Jacques Lanzmann

Jacques Lanzmann (4 May 1927 – 21 June 2006) was a French journalist, writer and lyricist. He is best known as a novelist and for his songwriting partnership with Jacques Dutronc.

Early life Lanzmann spent the early part of his life in Auvergne. His parents, Paulette (Grobermann) and Armand Lanzmann, divorced shortly before World War II and, at the age of 12, he became a farmhand. Lanzmann was Jewish and, following the Battle of France, he, his mother and his siblings, pretended to be Moroccan Arabs to escape persecution by the Vichy regime. In 1943, Lanzmann and his elder brother Claude (later a noted documentary-maker) joined the Communist resistance. Jacques was taken captive by the Germans and was due to be executed by firing squad, but escaped. Lanzmann's father was one of the leading local figures in the rival Mouvements Unis de la Résistance, but Jacques and Claude were not aware of this until February 1944.

After the war, Lanzmann worked in Paris as builder and a welder, and showed promise as a painter. During the early 1950s, he moved to Chile for two years, where he worked as a copper miner.

Lanzmann continued to write novels and, in 1959, wrote his first adapted screenplay, Le Travail c'est la liberté ("Work is Freedom") (possibly a play on the infamous "Arbeit macht frei"). Between 1960 and 1962 he was a journalist for L'Express. In 1963, he adapted his novel Le Rat d'Amérique as a screenplay for the film Rat Trap, starring Charles Aznavour. In the same year, he was approached by Daniel Filipacchi to edit a new men's magazine Lui, a post which he held until 1968.

Pop music In 1966, Jacques Wolfsohn of Disques Vogue asked Lanzmann to work with pop composer Jacques Dutronc to create songs for a beatnik singer called Benjamin. Benjamin released an EP in 1966, featuring songs written with Dutronc and a Lanzmann-Dutronc composition, "Cheveux longs" (Long Hair). However, Wolfsohn was disappointed by Benjamin's recording of a song titled "Et moi, et moi, et moi". A second version was recorded, with Dutronc's former bandmate Hadi Kalafate on vocals. Wolfsohn then asked Dutronc if he would be interested in recording his own version. The single reached number 2 in the French charts in September 1966.

Lanzmann, sometimes working with his wife Anne Segalen, wrote the words for most of Dutronc's output between 1966 and 1980. Dutronc's self-titled debut album, released at the end of 1966, sold over a million copies and was awarded a special Grand Prix du Disque by the Académie Charles Cros, in memoriam of one of its founders. A second single, "Les play boys", spent six weeks at number one and sold 600,000 copies. Dutronc was one of the most commercially successful French music stars of the late 1960s and early 1970s. During that period, he released seven hit albums and more than 20 singles, including two further number ones: "J'aime les filles" in 1967 and "Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille" in 1968.

During the recording of the 1980 album Guerre et pets ("War and Farts" – a play on the title of Tolstoy's novel), Wolfsohn proposed that Dutronc write with both Jacques Lanzmann and Serge Gainsbourg. He suggested to the two that they each work on alternative lyrics to go with one of Dutronc's instrumental demos. Lanzmann objected to being placed in competition against another writer, and dropped out of the project. The resulting album consequently only includes two Lanzmann-Dutronc compositions, and is mainly written by Dutronc and Gainsbourg.

In 2003, Dutronc and Lanzmann reunited for Madame l'existence, an album described by rock critic Christophe Conte as "surpassing, without much apparent effort, everything that [Dutronc] has created in the last two decades".

Lanzmann has also worked on songs for a number of other artists, including Johnny Hallyday, Françoise Hardy and Petula Clark. In 1969, he wrote the French adaptation of the musical Hair. Lanzmann subsequently founded the publishing company Jacques Lanzmann et Seghers Editeurs.

During the 1970s, Lanzmann wrote a number of best-selling novels and became a professional gambler.

He was a keen traveler and walker. He crossed nearly all of the world's deserts, and explored the Sahara Desert at the age of 19. He came close to death while crossing the Taklamakan Desert in 1990. While crossing the Sinai Desert in 1985 he was arrested by Egyptian soldiers on suspicion of spying. In his suitcase, he had a cutting of a Le Monde profile dedicated to him, and was able to secure his release by using this to prove his identity.

When author Gabriel Matzneff was confronted by Canadian novelist and journalist Denise Bombardier for his writing about sexually abusing children, Lanzmann was quoted that he was surprised that Denise Bombardier was not "slapped in the face" for being rude to Matzneff

He died on 21 June 2006, aged 79, in Paris and his funeral was held on 26 June at the Père-Lachaise cemetery. French President Jacques Chirac paid tribute, saying: "His brilliant songs left an imprint on their era. They will remain for a long time in the hearts of the French."