On March 2, 1991, Serge Gainsbourg went to sleep in his bed on the second floor of his house at 5 bis rue de Verneuil in Paris and never woke up. A second heart attack killed him at age 62. For all of France, his death was both shocking and unsurprising. Gainsbourg bestrode the French cultural landscape like a broken-down colossus. “He was our Apollinaire, our Baudelaire,” wrote French president François Mitterand.

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Persons: Serge Gainsbourg, he’d, Gainsbourg, Apollinaire, ”, François Mitterand Locations: Verneuil, Paris, France