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Album review
Jane Birkin
Rendez-Vous
Paris
02/04/2004 -
RFI: Your daughter, Kate Barry, took a superb photo of you for the cover of your new album...
Jane Birkin: I had to fight like crazy to get that cover accepted, you know. Record companies aren't too keen on artists who don't want to show their face on an album cover. So I really had to fight to convince them to use a portrait of my back. I think it's a beautiful photo, there's something almost sculptural about it. To begin with, I thought it would be much too personal to use for this album and I'd more or less decided to keep it for a later date, for when I write my own album. But I did point out to my record company that I'm the one who signs autographs on my album covers – and I haven't made a mistake about my album covers yet! So they finally caved in and let me use the photo I wanted. We were off on tour with Arabesque at that point, in Vietnam and I remember the negotiations over the final version took place by fax. The record company would fax me colour changes to the Embassy in Vietnam. The artistic director actually asked me if the photo had been taken in a museum – and I was like "No, it's my back!"
Mickey 3D's contribution to the album, Je m'appelle Jane, paints a rather unexpected portrait of you...
I actually called Mickaël Furnon to tell him he could go even further in the song if he wanted to. And he turned round and said, "Well, I feel like I've already taken things pretty far as it is!" But I told him that it was even worse than he thought! It's funny, Mickey 3D, Brian Molko and Beth Gibbons are the youngest artists on the album and they all contributed songs they'd written specially themselves; the tracks I recorded with them aren't covers or earlier stuff they've recorded. I found that really touching. It's like a little kid coming up and asking for an autograph in the street when I could be his grandmother!
One of the biggest surprises on your new album is the duet with Brian Molko, lead singer of Placebo. He seems to have been rather an unexpected choice...
Oh no, not at all! Brian's a big fan of Serge's work. He knows all his songs and he's already recorded his own version of Melody Nelson. He did my part on a cover of Je t'aime moi non plus, as well! Brian really knows his stuff. He's an intelligent guy. I thought only French songwriters paid such careful attention to words. I thought with English music, so long as people understood a song's title and could dance to it, they didn't bother much beyond that! But Brian wrote a really strong song for the album, and a cheeky one at that. And he's proved he's a very good songwriter who has the ability to carry a word over onto the next line. He's a bit like Cole Porter in that respect. My mother absolutely loved the element of mischief and malice in the song. It's not a respectful song at all!
I discovered Beth's work listening to her records when I was round at my daughter Lou's place. Beth turned up to the studio with her bright red hair and things went really, superbly well. She's a very hard worker, who takes things seriously. The song we did together was in English, but Beth loved my French accent and she tried to persuade me to record the song with a French accent. But I refused. It would have been a total humiliation! I really took a lot of care trying to articulate her lyrics as I sang. I'm used to working that way in French, but in English people don't seem to care too much about that. In fact, Beth thought I was over-articulating. Maybe I've got a bit of an old-fashioned English accent like my father had. After all, I did leave England 35 years ago now! But in the end when we were in the studio together we reached a compromise. Beth didn't ask me to t be her or myself with a French accent. We had a great session in the studio in the end.
Over the past two years you've taken your Arabesque tour pretty much round the world and back. How do you feel after such an extensive tour? Well, I realised everyone around the world knows me – probably because of Je t'aime moi non plus and other things with a whiff of scandal about them. The films I made with Zidi also seem to have travelled well abroad. I don't think you have to look much beyond that. Why else would I have 2,000 people turn out to my concerts in Hong Kong every night? The organisers had actually had Serge's lyrics translated into English, but I didn't know that beforehand. And I was really bewildered during the show because I saw all these people in the audience looking down at their programmes all the time. I thought they were trying to see what time the show ended! But, in fact, they were following Serge's lyrics word for word as if they were at an opera. You scored a really big hit in Japan a few years ago, too...
Yes, for four months I was the best-selling foreign artist in the country! And I was on the phone to my mother, saying "Do you realise, I'm up there above Elton John and all the big American stars – and my album's in French!" the Japanese ended up using L'Aquoiboniste as the theme song to a TV serial that was on three times a week. Serge wrote the song about Jacques Dutronc and originally offered it to Françoise Hardy, but she turned it down. So I took it instead and now I'm more recognised on the streets of Japan than I am in the UK. On Rendez-Vous I recorded a duet with Yosui Inoue and I only realised what a huge star he was when I went out to Japan. We went to do a photo shoot in a park together one day and there were girls literally fainting at the sight of him and cars screeching to a halt across the street. Yosui was very cool about the whole thing. He just stood there with his sunglasses on.
You mentioned being more famous in Japan than England, but you've actually got quite a reputation in the UK now, haven't you?
I took the Arabesque tour to London and then we went up to Manchester, Edinburgh and down to Brighton before going back up to London again. It was in the middle of the Iraq war, last year, and I thought I'd get pelted with Camemberts! But, no, the critics gave me five stars every time. It was a real victory for me! And this time round I think everyone's been very surprised to find me singing in English on Rendez-Vous and doing duets with singers like Bryan Ferry, Brian Molko and Beth Gibbons who are absolute icons in the UK. I've got five days of interviews lined up in the UK for the release of the album over there.
I've heard word that you're about to step behind the camera again and make your second feature film, Boxes. That's a film you've been talking about for a long while now...
I've decided to give one of the lead roles to my mother now. She launched her career on the stage singing, you know. She was a showgirl on the London stage. She was dangerously beautiful and my father ended up whisking her off to a farm miles away from London so she couldn't perform with Noel Coward – that was her dream at the time! My mother's 87 now, so I think it's high time she got her chance!
As for my other projects, we're on tour this summer and then I'm going to finish up Arabesque in South America and, after that, North America. It's going to be a bit strange going to Austin, Texas, with Djamel Benyelles and the rest of the crew. Then next January I'll be doing a bit of acting in a film.
Jane Birkin Rendez-Vous (Capitol/EMI) 2004
Bertrand Dicale
Translation : Julie Street
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