N'avoue jamais

Location

The 1965 contest took place in Naples, Italy, following the country's victory at the 1964 contest with the song "Non ho l'età" performed by Gigliola Cinquetti. It was the first time that Italy had hosted the event. The chosen venue was the Sala di Concerto della RAI, in the Fuorigrotta suburb of the city. A part of the production centre of the Italian public broadcaster Radiotelevisione italiana (RAI) within the city, the auditorium was built between 1958 and 1963 and had space for an audience of around 1,000 people. Naples had been chosen by RAI as the host city due to the availability of the necessary equipment within the city's production facilities, as well as to honour Naples' history as a center for music in Europe, including the prestige which the canzone napoletana holds.

Participants

Broadcasters from a new record number of eighteen countries submitted entries for the contest. Sweden returned after a one-year absence, and Ireland made its first ever appearance. For the first time in the contest's history a competing entry was performed entirely in a language which was not the official language of the country it represented, namely the Swedish entry which was performed entirely in English.

Three of the competing artists at this year's event represented their countries for the second time: Conchita Bautista had represented Spain in 1961, Vice Vukov had represented Yugoslavia in 1963, and Udo Jürgens had represented Austria in 1964.

Production and format

The contest was produced and broadcast by the Italian public broadcaster RAI. Romolo Siena served as director, Francesco De Martino served as designer, and Gianni Ferrio served as musical director of the RAI Orchestra comprising 48 musicians. Each participating delegation was allowed to nominate its own musical director to lead the orchestra during the performance of its country's entry, with the host musical director also conducting for those countries which did not nominate their own conductor. The event was presented by Renata Mauro and was overseen on behalf of the contest organisers, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), by Miroslav Vilček as scrutineer.

The stage design within the venue had the orchestra situated in the centre, on top a transparent dais which allowed for special lighting effects to be made during the performances. Stage left was a performance area which the majority of artists used for their performances, with a backdrop featuring the Eurovision logo, while stage right was the scoreboard. The performance area was also used by Mauro in her opening and closing remarks, and introduce the competing acts. The large pipe organ within the RAI auditorium, with over 9,000 pipes, featured prominently behind the orchestra during the contest, as well as during the voting sequence when Mauro was pictured standing in front of it.

Each country, participating through a single EBU member broadcaster, was represented by one song performed by up to two people on stage. No entry was allowed to be commercially published before 10 February 1965; this caused an issue for the Italian entry, "Se piangi, se ridi" by Bobby Solo, which had won the 15th Sanremo Music Festival on 30 January, as around 240,000 copies of the single release had been available in Italy by the cut-off date. Although a small number of the other broadcasters participating in the event raised objections to the song competing, given that RAI was hosting the event, with disqualification of the host broadcaster considered impossible, and an understanding that there was little time available to select a new song, "Se piangi, se ridi" was ultimately allowed to compete.

The results of the event were determined through jury voting, with the same voting system introduced for the previous year's event retained. Each jury comprised ten individuals representing the average television viewer and radio listener; as such no individuals in the music industry, including composers, music publishers, and people employed by record companies, were able to sit on the jury. Each jury comprised twenty members, who each had three votes to award in total, which could be given to one song or divided across two or three songs. Jurors could not vote for their own country, and no abstentions were allowed. The song which was awarded the most votes received five points, the second-highest three points, and the third-highest one point. If only two songs had been awarded votes they would receive six and three points for first and second respectively, and if only one song was awarded votes they would receive nine points.

Contest overview

The contest was held on 20 March 1965 at 22:00 (CET) and lasted 1 hour and 38 minutes. The interval act was a performance by the Italian operatic tenor Mario Del Monaco, who gave a rendition of "O sole mio", although rather than singing live he mimed his performance to a previously recorded version. The prize for the winning artist and songwriters, a medallion engraved with the Eurovision logo designed by Hans Mettel, was presented by Del Monaco.

The winner was Luxembourg represented by the song "Poupée de cire, poupée de son", written by Serge Gainsbourg and performed by the French singer France Gall. It was Luxembourg's second contest win, following victory at the 1961 contest. The United Kingdom came in second for the fifth time, while France placed third. Austria, in fourth place, achieved its best-ever result, while four countries, namely Belgium, Finland, Germany and Spain, finished in joint last place with nul points.

The contest was a tumultuous experience for Gall who, at 17 years old, was the youngest competitor at this year's event. During rehearsals the musicians in the orchestra were displeased with the fast tempo of the song, resorting to booing and whistling towards Gall as a form of disrespect and protest. This infuriated Gainsbourg, who insulted the orchestra and stormed out while threatening to leave Naples entirely and return to Paris, leaving Gall alone with an angry orchestra to finish the rehearsal. While the fractious relationship between Gainsbourg and the orchestra was eventually settled, the experience had a continued impact on Gall's confidence during the contest; as Gall recounted in 2015, this led to what she perceived to be a shaky and nervy performance during the event, which she believed diminished her chances of doing well in the contest. When she looked for support over the telephone from her then-boyfriend, the French singer Claude François, he supposedly reinforced her doubts, telling her she sang out-of-key. Ultimately, however, Gall would take the lead from the first round of votes, and retain the lead until the very end, beating the UK's Kathy Kirby by six points. Upon her victory, before going out on stage for the award presentation and reprise performance of the winning song, Gall called François again, who broke up with her over the phone; Kirby meanwhile, who had been the pre-contest favourite to win, was upset at losing to the young Gall and stormed into the Luxembourgish delegation's dressing room, claiming the contest had been rigged in Gall's favour, and slapped her. Gall was subsequently in tears as she went back on stage, which were interpreted as tears of joy by the assembled press.

