Post by davidhr on Jul 12, 2009 19:32:48 GMT -5
True Interview
Lara Fabian: Our friend explains herself
Featured in this number: an interview "straight out" (and two posters) of our friend (she has the record of interviews in Platine…) Lara Fabian, who just before entering at the Top as No.5 - proving that she still had a public - responded to all our questions. Without shying away. Bravo Madame.
Lara Fabian
Veiled Sun…
After several delays, Lara's album of reprises was finally released May 25th. If the public has given her a nice welcome (top 3) "Toutes les femmes en moi" is not resistible for long, the criticisms from mass media - the one from RTL in the lead - haven't spared it. That is why, Lara decided to explain herself concerning her disk on all the dangers. For that she chose Platine. Without waffling, Lara responded to all our questions, including that on "Taratata", a broadcast where she has no place while the father of her child is the director. Lara will be at the Paris Zenith Theatre October 7th.
This break of 4 years, is it due to your maternity or have there been other reasons?
It is an connected, among other things, to the fact that I became a mother. And it also needed time to work out an idea, to set it up.
How did the idea of this album of reprises in French come about?
From a conversation with Nathalie, my best friend.
However, since one has known you, you've always spoken more about international artists like Streisand in your influences…
But TLFM exists in English! I've recorded in piano voix, a version 100% acoustic. It is called "EWIM" (Every Woman in Me) and one finds on it reprises of Ela Fitzgerald, Streisand, Houston, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Kate Bush, Annie Lennox…It is the equivalent of the French, except that I couldn't release it immediately. As I am Italian, you suspect properly that I also have in mind a "Tutte le donne in me" avec Mina, Omelia Vanoni…
Whether it be in Italian, in English or in French, you seem to have chosen singers of your childhood…
Of my childhood and of my adolescence.
Adolescence? "Amoureuse" dates from 1972, you were two years old…
…Yes, but I discovered it later…At the same time as "Le port de Vancouver" (1976), "Allah (1988)…
Identical for "Mamy Blue" and "Soleil Soleil" which date from 1971?
Me, I discovered "Soleil soleil" when my parents brought me to see Nana Mouskouri on stage in 1978. It was still one of her key songs along with "Les tournesols" [Ed. note: "Le tournesci"]. It is then when I went up on stage to bring her a small bouquet of daffodils…
With your brown velvet dress…
Voila. All this because my parents love this artist more than anything, that hasn't ever changed. For me either, that hasn't changed. "Soleil soleil" made me happy. I remember that as a child, I always said to my mother: "Don't you want to put on the song that gives us happiness"…"Mamy Blue", it is another story. It is my mother who tells it, for me, I don't remember it. It seems that every day when she put me on the table to make the bed, I started to sing "Mamy Blue". Moreover I sang "bloeu"", a strange sound (laughs).
How is it that there are photos of you with Nana in Greece during her good-bye concerts in the summer of 2008?
It is she who invited me.
Did she know then that you had reprised "Soleil Soleil"?
She knew it. She knew especially how much I loved it and how much I said it everywhere. One day she called me telling me: "it is my last concert, I think I know that you love me, I would like that you be in the hall with my friends, I send you an airplane ticket". I was very moved.
Your passion for these singers seems stronger than reason: nobody said to you that it did not give a modern picture?
What the hell does one care? What does that mean??!
I'm playing devil's advocate…
Yes, you do to me what you know how to do…Do you believe that which you've just said?
No, I say just that it is dangerous in a country where the connected media shows off; Nana is often mocked - wrongly - Dalida was criticized in her lifetime, you are perhaps too young to remember it…
But I know it! I have nevertheless had my classes…
You are moreover like them; criticized and mocked…
Yes. but I don't like the compartments and you know it. I don't like the tags, I don't like the partitions. These great women have all brought something unique to the music. And Nana, displeasing to certain moaners, sold 430 million albums: she is quite up there with the Beatles, Jackson, the Stones, Julio Iglesias. It is only in France that they decide to glue a label on the back of someone who absolutely does not deserve it. Personally I didn't have the desire to play that game. I just had the desire of saying: "Thanks". It is a reverence.
Apart from Nana, had you crossed paths with these singers when you were a child?
No. There are even some of them that I never dared to approach since I became a singer. However, all have made up the person that I am.
Your career got under way in Quebec however there aren't many Quebecois in "TLFM"…
There is already Diane Dufresne and Celine on the album. On stage, there will be in addition Ginette Reno: "J'ai besoin de parler à quelqu'un"…
A title from 1983, more 'logical' for you than, for example, "une femme avec toi" of Nicole Croisille, released in 1975…
This song, as I have written in the letter to Nicole Croisille which is in the booklet of the album, permitted me to discover the limits of my voice. It is the time when I had my piano and when I was going to enter the Academy. This song persecuted me over the years for I didn't manage to hit the highest note…(laughs)
Do you know the Italian verson of this song" Une donna con te"?
Of course! Moreover, as I did not understand this manner of phrasing in French - the couplets were of the story, of the narration - one day my mother, who is Italian, taught me that it was a song of my country.
Were you surprised that the texts of these songs had almost all been written by men?
No…For it is you who tell us the best in general…(laughs)
In general…for Piaf co-wrote "L'hymne a l'amour"…
…And Sanson "Amoureuse" and Barbara "Gottigen"…
You looked closely at the credits?
Yes, even if I've chosen these women for who they are or have been…Dalida I've chosen her more for herself than for her repertoire: for her atrocious and tragic departure, for her history of love with Luiji Tenco who finished by killing herself, I've truly looked closely at this person who, today, has become an icon, but who had been very criticized. I wanted to understand how, why, one finally makes this gesture…She didn't leave for nothing: at the moment when, in life, one is doing poorly and one can think of certain things, she is an extraordinary guard-rail…(silence). But she had also been a Cindy Crawford in her debuts. When she was on stage, she made dreams.
Why "18 ans"?
Something very personal made me choose it. If I put myself in the skin of a woman who tells this story, it is that I have been her. I have been in the skin of a woman 30 years old who was with a young man, that happened to me (Editor's note: Lara was 30 years old in 2000, and the media spoke that year of a history with Sebastien Lorca, the singer of "Ali Babi" who was then 22 years old). I succeeded to make the bridge between her and me thanks to this text.
Isn't this also the case of that of "Gottingen" of Barbara?
