Album review

Renaud

Double Trouble

Paris 

14/06/2002 - 

After seven years in the musical wilderness Renaud is back at the forefront of the French scene with a new album entitled Boucan d'enfer. Like Gainsbourg before him, Renaud plays with the idea of a split personality on his latest single, alternating between the persona of "Docteur Renaud" and "Mister Renard" – as if this were his only way of dealing with the pain and suffering he has undergone over the past few years. Having survived a serious bout of alcoholism, a mid-life crisis and a split from his partner of 25 years, the singer has sought therapy through songwriting as well as the psychoanalyst's couch. RFI/Musique met up with Renaud to discuss his dark and highly personal new work in the local Paris bistro where he used to come and drown his sorrows:

RFI/Musique: Besides taking a long break from your recording career we haven't seen much of you on the movie screen lately either. In fact, you haven't made a film since Claude Berry's Germinal. But I believe you recently got back in front of the movie camera in Toronto. What's your new film about?
Renaud: It's an absolutely brilliant 'cops and robbers' comedy written and directed by Brad Mirman. The film's about this band of loser criminals from Paris who are sent out to Chicago by this Mafia guy in Pigalle to do this dodgy job. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it all goes wrong and the band end up with the F.B.I., the Mafia and a street gang on their tail… I think it's going to be a great film seeing that the cast includes guys like Harvey Keitel, Gérard Depardieu, Johnny Hallyday, Saïd Tagmaoui and Richard Borhinger. I get to play this sort of cold-blooded, taciturn killer who always refers to himself in the third person. He's called "Zéro"!

I believe you actually celebrated your 50th birthday over on the film set in Toronto on May 11th?
Yep, that's right! I celebrated my birthday with the whole film crew and Gérard Depardieu and Johnny Hallyday were there too. It was great fun – and my daughter was out there for the big day too as she was working on the film as a trainee!
50 years old, who'd believe it?... Turning 30 did my head in and turning 40 freaked me out completely. But these days my aim is to reach 100 – or even 110! So the closer I get to my goal the happier I am!

Do you think you've got a good chance of living to a ripe old age then?
Yes, I do. My father's got to 92, you know. We've got solid constitutions in the Séchan family - even if you might not think so to look at us!

After a long absence from the recording scene, not to mention a serious bout of alcoholism and a painful separation from your partner, perhaps it's not surprising that this album has been something of an emotional outlet for you…
Well, the thing is I feel my work has always come straight from the heart. My songs have always been about what's going on in my heart, my head and my guts. This time round it so happens that the songs which rolled off my pen insisted on talking about me and all my heartaches and disillusions – or as Nino Ferrer would have put it "my disabusations!" So, yes, the new album is an extremely personal, extremely introspective affair. Perhaps the best way to describe it is 'a totally self-absorbed album where I sit and look into my own problems rather than analyse what's going on with the rest of humanity'.

I think an artist's role is to open himself up completely, you know, offer up his heart and soul. And that's really what happened when I sat down and started writing these new songs. That's why I feel a lot of the songs on the album can really reach out and touch people because love stories - and heartache as well, come to think of it - are a universal experience. I mean, who hasn't had their heart broken at least once in their life? Who could possibly avoid living through an unhappy love affair sooner or later?

But in your case it was a bit more than a simple love affair, wasn't it?
Yes, it was major heartache, seeing that we'd been together for 25 years… It was an awful experience – I really believed that our couple was indestructible, that we'd go on for ever like my old parents who've been together for 60 years. But that wasn't the way things turned out. Life eventually pulled our paths apart.

Your new album, Boucan d'enfer, sold a staggering 450,000 copies in a week. Do you feel that such phenomenal commercial success proves that the public has a deep sympathy towards you and your misfortune?
I don't know really. What I do know is that for the past 15 years or so there's been this strong core of fans made up of about 600,000 or 700,000 people who regularly listen to my music and go out and buy my records. Now I don't know whether it's my most loyal, long-term fans who rushed out to buy the new album. Maybe some of my long-term fans were impatient for me to make a bit of a comeback or maybe I've attracted a few new fans this time round, who knows?

