Histoire de Melody Nelson is the great Serge Gainsbourg’s Lolita-esque funky psychedelic rock opera, an album many (raises hand) consider to be his masterpiece. It’s unclear whether or not the story-line is, or how much of it is, autobiographical: The middle-aged narrator (Gainsbourg, doing that “talk singing” thing he was so good at) tells the tale of hitting a bike-riding British teenager, Melody Nelson (a role sung by his muse, Jane Birkin), with his Rolls Royce and of their subsequent affair. In the end, Melody meets an untimely death in a plane crash and the despondent narrator sings of cargo cults and waiting for the return of the lost body of the “little animal” he was so in love with.

But not to white-wash it, the poetry, while lovely and sad (En France, Gainsbourg is considered the equal of Bob Dylan in the lyrics department) is still describing statutory rape, with characteristic Gainsbourgian provocation (In 1985, he recorded a song called “Lemon Incest” with his then 12-year-old daughter, Charlotte).

This album has an amazing sound. It’s pretty much still the cutting edge of what you can do with a rock group and an orchestra (no matter what The Moody Blues or Deep Purple think). The way Gainsbourg and arranger Jean-Claude Vannier use the strings here is simply uncanny, providing a big influence on Pulp. Air and Beck (who later famously worked with Charlotte Gainsbourg). This innovative 1971 album is easily in the same class as Anglo-American contemporaries like Bitches Brew or Sticky Fingers. (Pitchfork named it #21 in the top 100 albums of the 1970s).

But what is little known, even to fans of the album, is Melody, the half hour, shot on videotape visualization of the album created by Gainsbourg and director Jean-Christophe Averty, and starring himself and Jane Birkin. It was included in the career-spanning Gainsbourg DVD box set, Serge Gainsbourg: D’autres nouvelles des etoiles that came out in 2005. Now, of course, it’s turned up on YouTube. It’s quite something. First off, how do you go wrong with a soundtrack like this one? You don’t. And secondly, who was cooler and more elegantly wasted than Mister Serge Gainsbourg, hisself, circa 1971? (Keith Richards…? Maybe?). And my third point, Birkin was so freakishly beautiful then (and still is) that I could look at a photo of her for 30 minutes, so when she’s actually moving onscreen, it’s just a bonus. Trust me, this one is worth your time, rock snobs…

Here is the beginning of Melody. You can find the entire thing, in very good quality, on Youtube.