Yes: "Gottingen" symbolizes the love that I carry in a very strange manner to this culture, to Judaism. For me the great bearers of Judaism are the conductors. I've thought that since I was little…As they say in Quebec…"Search me", I don’t know why I was born with that. I was born with this star, excuse the pun, even if I was not born under this star. This religious philosophy is part of my culture and my life today. "Gottingen" is a song of pardon. Me who doesn't understand that which happened between 1939 and 1945 - that Humanity had let itself do that - no more than the enslavement of the blacks in the 19th century, I was blown away by this song and especially that it comes from her…
Who - as a Jew - must have hidden during the war…
…Yes, and who lived through dreadful things…She is capable of saying: "That the roses are beautiful in Gottingen"…
And, on top of that, being scarcely 20 years old after the end of the war…
…Yes, at a time when one didn't speak of it, when there was a great silence…When I read this text, I said to myself: " Lara, you keep quiet and you learn that by pardoning you survive". If forgiveness does not cure, it calms the times from a song.
Why then the choice of "Soleil Soleil" as the first single? A title less symbolic but more sunny?
Yes, it is the most sunny title. At the same time, Michel Jourdan - who wrote this Middle of the Road adaptation - has written some splendid things. He had moreover written me a letter when he knew that I had recorded "Soleil soleil". And this letter is one of beauty…It is good to read of things which aren't in cynicism, but which are in one true benevolent step. For that music continues to exist. If I have not yet responded, it is that I've wanted to take the time to call him and even to see him…If I have chosen this song as the first single, it is also because I released it before the summer, when one is bored until October: then the winter does not any more serve it which finishes it. I don’t know if you've seen the clip if Gerard (Pulicino) has shown it to you…but this song simply tells with much lightness the feeling that one has when, after some months of the travail of winter, one can finally stretch out on a lounge covered with cream (laughs).
The fact that, outside of France Bleu, radios are not playing this title, does this cause you anxiety?
No, for people don't listen to radio anymore. Aside from France Bleu…Perhaps because these men of radio have turned into, as one calls them, all dinosaurs. Myself, when I work, I go onto the Internet, on a program where I make my own radio…
Do you think that if you arrived with an original song and not a reprise, the radios would pass it?
No, I guarantee it to you. Obispo is in the same case as me. Dion, they have turned away from also. There are even some people who have partnerships, like Mylene on NRJ, and who aren't played even so…
You realize that all these (female) singers [in TLFM] resemble you? Like you, they are guys, no?
(Clap of laugher) It is true. It is what I wrote at the end of the letter to Piaf: You are the most handsome (guy) in a feminine body.
I had the chance to interview quite a lot of 'your' women: you have in common a true apparent femininity which hides a masculine force…
It is true, you are right. And me, I claim my "guy" side!
Finally, is it because of these women that you became a guy?
No, thanks to them (laughs). We are all built with a family of people.
On this album, one doesn't find Kaas, she hasn't therefore stood out for you?
It isn't that. I find that she has made a formidable career. I have been a big fans of songs of the album written with Barbelivien, the one with "Mademoiselle chante le blues", when I was 17 years old. Just after, I did the Eurovision (1988), and, thanks to that, I left for Quebec. I therefore didn't have the time to know her. She stood out for me but she didn't construct me. Like Liana Foly, she brought a different way at the end of the 80s. For me, "Reve orange" is one of the greatest French albums.
Kaas accepted to do Eurovision in 2009, would you do it again?
No, but I understand it: it is at the same time dangerous and magical. It is a true quits or double, positively for her.
Small quiz on your album: which are the French songs which became international hits?
"Soleil soleil"…
No, it is not French…
Pardon, "Amoureuse": it was translated into English.
Bravo: That makes one.
"L'amour existe encore"…
OK. And the oldest song of the album?
Of course: "L'hymne à l'amour"!
There remains one of them…
(she looks at the list of songs) "Mamy blue"! No! It was composed by Roger Whitaker! (laughs)
Yes, it is well an international French hit written by Hubert Giraud.
Second question: which are the songs that aren't French in origin?
(she takes again the list of titles) "Solel soleil" and "Femme". Possibly "L'amour existe encore", which is half Italian by the composer Musumarra…
Why was this album pushed back three times: 1st December, 8 March - Day of the Woman - and finally May 25? A lot of noise ran…
Which?
The first prize was that Pascal Negre hadn't found the album sufficient for the actual release?
OK. the second?
That some songs had been suppressed in the course
No.
You had therefore not expected to sing from Mylene Farmer? (and Babacar from France Gall)?
Yes, at the very beginning of the album, I had thought that. I had chosen Mylene for what she defied. In that which she created. There was a true rebellion, a true defiance, a true rejection. It is truly extraordinary to have lived this transformation without any roots…
What title had you chosen?
"Libertine", but I had done it as an instrumental on which I read the chart of the rights of women.
It required an authorization, no?
And voila: you have understood all…If I had sung "Je, je suis libertine…" (she sings) there wouldn't have been any problems. But this I didn't know how to do it. And nevertheless, I tried…
Is there any pressure from Universal, Pascal Negre, so that you don't do a title of Mylene?
It is false! It is the people who love to invest these stories. No, that had been very much simpler: I had asked for authorization from the publishing house of Mylene Farmer, that was refused, that's all.
Did you have wind of what they were saying?
I especially heard what the people said: "Pascal (Negre) didn't like the album". I moreover asked everyone to call him so that he can say what took place. For me, it is difficult to recount it for it is a conversation between an artist and the head of a record company. A capital moment in the life of a singer.
Haven't you already had some capital moments, notably with the Head of Sony USA during your international launching?
Yes, but last October 20, with Pascal Negre, that was strong…But magnificent, for constructive and just. Pascal changed nothing fundamentally…I would really like you to lift up your telephone, for I know that you can do it, that you have the power to ask him the question…(silence). Roughly, it began like this: "Is it that Pascal can speak to Lara or do you prefer that Negre speaks to Fabian?" I immediately responded: "Ah no, I want Pascal to speak to Lara". After that he explained to me how he loved this idea of homage to the singers who had marked me, that he found it just at this stage of my career, honestly. He said to me: "I know you Lara, I know that you do not make a thing of betraying your promise, but for me, you chose a musical direction which doesn't correspond to you, or not yet". The rest, he will tell you if he wants to…Actually, following this conversation, I understood truly the sense of what he said to me. He made me think straight, and I saw that I had been a little bit too affected - by that which had been said or written about me - that that I definitely wanted to say it or even to feel it. I said to myself then that while I had never betrayed myself until then, and that it was not necessary that I begin.
You therefore said to your arranger, Simon Climie, that it was necessary to begin again?
Not at all, for I still hadn't worked with Simon up to that moment. It is following this conversation with Pascal that I had completely begun again at zero with Climie [Note: he has a studio in France, in Nice).
Can one know where and with whom you had made this 'first' album that Pascal Negre heard on October 20?
