Post by ocelot on Jan 8, 2006 10:50:12 GMT -5
With her enlightened ''Regard 9'', Lara Fabian stopped in the Olympia last September and she will sing in the Zenith in 2006 in a disconcerting white show, proof of a free woman and of a freed singer. We are pleased to see her well-adjusted, eclectic and proud of her choices. We met her before her new tour which will surprise many!
Yes, appearances can be deceiving, but here, it is blatant. Lara is waiting for us, seated in a big armchair of a luxurious Parisian hotel. She's wearing a cream-coloured pant suit which contrasts with her rigorous and dark look she had a few years ago. Everybody says it's a metamorphosis. And yet, when we listen to her -- precise and voluble -- talking about the way she envisages her career now, we don't feel a resounding resurrection but a peaceful evolution of a singer who has accepted to be a musician.
A few weeks later, at the end of one her last concerts, Lara walks in a virginal white set, lit with candlesticks. She begins her show a capella with ''Je t'aime'', swings with ''Humana'' and ''Le tour du monde'', plays the piano with ''La Lettre'' and has fun rewriting ''Tout'' in a bossa nova. She doesn't care about what others may think. Is it what we call happiness?
- Repeating a new show, is always like throwing oneself in the unknown...
We worked enough before not to fear anything. My team has changed and my 10 musicians will accompany me on my successes that can't be ignored and on my new songs. There won't be original songs because I regret it is the reason for buying a live album. I will never force myself to write a song for the pleasure of a label. At the end of the show, there will be a surprise that I've wanted to do for 10 years and I never dared doing it. Come to see me and you'll see. It won't be a classical song, even if classical music has been my family for years with my teacher Lucette Tremblay. The song ''Il ne manquait que toi'' gave me a huge work, it doesn't seem so, but it needs to have a perfect vocal stability, with volume and without vibrato. Lucette laughed when she saw I had written the melody on the piano and when I wanted to reproduce with my voice the notes which were held by the pedal. I've started learning piano again and I'd love to learn the cello for the vibration, the embrace, the basses...
- The introduction of ''il ne manquait que toi'' in the album '9' was only a foretaste then. Will Jean-Félix Lalanne, your musician on the album, control the musical direction?
He wrote the arrangements of the concert, helped me build a sumptuous album, but he won't be on stage. My songs take an unexpected way, as if they hadn't existed before, thanks to guitarist friends of Jean-Félix and thanks to the chorus: one boy and an alto girl, a gospel voice and a humming-bird singer. It allows us to use their voices like instruments or like violins sometimes. We looked for dense, lyrical and sometimes complicated writings. I have to admit that each person of the chorus has worked a lot on his/her part.
- Does the version of ''Humana'' on the album ''Akapella'' by Marco Béacco and P. Kelly (he participated in '9') come from this same idea?
No, this version was recorded one year and a half ago. You sometimes meet artists who do the same thing as you at the same time. The current arrangement of ''Humana'' doesn't sound like this version and we use the potential offered by the guitars, the bass, the drums and we transformed it into a more entertaining song, more 'African' than the original.
- You did two concerts last June in Casablanca, Oporto and Moscow...
... with an acoustic quartet. I will give concerts this year in Bulgaria, Turkey and in the United States. I've learned to be happy on stage when you have the freedom that the public gives to you, when you have its approval and when you focus on music and not on seduction.
- You worked with the director Marc Hollogne for the video clips of '9'. Were you inspired by his ''Marciel monte à Paris'' for your concerts?
I love the video clip of ''L'homme qui n'avait pas de maison'' for its simplicity. But Marc will eventually not participate in the adventure. It's a pity because the idea was to reproduce the concept of the clips. You can't ask a person to stick to a project when he doesn't feel like to do it...
- A few years ago, the set of some of your shows should have already been organized by Franco Dragone, the director of the ''Adagio's'' video clip...
There are always travelers who don't take the train, but contrary to Marc, Franco didn't give me any good reason. It was only a question of money and if I was a machine which produces money, you would know it! For ''Un Regard 9'' I wanted a crystalline aesthetic which translates the festive and airy state of mind of the album. I take the risk of re-writing songs. Even the fans will need a dozen of beats to know which song it is. I don't have the right to offer them the same show for ever. That's also why I decided to produce it without Thierry Suc and Jean-Claude Camus. Their work was ok, but I wanted to do it on my own, because my artistic choices could not be compromised. If I fail, it's going to be my fault, and only mine!
- The Olympia, the Palais des Sports, a tour: was 1998 a 'live' year?
