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Jeanette Ruggeri
Manager of Noir Désir
Paris
04/04/2007 -
A manager's work is largely carried out in the shadows and Jeanette is obviously not used to performing centre-stage. When asked if she would do an interview with RFI Musique, she hesitated long and hard, "OK, but what about? An interview about my profession? Well, that’s not something I'm ever asked much about…" She finally agreed tour request, but on one condition. "Will I be able to see the article before it appears? I want everything to be clear. I don't want anything to sound confusing or ambiguous."
Jeanette Ruggeri, 36-year-old manager of Noir Désir, is used to screening, vetting and general flak-taking. Responsible for dealing with everything that touches the Bordeaux-based rock foursome (from their work with a local civil liberties association to mainstream promotional interviews), Jeanette explains that she "takes all the propositions that come in from all sides, passes them on to members of the band, then I sit back and let them discuss things. They're the ones who decide what they want to do or not. Then I'm responsible for passing that decision on. The only sphere in the band's life where I never intervene is the artistic one. I'm obviously not involved in making decisions about who the band collaborate with or what musical choices they make."
In Noir Désir's entourage, Jeanette plays the role of a younger, modern-day Jeanne Le Bonniec (the dressmaker who was Georges Brassens's landlady at impasse Floriment from the latter years of the Second World War to the 1960s and who featured in his songs). Jeanne, renowned for her fierce temperament would keep all unwanted intrusions away from the late chanson star's door – and her modern-day incarnation, Jeanette, does the same, acting as what she calls "a filter". "You know what an egg-timer looks like? Well, I'm the bit in the middle!" This appears to be rather a modest definition of her position as the band's security barrier, bouncer and general bodyguard, fielding off unwelcome solicitations and having to say "no" on behalf of the boys. But if Jeanette takes the flak shielding the band from all the "emmerdes" (hassle) of the music industry, she also occasionally reaps gratitude, too (see the credit list at the end of Marc Besse's biography Noir Désir, published by Librio).
Underground
Comparisons with Brassens's "rock" Jeanne Le Bonniec only go so far, however. Apart from Jeanette's role as "final rampart" between Noir Désir and the outside world, her life has been a very different story. The daughter of teachers who "grew up in a world where I had easy access to culture" went on to join ND Musique (Noir Désir's production company) "by chance" in 2001. At the time the group, already hard at work on their album Des visages, des figures, were looking for a manager. Jeanne had been working as girl Friday at the indie label Vicious Circle (a Bordeaux label started by the authors of the fanzine Abus Dangereux which has since signed American rock band The Bell Rays and rapper-puppeteers Puppetmastaz). "There were just two of us working there at the time," she recalls, "The music scene was very different in the late 90s to what it is today. There were all these small outfits that sort of operated outside the law and I came along at a moment when we were forced to put things in order. We had to start giving artists proper contracts and paying copyright to the SACEM. It was all very rock'n'roll!"
Jeanette, who originally came from Lyons, has been living in Bordeaux since 1997/98. She describes herself as having come from "the underground" – "during my training for my D.E.S.S. exams I worked in various theatres and dance venues but institutionalised culture has never been my thing! – and she claims she had never really heard of Noir Désir up to that point. "Hanging out on the underground I listened to stuff you never heard on the radio, like Fugazi. So when I actually met Noir Désir I didn't feel under any pressure – I didn't feel like it was a life or death situation or anything!" The first contact came in the ND Musique offices in Bègles, a sort of lean-to positioned between apartment blocks and the local industrial estate. "I started working with the band when they were mixing their last album in New York with Nick Sansano."
Under Pressure
Jeanette found herself a newcomer in a milieu "where everyone knew one another and where everyone – not the band themselves but everyone else – seemed to be out to test me!" She had to adapt fast and, besides making her place in the team, start organising a summer tour which was already looming on the horizon. The stakes in her new job were very different, too, she recalls. "If you make a cock-up working for a small label, it can have disastrous consequences," she says, "The survival of the label itself is at stake. Working for a big structure, things are different from that point of view, but there's a lot at stake, too, maybe in terms of financial pressure or professional ethics."
With her mobile phone glued permanently to her ear, fielding off solicitations from all sides, Jeanette soon discovered the demands of working for a big music stable. "You've got to act as a buffer all the time. There's never any let-up," she sighs, "On tour, you've got the pressure of the band, their entourage and all the people gravitating around the edge all the time. And as a manager you've got to know your place – and stay there! You must never take yourself for the artist, never go round complaining you're under pressure as well. It's a very rewarding experience because you get to meet a lot of interesting people all the time. But it can also be totally exhausting, too!"
Jeanette describes the run-up to the simultaneous release of the band's double live album Noir Désir en public and the DVD Noir Désir en images as a "complete shambles." "They were both really big projects, involving sound and images, and we had to deal with a lot of different people. There was obviously a lot of tension and it came at a bad moment because the members of the band already had a lot of other stuff on their plate!" Jeanette went on to spend the next eighteen months managing Les Wampas (April 2005 - September 2006) and then took a breather. She is currently busy working with Noir Désir guitarist Serge Teyssot-Gay on his solo project Interzone - which she describes as "very flexible" - and is part of the team organising the second "Rendez-Vous de Terre Neuve" citizens' festival co-produced by ND Musique. This allows her a bit of free time to watch her daughter growing up and get her listening to the children's musical Emilie Jolie, "the first thing in the music world that totally blew me away!"
Bastien Brun
Translation : Julie Street
27/12/2006 -
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