Of course, the sales have made me feel really happy and reassured. It really touched me that so many people went out and bought the album. I mean, after eight years away from the music scene you're naturally scared you'll have been forgotten. And it turns out that not only have I not been forgotten but that apparently there are quite a few people out there who'd been eagerly awaiting my return…

There's a song on the album called Mon nain de jardin (My Garden Gnome). Was it inspired by the gnome scenes in Jeunet's film Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain?

Well, that's a question I've been asked a lot actually – but the answer is no, not at all, in fact. I wrote the song four years ago, before Jeunet even started making his film. And, I have to add in my defence, that I still haven't seen Amélie Poulain.

No, the song was really written as a reaction against all those people who fell about laughing when they read about "The Garden Gnome Liberation Committee" – this gang who used to go round the suburbs stealing gnomes from people's gardens. I felt I could personally relate to the story because I had this grandfather called Oscar who was a simple working man and who lived the last days of his life in this tiny house with this tiny patch of garden – and he had this gnome he was really seriously attached to. If anyone had broken into his garden and stolen that gnome I know he'd have been totally distraught. So when I was writing the song I put myself in the place of this poor guy who doesn't have many possessions in his life and who suddenly loses this little thing he really treasures. The moral of the story is thieves always steal from people worse off than themselves – and I think that's pretty sad really!

And what about the song l'Entarté, your ode to Belgian "flan-flinger" Noël Godin? It sounds like a bit of a personal attack on French philosopher Bernard-Henry Levy. This may have been a way of settling old scores but wasn't BHL a bit of an easy target?
Well, that's not the first time I've been asked that question either. And no, I don't think it's so easy to attack someone as publicly important in the media and the world of literature and philosophy as BHL… BHL's everywhere these days and personally I find him so invasive that I think it's good that from time to time someone should come along and put him back in his place – with gentle humour and irony, of course. But I honestly don't think he's such an easy target, you know. He's got the gift of the gab, he knows how to use - and abuse – language so he's perfectly capable of defending himself. Actually before the album came out BHL's lawyer got in touch with me and asked to see the lyrics. According to him, Levy had reacted by saying "OK, I'm a fair player and I've got a sense of humour, so I'll let it go ahead!" Well, I'm the first to be surprised to find out he's got a sense of humour! But I have to say I'm delighted, it redeems him a bit in my eyes!

What are your views on the intelligentsia who like to speak out on great causes like war and famine? There was a time in your own career, of course, when you played the 'rally the crowd' card with SOS Ethiopie….
Yes, that's true. But in the end I got fed up of playing the moraliser and lesson-giver. I was prepared to stand up and denounce misery, poverty and oppression, but I don't want to find myself brandished as a spokesperson of such and such a group or such and such a cause. I prefer to live hidden away in my bistro far from the madding crowd! I do try and change people's mentalities through my songs, but these days I've no desire to get out there in the front line, you know, mount the barricades and urge people to vote this way or that. I was like that once – but that's a period that belongs to my youth and it's well over now!

Talking of your youth, I was going to ask you whether the people you reminisce so fondly about in the song Mon bistrot préféré are the friends from your early days like Fallet and Coluche?
In answer to that all I can say is: yes, I do miss the emotional presence of those whom I had the insolent good fortune to know! I do miss Gainsbourg ringing up at two in the morning and practically crying down the phone, begging "Come and see me. I'm not doing well – I'm freaking out, I'm unhappy, please come and talk to me!" I miss someone like Frédéric Dard in the same way and that wonderful little man called Robert Doisneau – I had an infinite amount of love for him, you know. And then there were all those wonderful dinners with Coluche and his friends sitting round the table at his house…

Turning to a darker period now, do you ever regret the infinite amount of Ricard Mister Renard imbibed as a serious drinker?
I think I'm the sort of person who'll always have a crack running through their life. I've always lived in the grip of melancholy and nostalgia and that means I don't always deal with life very well. But as far as the drinking and the Ricard abuse goes, I like to think I've managed to pull through that and come out the other side… I might have two or three glasses a day now, but that's a pretty reasonable amount compared to the five years I spent here in this bistro pouring a litre of Ricard down my throat each day.