Yes, in Montreal and with three young musicians, three kids not well-known: one who comes from jazz, another from R'n'B, and the third from classical music. I moreover had taken the 'top', first prizes at the Conservatory. Moreover, I loved very much this 'first' album for it went very far in its musical journey, it lies completely outside of more accessible music…
Was it the same songs?
Yes, I changed nothing! It is why when I hear it said that Pascal didn't like the album, it isn't true: Pascal adored the album, but he explained to me that it was a futile response to the attacks of people who, in any case, would not understand.
You had therefore made an attempt to prove to your detractors that you were not a singer of 'bad pop music'?
That's what Pascal understood…It is his interpretation. Me, I was in that which I love the most. I adore when I go to hear Papazov who plays the sax…
By seeing frequently musicians (Jean-Felix Lalanne) did not you climb up rungs in music which your public perhaps did not climb up?
No, I don't believe that. It is necessary to stop taking people for idiots, already, to begin with. The rungs that you climb are just like certain desires which exile you from yourself: it is a little like when you go to Gallano Haute-Couture and that you hope to get into a dress size 38 built for a girl of 1.8 meters who weights 50 kilos. And well no: I am 1.62 meters, I weigh 58 kilos and I will never get into a Gallano Haute-Couture. It means that one cannot cut one's hips down or stretch the torso to get into a dress. It is that which Pascal Negre explained to me October 20th. Even if that had been very interesting as experience, what I had done is antinomical {note: means a contradiction between laws, in this case contrary to Lara's 'current configuration'}. That said, I will release it one day, at least as a bonus or a gift for the heads. And I know that that will please a good number of people. There, where Pascal was right, it is because one does not do psychotherapy through an album…I found this extremely 'ballsy' and loving on his part. And I believe also that what astonished him even more, is my response and my trust for I said to him: "I believe that you are right on all. I hadn't seen it like that". I had seen it truly like a gait which belonged to me…
Isn't this your handicap: to have a gait which belongs to you? To be your own producer? To be alone, for surrounded by people who no longer dare to tell you when you've gone too far…
No, I don't feel myself alone.
I knew you nevertheless with some musicians - Rick Alllison, Jean-Felix Lalanne - who dared to tell you that you made a mistake about the route. In the case of this album, you spent a lot of time, a lot of money….before Pascal Negre 'woke you up'…
No one would have been able to tell me what he said to me and which made me think straight. It was necessary first that I fly to the end of my walk. And then it is magnificent this album made in Montreal. I stick by it. I think just that Pascal was right when he said it: it will not be right in some years.
Which versions are you going to play on stage?
Those of the released album, otherwise it is an injustice in relation to the people who come.
Do you think that you would have been able to harmonize your hits from the past with the versions from the first album?
I had already done this with "En toute intimite", it was classical but that proved well that a song when it is controlled, it is controlled in classical, in jazz, in blues…
Nevertheless, as we have not released the album in the first version, I have not worked with the three men on the re-arrangements of my [past] successes…I think that, as in what we had done, my voice would become an instrument. With them, I never served otherwise than like a violin-cello, a flute, a piano. It was hyper-intriguing to do.
Is it that Simon Climie is going to rearrange yours past successes?
No, even if Climie gives me an enormous help on it. It is with Manu Pithois, who is one of the three guys with whom I worked in Montreal (he also worked with Zoe…) who I'm gong to have re-dress my catalog in the colors that we developed with Climie: gospel, urban, hip-hop…
Are you going to sing all the titles from the new album?
Yes.
What are you going to keep from your successes of the past?
I don't still know exactly, but I am going to return a little to the rear. I've already chosen to redo "Alleluia", "Humana"…I will also present a part of "Toutes les femmes en moi" in English. Plus one song in Italian and one in Spanish.
Where are you in your international career? "Cuore Malato", your duo with Gigi d'Alessio, succeeded in Italy but not at all in France…
No, the radios didn't carry it, what is it that you want me to do?
Is it that it allowed you to become better known in Italy?
Yes but I remain "the singer of Adagio", the singer of Adagio, then there is nothing to do. Gigi d'Alessio, that one has been a window, thanks to San Remo [the Festival]. Unfortunately, it is a country where it is politically very difficult to make music. It is not an easy country, where there is truly a protectionist culture, indeed mysterious, for song. What prevents me until now from doing music in Italian, it isn't the music, it is the people who make it…
You mean the professionals?
Yes, when you enter into a team down-there, that you sign a contract, you abandon a form of liberty that I don't have the desire to lose. I have already been the property of an environment and I don't what it anymore. I've worked too hard.
At the time of our last interview, you had announced having just written a song with Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. Where are you on your third English album? Is it that what occurred on the second disgusted you?
That disgusts a little, frankly. And I am not William Tell. It is necessary to choose one's battles. The priorities realign when you become a mother… I have always some part, in the corner of my spirit, the desire, but I don't have an obligation. I have passed this stage. And I am happy about it for that strangled me, it made me sick. Then, there was an Italian, Domenico, who wanted to re-launch the second English album. But me, I am not a backward-looking person. I don't like to return to the past in order to bring back in the present things which hadn't had the space to truly exist. It's necessary to call a cat a cat: "Wonderful Life" doesn't exist. If "I Guess I Loved You" made a place after "Broken Vow", that is already tremendous, marvelous…
Are you not going to release the English version of "Toutes les femmes en moi" on the English market?
No (laughs), first on the French market. I have an idea for that. I would like to offer it to the fans in another way, at the moment of the tour…I would like to convince Pascal (Negre) to do it with me…
Are you going to release "Toutes les femmes en moi" in Quebec?
Yes, it is funny, for at the moment when you let go of some things, the people return to you. It is a little of that which is occurring at the moment: the Russians have heard this thing, they have found it incredible. The Italians love "Soleil soleil" in French…This album which nobody waits for, that they didn't imagine that I could do, I sense a thing above it…Too bad if people say it is not a personal album - while it is so much that for it recounts my personal history - that it is only an album of reprises…Let them say it…
Do you continue to write for others as you have done for Cheme Badi, Nolwenn Leroy, Myriam Abel…
If one solicits me, why not?
However, I'm not going to put myself to write for someone other than that. Especially since, at the moment when I have had my conversation with Nat to whom I gave "Toutes les femmes en moi", I had written an album entirely for me. It is called "Le secret".
Who has written the music? You?
No, I've only written the lyrics. The music is from an Israeli 35 years old who is going to go very far. During the years, he pestered me around the world with some engraved CDs with his music…And one day, on vacation in Israel, the ex-manager of Noa gives me a CD and says to me: "You have to listen to this, it's amazing". And I see the name of this man that I already had read on the CDs that he had given me over the years! I learn also that he writes that for me for ten years. I meet him therefore in Tel Aviv. We install ourselves before a keyboard and then, he plays barely for me five or six melodies that I realize, really, he has written for me. Attention, it is a symphonic album, and therefore it will exist only if it can be carried by 80 classical musicians…
It is therefore an album that is going to cost the skin of C…?
