Album review

Dick Annegarn

Annegarn Steps Out of the Shadows

05/04/2002 - 

Dick Annegarn re-emerged on the French music scene at the beginning of this month with a new album entitled Un' Ombre. This new concept album which revolves around desire, seduction and homosexual love, gave us the perfect occasion to meet up with Annegarn, the French Dutchman (or, given Annegarn's culturally mixed roots, should we say the Dutch Frenchman from Morocco?). In this frank, in-depth interview the poetic globetrotter talks to us about his music, his love of the countryside and the mysterious shadow-men on his new album.

RFI/Musique: Dick, after recording your last album in New York, you chose a complete change of scene this time round and went off and recorded your new album in a country studio in the Landes…
Dick Annegarn: Recording in a city is complete and utter punishment as far as I'm concerned! I don't even like having to sing in a city, in fact. I have to prepare myself to deal with the pollution each time. Recording my last album in New York came about by chance actually. My label Tôt ou Tard suggested I went and worked there and I thought 'Why not? A studio in New York is just as good as anywhere else!' It was better than working in a recording studio in Paris actually, because it was an old analog studio. And those have pretty much disappeared in France these days – everyone's fascinated by digital recording and computer technology now! But on my new album I ended up going off to an old analog studio down in the Landes. It was all very quaint and rustic. The studio was right out in the middle of the countryside and I felt it really corresponded to my new lifestyle. It was a lot greener than any of the towns I've lived in to date, in any case!

So what did life in the south offer that you couldn't get in the north?
I think society's got more of a poetic edge to it down south. OK, so there's a bit of poetry to be gleaned from life in the north, but if you're looking for the magic of words you have to go to local bistros. And it gets a bit tedious sometimes in the north, because it feels like the same old jokes resurface time after time. In the south I feel like there's a lot less alcohol and a lot more poetry in life. The other advantage to living in the south is that I'm a lot closer to Morocco. I can jump in my car, drive across Spain and I'm home then I can hop in my car drive across the border and I'm back home in France. I'm really happy living down in the countryside. I've got a house in the Comminges region, in the Lower Pyrenees. One of the things I love most about living down there is that you can have all your doors and windows open in December. I mean, I can't even do that in Lille in July!

Recording in the Landes meant you ended up working with a local musician by the name of Jean-Pierre Mader…
Yes, Jean-Pierre was my guide! I started out with the idea of working with Claude Sicre from the Fabulous Trobadours, but when I actually hooked up with him he didn't prove to be very helpful. The thing is, he's completely tied up in the fight for regional languages – which is a battle I don't feel involved in at all.
Jean-Pierre was more on my wavelength though. He became a bit of a local ambassador for me and boosted my street cred in Paris where I've always had a bit of a credibility problem. Jean-Pierre found me all these really good musicians who are actually real celebrities on the local scene, but I'd never heard of them before (i.e. horn-player Jean-Pierre Soulès, tuba-player Barnabé Wiorowski and musical arranger Philippe Leoge). He also offered his own services working as a producer and sound engineer on my new album. It was Jean-Pierre who found me the studio in the Landes actually. He's a fantastic organiser - and a really nice guy too!

Your songs often revolve around the theme of travel, people putting down roots and getting attached to places while others are uprooted and displaced. Have you always felt the need to define yourself in terms of place?
Well, I've always tried to make the most out of places when I'm in them, to live fully in the moment wherever I am. You can't own a place, you can only exist in it. A place is a smell, a colour, an ambience, it's always full of imaginary families. There's an album by a group of Hungarian peasant musicians which I particularly like where they introduce each of their songs by explaining where and when it was recorded. I think that's important.

When you're in Morocco do you feel rooted or not?
When I'm in Morocco I totally assume my Westerness. I don't sit around wearing babouches (traditional leather slippers) or anything! I assume my geographic origins and my social ones too, the fact that as a Westerner I've obviously got more cash than others. People consider me to be a bit bourgeois over there, actually, even though my mother worked on the production line at Philips. Maybe my real roots lie in the "old library" of Europe – which, paradoxically, has always been open to the Orient and influences from the East. I've never really felt rootless in my life it's just that, as a Westerner, it's quite debatable as to what my roots actually are. I don't see myself as the centre of the world or anything!

Your new album revolves around the idea of love and seduction, even if at times you only hint at it indirectly…
When I sing "J'aime quand il pleut" (I like it when he rains), I think it's clear in the context of that song that I'm talking about a guy coming. It's not that indirect, you know!... Besides, I always give listeners keys to unlocking the meaning of my songs. I've always considered my songs to be a form of erotic or sensual poetry. But this time round I really wanted to give my new album an autobiographical edge too. You have to be careful though. Autobiography isn't necessarily art! You can't just talk about your own emotions and label that art. I think the problem is too many people think their heart's an open library.
I had a lot of trouble finding poetic words to talk about homosexuality actually. I didn't want to end up doing a Guidoni or anything! The problem is, there's been very little homosexual poetry written in France so the words aren't there in the language. You have to look to Greek, Arabic or English tradition to find poetry that addresses the subject of homosexuality. In France there's too much modesty surrounding the subject. I wanted to break that taboo and write about men sweating and fighting, the way I like them in real life.

But you've rarely raised the subject of homosexuality in your songs to date…
Well, I had a bit of a bad experience with the song "Bruxelles ma belle, Michel, te rappelles-tu" (Beautiful Brussels, Michel, do you remember?) I ended up losing Michel because of that song – and that's something I wouldn't do again. My friends are more important to me than success!

