In anger, Jacques Brel had thrown his wages on the ground that evening: 12,000 guilders in a thick envelope (almost 5,500 euros). “Stick it up your ass or give it to the Red Cross!” He then insulted the restaurant owner and his guests in rapid French, a cannonade that was expertly translated by his regular translator Ernst van Altena. “I’m not a bar singer, haven’t been for years. I should be in a hall and then they bring me to the province to perform in one of those shitty places for deaf old pies.”
Behind the ranting Belgian singer’s back, his driver hurriedly bent down to pick up the envelope containing the money.
On May 30, 1964, an angry Brel left café-restaurant Het Huis met de Pilaren, in Bergen, North Holland, leaving the audience with their mouths open – and a story for eternity. For decades that story was served with relish; first in Bergen and surrounding areas, later, in 2002, when the tapes containing the concert that lasted 45 minutes were found in the archives of the Institute for Sound and Vision and broadcast in the rest of the Netherlands.
And soon, sixty years later to the day, the performance will be repeated.
Not by Jacques Brel of course. He died in Paris in 1978, at the age of 49, of a pulmonary embolism. By Olivier Laurent. This Belgian chansonnier does not imitate Jacques Brel, like the French newspaper Le Figaro wrote, but is “the reincarnation of Jacques Brel”.
“I want to honor Jacques Brel and his actions,” says the current owner of Het Huis met de Pilaren, Ad Besseling. He himself was not there in 1964. “I was only twelve!” Other Bergen residents, including poet Adriaan Roland Holst, were there. And Thé Lau, later the singer of the band The Scene, who was sitting at the reading table with his father when Brel entered the café in the afternoon, attended the sound check in amazement.
It was an idea of the VPRO, which wanted the singer to perform in an atmosphere other than a ‘cold TV studio’. The choice fell on the café-restaurant in Bergen, the director’s hometown. And so the man who stopped L’Olympia in Paris was singing in front of the fireplace in a North Holland cafe. Fifteen chansons, and with a dedication as if he had to win over L’Olympia.
Sixty years later, much will be the same, and some things won’t. The sole and frog legs that people ate in 1964 are not on the menu – a Belgian stew is. For years, people told each other the story that Brel had to sing above the smacking of people and the clatter of cutlery. Until the footage surfaced; this shows that Brel performed after dinner.
And is there also a large flat cheese ready for ‘reincarnation’ Olivier Laurent? The VPRO thrust the cheese into Brel’s hands upon his departure, as a thank you, just before he left the artists’ village with screeching tires. “Bon Fromage, Jacques,” translator Van Altena just managed to shout through the car window.
Besseling says yes. “The cheese will be there too.” But will they also push him in his hands afterwards? Besseling laughs: “I think we’ll just give it to you.”
Olivier Laurent sings Brel in The House with the Pillars, Bergen (NH), May 30, 2024. See: pilarenbergen.nl
Correction (April 24, 2024): An earlier version of this article referred to Jacques Brel as a French singer. This must be a Belgian singer and has been adjusted.
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