Exactly…Hello Pascal?!!! (laughs)
Have you already announced it?
No, you are the first media person to whom I speak of it. You know that I love you well, so….
Finally, you haven't stopped during these last years while one thought that you played mother…
No, or rather yes, at the same time.
I don't read the press people very much, but I don’t have the impression that your maternity had been very mediatized?
Not at all. I have protected that.
Why?
Because.
You think having paid too dearly for letting the press get hold of your love stories?
One isn't always stupid and young (laughs)
There have therefore not been any photos of you with your baby?
Nor with my guy…The only one that there has been with my guy, they have stolen from me: Voici…
At the beginning of your relationship, no?
Yes, four years ago.
Why do you call your daughter Lou? It is the same first name that Maurane had chosen for her daughter…
It is funny that they would have the same first name with 14 years difference in age, but it isn't me who chose it. That said, it is certainly the one that goes the best.
Who chose this first name? Your parents?
No (laughs)
OK, we're not gong to go any further…Is it that the men in your life have changed your musical tastes? Is it that in being with Gerard Pullicino, who directed "Taratata", you think to have explored other musical styles?
I reassure you: I loved Camille before knowing him….Musically, we have exactly the same universe, even if we don't travel in the identical world. That's all that I would say.
Why?
Because I don't ever speak of my guy.
It seems that you couldn't do "Taratata"?
I haven't ever done "Taratata", why would I do it any more now?
Because your guy is the director and one of its pioneers…
That isn't sufficient. The pennant of "Taratata" doesn't belong to the music to which I belong. It is necessary to call a cat a cat. They make music which belongs to another universe.
We have nevertheless seen there Maurane and Celine Dion in duo…
It was 15 years ago! The "Taratata" of that epoch and the one of today have nothing in common. France 4, Nagui and Marie Pricko have elaborated a concept around which there is Raphael Saadiq and some discoveries, that, it is marvelous. When they presented Packo Nuttini, no one knew who he was. James Morrison, either.
I don’t find Nuttini, nor Morrison, very far from your universe. It is International Variety, like Josh Groban who reprised your “Broken Vow”…
Me neither, to confess all to you…I think that there is a snobbism and a Parisianism which does that…
For “Taratata”, don’t you think that it is better to be unknown, stranger and come on in jeans?
If I had been a model and then I became a singer, or if I had been the lover of a rocker, that would be perhaps different. I believe that I belong to a category of artists termed “popular” – of which I am very proud for I’m saddened by this negative reduction, in the sense of “gauche caviar” of the term – which doesn’t correspond to their window. And me, that, I respect. It isn’t because I have a privileged relationship with the director that I will do this broadcast. I don’t belong to their family. In their opinion.
Quid des Enfoires? Despite three passages: in 1998, 2001 and 2006, you are not entered into the “permanent family”. You complain about it?
No.
Is it your choice?
It is a choice which is a consequence of one of their blunders. I believe they do not treat people properly. One is not a piece of meat. One is there to serve a cause. I would love that it be present behind the scenes as much as it is on the screen. It is a little sad that it’s not the case, that’s all. And I don’t speak of Jean-Jaques who remains honest and upright with respect to the cause. But, like everywhere, there are people in the courtyard of the king who demand powers which they do not have. When one learns of things that they have done on the backs of the artists – as they did with me in 2005 when they had a lack of respect – one can decide to never more return to it. I however wish them “good and long life”, for there are three and a half million homeless people in France. I’m an activist moreover for another association.
Your return to Belgium where you live again since 2004 and this album are they not linked? One has the impression that you have returned to the source, to the protective cocoon?
It is true that when I returned to live in Belgium, I had need of reconnecting myself to certain roots to re-find certain forces, some bearings…And when you do it, life sends to you some good meetings. I had also the chance of having a father and a mother - ones who love me. Equally my best friend. I have there a core of 5 or 6 people.
Returning to live in Belgium, that brought you closer to Maurane?
Of course, even if we have always been close. Jagged, because of our activities, but close. She moreover has been astonished to be in “TLFM” with “Ca casse”…
Is it perhaps because she is the last singer to have “built” you, she must have pierced a dozen years before you…
No, the last, it is Celine. She is only three years more than me.
Celine, did you not do the reprise a little bit for provocation?
No, it is not for provocation, it is for love. This is said in the letter I wrote: “Finally I have the possibility to say it to you…” for I had never had the possibility of telling her that I loved her in person. As soon as I tried to say it, I was given a massive blow on the head.
You also wrote to her: “I’m not going to recount to you the following, that isn’t of importance”…
Of course…That which I meant to say there, it is because it is not necessary to return to this fire lit by others. I just wanted to say to her by a letter that was going to get to her in person: “Me, I love you”. Moreover, in the beginning, these letters were not going to figure in the booklet, I was just going to send them to these women. And then someone said to me: “You ought to put them in the CD”…If in the red line of this album and of my history, I sang “L’amour existe encore”, it is also that I find that it is a sublime song of Cocciante and Plamondon…
What do you think of the situation of the singers of voice today…
You know what I think of the word “Singers of voice”…For me it is like cyclist of bike! It is an expression which means nothing!
Then what do you think of the difficulties of Segara, Boulay? All these girls with melodies with emotion…
Yes, yes…there are some cycles. For the media, not for the public. The last cycle had begun with the arrival of Celine, and then me, last. Before this cycle, one was in the same scenario as today. Me, that doesn’t worry me, for I try to evolve with my time. I don’t see myself redoing “Je t’aime”, “J’y crois encore”…I would love with grace and dignity, as Phil Collins or Sting have done it, to age well with my music. To grow with it while adapting it each time to the times. Because, that's no more, that doesn’t work. It is for this that I have taken Simon Climie who is 52 years old, who has therefore done this for a long time – he works since 20 years old with Clapton, he worked with BB King, Aretha Franklin, Michael Mac Donald…and who has evolved with his times. The black music sung by whites, he knows how to do it….And that which he does, does not sound like the 90s! As far as Isabelle or Helene, or even Florent Pagny or Garou, I don’t have any answer. I know just that, if one arrived in the same epoch, we all evolved differently. To put us all in the same bag, it is mou (soft, gelatinous substance) for the journalist’s cat! The only thing that I could add, it is that one is always afraid of quitting that which one knows to do. However, to remain seated on the chair that projected us, it is that which is dangerous…Me, one can raise me from my chair, put me in the hands of people who don’t do my thing, I will always find a space which corresponds to me to express myself.
