As soon as we say his first name, we immediately think of Serge Gainsbourg and Lulu, his son born from this union and love story, in 1986. Bambou was Serge’s last companion, the mother of this little boy who brought so much happiness to Gainsbourg, to the point of making him forget his character of Gainsbarre and his illness. Gainsbourg loved him, esteemed him and she also gave him a lot of love, almost as much as she lacked as a child, placed in public assistance from the age of six months. On March 2, 1991, Gainsbourg left us. It was 33 years ago. Since then, she has never wanted to take center stage. Today she publishes her autobiography, Step by step in the nightpublished by XO.
franceinfo: Step by step in the night is a cry from the heart, a sincere, moving, poetic laying bare. Why break this silence today?
Bamboo: Because I think it was time. I wouldn’t have been able to release it ten years ago. In fact, I was on the phone with Étienne Daho and at one point he said to me: “Bamboo written” and I thought about it for a month, a month and a half and it was the right time.
You were born in an emigrant camp in Lot-et-Garonne and placed there when you were six months old. You start this work with blank bars and this is what will haunt you throughout your life. They simply correspond to the bars of the beds of the children of Assistance.
When my mother took us back at the age of 13, I understood that I had not dreamed and that these bars were really there.
The first thing the host couple says when you arrive is: “The package is here“. You say that for 13 years they will not stop stealing from you, dirtying you and destroying you.
I call them the “Thénardiers”. It’s really Cosette.
“These people are paid to raise us, but they have free maids and they treat you very badly.”
It was constant blackmail with food and they weren’t very affectionate. They were racist. I was truly their slave.
This book is moving. We even wonder how you managed to stay alive. As a little girl, already at nine years old, you tried to cut your veins, telling yourself about it in the smallest details.
I wanted it to stop. For me, death came very quickly into my thoughts at the age of five. I told myself before going to sleep that one day I was going to put myself under the tracks because I couldn’t take it anymore. When you’re little, feeling that dirty isn’t easy.
For the longest time you thought you didn’t have a mother and then you discovered you did. She came to visit you. At the same time, you discovered that you had sisters who lived not far from your host family.
Yes, I had four sisters and a brother. I am the sixth.
And you say she decided to love only two out of the six. You weren’t one of them.
Non.
“My mother loved beauty. If you weren’t to her taste, she didn’t love you.”
Meeting Serge Gainsbourg will revolutionize your life. At that point, you’re a model, you go to a nightclub and the manager of the establishment comes up to you and says, “Over there, there is Serge Gainsbourg who wishes…”
Who orders you to come to his table! I replied: what, this old bastard who gives me orders! Then I return to my table to leave and there, I see Serge coming towards my table. He puts down his bucket and says to me: “The old man is coming to your table, you bastard!“And then I burst out laughing, he did too and it started like that.
Lulu changed your life and hers.
Oh yes, completely. He told me that you are not born a dad, you become a dad and that he was at an age where he became much more aware… He could take care of a child much more than ten years before or 20 years back.
Lulu was precisely what kept you alive. It is often said that we reproduce what we experienced as children. You, on the contrary, went completely the opposite, you gave him all the love that you lacked.
And I did better than that. I went to forgive the “Thénardiers” for all the harm they had done to me by introducing them to Lulu and they didn’t understand. I needed to do it so that Lulu could start on a basis where there were no stories behind it.
Have you forgiven your mother?
I never held it against him. With his past, the Vietnam War and all that. I thought everyone could have lost their temper like her.
