Born Gergana, to Gypsy parents in Bulgaria in 1943 on Saint George's Day, Gigi's improbable journey to stardom, celebrity, notorious infamy and finally back to anonymity began when she became (along with her other teenage cohorts; Sylvie Vartan, France Gall, Sheila and Francoise Hardy) one of the most successful of the yéyé singers of the 1960s.
Winter 1943: Gigi's Mother
[NOTE: Click on any photo on this page to see a larger version]
"This is one of only two photos that I have of my mother. Her name was Elisaveta. She raised the four of us, my three brothers and me, as an itinerant gypsy musician in the X region of Bulgaria. I'm not sure were this picture was taken, probably in a photo studio in Sofia, Bulgaria."
Gigi Interview, Salut Les Copains, 1965
1950-1958: The Convent
‘At the age of seven, Gergana was left at the door of the 'Good Shepard' orphanage run by the strict nuns of the XXX order in the Alsace-Lorraine area of France. Here, unlike the rest of France, the Catholic Church held great sway and there was little separation between Church and State. The nuns dubbed the young girl, Gigi. She spoke no French and did not even know her last name.
1958: The Gaston Family
Pictured here, Gigi with the Thierry Gaston
“In the summer of 1958 the nuns sent me to the country home of a very artistic Parisian family to take care of their five year old son, Thierry. If you can imagine - being a young girl that had never been protected, sent out to work from the age of 8, and many bad things had happened along the way, so I was extremely withdrawn, and even though I must have seemed quite strange, the Gastons were the first to treat me like a human being and not a dog. "
1959: First Guitar
"! don't mean to boast, but it was with our family that Gigi received her cultural
education. Our friends - writers and musicians and artists - were constantly over the house - music playing all the time.She heard Piaf, Juliette Gréco, Serge Gainsbourg and American R +
B for the first time. She begged me constantly until I finally broke down and bought her first guitar."
--Phillipe Gaston interviewed in XXX magazine, 1968
1961: Disques Vogues
"I think it was around April of 1961,when this pretty teenage girl stood out in front of our offices, almost every day, playing the same five songs over and over to get the
attention of the anyone who worked there. One day on my way back from lunch I just couldn't take it anymore, so I told her, 'If you swear to me that you'll never come back here again, I'll record you.' Of course, that first song, 'Je suis ici (Òu es-tu?)' changed everything. The photo for the first single was a kind of inside joke, taken in front of our offices where she used to annoy the hell out of us."
Charles Delaunay, owner and founder of Disque Vogues, the French record company in an interview for Salut de Copains, January 1965
1962: Her first 45s
Really, I wasn't even thinking about I was doing, but the songs poured out of me. And the producers scheduled the recording sessions. And the photographers took the pictures. And the records cames out. And it didn't really seems strange because I was still so young and my world was still so small and I wasn't yet thinking about what it must look like to someone who was on the outside. If that makes any kind of sense at all.
-Gigi Interview
1963-1967: Fan Mags
Between 1963 and 1967 Gigi appeared on the covers of scores of music, fan and general interest magazines in France, Belguim, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, England and most of the other European countries.
1964: Triumph and Tragedy
"The evening began in triumph, with Gigi's concert at the Olympia, the
oldest and most famed music hall in France, where her heroine Edith
Piaf had so often performed. The only disappointment was that Gigi’s
somewhat sickly lover Etienne, had skipped the concert because of a
severe flu and remained at the family’s country home. As Gigi performed
to a sold out and wildly enthusiastic crowd how could she have known
that Etienne had dragged himself out of his sickbed at the last minute
and raced to meet her. Happily exhausted at the end of the night,
standing in her dressing room, surrounded by
admirers, autograph seekers and bouquets of flowers how could she have
known that Etienne, behind the wheel in a pouring rain. had lost
control of the car on a hairpin turn, shot through a barrier, flew off
the side of the road and crashed fatally on the rocks below."
-Noir et Blanc Magazine, May 1964
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1965: Black Flower
Francoise Sagan's lightly fictionalized novel, The Black Flower,
was based on Gigi's life. The novel, a best seller, was considered by
most critics a return to form for Sagan, whose recent plays and novels
had been met mostly with critical indifference.