Amsterdam (Jacques Brel song)

"Amsterdam"
Song by Jacques Brel
English title	Amsterdam
Published	1964
Writer(s)	Jacques Brel
Composer(s)	Jacques Brel
Language	French

"Amsterdam" is a song by Jacques Brel. It combines a powerful melancholic crescendo with a rich poetic account of the exploits of sailors on shore leave in Amsterdam.

Brel never recorded this for a studio album, and his only version was released on the live album Enregistrement Public à l'Olympia 1964. Despite this, it has been one of his most enduringly popular works. It was one of the songs Mort Shuman translated into English for the musical Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.

Brel worked on the song at his house overlooking the Mediterranean at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, the house he shared with Sylvie Rivet, a publicist for Philips; a place she had introduced him to in 1960. "It was the ideal place for him to create, and to indulge his passion for boats and planes. One morning at six o'clock he read the words of Amsterdam to Fernand, a restaurateur who was about to set off fishing for scorpion fish and conger eels for the bouillabaisse. Overcome, Fernand broke out in sobs and cut open some sea urchins to help control his emotion."

The melody shows strong similarities with the English folk song Greensleeves.

Scott Walker recorded several of these translated Brel songs in the late 1960s. This inspired David Bowie to record his own versions of "Amsterdam" in the early 1970s. Bowie's studio version was released as the B-side to his single "Sorrow" in September 1973. (This recording may have been made in the summer of 1973 or in late 1971.) Brel refused to meet Bowie when he visited Paris, saying he did not wish to meet a "pédé", but the latter nevertheless still admired him.

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