Plaisir d'Amour/Can't Help Falling in Love With You
Soul Music
BBC
4.7 • 831 Ratings
🗓️ 19 November 2014
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Marianne Faithfull recalls the classical French Love song which went on to inspire a 1960s hit record by Elvis Presley.
'Plaisir d'Amour' somehow found its way through 18th century orchestration (Hector Berlioz) and 1960's folk revival, to an unexpected re-invention as Elvis’s 'I Can't' Help Falling in Love with You'.
Written in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini, the song muses on the pleasures and pains of love and was inspired by a poem in Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian's novel 'Célestine'.
For 17 year old Marianne Faithfull, it was a song of innocence, recorded in a tiny booth in London’s old Decca studios whilst happily pregnant with her first child.
Meanwhile, author Julia Donaldson and husband Malcolm busked it on the streets of Paris. This was in the summer of 1969 and police hid in alleyways, still fearful of students following the 1968 riots.
Inspired by Elvis, West Point Military Academy Freshman Andrew Scott learnt to pick the tune on guitar – helping him win the heart of his wife.
For Henry and Christine Wallace, it summed everything up "It was what I was looking for, someone to share my life and the words 'take my whole life too was in tune with what I wanted'.
Producer: Nicola Humphries
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2014.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I'd like to quickly tell you about some others. |
| 0:05.1 | My name's Andy Martin and I'm the editor of a team of podcast producers at the BBC in Northern Ireland. |
| 0:11.3 | It's a job I really love because we get to tell the stories that really matter to people here, |
| 0:16.2 | but which also resonate and apply to listeners around the world. |
| 0:19.6 | And because the team is such a diverse range of skills and strengths, |
| 0:23.0 | we have trained journalists, people who love digging through archives, |
| 0:26.6 | we've got drama and even comedy experts. |
| 0:28.9 | We really can do those stories justice. |
| 0:31.5 | So if you like this podcast, head to BBC Sounds |
| 0:34.2 | where you'll find plenty more fascinating stories from all around the UK. |
| 0:43.8 | I always thought of it in terms of sort of the past and courtly love and romantic love. |
| 0:51.4 | I was very keen on romantic love when I was young. My name is Marianne Phaeton, and I'm a chantress. |
| 1:02.0 | Pleasier d'amour, let's hear of my name pleasure to my mind |
| 1:12.6 | I'm |
| 1:14.6 | pleasure Pleasure d'amour, the pleasures of love. |
| 1:34.0 | The pleasures of love don't last very long, but the pains of love last forever. |
| 1:39.9 | That would be a real drag. |
| 1:42.4 | If you had to keep on suffering for your sort of early, terrible mistakes in love. |
| 1:49.0 | My name's Richard Langham Smith, and I'm particularly interested in French music. |
| 1:57.0 | I think probably the place you would have first heard the song most likely would either be in the home or in a salon |
| 2:03.3 | because it was very fashionable to have music and poetry and so on in salons |
| 2:09.0 | which lasted well into the 20th century almost in France. |
... |
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