Lara Fabian: Our friend explains herself
Featured in this number: an interview "straight out" (and two posters) of our friend (she has the record of interviews in Platine…) Lara Fabian, who just before entering at the Top as No.5 - proving that she still had a public - responded to all our questions. Without shying away. Bravo Madame.
Lara Fabian
Veiled Sun…
After several delays, Lara's album of reprises was finally released May 25th. If the public has given her a nice welcome (top 3) "Toutes les femmes en moi" is not resistible for long, the criticisms from mass media - the one from RTL in the lead - haven't spared it. That is why, Lara decided to explain herself concerning her disk on all the dangers. For that she chose Platine. Without waffling, Lara responded to all our questions, including that on "Taratata", a broadcast where she has no place while the father of her child is the director. Lara will be at the Paris Zenith Theatre October 7th.
This break of 4 years, is it due to your maternity or have there been other reasons?
It is an connected, among other things, to the fact that I became a mother. And it also needed time to work out an idea, to set it up.
How did the idea of this album of reprises in French come about?
From a conversation with Nathalie, my best friend.
However, since one has known you, you've always spoken more about international artists like Streisand in your influences…
But TLFM exists in English! I've recorded in piano voix, a version 100% acoustic. It is called "EWIM" (Every Woman in Me) and one finds on it reprises of Ela Fitzgerald, Streisand, Houston, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Kate Bush, Annie Lennox…It is the equivalent of the French, except that I couldn't release it immediately. As I am Italian, you suspect properly that I also have in mind a "Tutte le donne in me" avec Mina, Omelia Vanoni…
Whether it be in Italian, in English or in French, you seem to have chosen singers of your childhood…
Of my childhood and of my adolescence.
Adolescence? "Amoureuse" dates from 1972, you were two years old…
…Yes, but I discovered it later…At the same time as "Le port de Vancouver" (1976), "Allah (1988)…
Identical for "Mamy Blue" and "Soleil Soleil" which date from 1971?
Me, I discovered "Soleil soleil" when my parents brought me to see Nana Mouskouri on stage in 1978. It was still one of her key songs along with "Les tournesols" [Ed. note: "Le tournesci"]. It is then when I went up on stage to bring her a small bouquet of daffodils…
With your brown velvet dress…
Voila. All this because my parents love this artist more than anything, that hasn't ever changed. For me either, that hasn't changed. "Soleil soleil" made me happy. I remember that as a child, I always said to my mother: "Don't you want to put on the song that gives us happiness"…"Mamy Blue", it is another story. It is my mother who tells it, for me, I don't remember it. It seems that every day when she put me on the table to make the bed, I started to sing "Mamy Blue". Moreover I sang "bloeu"", a strange sound (laughs).
How is it that there are photos of you with Nana in Greece during her good-bye concerts in the summer of 2008?
It is she who invited me.
Did she know then that you had reprised "Soleil Soleil"?
She knew it. She knew especially how much I loved it and how much I said it everywhere. One day she called me telling me: "it is my last concert, I think I know that you love me, I would like that you be in the hall with my friends, I send you an airplane ticket". I was very moved.
Your passion for these singers seems stronger than reason: nobody said to you that it did not give a modern picture?
What the hell does one care? What does that mean??!
I'm playing devil's advocate…
Yes, you do to me what you know how to do…Do you believe that which you've just said?
No, I say just that it is dangerous in a country where the connected media shows off; Nana is often mocked - wrongly - Dalida was criticized in her lifetime, you are perhaps too young to remember it…
But I know it! I have nevertheless had my classes…
You are moreover like them; criticized and mocked…
Yes. but I don't like the compartments and you know it. I don't like the tags, I don't like the partitions. These great women have all brought something unique to the music. And Nana, displeasing to certain moaners, sold 430 million albums: she is quite up there with the Beatles, Jackson, the Stones, Julio Iglesias. It is only in France that they decide to glue a label on the back of someone who absolutely does not deserve it. Personally I didn't have the desire to play that game. I just had the desire of saying: "Thanks". It is a reverence.
Apart from Nana, had you crossed paths with these singers when you were a child?
No. There are even some of them that I never dared to approach since I became a singer. However, all have made up the person that I am.
Your career got under way in Quebec however there aren't many Quebecois in "TLFM"…
There is already Diane Dufresne and Celine on the album. On stage, there will be in addition Ginette Reno: "J'ai besoin de parler à quelqu'un"…
A title from 1983, more 'logical' for you than, for example, "une femme avec toi" of Nicole Croisille, released in 1975…
This song, as I have written in the letter to Nicole Croisille which is in the booklet of the album, permitted me to discover the limits of my voice. It is the time when I had my piano and when I was going to enter the Academy. This song persecuted me over the years for I didn't manage to hit the highest note…(laughs)
Do you know the Italian verson of this song" Une donna con te"?
Of course! Moreover, as I did not understand this manner of phrasing in French - the couplets were of the story, of the narration - one day my mother, who is Italian, taught me that it was a song of my country.
Were you surprised that the texts of these songs had almost all been written by men?
No…For it is you who tell us the best in general…(laughs)
In general…for Piaf co-wrote "L'hymne a l'amour"…
…And Sanson "Amoureuse" and Barbara "Gottigen"…
You looked closely at the credits?
Yes, even if I've chosen these women for who they are or have been…Dalida I've chosen her more for herself than for her repertoire: for her atrocious and tragic departure, for her history of love with Luiji Tenco who finished by killing herself, I've truly looked closely at this person who, today, has become an icon, but who had been very criticized. I wanted to understand how, why, one finally makes this gesture…She didn't leave for nothing: at the moment when, in life, one is doing poorly and one can think of certain things, she is an extraordinary guard-rail…(silence). But she had also been a Cindy Crawford in her debuts. When she was on stage, she made dreams.
Why "18 ans"?
Something very personal made me choose it. If I put myself in the skin of a woman who tells this story, it is that I have been her. I have been in the skin of a woman 30 years old who was with a young man, that happened to me (Editor's note: Lara was 30 years old in 2000, and the media spoke that year of a history with Sebastien Lorca, the singer of "Ali Babi" who was then 22 years old). I succeeded to make the bridge between her and me thanks to this text.
Isn't this also the case of that of "Gottingen" of Barbara?