There was not only happiness in all that. Today, I'm looking forward, thinking how I could do things I've never done. But ''En toute intimité'' was fundamental in my life because I had decided to be true with myself. I was a way to find my centre again and to understand what I had forgotten. I came back to the true pleasure of singing. That was how I built this show and that's why it was successful. My acoustic tour in Quebec in 1994 was void of stake whereas when I started ''En toute intimité'', my team worked hard and thought instead of me. Today, I listen to my family circle but I also listen to my instinct. I didn't need to prove them anything then and I didn't share the attacks of some journalists... But it's over now.
- You defended your last live album with ''Bambina''. Did it confirm your new state of mind?
Yes, ''Bambina'' was a transition. I remember having done some tv-shows with Jean-Félix and I, seated on a bench. I had the impression of landing myself, without pain and complication. Everything evolved and my voice was the expression of my soul. But let's be honest... when I'm on stage, singing with all my power, I assume the power of my voice!
- The first extract of '9' was ''La Lettre'', a song which came later on..
Yes and it was so true with what I was going through. I was delighted that it was the first extract. Concerning the second one, I let my record company choose ''Ne lui parlez plus d'elle'' even if I preferred ''il ne manquait que toi''. I understood their arguments and what matters is the length of life of this album, not a popularity peak.
- Did you know the original version of ''La Lettre'' sung by the singer Patsy (she comes from Madagascar) and the other 10 songs that Jean-Félix had written for her?
He played this song in the kitchen one day and I asked him if I could re-write the melody a bit. I re-wrote the verses, a bridge and we kept the lyrics. It's very rare that I come back on old bits of melody. Nothing is behind us by chance, you must go forward and do something else or you would grow old too fast. That's the theme of ''un Ave Maria'', a song mixing classical composition and esoteric lyrics. It talks about a faith which is not necessarily religious. I speak of Mary like the mother of humanity and like a clement woman. These are the words that I heard in the music, just like when you enter an art gallery and when paintings tell a story by themselves. In fact, for '9', I didn't think too much about the music: I let it live.
- Would you say you live ''thanks'' to music or ''for'' music?
Today I can live thanks to music. What is talent? Why do we write? You don't know and when you begin composing a song, you find yourself in a world where nothing concrete exists. The melody of ''Je me souviens'' was written by my friend Jérémy Jouniaux. In a concert in Tahiti, he was playing chords on his piano, I felt something and I improvised, without thinking.
- Can we say that ''Le tour du monde'' is a 2005 version of ''Pas sans toi''?
Yes, that's an interesing analogy. It's funny how a new perception can reveal an unconscious link.
- Do you have songs left that you had written for '9'?
Yes, there are some which weren't put in '9' but there will be in a next album that will come very quickly and which has nothing to do with what we're talking about. It's almost a new life. Music doesn't have one single language and a series of original compositions... Therefore, it won't be the Italian album I had promised because I'm waiting a bit. I want to work with the right person. Some songs already exist: some new and some translations. I know I'll have to work with Celso Valli (Bocelli, Pausini, Ramazotti) and have good guarantees. I don't want to have endless conversations or throwing myself in an unknown world. I've already done that too often.
- You sang ''Tu es mon Autre'' and ''Mais la vie'' with Maurane. Today, you work with her pianist, Philippe Decock and her former manager, Sophie Harvengt...
Philippe was the pianist of my first album when I was 17 and works in Brussels. Concerning Sophie, she has a new way of looking at me. She's a young woman who doesn't do the job of manager like a player who wants money.
- A new aspect of your writing is irony or cynicism, like in the ''Homéricains''...
It was not a way of doing politics but I wanted to claim something, as a human being, with a funny and poetical text. I wanted to have concise lyrics. I didn't know Hemingway but I read him this year and I was deeply moved by his description of pain. I also continued to devour Amélie Nothomb, she's so delicious and mischievous. It makes her laugh when I say that. To come back to the ''Homéricains'', I was sick and tired with hearing that American people are stupid people. Aren't there bad policies on our side of the Atlantic? We are certainly not the ones who can judge them. Yes, Bush is not intelligent but more than 50% of his country doesn't agree with him. These are the people that I like and they think his presidency is a shame in their history. America is a part of me. I've been living there for 15 years and I have a lot of friends... these creators, visionaries who don't need to claim a thousand year of history to exist. I don't like the conservatism in our continent which says we must be proud of being old people with an old culture, even I feel European.
- Perhaps more Mediterranean than European?