Of course, I'm angry with myself for acting that way all those years but the fact of the matter is I've got a powerful self-destructive instinct – although paradoxically one which has never driven me to suicide. I was more into the idea of destroying myself little by little and slowly crumbling away. Sure, I'd have liked to live life in a better way but hey! you have to remember that there are a million people worse off than you, people with real problems, real heartaches, real illnesses. My worries were real enough to me – but when you come down to it they were petty bourgeois problems really!

During this long, dark period of your career did you feel you received sympathy and compassion from your family, your fans and other professionals in the music industry?
Well, there was one point where I just sat back and let all the rumours fly. I knew people in the business were discussing my physical and mental state and that some of them reckoned I wouldn't even make it through the winter. Friends of mine who are doctors were predicting I'd end up with cirrhosis of the liver within the next couple of months. And I have to say I'm pretty pleased I managed to pull through and dig myself out of that hole!

I have some amazing stories from that period though. I remember I was on a tour of the French provinces at one point and I tried out Boucan d’enfer - a song about a very messy, very painful break-up - on stage. And then afterwards I launched into Manu and there were all these 15-year-old kids in the audience going, "Don't fuck up, Renaud! Don't go and slit your wrists!"

. There's a song on your new album called Mal barrés which sounds eerily reminiscent of the Brassens classic Bancs publics...
Yes, people have already remarked on the fact that the song sounds like a sort of dark double to Bancs publics. The thing is, even though I still believe in love - because somewhere down the line that's the only thing I do believe in - well, I don't really believe in relationships so much any more. When I see 15-year-old kids sitting there in cafes or on park benches I can't really picture them being happy and in love fifty years down the track. Mal barrés is a bit of a gloomy number really. The thing is, I believed in it all myself once – and look at me, the relationship I once thought so indestructible wasn't strong enough to resist the wear and tear of life!

Talking of French politics for a moment, I'd like to ask how you felt about voting for Jacques Chirac in the second round of the presidential elections in May?
Voting for Chirac made me want to throw up! I'm someone who likes the idea of voting "for" something not "against" – and that's why I'm so pissed off at Le Pen for having forced me to vote for the centre-right. I was actually really torn between the idea of voting for Chirac and abstaining. But I was pushed into voting because there were all these fake secret service reports in circulation at the time which claimed that Le Pen was about to run off with 42 % of the votes in the second round. Chirac's not my cup of tea – and everyone knows it! – but better him than the 'black plague' of fascism all over again.

Given the political situation at the moment don't you feel it's time to roll out your old classics like Hexagone and Camarade bourgeois - or better still write some new ones?
Yes, it's certainly time to write some new ones - or to fetch out Hexagone, a song I've been singing for 25 years now!… But, you know, when you sing your protest songs and you still see someone like Le Pen getting such a big score in the presidential elections, well you can't help wondering whether it's all been in vain, whether your songs have actually served any useful purpose.

So in the famous words of one of your early hits - "Laisse Béton - we should just "drop it"?
No, no way, that's not what I'm saying at all! I'm not dropping anything. Far from it, in fact, I'm getting back to the coalface and writing a whole load of new songs!

Interview: Frédéric Garat
Translation: Julie Street

Renaud-le-renard website

Renaud Boucan d'enfer (Virgin) 2002
Biographical musings: Thierry Séchan Bouquin d'enfer Editions du Rocher 2002