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Bashung, l'Imprudence
Throwing Caution to the Wind
Paris
21/10/2002 -
Bashung's L’Imprudence is guaranteed to leave you shaking your head in wonder at the sheer scale, sophistication and emotional impact of it all. As for the virtuoso arrangements, sumptuous string sections and powerful bass lines, they'll simply blow you away! But the contents of this musical tour de force are hardly surprising when you read the songwriting and production credits at the end of the album. L'Imprudence features contributions from everyone from Jean Lamoot, Jean Fauque, Steve Nieve and Simon Edwards of Talk Talk to Arto Lindsay, Mobile In Motion, Marc Ribot and Miossec.RFI Musique: Your last album, Fantaisie Militaire, came out four years ago now. How long did you spend working on L’Imprudence?
Alain Bashung: Well, about a year all in all, but there were different stages. Sometimes we'd take a break for a month. And we recorded in different places too. Sometimes it was just a question of preparing what we'd record later and other times it was a matter of getting different musicians involved. I was all over the place for the new album. I spent some time in Belgium, but I finished everything up in Paris...
Well, I'd certainly hope so. It's the words that are the problem though... If I went into the studio knowing how to express everything I wanted to say then yes, I think I could make an album in a fortnight. When it comes down to it I don't honestly like things taking so long, you often end up losing yourself and going round in circles. In an ideal world I'd love to make an album in three days!
I have done other work between my last album and this one, you know. I recorded my own version of a Jacques Brel song and sang with the group Noir Désir – and on both occasions I managed to do it in one take! That was a very liberating experience, I can tell you. But what can I say? With the album things just didn't come at the same time. Sometimes I'd be working with some of the musicians and I felt that there had to be something complementary going on, that I had to wait for the musician to make some sort of breakthrough on his side before we could complete the musical puzzle.
So when do you know an album's finished?
Well, this time round there was just so much information to get across... The album got made through a process of trying to develop all these different ideas and make them work side by side somehow in the songs. Working with machines you can stock a whole pile of different ideas. But then you can't make instant choices about the stuff you're working on. I always wait for some sort of external sign. And this time round I knew the album was finished when we did the song L’Imprudence. It felt like that track really brought everything full circle!
What happened was we'd recorded so many things that there came a point when I decided to get together with the musicians for a couple of days and play the songs live, just to see if anything new came up because by that point everyone knew most of the songs by heart. And I don't know why but L’Imprudence really stood out from the rest because we managed to record it in one take. I didn't select the track immediately because we recorded it with these two mikes, one of which was this really old thing – God only knows how it came to be there! It was this sort of old Luftwaffe mike with a Nazi insignia on it, a piece of prehistoric recording equipment. Anyway, we used it but at the end of the track the thing just stopped working. I thought 'Well, that does it, I can't keep the take now because there's this accident on it!' But afterwards I realised that maybe this was a sign that the album was finished. We kept the original take on the album too – you can actually hear the bzzzz when the mike conks out!
What idea did you have in mind when you originally started work on the album? Well, I had one major demand and that was that I wanted to use technology in a way that didn't show it off. I didn't want people to listen to the album and hear machines. I wanted them to hear instruments, like the piano, for instance. Recently I happened to meet a pianist whose work I've admired for about 20 years now. He's called Steve Nieve and he's done a lot of work with Elvis Costello. I really admire Steve because he's got the talent of someone who's studied everything from classical music to experimental stuff and jazz. And he's got a totally magic touch. When that guy plays a note, he's not playing the piano, he's really playing music! Anyway, it turned out to be one of those chance coincidences. One day I found out that Steve actually lives in Paris and that he's done a lot of work with French musicians. And that, plus the fact that I knew this guy was capable of playing anything from the most quiet, low-key things to doing Jerry Lee Lewis, really made me take an interest in him! The way we worked was I gave Steve the basic structure of all the songs and told him that he could do whatever he wanted, you know, go right outside the structure if he wanted. And we ended up keeping all the stuff where he ventured over. What he did was wonderful - I really feel he took up where I left off and pushed things even further.
There were a lot of other musicians involved on the new album too, like Marc Ribot for instance, and I wanted people to really hear their contributions... I asked a lot of different people to write the string sections for me actually. Some of them didn't fit in with what I was trying to say, but others were great – they added a new element of tragedy to the songs. But those moments didn't just happen instantly, you know, they were things that were very much built up in stages.
We also spent a lot of time in the studio working on sound effects, but we didn't 'traffic' them on machines or computers or anything, we made them ourselves. We'd do things like plunge the mike underwater or record the piano in weird ways, bringing the mike up really close and then pulling it away... We ended up doing all these weird and wonderful things like the bassist playing with his feet stuck in a washing-up bowl with a great big chain hanging round his neck... If anyone had looked into the studio at that point they'd have thought we were in a torture chamber with Vincent Price!
No, I'd say I'm more of an organiser, running round trying to make everything work in harmony. I hate working in conditions where there's conflict or any kind of power struggle. If I do ever see anything like that going on I put a stop to it immediately! I like things to take place in a totally calm, peaceful atmosphere – even if we're recording a song about utter despair! There are several songs on the new album where you don't actually sing – it's more like you recite your lyrics, thereby giving the song some extra status. It's not just an ordinary song any more...
Well, all that's pretty much dictated by what I want to say in a song – and it's something that comes pretty naturally too. Sometimes there are things I feel are too important to be hammered home at the top of one's voice. I feel I need to get right inside the sensitive fibres of the words and get them across in a soft, delicate way not through force. The French language can be dangerous for that, you know, and words are bad enough but if you start making sentences with them it's even worse... I spend a lot of time playing with the music once it's been recorded, you know. I always try to get the end result as balanced and harmonious as possible. I never want to have one element drowning out all the others. Basically, the way I see myself is as an actor performing within a decor.
Bertrand Dicale
Translation : Julie Street
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