A few days prior to the release of her new album
Fictions, Jane Birkin holds court in a luxury hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, fielding questions and giving interviews to assembled journalists and photographers. The inexhaustible globe-trotter is hot back from Cologne and currently preparing to fly off to Switzerland, Italy and Spain, following her extensive tour of
Arabesque, an album featuring Oriental reworkings of her partner, the late great Serge Gainsbourg’s songs. This album proved Jane had come a long way since rising to fame as the young English girl who recorded breathy backing vocals on the scandalous
Je t’aime moi non plus in the ‘60s. And
Fictions, which Jane proudly reveals is being released “everywhere this time”, is set to reveal another dimension to that most British of French
chanteuses.Over the past three years Jane committed herself to a non-stop tour of
Arabesque, playing concerts across all five continents before finally rounding things off with a rousing finale in Saint Petersburg, in the Russia of Serge (né Ginzburg’s) origins. “The tour was enormous fun,” enthuses Jane, whose memories from the experience - part personal pilgrimage, part emotional exchange with fans – include one particularly poignant night in Châteauroux, deep in the French countryside. “Châteauroux, the place where (French actor) Depardieu was born, was one of the most touching moments for me. Maybe it’s because nothing much happens there, artistically speaking. But I’ll never forget the face of this man in the crowd. I saw him wipe away a tear the moment I broke into ‘Oh je voudrais tant que tu te souviennes/ Cette chanson était la tienne.’ (Oh how I’d love you to recall / That this song was always yours). Perhaps it really was his song, after all!”
Sadly, the multi-talented Ms. Birkin is not due to be back on stage singing any time soon, given the amount of other projects she has in the offing. In a few weeks she begins shooting Boxes (the second feature film she will have made as a director). Then, in the autumn of this year, she returns to the stage as an actress at a major Paris theatre.
In the meantime, fans can turn to
Fictions for consolation, savouring Jane’s inimitable covers of Tom Waits’
Alice, Neil Young’s
Harvest Moon and Kate Bush’s
Mother Stands for Comfort. Jane’s new album also includes an impressive amount of original material penned by the likes of Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy), Romeo Stodart (The Magic Numbers), Beth Gibbons, Rufus Wainwright and Gonzales (who also happens to have co-produced her new album with Renaud Letang). Interestingly enough, Jane’s first engagement on the English stage was performing in a musical. However in retrospect the singer declares, “I know that if I’d stayed in the UK, I wouldn’t have had a career in musicals because my voice wasn’t strong enough. It took someone like Serge to understand that with such a frail, delicate voice I could actually be a singer – and even so, I was restricted to the studio for a long time! Luckily, the Carpentiers came along and we proved musicals could be done in a totally new way!” (It was thanks to groundbreaking French TV producers such as Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier and Jean-Christophe Averty that Gainsbourg was able to launch his young English muse and make a number of follow-up albums).After paying tribute to Gainsbourg on
Arabesque, Jane Birkin pays her respects to new talent from both sides of the Channel on
Fictions. Cali, Arthur H and Dominique A represent the ‘young guard’ of the contemporary French chanson scene. Jane admits to being a major fan of Cali’s songwriting. “He manages to use the most down-to-earth everyday things, but his songs just hit you in the face every time!” she says, “At the end of the song (he contributes to
Fictions) he basically says ‘Whatever you do don’t be happy without me. Be a whore, unhappily married, end up all alone, in the gutter. But whatever you do don’t be happy without me.’ When I heard those lyrics for the first time, I felt it rang so true.” Jane is a singer who likes to provoke and, just as she did with Mickey 3D on
Rendez-vous (her album of duets released in 2004) she seems particularly keen to have her songwriters shatter her stereotype as “Mrs sweet and nice.
Jane declares that she loves the underlying violence of Dominique A’s
Où est la ville and claims she is still in raptures over the ‘new French chanson’ star’s latest album
L’Horizon. “Dominique A’s a really great writer,” she says, “But he doesn’t play on the image of tortured artist at all. And that makes me even prouder that he gave me his song. It would have been a big hit if he’d kept it, you know. I think it’s extremely generous for an artist to hand over a track he could have recorded himself.”
Having already collaborated with a number of rising young stars from the new generation on Rendez-vous and the ensuing live DVD, Jane hooked up with more new talent during the recording sessions for Fictions. “I was just so touched they gave me their songs,” she says, “because they could have been my children - or even my grandchildren come to that! I was really touched by meeting new artists and coming into contact with new songs by people like Anthony & The Johnsons and Nosfell.”
Jane is a singer who has proved her commitment to unearthing new material and new talent. And she reveals that she has also been urging her cross-Channel compatriots to open their ears and discover French-speaking acts. “When I’m over in England I’m always telling people that they’re missing out on some really great stuff. I tell them ‘Get Bashung to come over! Get Souchon and Miossec!’ And then there’s Arno from Belgium. You’ll be blown away by what they do. They’re not in groups, they’re not part of some fashionable trend. They’re unique individuals making unique music. I think all these barriers are a great shame and we should just do away with them!”