Yes: "Gottingen" symbolizes the love that I carry in a very strange manner to this culture, to Judaism. For me the great bearers of Judaism are the conductors. I've thought that since I was little…As they say in Quebec…"Search me", I don’t know why I was born with that. I was born with this star, excuse the pun, even if I was not born under this star. This religious philosophy is part of my culture and my life today. "Gottingen" is a song of pardon. Me who doesn't understand that which happened between 1939 and 1945 - that Humanity had let itself do that - no more than the enslavement of the blacks in the 19th century, I was blown away by this song and especially that it comes from her…
Who - as a Jew - must have hidden during the war…
…Yes, and who lived through dreadful things…She is capable of saying: "That the roses are beautiful in Gottingen"…
And, on top of that, being scarcely 20 years old after the end of the war…
…Yes, at a time when one didn't speak of it, when there was a great silence…When I read this text, I said to myself: " Lara, you keep quiet and you learn that by pardoning you survive". If forgiveness does not cure, it calms the times from a song.
Why then the choice of "Soleil Soleil" as the first single? A title less symbolic but more sunny?
Yes, it is the most sunny title. At the same time, Michel Jourdan - who wrote this Middle of the Road adaptation - has written some splendid things. He had moreover written me a letter when he knew that I had recorded "Soleil soleil". And this letter is one of beauty…It is good to read of things which aren't in cynicism, but which are in one true benevolent step. For that music continues to exist. If I have not yet responded, it is that I've wanted to take the time to call him and even to see him…If I have chosen this song as the first single, it is also because I released it before the summer, when one is bored until October: then the winter does not any more serve it which finishes it. I don’t know if you've seen the clip if Gerard (Pulicino) has shown it to you…but this song simply tells with much lightness the feeling that one has when, after some months of the travail of winter, one can finally stretch out on a lounge covered with cream (laughs).
The fact that, outside of France Bleu, radios are not playing this title, does this cause you anxiety?
No, for people don't listen to radio anymore. Aside from France Bleu…Perhaps because these men of radio have turned into, as one calls them, all dinosaurs. Myself, when I work, I go onto the Internet, on a program where I make my own radio…
Do you think that if you arrived with an original song and not a reprise, the radios would pass it?
No, I guarantee it to you. Obispo is in the same case as me. Dion, they have turned away from also. There are even some people who have partnerships, like Mylene on NRJ, and who aren't played even so…
You realize that all these (female) singers [in TLFM] resemble you? Like you, they are guys, no?
(Clap of laugher) It is true. It is what I wrote at the end of the letter to Piaf: You are the most handsome (guy) in a feminine body.
I had the chance to interview quite a lot of 'your' women: you have in common a true apparent femininity which hides a masculine force…
It is true, you are right. And me, I claim my "guy" side!
Finally, is it because of these women that you became a guy?
No, thanks to them (laughs). We are all built with a family of people.
On this album, one doesn't find Kaas, she hasn't therefore stood out for you?
It isn't that. I find that she has made a formidable career. I have been a big fans of songs of the album written with Barbelivien, the one with "Mademoiselle chante le blues", when I was 17 years old. Just after, I did the Eurovision (1988), and, thanks to that, I left for Quebec. I therefore didn't have the time to know her. She stood out for me but she didn't construct me. Like Liana Foly, she brought a different way at the end of the 80s. For me, "Reve orange" is one of the greatest French albums.
Kaas accepted to do Eurovision in 2009, would you do it again?
No, but I understand it: it is at the same time dangerous and magical. It is a true quits or double, positively for her.
Small quiz on your album: which are the French songs which became international hits?
"Soleil soleil"…
No, it is not French…
Pardon, "Amoureuse": it was translated into English.
Bravo: That makes one.
"L'amour existe encore"…
OK. And the oldest song of the album?
Of course: "L'hymne à l'amour"!
There remains one of them…
(she looks at the list of songs) "Mamy blue"! No! It was composed by Roger Whitaker! (laughs)
Yes, it is well an international French hit written by Hubert Giraud.
Second question: which are the songs that aren't French in origin?
(she takes again the list of titles) "Solel soleil" and "Femme". Possibly "L'amour existe encore", which is half Italian by the composer Musumarra…
Why was this album pushed back three times: 1st December, 8 March - Day of the Woman - and finally May 25? A lot of noise ran…
Which?
The first prize was that Pascal Negre hadn't found the album sufficient for the actual release?
OK. the second?
That some songs had been suppressed in the course
No.
You had therefore not expected to sing from Mylene Farmer? (and Babacar from France Gall)?
Yes, at the very beginning of the album, I had thought that. I had chosen Mylene for what she defied. In that which she created. There was a true rebellion, a true defiance, a true rejection. It is truly extraordinary to have lived this transformation without any roots…
What title had you chosen?
"Libertine", but I had done it as an instrumental on which I read the chart of the rights of women.
It required an authorization, no?
And voila: you have understood all…If I had sung "Je, je suis libertine…" (she sings) there wouldn't have been any problems. But this I didn't know how to do it. And nevertheless, I tried…
Is there any pressure from Universal, Pascal Negre, so that you don't do a title of Mylene?
It is false! It is the people who love to invest these stories. No, that had been very much simpler: I had asked for authorization from the publishing house of Mylene Farmer, that was refused, that's all.
Did you have wind of what they were saying?
I especially heard what the people said: "Pascal (Negre) didn't like the album". I moreover asked everyone to call him so that he can say what took place. For me, it is difficult to recount it for it is a conversation between an artist and the head of a record company. A capital moment in the life of a singer.
Haven't you already had some capital moments, notably with the Head of Sony USA during your international launching?
Yes, but last October 20, with Pascal Negre, that was strong…But magnificent, for constructive and just. Pascal changed nothing fundamentally…I would really like you to lift up your telephone, for I know that you can do it, that you have the power to ask him the question…(silence). Roughly, it began like this: "Is it that Pascal can speak to Lara or do you prefer that Negre speaks to Fabian?" I immediately responded: "Ah no, I want Pascal to speak to Lara". After that he explained to me how he loved this idea of homage to the singers who had marked me, that he found it just at this stage of my career, honestly. He said to me: "I know you Lara, I know that you do not make a thing of betraying your promise, but for me, you chose a musical direction which doesn't correspond to you, or not yet". The rest, he will tell you if he wants to…Actually, following this conversation, I understood truly the sense of what he said to me. He made me think straight, and I saw that I had been a little bit too affected - by that which had been said or written about me - that that I definitely wanted to say it or even to feel it. I said to myself then that while I had never betrayed myself until then, and that it was not necessary that I begin.
You therefore said to your arranger, Simon Climie, that it was necessary to begin again?
Not at all, for I still hadn't worked with Simon up to that moment. It is following this conversation with Pascal that I had completely begun again at zero with Climie [Note: he has a studio in France, in Nice).
Can one know where and with whom you had made this 'first' album that Pascal Negre heard on October 20?
