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Album review
Louis Bertignac
Longtemps
19/08/2005 -
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Louis Bertignac : Yes, that was very much my intention. I’d decided I couldn’t go out and perform in concert until I had a new album to present. I'd distanced myself from fans a bit really, but I felt I reconnected with them when I set up my website. When you disappear from the live circuit for eight years, I think the least you can do when you return is give audiences songs which share something about yourself and what you’ve been up to. As far as songwriting went, I explored a whole lot of themes in my work, everything from atomic bombs to terrorism, but the themes I ended up keeping were those that related directly to my own life and experience.
So what about Carla Bruni and you? Looks like you've hit on a winning formula there...
Well, it’s pretty rare in life to find a real songwriting partner. You don’t find Starsky and Hutch every day, you know! The thing that’s great with Carla is the way our characters fit together and complement one another – even more so than with Jean-Louis (Aubert, lead singer and guitarist of Bertignac’s old band Téléphone). The way we work is I give Carla the tapes I’ve been working on, with me singing any old rubbish over the top of the melody, and she gives them back with exactly the kind of lyrics I’d have liked to play to. Carla’s great at doing exactly what I can’t and vice versa!
Étienne Roda-Gil (a famous French songwriter who has worked with Bertignac in the past) once said that lyrics can destroy music. How does Carla Bruni avoid that?
What Roda said was that lyrics should flow naturally into the music without distracting the listener’s attention in any way. Carla’s got a great ear when it comes to lyrics – she has a very musical style of writing. And I like the subjects she brings up. Basically, I like songs that aren’t pretentious in any way, songs that don’t take themselves too seriously. At the end of the day Carla manages to retranscribe what I express with my guitar, using just the right words. Carla and I have been friends for a long while now so she knows exactly who she’s dealing with and, musically speaking, we share the same references, too.
Your vocals sound a lot more assured and mature these days. Do you think your collaboration with Carla Bruni has had something to do with that?
Well, I’d say unlike guitar, singing has never come naturally to me. I actually started out trying to make an instrumental album, but in the end I decided it was lacking that certain warmth vocals bring. I wanted to do full justice to the vocals this time round and, for the first time in my career, I paid a lot of care and attention to them. That’s something I got from watching Carla sing on her album, picking up on the way she breathed or the way she lingered over a certain note… That was sort of a trigger for me!
Longtemps is a very acoustic album. Do you feel that, in a way, you’re burying your rock past?
The way I see it, rock is really a question of circumstance. My days with Téléphone were a period where everything happened live on stage as part of a group. But Longtemps was an album that I made tucked away on my own and I just let whatever came into my head come out without any kind of preconceived acoustic idea. I wrote about 40 songs for the album initially, but I ended up chucking away all the rock songs. Maybe I’d just grown weary of it or felt like I was repeating myself or something...
Or maybe you felt like digging a little deeper into the vein you opened up on Carla Bruni’s album which, incidentally, you produced?
Rather than attempting to do Led Zeppelin-style rock with Robert Plant vocals, I brought everything down to my own level. Basically, I feel I’ve got the voice I have today and I wanted to bring it to the fore on the album. Maybe I’ve become a bit less Utopian and a bit less ambitious these days. I don’t spend my time dreaming of another world. I just want to have a pleasant life in this one! I don’t think people should waste their time trying to be something they’re not. Take John Lennon, for instance, I prefer him when he’s singing a really good song than when he’s banging on about changing the world overnight!
70 artists have just signed a petition against "pirates" who download music illegally over the Internet. I didn’t see your name on the list. Were you contacted about the petition or not?
Yes I was, actually, but the original draft seemed pretty vague to me, so I refused to sign it. I’ve just received a second version which is much clearer, so I’m going to sign it now. In my opinion, the ‘democratisation’ of music is the one single cause behind the problems facing the record industry right now. But I do think Internet’s an amazing new medium which can bring people together and to keep my fans happy I’m planning to put a number of tracks on line which won’t appear on Longtemps.
And when can fans expect the next Téléphone concert?
Well, I'd thought we might get together and do a sort of mini-tour to celebrate the year 2000. We came pretty close to doing it, too. But then, apart from the big row that broke out between Jean-Louis (Aubert) and Corinne (Marienneau, the group’s ex bass-player), the whole thing suddenly turned into a major cash enterprise and we found ourselves under enormous pressure from tour organisers and managers... That’s when the big rows really started. Personally, I feel I’ve done my bit as far as all that’s concerned. I’ve got over the anger and the bitterness and wiped the slate clean. I've finally exorcised Téléphone!
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Téléphone 1976-1986 : the band history on DVD Téléphone, commonly known as the "greatest French rock band in the world", enjoyed a phenomenally successful career spanning ten years. The band started out as four friends linked by a common passion for music: Jean-Louis Aubert (guitar and vocals), Richard Kolinka (drums), Corinne Marienneau (bass) and Louis Bertignac (guitar). The foursome quickly earned a reputation for kicking against the Giscardian politics of the day and ranting against society's material aspirations and became a cult group idolised by a whole generation of fans. This double DVD which looks back on Téléphone's performing and recording career puts the emphasis firmly on live music, featuring a number of extracts from concerts the band played in France and Canada in their last three years together. Les Années Téléphone, a 1991 documentary charting the group's rise to fame, is also included in the pack along with other highlights such as archive footage of Téléphone's busking days (which shows the band playing a cover of Led Zeppelin's Rock n’ Roll on the "métro"). Fans will also find interviews and previously unreleased sequences from TV shows - most famously Téléphone's outrageous version of Sex Machine recorded for cult TV music show Les Enfants du Rock. The second DVD in the pack features six of the band's best video clips together with the documentary Téléphone Public, shot by Jean-Marie Périer during the band's Crache Ton Venin tour in 1979. The film which was made with seven cameras, and presented at Cannes the following year, alternates split-screen techniques, in-depth interviews with the band and profiles of members of the audience. The double DVD set comes complete with Dolby 5.1. surround sound – to add to the hours of listening pleasure! |
Louis Bertignac Longtemps (Polydor/Universal) 2005
Téléphone 1976-1986 (2DVD) (EMI/Virgin) 2004
Pascal Bagot
Translation : Julie Street
25/03/2011 -