Probably, I have a lot of origins: I'm neither Italian, neither Belgian, Sicilian, Canadian nor French. I don't like when people are condemned because of being eclectic.
- Your first English album was quite successful. But ''A wonderful Life'' wasn't released in the US in spite of 3 years of work. Will you sing some of your songs in English or do people tend to hate them?
There will be 3. My fans were surprised that I refused to sing them. I've thought about it and I saw no reason for which these two categories of songs shouldn't be gathered. In fact, I was afraid of singing them because people had not understood my desire to make albums for the English market. I never wanted to conquer a continent! When you hear a lot of incorrect things, you believe them. Some of the songs I wrote during this period really look like me. If I look at all this adventure, I remember my meeting with Pat Leonard and Marvin Gaye and beautiful songs that I sang or which were later sung by others, like Josh Groban. For my first English album, I had 48 songs... I had to take only 13!
- Is the American way of working more efficient?
That's what we say, but it's not always true. They also make albums which ruin singers' careers. Of course, there is a specific American school of engineers who are able to take a voice with high dynamics. But I was lucky to work in the US in the world of the film music. I liked to sing something among 30 beats in the middle of a sheet music of John Williams who conducts 100 musicians. Nobody knows it. Here, you don't prove your talent, you only do music. That's what makes me happy. When John Williams organize concerts in Tanglewood or for the Boston Pops, he doesn't promote them and has a faithful public. Thanks to his way of doing (without a lot of promotion), I realised it was possible to come back to the kind of music I did before, after 12 million albums sold and in spite of 5 difficult years in a long tunnel...
- Marketing finishes by replacing music and losing artists...
I was lucky to work with James Taylor and we had a conversation about it. He said: ''in 30 years, I had big failures but I'm still here. Each time I release an album where I don't lie, the public is there. Lara, always try to be true.'' I was seated on the stage in Tanglewood. James Taylor was talking to me. Yo Yo Ma was playing on his cello the music when E.T. rises in the sky. It was an essential moment in my life.
- Do Tanglewood or the Boston Symphony Orchestra do a lot for the musical education?
Yes, that's what is great too. There is not a financier who walks in the rows to see how many seats are sold.. There are only 200 young people, in shorts and tennis shoes, who come to learn from John Williams when their parents learnt with Bernstein. In these kinds of moments, I'm a passionate pupil. And I will stay like this.
(Thanks to W.V.P. of larafabianforum.com for the translation)
Yes, appearances can be deceiving, but here, it is blatant. Lara is waiting for us, seated in a big armchair of a luxurious Parisian hotel. She's wearing a cream-coloured pant suit which contrasts with her rigorous and dark look she had a few years ago. Everybody says it's a metamorphosis. And yet, when we listen to her -- precise and voluble -- talking about the way she envisages her career now, we don't feel a resounding resurrection but a peaceful evolution of a singer who has accepted to be a musician.
A few weeks later, at the end of one her last concerts, Lara walks in a virginal white set, lit with candlesticks. She begins her show a capella with ''Je t'aime'', swings with ''Humana'' and ''Le tour du monde'', plays the piano with ''La Lettre'' and has fun rewriting ''Tout'' in a bossa nova. She doesn't care about what others may think. Is it what we call happiness?
- Repeating a new show, is always like throwing oneself in the unknown...
We worked enough before not to fear anything. My team has changed and my 10 musicians will accompany me on my successes that can't be ignored and on my new songs. There won't be original songs because I regret it is the reason for buying a live album. I will never force myself to write a song for the pleasure of a label. At the end of the show, there will be a surprise that I've wanted to do for 10 years and I never dared doing it. Come to see me and you'll see. It won't be a classical song, even if classical music has been my family for years with my teacher Lucette Tremblay. The song ''Il ne manquait que toi'' gave me a huge work, it doesn't seem so, but it needs to have a perfect vocal stability, with volume and without vibrato. Lucette laughed when she saw I had written the melody on the piano and when I wanted to reproduce with my voice the notes which were held by the pedal. I've started learning piano again and I'd love to learn the cello for the vibration, the embrace, the basses...
- The introduction of ''il ne manquait que toi'' in the album '9' was only a foretaste then. Will Jean-Félix Lalanne, your musician on the album, control the musical direction?
He wrote the arrangements of the concert, helped me build a sumptuous album, but he won't be on stage. My songs take an unexpected way, as if they hadn't existed before, thanks to guitarist friends of Jean-Félix and thanks to the chorus: one boy and an alto girl, a gospel voice and a humming-bird singer. It allows us to use their voices like instruments or like violins sometimes. We looked for dense, lyrical and sometimes complicated writings. I have to admit that each person of the chorus has worked a lot on his/her part.