Yes, in Montreal and with three young musicians, three kids not well-known: one who comes from jazz, another from R'n'B, and the third from classical music. I moreover had taken the 'top', first prizes at the Conservatory. Moreover, I loved very much this 'first' album for it went very far in its musical journey, it lies completely outside of more accessible music…
Was it the same songs?
Yes, I changed nothing! It is why when I hear it said that Pascal didn't like the album, it isn't true: Pascal adored the album, but he explained to me that it was a futile response to the attacks of people who, in any case, would not understand.
You had therefore made an attempt to prove to your detractors that you were not a singer of 'bad pop music'?
That's what Pascal understood…It is his interpretation. Me, I was in that which I love the most. I adore when I go to hear Papazov who plays the sax…
By seeing frequently musicians (Jean-Felix Lalanne) did not you climb up rungs in music which your public perhaps did not climb up?
No, I don't believe that. It is necessary to stop taking people for idiots, already, to begin with. The rungs that you climb are just like certain desires which exile you from yourself: it is a little like when you go to Gallano Haute-Couture and that you hope to get into a dress size 38 built for a girl of 1.8 meters who weights 50 kilos. And well no: I am 1.62 meters, I weigh 58 kilos and I will never get into a Gallano Haute-Couture. It means that one cannot cut one's hips down or stretch the torso to get into a dress. It is that which Pascal Negre explained to me October 20th. Even if that had been very interesting as experience, what I had done is antinomical {note: means a contradiction between laws, in this case contrary to Lara's 'current configuration'}. That said, I will release it one day, at least as a bonus or a gift for the heads. And I know that that will please a good number of people. There, where Pascal was right, it is because one does not do psychotherapy through an album…I found this extremely 'ballsy' and loving on his part. And I believe also that what astonished him even more, is my response and my trust for I said to him: "I believe that you are right on all. I hadn't seen it like that". I had seen it truly like a gait which belonged to me…
Isn't this your handicap: to have a gait which belongs to you? To be your own producer? To be alone, for surrounded by people who no longer dare to tell you when you've gone too far…
No, I don't feel myself alone.
I knew you nevertheless with some musicians - Rick Alllison, Jean-Felix Lalanne - who dared to tell you that you made a mistake about the route. In the case of this album, you spent a lot of time, a lot of money….before Pascal Negre 'woke you up'…
No one would have been able to tell me what he said to me and which made me think straight. It was necessary first that I fly to the end of my walk. And then it is magnificent this album made in Montreal. I stick by it. I think just that Pascal was right when he said it: it will not be right in some years.
Which versions are you going to play on stage?
Those of the released album, otherwise it is an injustice in relation to the people who come.
Do you think that you would have been able to harmonize your hits from the past with the versions from the first album?
I had already done this with "En toute intimite", it was classical but that proved well that a song when it is controlled, it is controlled in classical, in jazz, in blues…
Nevertheless, as we have not released the album in the first version, I have not worked with the three men on the re-arrangements of my [past] successes…I think that, as in what we had done, my voice would become an instrument. With them, I never served otherwise than like a violin-cello, a flute, a piano. It was hyper-intriguing to do.
Is it that Simon Climie is going to rearrange yours past successes?
No, even if Climie gives me an enormous help on it. It is with Manu Pithois, who is one of the three guys with whom I worked in Montreal (he also worked with Zoe…) who I'm gong to have re-dress my catalog in the colors that we developed with Climie: gospel, urban, hip-hop…
Are you going to sing all the titles from the new album?
Yes.
What are you going to keep from your successes of the past?
I don't still know exactly, but I am going to return a little to the rear. I've already chosen to redo "Alleluia", "Humana"…I will also present a part of "Toutes les femmes en moi" in English. Plus one song in Italian and one in Spanish.
Where are you in your international career? "Cuore Malato", your duo with Gigi d'Alessio, succeeded in Italy but not at all in France…
No, the radios didn't carry it, what is it that you want me to do?
Is it that it allowed you to become better known in Italy?
Yes but I remain "the singer of Adagio", the singer of Adagio, then there is nothing to do. Gigi d'Alessio, that one has been a window, thanks to San Remo [the Festival]. Unfortunately, it is a country where it is politically very difficult to make music. It is not an easy country, where there is truly a protectionist culture, indeed mysterious, for song. What prevents me until now from doing music in Italian, it isn't the music, it is the people who make it…
You mean the professionals?
Yes, when you enter into a team down-there, that you sign a contract, you abandon a form of liberty that I don't have the desire to lose. I have already been the property of an environment and I don't what it anymore. I've worked too hard.
At the time of our last interview, you had announced having just written a song with Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. Where are you on your third English album? Is it that what occurred on the second disgusted you?
That disgusts a little, frankly. And I am not William Tell. It is necessary to choose one's battles. The priorities realign when you become a mother… I have always some part, in the corner of my spirit, the desire, but I don't have an obligation. I have passed this stage. And I am happy about it for that strangled me, it made me sick. Then, there was an Italian, Domenico, who wanted to re-launch the second English album. But me, I am not a backward-looking person. I don't like to return to the past in order to bring back in the present things which hadn't had the space to truly exist. It's necessary to call a cat a cat: "Wonderful Life" doesn't exist. If "I Guess I Loved You" made a place after "Broken Vow", that is already tremendous, marvelous…
Are you not going to release the English version of "Toutes les femmes en moi" on the English market?
No (laughs), first on the French market. I have an idea for that. I would like to offer it to the fans in another way, at the moment of the tour…I would like to convince Pascal (Negre) to do it with me…
Are you going to release "Toutes les femmes en moi" in Quebec?
Yes, it is funny, for at the moment when you let go of some things, the people return to you. It is a little of that which is occurring at the moment: the Russians have heard this thing, they have found it incredible. The Italians love "Soleil soleil" in French…This album which nobody waits for, that they didn't imagine that I could do, I sense a thing above it…Too bad if people say it is not a personal album - while it is so much that for it recounts my personal history - that it is only an album of reprises…Let them say it…
Do you continue to write for others as you have done for Cheme Badi, Nolwenn Leroy, Myriam Abel…
If one solicits me, why not?
However, I'm not going to put myself to write for someone other than that. Especially since, at the moment when I have had my conversation with Nat to whom I gave "Toutes les femmes en moi", I had written an album entirely for me. It is called "Le secret".
Who has written the music? You?
No, I've only written the lyrics. The music is from an Israeli 35 years old who is going to go very far. During the years, he pestered me around the world with some engraved CDs with his music…And one day, on vacation in Israel, the ex-manager of Noa gives me a CD and says to me: "You have to listen to this, it's amazing". And I see the name of this man that I already had read on the CDs that he had given me over the years! I learn also that he writes that for me for ten years. I meet him therefore in Tel Aviv. We install ourselves before a keyboard and then, he plays barely for me five or six melodies that I realize, really, he has written for me. Attention, it is a symphonic album, and therefore it will exist only if it can be carried by 80 classical musicians…
It is therefore an album that is going to cost the skin of C…?
