Album review

Alain Bashung

Bashung Reaches A Climax

Paris 

29/05/2000 - 

Is Bashung's new album Climax a greatest hits compilation or an innovative new form of musical retrospective? Our two reporters, Bertrand Dicale and Jean-Claude Demari, appear to have slightly different opinions! We leave you to make up your own mind after reading the interview and album review below:

Almost two decades after his smash hit Gaby Oh Gaby, Bashung is back in the French music news with a double CD album entitled Climax. Released on the Barclay label, Bashung's double album features 38 tracks including a selection of old favourites, classic hits and six new songs recorded for a forthcoming TV documentary. Bashung invited an impressive list of guest stars into the studio to work with him on his new album and the credits include everyone from Noir Désir, Rachid Taha and Rodolphe Burger to Marc Ribot and M. We caught up with Bashung, who has a well-earned reputation for being the most unusual singer on the current French music scene, and asked him a few questions about his career to date:

RFI Musique: Alain, you've worked with a lot of different songwriters in the course of your career - people as diverse as Bergman, Fauque and Gainsbourg - and yet there's a surprising coherence and a strong overall personality on your new compilation...
Alain BASHUNG : It's funny, people sometimes say to me, "You must work with someone who's your double!" But that's not the case at all. In fact, I need to work with someone who's complementary to me rather than a clone. I wouldn't get far if the person I was working with had a mind exactly like mine. Having different perspectives creates a slight friction between you - although, having said that, you need it to be a pleasant, exciting sort of friction rather than an irritating one!
There's only one song on the compilation where I didn't change a word and that's Les Petits Enfants. I remember Daniel Tardieu handing me the song and saying "I've made a start on it - it goes Les petits enfants qui tombent du balcon/Toute leur enfance défile devant leurs yeux. (Little children falling from the balcony/ Watch their whole childhood flash before their eyes). Now you've got to finish it." And I turned to Daniel and said, "No, it's finished, it doesn't need another word!" The song was just perfect as it was.

Would you say there's a lot of you in that song?
Well, I don't know whether I can answer that clearly or not. Is there a lot of me in the song or do I just like it? I mean, what's the difference between the two?

Do you feel your songs are a reflection of your personality or more a sort of projection?
I see it more as me presenting a song to the listener and saying, "Today I'd like to share this moment with you. This is something I find really interesting - let me know what you think!"

Maybe this is why your lyrics are perceived as being so ambiguous. Your song Ma Petite Entreprise, for instance, stirred up so many different reactions...
I've met people who've given me their own interpretation of what's going on in that song - and I've heard some very different stories! One person will tell you it's the story of a guy who's got his own company and is going out to work each day. But then someone else will go a bit deeper and find another layer of meaning in the song.
Ma Petite Entreprise appears to be a very simple, straightforward song which just functions on a surface level. You know, it's the guy going round from door to door with his little suitcase selling I don't know what. But in actual fact when I was working on the song I had this image of a woman in my head all the time...

So the song's about sexual attraction...
Yes, in a way, the guy in the song sees his love for this woman as a kind of "entreprise" (Ed: in the sense of daily undertaking). He lives his love like a guy going to work every day. He throws himself into the job twenty-four hours a day and complains when there's a holiday because he doesn't want to take a break from loving her.

It's a bit ironic then that Ma Petite Entreprise has ended up being used in a French car ad...
Well, there always comes a moment when songs escape from the author and live their own life. But there's another side to the song too - when I was writing Ma Petite Entreprise I was also focusing on French people's relationship to money and the spirit of entreprise. It makes me really annoyed in this country sometimes to see that a guy who succeeds at what he does and makes money is instantly considered to be some kind of bastard. This sort of reasoning is a bit short-sighted if you ask me!
We can't just go on condemning the guy who wakes up in the morning and has a brilliant idea - it's ridiculous! You know, when I was a kid money was even more of a taboo than homosexuality. People who had money kept quiet about it, they didn't show it in any way. It's only recently that people have started to talk openly about money and even then talking about money is often considered to be a bit vulgar. When I wrote Ma Petite Entreprise people hadn't really got to the stage where they talked openly about money and if you wanted to succeed in life you had to accept the fact that other people would condemn you. It's funny, on the one hand, people are expected to succeed at what they do, but as soon as you start flying too high you'll get your wings clipped.
How are you supposed to live in this country? Are you supposed to feel guilty when something goes well for you? Lie back and let the United States take over? When you haven't got a penny to your name, people think you're a real bloody failure - but if you've got money, you're a bastard! I mean, pass me the Valium, please! In a way what I was saying in Ma Petite Entreprise is that things are going OK for me and I'm not ashamed to say it.

Do you feel this kind of criticism aimed at you?
Well, people give me funny looks every now and then and you can tell what they're thinking is that I earn my cash a bit too easily.

And do you?
You have to say it's easy and then just get on with it. Things lose a lot of their charm when you go on about having to work for a living.



Would you say you work hard?
Yes, I do. When I make up my mind to do something I plan it all out in my head and I get on with it. I've got a lot of willpower. When I'm actually working away at something I don't feel like I'm a particularly hard worker. I'm happy. My mind's taken up with the creative process twenty-four hours a day. It's only when I've actually finished a project that I realise I've been working - and then I tend to feel a bit depressed for two or three days!