- Does the version of ''Humana'' on the album ''Akapella'' by Marco Béacco and P. Kelly (he participated in '9') come from this same idea?
No, this version was recorded one year and a half ago. You sometimes meet artists who do the same thing as you at the same time. The current arrangement of ''Humana'' doesn't sound like this version and we use the potential offered by the guitars, the bass, the drums and we transformed it into a more entertaining song, more 'African' than the original.
- You did two concerts last June in Casablanca, Oporto and Moscow...
... with an acoustic quartet. I will give concerts this year in Bulgaria, Turkey and in the United States. I've learned to be happy on stage when you have the freedom that the public gives to you, when you have its approval and when you focus on music and not on seduction.
- You worked with the director Marc Hollogne for the video clips of '9'. Were you inspired by his ''Marciel monte à Paris'' for your concerts?
I love the video clip of ''L'homme qui n'avait pas de maison'' for its simplicity. But Marc will eventually not participate in the adventure. It's a pity because the idea was to reproduce the concept of the clips. You can't ask a person to stick to a project when he doesn't feel like to do it...
- A few years ago, the set of some of your shows should have already been organized by Franco Dragone, the director of the ''Adagio's'' video clip...
There are always travelers who don't take the train, but contrary to Marc, Franco didn't give me any good reason. It was only a question of money and if I was a machine which produces money, you would know it! For ''Un Regard 9'' I wanted a crystalline aesthetic which translates the festive and airy state of mind of the album. I take the risk of re-writing songs. Even the fans will need a dozen of beats to know which song it is. I don't have the right to offer them the same show for ever. That's also why I decided to produce it without Thierry Suc and Jean-Claude Camus. Their work was ok, but I wanted to do it on my own, because my artistic choices could not be compromised. If I fail, it's going to be my fault, and only mine!
- The Olympia, the Palais des Sports, a tour: was 1998 a 'live' year?
There was not only happiness in all that. Today, I'm looking forward, thinking how I could do things I've never done. But ''En toute intimité'' was fundamental in my life because I had decided to be true with myself. I was a way to find my centre again and to understand what I had forgotten. I came back to the true pleasure of singing. That was how I built this show and that's why it was successful. My acoustic tour in Quebec in 1994 was void of stake whereas when I started ''En toute intimité'', my team worked hard and thought instead of me. Today, I listen to my family circle but I also listen to my instinct. I didn't need to prove them anything then and I didn't share the attacks of some journalists... But it's over now.
- You defended your last live album with ''Bambina''. Did it confirm your new state of mind?
Yes, ''Bambina'' was a transition. I remember having done some tv-shows with Jean-Félix and I, seated on a bench. I had the impression of landing myself, without pain and complication. Everything evolved and my voice was the expression of my soul. But let's be honest... when I'm on stage, singing with all my power, I assume the power of my voice!
- The first extract of '9' was ''La Lettre'', a song which came later on..
Yes and it was so true with what I was going through. I was delighted that it was the first extract. Concerning the second one, I let my record company choose ''Ne lui parlez plus d'elle'' even if I preferred ''il ne manquait que toi''. I understood their arguments and what matters is the length of life of this album, not a popularity peak.
- Did you know the original version of ''La Lettre'' sung by the singer Patsy (she comes from Madagascar) and the other 10 songs that Jean-Félix had written for her?
He played this song in the kitchen one day and I asked him if I could re-write the melody a bit. I re-wrote the verses, a bridge and we kept the lyrics. It's very rare that I come back on old bits of melody. Nothing is behind us by chance, you must go forward and do something else or you would grow old too fast. That's the theme of ''un Ave Maria'', a song mixing classical composition and esoteric lyrics. It talks about a faith which is not necessarily religious. I speak of Mary like the mother of humanity and like a clement woman. These are the words that I heard in the music, just like when you enter an art gallery and when paintings tell a story by themselves. In fact, for '9', I didn't think too much about the music: I let it live.
- Would you say you live ''thanks'' to music or ''for'' music?
Today I can live thanks to music. What is talent? Why do we write? You don't know and when you begin composing a song, you find yourself in a world where nothing concrete exists. The melody of ''Je me souviens'' was written by my friend Jérémy Jouniaux. In a concert in Tahiti, he was playing chords on his piano, I felt something and I improvised, without thinking.