Spokespersons

Each participating broadcaster appointed a spokesperson, connected to the contest venue via telephone lines and responsible for announcing, in English or French, the votes for its respective country. Known spokespersons at the 1965 contest are listed below.

Finland – Poppe Berg

Netherlands – Dick van Bommel

Sweden – Edvard Matz

Detailed voting results

Jury voting was used to determine the points awarded by all countries. The announcement of the results from each country was conducted in the order in which they performed, with the spokespersons announcing their country's points in English or French in ascending order. The detailed breakdown of the points awarded by each country is listed in the tables below, with voting countries listed in the order in which they presented their votes.

5 points

The below table summarises how the maximum points available were awarded from one country to another. The winning country is shown in bold. Luxembourg and the UK each received the maximum score from four of the voting countries; Austria, Denmark and France received two sets of maximum scores each; and Ireland, Monaco, the Netherlands and Switzerland each received one maximum score.

Broadcasts

Broadcasters competing in the event were required to relay the contest via its networks; non-participating EBU member broadcasters were also able to relay the contest. Broadcasters were able to send commentators to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language and to relay information about the artists and songs to their television viewers. These commentators were typically sent to the venue to report on the event, and were able to provide commentary from small booths constructed at the back of the venue, with 20 booths ultimately constructed for the event.

For the first time the contest was broadcast by members of the International Radio and Television Organisation (OIRT), the counterpart of the EBU within Eastern European countries, via its Intervision network. In addition to the participating countries, the contest was reportedly broadcast in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union, with an expected global audience of 100 to 200 million. Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators, are shown in the tables below.

Legacy

The 1965 contest, and in particular its winner, has since been viewed as a monumental moment in the event's history. Although pop music had been present in the contest in past editions, the vast majority of songs and winners had fit more into the "chanson", "canzone" or ballad categories. "Poupée de cire, poupée de son", considered emblematic of the yé-yé genre, is thus commonly referred to as the contest's first pop winner, as well as the first winner which was more reflective of European popular music at the time, and its win had a big impact on the types of songs and performers which would be selected to compete in future contests. Following another pop winner in 1967, the UK's Sandie Shaw and "Puppet on a String", pop songs, and in particular schlager music, would go on to become a staple of future editions of the contest, with several winners from the 1970s onwards fitting into this genre.

Although past contest entries had achieved commercial success outside of their countries of origin, no previous winner had achieved the chart success that "Poupée de cire, poupée de son" went on to accomplish in the weeks and months after the contest, reaching the top 10 in singles charts in Belgium, Finland, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and West Germany, as well as in Argentina, French-speaking Canada, Japan, and Singapore. Gall became one of Eurovision's first breakthrough stars, and the commercial success of "Poupée de cire, poupée de son" helped pave the way for the contest to be seen as a platform to drive forward professional careers and achieve commercial success across Europe and worldwide.

Gall and Gainsbourg, who had first developed a creative partnership in 1964 with "N'écoute pas les idoles" ("English: Don't listen to idols"), continued to work together after the contest, spawning further hits including the controversial "Les sucettes ("English: Lollipops"); although on the surface it is a song about a girl who likes lollipops, just as with "Poupée de cire, poupée de son", Gainsbourg's lyrics were laced with subtext, in this case double meanings about fellatio. Although Gall claimed that she was too young to understand this when she recorded it, it dented her artistic image and led to a rift between herself and Gainsbourg and her career soon dipped. Upon meeting her future husband, the French singer Michel Berger, her career had a resurgence, and she only performed songs written by him in future years. This partnership led to her most successful album, Babacar, in 1987, which featured "Ella, elle l'a", which became a worldwide hit the same year. The ending of her previous relationship with Claude François would serve as inspiration for his 1967 song "Comme d'habitude"; Paul Anka would subsequently buy the rights to adapt the song into English, which would eventually become "My Way", a hit song for Frank Sinatra in 1969.

Notes and references

Bibliography

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O'Connor, John Kennedy (2010). The Eurovision Song Contest: The Official History (2nd ed.). London: Carlton Books. ISBN 978-1-84732-521-1.

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Roxburgh, Gordon (2012). Songs for Europe: The United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest. Vol. One: The 1950s and 1960s. Prestatyn, United Kingdom: Telos Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84583-065-6.

Roxburgh, Gordon (2014). "Errata". Songs for Europe: The United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest. Vol. Two: The 1970s. Prestatyn, United Kingdom: Telos Publishing. pp. 368–372. ISBN 978-1-84583-093-9.

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