Interview: Bertrand Dicale

_______________________________________________________________________

Despite 34 years of career and 20 years of hit singles, Bashung still comes across as a sensitive soul gingerly making his way in the music world. After emerging from an intense period of experimentation in the 80s (influenced by the late Serge Gainsbourg), Bashung went on to record four new albums in the 90s. Now he's back in the music news with Climax, a double CD album which single-handedly sums up 20 years of French rock. Make no mistake about it though - this is no straightforward Greatest Hits compilation!

So here I stand with two volumes of Bashung's new album in my hands, turning them slowly over from cover to cover before finally leaning forward and slipping them into the CD-player. And all the while I'm wondering: What possessed Alain Claude Baschung (born in Paris in 1947) to stand back and review two decades of his life? What drove him to make this strange Christ-like journey, passing through 38 stations of the cross to present us with his own inner musical truth?

Like Jesus, Bashung rose to fame at the age of 33 (although, admittedly, without the same dramatic consequences …), exploding onto the French music scene in 1980 with a surprise hit entitled Gaby. With its dreamily abstract lyrics and strange, dissonant melody, Gaby did not appear to be destined for chart success and yet, somehow, Bashung's performance gripped the public imagination and he has never looked back since.

Gaby does not hold pride of place on Bashung's new album, however. Far from it in fact - Gaby is relegated to the end of Volume 1, as if Bashung were eager to underline the fact that Climax is not just another "Twenty Years of My Greatest Hits" album. Throughout his career Bashung has thrived on being different and we should not forget that the last time he presented us with a musical retrospective (in 1992), he did not take the easy way out either. Rather than throwing together a compilation of his old hits, Bashung preferred to lock himself away in the studio and remix his last seven studio albums, presenting them in a boxed set with two previously unreleased albums - Tour Novice (a live album recorded in 1990) and Réservé aux Indiens (a collection of instrumentals and film soundtracks). The latter included Climax 4, the track which gives its name to Bashung's latest opus.

Bashung's new album is an equally all-embracing undertaking. 36 songs on Climax are taken from the nine albums included in his last retrospective or the four albums he has released since: Osez Joséphine (1991), Chatterton (1994), Confessions publiques (live, 1995) and Fantaisie militaire (1998). But this is no straightforward compilation - songs are not ordered chronologically but grouped together according to theme with a little bit of random uncertainty thrown in here and there.

What's more, six of Bashung's greatest classics have been reworked with guest artists and three of the most outstanding tracks on Climax are Les grands voyageurs (a superb example of minimalist blues reworked from the original on Osez Joséphine), Delta tu meurs (featuring Marc Ribot on guitar and Alain B on vocals/harmonica) and a new version of Volontaire (from Bashung's 1982 opus Play Blessures) which comes courtesy of Bertrand Cantat and alternative French rock group Noir Désir. Bashung's new version of Ode à la vie abandons the trip hop influences of the original (featured on Fantaisie militaire) and gets a catchy new acoustic feel thanks to Rachid Taha's performance on lute and percussion. Meanwhile, Rodolphe Burger brings a drum'n'bass feel to Samuel Hall and alternative French pop star M joins Bashung in the studio for a surprise reworking of the '83 classic What’s In A Bird.

The remainder of the tracks on Climax are guaranteed to divide Bashung fans into two camps. A strong contingent appreciated Bashung's experiments with dissonance and "a-melody" on Play Blessures, his notorious 1982 album influenced by the late Serge Gainsbourg. (In the June issue of Rock and Folk Bashung reveals: "Gainsbourg encouraged me to push things as far as I could. He made me want to achieve a certain elegance, which goes beyond being understood by everybody.") And these fans will feast their fill on the first volume of Climax where tracks from Bashung's more abstract albums, Chatterton and Fantaisie dominate. (In fact, these two albums account for 11 of the 38 tracks on Climax).

However, fans who prefer Bashung in rock mode, giving free rein to melodies and wordplay - i.e. those who appreciated his first two albums, Roulette Russe and Pizza as well as Osez Joséphine and the 1986 opus Passé le Rio Grande - will prefer the live interludes on Climax. The best of these are undoubtedly Toujours sur la ligne blanche (taken from a 1985 concert) and J’écume (where on this 1995 live extract guitar virtuoso Xavier Geronimi rivals the studio recording made by young bluesman Jimmy King in Memphis in 1991).

Fans of Bashung "made in rock" will reach their own personal climax on the second half of the album as their idol launches into Nights In White Satin and a live version of J’passe pour une caravane. The next nine tracks - which include excellent renditions of Rebel and Hey Joe - explode into a frenzy of guitar, country and unbridled energy before Bashung steps in for a final encore with his old classic Pas question que j’perde le feeling. There's no question, it seems, of Bashung ever losing the feeling - and those who doubt it should just take a listen to this musical tour de force!

Jean-Claude Demari
Alain Bashung Double CD Climax, Barclay.

Translation : Julie  Street