- Can we say that ''Le tour du monde'' is a 2005 version of ''Pas sans toi''?
Yes, that's an interesing analogy. It's funny how a new perception can reveal an unconscious link.
- Do you have songs left that you had written for '9'?
Yes, there are some which weren't put in '9' but there will be in a next album that will come very quickly and which has nothing to do with what we're talking about. It's almost a new life. Music doesn't have one single language and a series of original compositions... Therefore, it won't be the Italian album I had promised because I'm waiting a bit. I want to work with the right person. Some songs already exist: some new and some translations. I know I'll have to work with Celso Valli (Bocelli, Pausini, Ramazotti) and have good guarantees. I don't want to have endless conversations or throwing myself in an unknown world. I've already done that too often.
- You sang ''Tu es mon Autre'' and ''Mais la vie'' with Maurane. Today, you work with her pianist, Philippe Decock and her former manager, Sophie Harvengt...
Philippe was the pianist of my first album when I was 17 and works in Brussels. Concerning Sophie, she has a new way of looking at me. She's a young woman who doesn't do the job of manager like a player who wants money.
- A new aspect of your writing is irony or cynicism, like in the ''Homéricains''...
It was not a way of doing politics but I wanted to claim something, as a human being, with a funny and poetical text. I wanted to have concise lyrics. I didn't know Hemingway but I read him this year and I was deeply moved by his description of pain. I also continued to devour Amélie Nothomb, she's so delicious and mischievous. It makes her laugh when I say that. To come back to the ''Homéricains'', I was sick and tired with hearing that American people are stupid people. Aren't there bad policies on our side of the Atlantic? We are certainly not the ones who can judge them. Yes, Bush is not intelligent but more than 50% of his country doesn't agree with him. These are the people that I like and they think his presidency is a shame in their history. America is a part of me. I've been living there for 15 years and I have a lot of friends... these creators, visionaries who don't need to claim a thousand year of history to exist. I don't like the conservatism in our continent which says we must be proud of being old people with an old culture, even I feel European.
- Perhaps more Mediterranean than European?
Probably, I have a lot of origins: I'm neither Italian, neither Belgian, Sicilian, Canadian nor French. I don't like when people are condemned because of being eclectic.
- Your first English album was quite successful. But ''A wonderful Life'' wasn't released in the US in spite of 3 years of work. Will you sing some of your songs in English or do people tend to hate them?
There will be 3. My fans were surprised that I refused to sing them. I've thought about it and I saw no reason for which these two categories of songs shouldn't be gathered. In fact, I was afraid of singing them because people had not understood my desire to make albums for the English market. I never wanted to conquer a continent! When you hear a lot of incorrect things, you believe them. Some of the songs I wrote during this period really look like me. If I look at all this adventure, I remember my meeting with Pat Leonard and Marvin Gaye and beautiful songs that I sang or which were later sung by others, like Josh Groban. For my first English album, I had 48 songs... I had to take only 13!
- Is the American way of working more efficient?
That's what we say, but it's not always true. They also make albums which ruin singers' careers. Of course, there is a specific American school of engineers who are able to take a voice with high dynamics. But I was lucky to work in the US in the world of the film music. I liked to sing something among 30 beats in the middle of a sheet music of John Williams who conducts 100 musicians. Nobody knows it. Here, you don't prove your talent, you only do music. That's what makes me happy. When John Williams organize concerts in Tanglewood or for the Boston Pops, he doesn't promote them and has a faithful public. Thanks to his way of doing (without a lot of promotion), I realised it was possible to come back to the kind of music I did before, after 12 million albums sold and in spite of 5 difficult years in a long tunnel...
- Marketing finishes by replacing music and losing artists...
I was lucky to work with James Taylor and we had a conversation about it. He said: ''in 30 years, I had big failures but I'm still here. Each time I release an album where I don't lie, the public is there. Lara, always try to be true.'' I was seated on the stage in Tanglewood. James Taylor was talking to me. Yo Yo Ma was playing on his cello the music when E.T. rises in the sky. It was an essential moment in my life.
- Do Tanglewood or the Boston Symphony Orchestra do a lot for the musical education?
Yes, that's what is great too. There is not a financier who walks in the rows to see how many seats are sold.. There are only 200 young people, in shorts and tennis shoes, who come to learn from John Williams when their parents learnt with Bernstein. In these kinds of moments, I'm a passionate pupil. And I will stay like this.
(Thanks to W.V.P. of larafabianforum.com for the translation)