to be expelled from secondary school before he completed his studies. He worked for four year in his father's factory, at which time he also started writing songs. he performed his obligatory military service and went to Paris, where he sang songs in small Left Bank caves while accompanying himself on the guitar. His first regular engagement as a performer was at the ThTGtre des Trois Baudets in the Pigalle section of Paris in 1953. After other billings he was given second billing in 1954 at the Olympia, the top music hall in Paris. His popularity increased steadily in the coming years, not only in France but in other European countries, and this was especially true once he began recording his songs. He returned to the Olympia with star billing in 1959.
Eric Blau, who would be Brel's collaborator as well as biographer, notes that many have tried to account for what Brel would become in terms of his childhood, usually referred to as being especially ordinary. However, Blau says Brel's song "Mon Enfance" underscores the fact that his formative years were anything but ordinary. As a child, Brel tried to see his family, to understand them, and to relate to them. At an early age, Brel seemed painfully aware of his isolation from the group he wanted most deeply to join--his family--but all they offered him was a place in which to feel lost. He felt that their concerns were always about business, class, and social status and about the future and how it could be measured in success, estates, and inheritances. The boy believed intuitively that he was included in their plans not as a human being but as an object:
He knows viscerally that they take it for granted he will grow up to become one them. He already sees his family as a group of pre-ghosts plodding toward extinction and offering him all "the solutions which will be without love."
Blau paints Brel as a young man who retreated into silence and shyness to plan his ...