Some time ago I wrote my article about Michel Polnareff’s Love Me, Please Love Me EP (if you’ve not yet read it, you can find it here) and I put out a call to see if anyone had a copy of a Guy Béart TV show on which Polnareff sang (live) a version of Love Me, Please Love Me in English. Of course no one got in touch with me (you miserable lot!), but I have managed to track down a copy myself anyway. So here are some lovely screen grabs and a description of the show, which is called Bienvenue (originally screened on 18 November 1966):
The show itself looks promising – it was a Guy Béart show with Jean Claude Vannier’s Orchestra and it has amazing credits – but in reality it is disappointingly boring. The other acts on the show are very sedate and, considering what else was going on in the music world in 1966, are very old fashioned. The only thing saving the show is, of course, Michel Polnareff’s appearance and performance.
Michel starts out with his English language rendition of Love Me, Please Love Me, follows it up with a jazz improvisation on the piano and then picks up his twelve string to perform La poupée qui fait non with some audience participation on the chorus. (Again, if you haven’t yet read my article about La poupée you can find that here).
In case anyone wants the English language lyrics to Love Me, Please Love Me – here you go:
Love Me, Please Love Me / As I do love you / My heart is so lonely without you / So lonely and blue (Repeat)
You tell me I’m your little brother / You’ll die without me / Yes, tonight, really / You tell me I’m your little brother / You will die without me / Yes, tonight, o really, o really
(Repeat verse again x 1) / (Repeat You tell me… etc again) / (Repeat verse again x 1)
They’re not particularly good lyrics but I can’t tell you how great it is to hear Polnareff singing another version of such a great song. It’s just a shame that it wasn’t released.
Anyway, I have acquired a few other TV shows featuring Polnareff performances so expect to see some more Polna-Télé reviews on here at some point soon.