No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf - Carolyn Burke

Piaf has been the subject of many quality biographies. This latest injects new research to triangulate with previous accounts while still retaining the sense of passion that marked Piaf's singing and life. While setting some myths straight, the book in itself will contribute to the ongoing mythology of Piaf.

Popular song gained an indelible image in 1935, when Édith Piaf, France’s fabled “Little Sparrow,” first stood onstage in a plain black dress, a rat’s nest of dark hair topping her weary eyes. Singing in a piquant tone with a thick vibrato, she poured out tales of working-class lives and endurance pushed to the brink, usually by love. Face, hands and voice were all she needed to bring her playlets to life. One of her trademarks, “L’Accordéoniste,” was written for her in 1940. As she sang of a prostitute whose musician lover went off to war and never returned, Piaf rocked her arms through the air manically to the rhythm of his playing; she caressed her stomach as though remembering how he felt against her.

The public knew that her drama wasn’t mere acting. Throughout her life, the tabloids wrote endlessly about Piaf’s hardships: the childhood of poverty and abandonment; her addict mother’s fatal overdose; the death of her greatest love, the handsome boxing champ Marcel Cerdan, in a plane crash; the injuries and illnesses and prescription drug abuse. But when she sang her theme, “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” (known in English as “No Regrets”), Piaf defied anyone to pity her. She embraced life passionately, even at its cruelest; so long as she could use it in her songs, she felt, the suffering was worth it. Her will to move forward was herculean, but her tiny body wasn’t. After years of failing health, she died in 1963 at 47.

Occasionally, a quotation in “No Regrets” makes Piaf leap off the page. André Brink, the South African novelist, caught her indomitable spirit in his 2009 memoir, “A Fork in the Road.” The fading chanteuse, he wrote, was “like a dying moth,” singing “in a voice like a shout from a tomb, . . . the voice of life itself, refusing to die, refusing to be silenced.”

Read the full review here.

“Concise and gracefully written . . . [Burke] surveys all [Piaf’s] mayhem with thoughtfulness and respect. . . . A sound overview of Piaf’s life.”
—James Gavin, The New York Times Book Review

Watch her sing on

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0feNVUwQA8U

Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien lyrics

Non, Rien De Rien, Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien
Ni Le Bien Qu'on M'a Fait, Ni Le Mal
Tout Ca M'est Bien Egal
Non, Rien De Rien, Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien
C'est Paye, Balaye, Oublie, Je Me Fous Du Passe


Avec Mes Souvenirs J'ai Allume Le Feu
Mes Shagrins, Mes Plaisirs,
Je N'ai Plus Besoin D'eux
Balaye Les Amours Avec Leurs Tremolos
Balaye Pour Toujours
Je Reparas A Zero


Non, Rien De Rien, Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien
Ni Le Bien Qu'on M'a Fait, Ni Le Mal
Tout Ca M'est Bien Egal
Non, Rien De Rien, Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien
Car Ma Vie, Car Me Joies
Aujourd'hui Ca Commence Avec Toi

Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien lyrics
Songwriters: Dumont, Charles; Vaucaire, Michel;


No, nothing of nothing
No, I don't feel sorry
About nothing

Not the good things people have done to me
Not the bad things, it's all the same to me
No, nothing of nothing

No, I don't feel sorry
About nothing
It's paid for, removed, forgotten

I'm happy of the past
With my memories
I lit up the fire
My troubles, my pleasures
I don't need them anymore
[ From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/e/edith-piaf-lyrics/non,-je-ne-regrette-rien-lyrics.html]

Broomed away my love stories
And all their tremble
Broomed away for always
I start again from zero
No, nothing of nothing
No, I don't feel sorry
About nothing
Not the good things people have done to me
Not the bad things, it's all the same to me
No, nothing of nothing
No, I don't feel sorry
About nothing
Because my life, my joys
Today, they begin with you

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