The son of Jacques Brel’s older brother died on January 18, at the age of 73. A singer like his uncle, he revived on stage the repertoire of the poet of Flat Country. He will also have performed around a hundred songs of his own.
“…Then I want to be taken to the top of my hill, to see the evening slowly moving towards the plain…” We do not know if the day before his death he thought of Jacques Brel’s song, The Last Supper. The singer Bruno Brel, the nephew of Grand Jacques, passed away on January 18, at the age of 73. Admiring the immense talent of the poet of Flat Country and at the same time anxious to distance himself from this tutelary figure, he wrote memoirs in 2021 entitled, My Uncle’s Nephew.
Benoît Closson, the mayor of the small town of Wellin in Belgium, where Bruno Brel had lived for several years, immediately wanted to pay tribute to him: “On the occasion of our wedding, he gave Sylvie and me the immense pleasure of performing with great emotion the magnificent song by his uncle Jacques Brel When we have that love. We had formed a beautiful friendship. I won’t forget you.”
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With Bruno Brel, in the footsteps of Grand Jacques
Pierre Brel’s son was born on September 24, 1951 in Anderlecht. Like his uncle, the song appeals to him. At fifteen, he started out, he would be a singer. We are now in 1966 and his uncle Jacques has already rocked the Olympia several times.
-Le Grand Jacques takes him a little under his wing. Should you keep your last name? Should we choose a pseudonym that would avoid a comparison that is initially difficult to bring on stage? Jacques Brel cuts this Gordian knot for him: “…At the Brels, we take responsibility!”.
On the advice of Jacques Brel, Bruno will discover the world. In 1975, he crossed the Atlantic to live in Canada. Travel trains youth. He returned to Paris where the talent scout Jacques Canetti, who had given Jacques a chance some twenty years earlier, produced his first album. Bruno will write around a hundred songs. And then novels. We can cite, The white Touareg, The gut of death, The Candy Merchant…
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France Brel: “My father Jacques belongs to history and we must therefore tell the truth about him”
From the 2000s, Bruno Brel is no longer afraid of being compared to his uncle. Basically his voice tone has some resemblance to that of the interpreter inhabited byAmsterdam Or “There are sailors who sing of dreams that haunt them…”. He will no longer cheat, no longer play, intimidated, with this lineage. Deep down, he is full of admiration. At Figaro in 2018 he admitted: “When Jacques sang, everything had to come out completely from within. That’s what bothered him so much. There is another who was able to do it, it is Johnny Hallyday. It came out of the belly and it was extraordinary. That’s why these people were sweating like fountains.” A beautiful confession in the form of an artistic testament.
