Jacques Brel and his Omega Speedmaster watch

It's a beautiful love story that begins with love at first sight, one day in the year 1964, a year during which the singer discovered aviation between the aerodromes of Charleville in the Ardennes and Biarritz on the Basque coast in aboard a small passenger plane assembled by the SOCATA company, a Gardan GY-80 Horizon. This meeting with piloting will mark a turning point in his life and will bind him to the love of the air until the end of his life. When he got off the plane, he decided to take his pilot's license, a diploma he obtained in 1965 and bought himself a pilot's chronograph...

During his initiation to piloting, during the flight, Jacques Brel observes the pilot: Paul Lepanse, a former naval air pilot, trained in piloting by the army and who, therefore in the purest academic tradition that military pilots have to fly, frequently and regularly activates his watch: an Auricoste type 20 chronograph to follow the flight. A military watch that the pilot bought when he left the army and that he uses each time to fly as an instructor at Toussus le Noble or as a test pilot for the Sud-Aviation company. The rest of the flight will lead Paul Lepanse to leave the controls of the plane to the singer who, enthusiastic by the magic and the feeling of freedom that this experience gives him will lead Jacques Brel to take Paul as an instructor.

In the days that followed, Jacques Brel procured all the maps, documents and accessories essential for private plane pilot training, and he took particular care in choosing what appeared to him during his its initiation to flight, as a central element of the various actions to be performed to pilot an aircraft: a chronograph.



 In 1965, the face of the world changed radically, it now appears that the world of the sixties had entered a second part of the cycle: from 1960 to 1964, for clothing fashion, dresses that were worn long began to shorten to mid-length. knees while keeping a classic aspect, from 1965 Space Art, then the emerging Pop-art shortened outfits to go as far as the mini-skirt... It was also the moment when the world, until then very conservative, began to dare, to plan for the future. It is also the conquest of new spaces, such as the depths of the sea, with Cousteau and his world of silence, but also the depths of the earth with a certain Haroun Tazzief who also writes an article in the newspaper Le Monde on the origin of craters on the Moon.

The Space Race: a desire to discover new horizons

It is in this context of changes that NASA with the GEMINI missions will send men into space and these pilots all of course have an essential chronograph on their wrist because, like Paul Lepanse, Jacques Brel's instructor, these pilots of military origin have forged a special relationship with their watches during their flights (So important an attachment that Charles Conrad during the NASA GEMINI 5 mission will insist on keeping in addition to his Omega Speedmaster endowment, his Glycine Airman watch from test pilot).



A Speedmaster to fly

It is therefore quite naturally, pushed by the surge of images from NASA that the world of aviation, just like Jacques Brel discovers Omega's Speedmaster. A simple-to-use chronograph that displays the essentials without the hassle of slide rules and time zones. Just the very legible measurement of seconds, minutes, and hours in white on a matte black dial. A tachymeter to surround the dial and above all a more reliable and shockproof movement with the arrival of the Omega 321 caliber which gives the watch the ability to withstand temperature variations in a cockpit without altering its operation. The choice was made, Jacques Brel will never leave him.



The following years always continuing his improvement in piloting, the actor will keep his Speedmaster on many occasions, chaining recitals, film shoots and chaining the hours of flights on his different planes, he will passionately strengthen the relationship so special that every pilot builds over time with his watch and it is not uncommon to see his Speedmaster on his wrist during his concerts, in photos in the press or as in 1969 in the film "The Risks of the Job" where he plays the role of a teacher with on his wrist his new Speedmaster Pré-Moon reference 145.012 equipped with caliber 861, an even more robust movement and alternatively his faithful version Omega Speedmaster 105.003 acquired during his pilot training, a little more sensitive to shocks than the latter with its caliber 321 movement.

It will happen in the years 1972 to 1975 to see Jacques Brel at intervals with a Rolex GMT Master 1675, a gold model, brown dial with nipple indexes all mounted on a black leather strap, more discreet than its gold Jubilee bracelet. 'Origin. This watch worn alternately by the artist, and which is difficult to track afterwards, is visible in particular during the period of Claude Lelouch's film of 1972: L'aventure, c'est l'aventure, in which Jacques Brel is surrounded by Charles Denner, Lino Ventura, Aldo Maccione and Charles Gérard, with a song performed by Johnny Hallyday. It is also possible to glimpse it during Edouard Molinaro's film "L'EMMERDEUR", a 1973 film in which Jacques Brel plays the role of Lino Ventura



Nevertheless in 1973, he put an end to his career and said goodbye to the stage and the screen, passed his captain's license in the great coastal trade and began with his family, a world tour aboard the Askoy, a Ketch-type sailboat, made of wood. It is in the Marquesas that his journey will stop. Diminished by illness, Jacques Brel retired to these places where the gentle way of life allowed him to live peacefully for a few years and where he would continue to devote himself to his passion: aviation.

He will acquire a Beechcraft Twin Bonanza, a twin-engine plane which he will baptize Jojo. In recent years, he has regularly rendered service to the Marquesan community by transporting over the Polynesian lagoons the inhabitants of the archipelago between Hiva-Oa where he resides and Tahiti. His Speedmaster on his wrist, he will continue to fly, and it is certainly in view of this relationship so faithful and so intimate with his chronograph that the image of this artist will remain forever inseparable from his watch. A union until the last days that allows you to think, only thanks to his faithful Speedmaster who accompanied him everywhere until the end of his life. We bet that this chronograph will have allowed it to then reach... its unspeakable star...