthumous burgeoning of his popularity.