Michel Polnareff

France has been thrilling to the sounds of a long-lost native son, who fled to Los Angeles 34 years ago after establishing himself as one of the most original and talented singer-songwriters of his generation. I speak of the marvellously eccentric Michel Polnareff -- he of the white sun-specs and mop of frizzy blonde hair (a la Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople, for those who remember such things). Polnareff exiled himself to the US in 1973 after being swindled by his manager and finding himself unable to pay his tax bill. Since then he several times hinted at an imminent return to performing in France, but it never happened. Till now. At the age of 62 he has just come back home for a concert tour that is being hailed as the pop music event of 2007. So who is Polnareff? Back in the 60s he was a prodigy who stood out from the regular ye-ye crowd because he was actually rather good. He had a run of melodious hits such as "La poupee qui fait non". He also had a talent to shock -- typified by the famous concert poster (see above) that led to a conviction and fine -- and some saw him as France's answer to Elton John. By all accounts Friday's opening night was a huge success, enjoyed -- among others of the great and the good -- by one Dominique de Villepin. Not the first person who would spring to mind as a Polnareff fan, but there you go.

Brel

A tale of romance, song, age, despair and death comes to us from Alicante in Spain, where it is reported that the woman who inspired Jacques Brel's wonderful song "Madeleine" has taken her own life at the age of 69. The woman -- who the papers name coyly only as Madeleine Z. -- took a cocktail of drugs after seeking the help of a right-to-die group. She had been suffering from a terrible motor neurone disease. In the weeks before her death she befriended a journalist at El Pais and told her of her youth in Paris. After narrowly escaping deportation in the war (she was half-Jewish) she became an habituee of the jazz-club scene. This was where she met Brel. She worked as a model but also sang -- and she says she performed with Brel when he went to hospitals and prisons. She told El Pais that one day she stood Brel up for a date, and this inspired the classic 1962 song. With its opening words "Ce soir j'attends Madeline, j'ai apporte du lilas," the song is about waiting for a girl who never comes. It is Brel at his utterly brilliant best. Madeleine Z. moved to Spain in the mid 1960s, and would have been long forgotten but for the fact that her plight reawakened debate there over euthanasia. The kicker to the story is that I rang up the Jacques Brel Foundation in Brussels to find out more, and they told me they had never heard of this Madeleine Z. Be careful, I was told. We have lost count of the number of people who claim to be this or that person in Brel's songs. Many of them are fantasists.

I was amazed and delighted to discover the other day that the grim Paris suburb of Ris-Orangis rejoices in having a street named after a boyhood hero of mine, Irish blues guitarist Rory Gallagher. Why on earth should a grotty Paris banlieue have a rue Rory Gallagher, I asked myself. It turns out that the only thing Ris Orangis is famous for -- apart from the occasional outbreak of rioting -- is having a rock venue called Le Plan. I presume Rory must have been a regular. He was certainly much-loved in Europe, and continued to tour here up till his death 10 years ago. To see true genius, try this clip at Youtube

Anorexia nervosa

What do you do if your already highly-strung 14 year-old daughter listens to a group called Anorexia Nervosa, whose latest album is called Suicide is Sexy? What if she dresses in black, pierces her body and obsesses about dying? In France the influence of so-called "Black metal" music has been placed in the spotlight after the appalling suicide of two young teenage girls. They jumped from the 17th floor of an apartment block in Paris, after tying their hands together. In a note found in one of their pockets were the words: "Life isn't worth it." The girls were Goths -- members of what is now a Europe-wide tribe known for a certain morbidity. That in itself is unexceptional. But what has got French commentators worked up are the contents of one of the dead girls' weblogs. It contains long extracts from the lyrics of the French group Anorexia Nervoisa (the name is already something of a provocation) which -- to my tender ears at least -- are pretty startling. I won't go into them here -- but suffice to say that death, blood, cavities, excreta, death, rape, suicide, and more death are the order of the day. If you buy the CD, you'll hear it all screamed out to a background of violently thrashing guitar. It sounds like the battle-song of the Uruk-Hai prior to an assault on the city of Gondor. Some campaigners see it as a "drift into Satanism" -- and are taking the record label to task. Even if Anorexia is basically a group of nice lads, the argument goes, that doesn't exonerate them of all responsibility for spewing out this kind of hate-filled nonsense. Adolescents after all are adolescents, the critics say, and some will take it all too seriously. Others are less censorious -- especially towards the Goths as a movement. One Roman Catholic deacon who I met says that the violence, the morbid posturing and the death obsession are all actually constructive -- in a soulless world they let youngsters let off steam. More to the point, Goths in his experience are mutually very supportive. Being a member actually decreases the chance of suicide.