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Le Volume Courbe signed in the U.K.
Interview with Charlotte Marionneau
Paris
06/06/2006 -
RFI Musique: Did you head off to London with the intention of launching a career in music?
Charlotte Marionneau: Originally, my idea was to get a job in a record company or a discotheque. I’d already started playing music in France actually, but I didn’t go off to England with the idea of making a record at all. I spent a couple of years singing in a group called Toyns. We must have played around a dozen gigs or so, but we never ended up making a record together.
So you just ventured off across the Channel with no idea of what lay ahead?
Yes, exactly! I arrived in London in July 1995 on my own - just me, my rucksack and the address of someone I’d met once in France! I really wanted to get out of France and do something else, so I didn’t waste time worrying about how I was going to manage. I went out and got a job in this company that copied videos and that paid me enough to rent a room. And I’ve more or less stayed put ever since. I still live in the north of London, in Hampstead.
Well, after the video job, I decided I wanted to get involved in organising concerts in the U.K. for French groups. I started off organising a short tour for the band Autour de Lucie. I arranged for the band to come over and they slept at my place while they were on tour. They played gigs in local pubs and small music venues and that’s how I came to meet Keith Cullen, the director of Setenta (the record label Divine Comedy and Edwyn Collins are on). Anyway, Keith knew I’d organised the whole tour for free, because I was passionate about what I was doing. He also knew I was trying to get work at a record label. So he turned round to me and said, “OK, come along and see me on Monday!” The whole thing ended up taking about five minutes. It was Keith who really pushed me to continue doing my music. He introduced me to Simon Raymonde, from The Cocteau Twins, and we hooked up together and recorded the single In My Place in 1997. You’ve tended to work mostly as a solo artist to date, though…
I could never find musicians who were on the same wavelength as me musically speaking. Anyway, I started messing around, playing a bit of guitar and I thought I might as well try and write a song on my own to see what I could come up with. And that’s how the first track of my album, Harmony, came about. A freind of mine ended up introducing me to Alan McGee (who discovered Oasis) from the Poptones label. He sat down, listened to the song a couple of times, then turned round and asked me whether I’d be interested in doing an album together. Believe me, that was the last thing I was expecting at the time!
So how did you go about making the album?
I recorded it in my bedroom. I’m not a big fan of working in studios because I find them too cold. And you’ve always got the stress of recording stuff in a hurry because it costs so much to hire a studio in the first place. I feel more comfortable working at home. I’ve got an 18-track recorder, a sampler and some speakers – pretty basic stuff! But at the end of the day I got the album mixed in a studio so it sounded a bit more professional. I think a lot of people work that way now, partly because it’s cheaper, partly because the equipment’s easier to use these days. The musicians I worked with came over to record at my place or occasionally I’d go round to theirs.
How did you end up getting spotted by Damon Albarn’s label Honest Jons?
A friend of mine passed on my album to get a bit of advice from people working at the label. They were really into it right away! And that was a huge stroke of luck for me because it’s still really tough to get signed in the U.K. These days, you have to deliver a pretty much finished product and have your concerts up and running already. Ten years ago, bands could just turn up with a demo and if the label liked what they heard and thought they had potential, they’d give them a chance.
So as a French woman living in London what’s your take on the music scene on both sides of the Channel?
Well, I’d say since Daft Punk and Air came on the scene, English people have a different image of France. And Serge Gainsbourg’s very respected over here - although I have to admit that’s a pretty recent thing. When it comes to their approach to music, I think the English are a lot more productive because they don’t sit down and ask themselves a lot of questions before they act the way French people do – the French tend to intellectualise things too much. And, on that level, I’d say I’m still very French!
You’ve always more or less insisted on singing in English. Why’s that?
It’s something that happened naturally. When I try and write an e-mail in French it never comes out quite right, so you can imagine how bad it would be writing songs… If a song came into my mind in French, that’s the way I’d write it. I don’t have anything against the idea of writing songs in French, it just so often happens that I sit down to write lyrics and they come to mind in English. That’s just the way it is!
You’ve often claimed to have a punk attitude…
My definition of being a punk is doing what you want without taking into consideration what other people are up to or what they’ll think. Basically, I decided I was going to do what I could with what I had - without any formal music training!
Nicolas Dambre
Translation : Julie Street
