Serge Gainsbourg – Aux armes et caetera

The anthem, set to a slow Kingston rhythm

In January 1979, at Dynamic Sounds in Kingston, Serge Gainsbourg sings La Marseillaise on a reggae rhythm. Sly Dunbar’s drums sit back. Robbie Shakespeare’s bass states the changes. Rouget de Lisle’s call to arms arrives as a chant, not a march. The sessions run from 12 to 24 January. Philippe Lerichomme produces. Geoffrey Chung engineers, with Philip Ziadie assisting. The title they take home is Aux armes et caetera.

The room is a reggae band, not a French orchestra. With Dunbar and Shakespeare come Michael “Mao” Chung on guitar and piano, Radcliffe “Dougie” Bryan on rhythm guitar, Uzziah “Sticky” Thompson on percussion, Ansel Collins on organ and Robbie Lyn on piano. The backing voices are the I-Threes: Rita Marley, Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt. Philips releases the album, Gainsbourg’s thirteenth studio record, in the early spring of 1979. It is the first time a white singer records a full reggae album in Jamaica, after single tracks such as Paul Simon’s Mother and Child Reunion and Peter Tosh with Mick Jagger. Gainsbourg wanted a dub reggae session and hired the people who could play it. His vocal works because it is closer to a chant than to the orchestral chanson he was known for.

The title track keeps Rouget de Lisle’s lyric and replaces the military step with Gainsbourg’s reggae arrangement. The title stops at “et caetera”: to arms, and the rest left hanging. In France the record does not stay a studio curiosity. Michel Droit, in Le Figaro, attacks it as a profanation and pushes the argument toward Gainsbourg’s Jewishness. The scandal helps sales. The album goes platinum within months. By 1991 it has sold about 650,000 copies in France. Years later the French edition of Rolling Stone places it among the great French rock albums.