 |
  |
Bashung is back
New album, Bleu pétrole
Paris
25/03/2008 -
Alain Bashung: As I go from one album to the next, I’m always looking for ways that throw things out of kilter with what‘s gone before. The way I see it, each new album should complete the one that preceded it. It’s like a constant work in progress. I’d like each of my albums to have a function in the overall scheme, like a house that’s gradually constructed over time. The day the house is completed, who knows, maybe the whole structure will just implode, I don’t know…
I occasionally need a helping hand. From time to time, I need to have someone working with me who can offer me something that doesn’t come directly from me, but that I can receive and make my own. I like the idea of throwing everything into question on each new album. That way I avoid the risk of repetition and escape the tics that creep into one’s songwriting over time… I’m not into the idea of being locked into one system for life. Once I’ve managed to demonstrate what can be done within a certain form, I need to move on to a new challenge. That doesn’t make things particularly comfortable or reassuring for me and maybe not for whoever’s producing the album, either. But this is the only way I can work.
You appear to have been very selective in your choice of collaborators on Bleu pétrole, only working with songwriters who are singers as well…
Yes, exactly, because they write things in terms of the way they’re going to sing them. Their songwriting is, a priori, very ‘sing-able.’ For instance, a song written by a singer will use syllables that resonate in a certain way so that the voice can really perform… It’s not the same as a poet’s writing, which is intended to be read, and which becomes overblown and grandiloquent when you try to sing it. On this new album I chose to work with singers who understand all the difficulties associated with the spoken word and who are aware of how it resonates. This time round, I felt a need to put something across in my songs that listeners can instantly understand, something that’s immediate, direct and generous. That doesn’t mean that I’m abandoning the idea of moving back to a more introspective style of songwriting at a later date. This is not a form of renouncement. It’s more a question of what fits the moment. And right now I feel the need to be more present in a physical way with my voice.
It’s true that the meaning of most of the songs on your new album is absolutely clear. And clarity has been a rare commodity in the Bashung discography to date…
I was trying to come close to that form of expression. It’s been a while since I’d come at things from that point of view and I simply felt the time had come to rise above ambiguity and confusion.
Besides being remarkably clear and unambiguous, Bleu pétrole is also much more personal than usual. Quite a few songs on the album are infused with a profound sense of compassion for your fellow man. I’m thinking of songs like Comme un Lego, written by Gérard Manset, and even Trapèze by Gaëtan Roussel…
I think a lot of artists before me have tackled the theme of universal love and expressed it very well in their own way. I may have gone off and explored other directions in the past, but sooner or later, I knew that this is something I’d have to express, too. It’s all a question of timing. It felt important to me to express this now. It’s something that’s so lacking… The thing is, I don’t think I would have been able to assume songs like this before now because I didn’t feel right about touching on the personal. It felt a bit immodest.
Interestingly enough, Bleu pétrole includes a cover of the Leonard Cohen classic Suzanne. You do a French version of the original written by Graeme Allwright, but isn’t Allwright a million miles away from the idea most Bashung fans have of rock?
Well, to start with, I think Graeme Allwright’s translation of Suzanne is totally representative of what Cohen wrote in English. It’s an absolutely brilliant adaptation! And then you have to realise that for me, like so many other artists from my generation, Cohen was absolutely seminal in helping us strike out and look for new ways of thinking and new ways of expression. It’s the same with Manset [Besides using the new material Manset penned for him, Bashung has also covered Manset’s 1975 classic Il voyage en solitaire]. This is my way of paying tribute to the people who had such a major impact on our relation to pop and folk… It wasn’t like they were setting themselves up in opposition to Brel or anything, they were simply doing something different.
I was also interested in the fact that there’s a love story going on in the song, but things aren’t very clear. I mean, is he staying with her for the wrong reasons? We all make compromises and concessions, things can’t be perfect every day, but what do you do? Do you just go along with things as they are and say nothing? This is my way of paying tribute to someone who expressed those things really well and putting them into a form that puts the human at the centre of everything.
When I began work on my new album, I knew I wanted to talk about things that were exterior to me rather than what was happening on the inside. But I was also thinking of a sort of parallel. I’m someone who, like Manset, lived through the ‘60s and ‘70s. And it was literally mindblowing. We had ideals of Utopia. From time to time you get a journalist coming along and suggesting that we should reinvent Utopia - which means this is something that’s sorely lacking in the modern world! At least we can lay claim to inventing something that didn’t exist before.
Alain Bashung Bleu pétrole (Barclay/Universal) 2008
Bertrand Dicale
Translation : Julie Street
29/04/2011 -
25/03/2009 -
16/03/2009 -
21/10/2002 -
29/05/2000 -
22/02/1999 -