Talking of friends, there's a song on your new album about Raïs Mohand¹, but it's a song full of worry and concern …
It's terrible. Two of Raïs's group left France recently and they're living as illegal immigrants in Amsterdam now. He went to see them off at the Gare Montparnasse and when the train pulled out he was in tears. They're having a hard time of it in Amsterdam too, it's tough living life underground all the time. As for poor old Mohand, he's living with a French woman who makes him listen to Mc Coy Tyner all the time. I ask you, is that really necessary? I'm afraid that sooner or later he'll end up getting lost in the great globalised soup. He's put up a certain resistance and tried to stay nakei, pure. But he's an amazigh, a free man – and, musically speaking, I don't think he's likely to be swayed by either Dick Annegarn or his wife!

You've recorded new versions of a number of old songs on this new album, including the title track,Un'Ombre,in fact. The lyrics to this song make a particularly strong impression - "Qui est-ce et qu'est-ce qu'il vient chercher par-là cet ombre? / Peut-être qu'il est là pour moi" (What's he doing here, this shadow man? Has he come for me, perhaps?)
Yes, the song's heavy, dark and louche – and intentionally so! I deliberately set out to give it a bit of a thriller-ish flavour. I wrote it back in '78 at the casino in Pau and it's an image that comes back to me all the time, you know, those visions of missed opportunities and encounters that never took place. It's my own version of the blues I guess.
Every now and then I like to dust off a few of my old songs that didn't quite work first time round and make new recordings of them. As this was intended as a concept album about men I decided to take a few of my old songs from here and there that had undercurrents of "homo-sensitivity" somewhere.

Does the shadowy black-and-white album cover tie in with the concept as well?
Yes, I like the dark, you know! (laughs). But I think this album's actually a lot less sad than some of my earlier albums which contained some really tragic scenes such as the school teacher dying in her bathtub and "Mireille the Fly" getting crushed at the local bar-tabac… The men on this album may be liars and have a bit of a louche edge to them, but I'd say it's a lot less negative over all. You can't talk about shadows, you know, without mentioning the light!

Last year you were all set to go off on tour with a bunch of cartoonists and illustrators², but the project never actually came off. What happened?
Well, it's like you said, it never came off. It's a sorry state of affairs, I tell you. All this facile leftism and anti-militarism and anti-religion and anti-what-have-you. I think it's pathetic, I've always found it pathetic! But, anyway, they invited me to do this tour with them and I agreed to it. But believe me when it comes down to it, it wasn't about altruism and solidarity at all. The people I was meant to go on tour with turned out to be a bunch of individualists looking out for themselves. As soon as there was a problem it was every man for himself! They left me standing there with 20 dates cancelled and five musicians and technicians without a penny to pay anyone!
If you want my honest opinion, they're a bunch of little dictators who like to sit there alone in front of their drawing-boards putting the world to rights. Frankly, I'm sorry I ever got involved with them in the first place!

Mathieu Boogaerts – a singer you went on tour with not so long ago – recently performed a series of small acoustic concerts, just him and his guitar at a small, low-key venue in Paris. Meanwhile, manufactured groups from TV shows like Star Academy are about to embark on mega-tours across the country. What are your feelings on the mini versus mega-show?
If you want my opinion, Mathieu Boogaerts is a craftsman and the others are manufactured freaks! We're considered to be real 'losers' on the music scene right now, but believe me, in a few years no-one will even remember Star Academy - and if anyone does mention it it will only be to talk about the huge media circus that surrounded it all! The Star Academy songs and concerts are utterly banal and forgettable!
But you couldn't ever forget someone like Mathieu Boogaerts. He's been very sought-after by record labels all of a sudden and Tôt ou Tard finally snapped him up. I turned round and told Vincent Frèrebeau (head of Tôt ou Tard) that 1,000 years from now the Chinese would thank him for having signed Mathieu Boogaerts! So don't talk to me about Star Academy, I couldn't care less! We might not have the budget they do, but that's what makes us representative of our time. Mathieu and I are part of the history of French 'chanson' and that's what will live on in the long term. I have to say, I'm very proud of Mathieu, in fact.

This is the third album you've released on Tôt ou Tard. How do you feel about the fact that the label is about to split from Warner?
I think it's a great move. Tôt ou Tard is about to become an indie label at last! That spirit certainly fits better with me and what I do. All I'm waiting for now is for them to sign a few new artists to the label and inject a bit of new blood. Tôt ou Tard has gained a certain status on the French music scene and I think they're under an obligation to keep things fresh and offer some sort of alternative to the mediocrity that dominates things these days. I'm very grateful to them, in any case – they've always let me make the albums I want!

Are you planning to go off on tour again some time soon?
Yes, I'm planning around 30 or 40 dates this year, but I'm waiting to see how the album does first. I don't want to be at the mercy of the artist's dole system again, you know. If this album doesn't go down well with the public, I'm going to reorient myself. I'll open my own recording studio and promote Berber music instead.

And will we be seeing you at Le New Morning again at some point?
Yes, definitely. I think Madame Farhi, the director's got a bit of a soft spot for me. She's a very interesting woman – she's an Egyptian Christian and I really like that mix. I feel very honoured to have been invited to play there again. I'd like to move more towards the jazz circuit, in fact.

¹ Dick Annegarn has helped Raïs Mohand, a Berber musician from Morocco, with recording and touring projects in Europe. (Raïs Mohand's CD album, Azorf, was released on WEA in 1999).
² The cartoonists and illustrators involved in the project were supposed to have designed backdrops for Annegarn's songs as he was performing. But the tour was cancelled after a number of illustrators dropped out at the last moment.

Dick Annegarn Un'Ombre (Tôt ou Tard/Warner) 2002

Catherine  Pouplain - Pédron

Translation : Julie  Street