Exactly…Hello Pascal?!!! (laughs)
Have you already announced it?
No, you are the first media person to whom I speak of it. You know that I love you well, so….
Finally, you haven't stopped during these last years while one thought that you played mother…
No, or rather yes, at the same time.
I don't read the press people very much, but I don’t have the impression that your maternity had been very mediatized?
Not at all. I have protected that.
Why?
Because.
You think having paid too dearly for letting the press get hold of your love stories?
One isn't always stupid and young (laughs)
There have therefore not been any photos of you with your baby?
Nor with my guy…The only one that there has been with my guy, they have stolen from me: Voici…
At the beginning of your relationship, no?
Yes, four years ago.
Why do you call your daughter Lou? It is the same first name that Maurane had chosen for her daughter…
It is funny that they would have the same first name with 14 years difference in age, but it isn't me who chose it. That said, it is certainly the one that goes the best.
Who chose this first name? Your parents?
No (laughs)
OK, we're not gong to go any further…Is it that the men in your life have changed your musical tastes? Is it that in being with Gerard Pullicino, who directed "Taratata", you think to have explored other musical styles?
I reassure you: I loved Camille before knowing him….Musically, we have exactly the same universe, even if we don't travel in the identical world. That's all that I would say.
Why?
Because I don't ever speak of my guy.
It seems that you couldn't do "Taratata"?
I haven't ever done "Taratata", why would I do it any more now?
Because your guy is the director and one of its pioneers…
That isn't sufficient. The pennant of "Taratata" doesn't belong to the music to which I belong. It is necessary to call a cat a cat. They make music which belongs to another universe.
We have nevertheless seen there Maurane and Celine Dion in duo…
It was 15 years ago! The "Taratata" of that epoch and the one of today have nothing in common. France 4, Nagui and Marie Pricko have elaborated a concept around which there is Raphael Saadiq and some discoveries, that, it is marvelous. When they presented Packo Nuttini, no one knew who he was. James Morrison, either.
I don’t find Nuttini, nor Morrison, very far from your universe. It is International Variety, like Josh Groban who reprised your “Broken Vow”…
Me neither, to confess all to you…I think that there is a snobbism and a Parisianism which does that…
For “Taratata”, don’t you think that it is better to be unknown, stranger and come on in jeans?
If I had been a model and then I became a singer, or if I had been the lover of a rocker, that would be perhaps different. I believe that I belong to a category of artists termed “popular” – of which I am very proud for I’m saddened by this negative reduction, in the sense of “gauche caviar” of the term – which doesn’t correspond to their window. And me, that, I respect. It isn’t because I have a privileged relationship with the director that I will do this broadcast. I don’t belong to their family. In their opinion.
Quid des Enfoires? Despite three passages: in 1998, 2001 and 2006, you are not entered into the “permanent family”. You complain about it?
No.
Is it your choice?
It is a choice which is a consequence of one of their blunders. I believe they do not treat people properly. One is not a piece of meat. One is there to serve a cause. I would love that it be present behind the scenes as much as it is on the screen. It is a little sad that it’s not the case, that’s all. And I don’t speak of Jean-Jaques who remains honest and upright with respect to the cause. But, like everywhere, there are people in the courtyard of the king who demand powers which they do not have. When one learns of things that they have done on the backs of the artists – as they did with me in 2005 when they had a lack of respect – one can decide to never more return to it. I however wish them “good and long life”, for there are three and a half million homeless people in France. I’m an activist moreover for another association.
Your return to Belgium where you live again since 2004 and this album are they not linked? One has the impression that you have returned to the source, to the protective cocoon?
It is true that when I returned to live in Belgium, I had need of reconnecting myself to certain roots to re-find certain forces, some bearings…And when you do it, life sends to you some good meetings. I had also the chance of having a father and a mother - ones who love me. Equally my best friend. I have there a core of 5 or 6 people.
Returning to live in Belgium, that brought you closer to Maurane?
Of course, even if we have always been close. Jagged, because of our activities, but close. She moreover has been astonished to be in “TLFM” with “Ca casse”…
Is it perhaps because she is the last singer to have “built” you, she must have pierced a dozen years before you…
No, the last, it is Celine. She is only three years more than me.
Celine, did you not do the reprise a little bit for provocation?
No, it is not for provocation, it is for love. This is said in the letter I wrote: “Finally I have the possibility to say it to you…” for I had never had the possibility of telling her that I loved her in person. As soon as I tried to say it, I was given a massive blow on the head.
You also wrote to her: “I’m not going to recount to you the following, that isn’t of importance”…
Of course…That which I meant to say there, it is because it is not necessary to return to this fire lit by others. I just wanted to say to her by a letter that was going to get to her in person: “Me, I love you”. Moreover, in the beginning, these letters were not going to figure in the booklet, I was just going to send them to these women. And then someone said to me: “You ought to put them in the CD”…If in the red line of this album and of my history, I sang “L’amour existe encore”, it is also that I find that it is a sublime song of Cocciante and Plamondon…
What do you think of the situation of the singers of voice today…
You know what I think of the word “Singers of voice”…For me it is like cyclist of bike! It is an expression which means nothing!
Then what do you think of the difficulties of Segara, Boulay? All these girls with melodies with emotion…
Yes, yes…there are some cycles. For the media, not for the public. The last cycle had begun with the arrival of Celine, and then me, last. Before this cycle, one was in the same scenario as today. Me, that doesn’t worry me, for I try to evolve with my time. I don’t see myself redoing “Je t’aime”, “J’y crois encore”…I would love with grace and dignity, as Phil Collins or Sting have done it, to age well with my music. To grow with it while adapting it each time to the times. Because, that's no more, that doesn’t work. It is for this that I have taken Simon Climie who is 52 years old, who has therefore done this for a long time – he works since 20 years old with Clapton, he worked with BB King, Aretha Franklin, Michael Mac Donald…and who has evolved with his times. The black music sung by whites, he knows how to do it….And that which he does, does not sound like the 90s! As far as Isabelle or Helene, or even Florent Pagny or Garou, I don’t have any answer. I know just that, if one arrived in the same epoch, we all evolved differently. To put us all in the same bag, it is mou (soft, gelatinous substance) for the journalist’s cat! The only thing that I could add, it is that one is always afraid of quitting that which one knows to do. However, to remain seated on the chair that projected us, it is that which is dangerous…Me, one can raise me from my chair, put me in the hands of people who don’t do my thing, I will always find a space which corresponds to me to express myself.
