 |
  |
Gonzales, Music’s Mr Entertainment
New album Soft Power
Paris
23/04/2008 -
RFI Musique: You seem to enjoy living in Paris. Why do you like it so much here?
Gonzales: I’d say I accept Paris. I appreciate the fact that Paris is a professional city with a proper music infrastructure, unlike Berlin. In Berlin, there are lots of interesting artists doing really great things, but they seem to forget that once you’ve created a piece of work you’ve got to get out there and promote it to the public. They see that as marketing hype whereas I see that as being a supplementary stage in the artistic process. And yes, it may be superficial, but I love it! The thing with Paris is that there’s not really an underground culture here and things tend to take off much more quickly with the media. Paris is a city that’s geared towards accomplishment, ambition and career progression in music.
Have you had the chance to listen to what’s been going on on the French music scene in recent years?
I can’t honestly say that I’ve had much time outside my work. But I did get the chance to work a bit with Daft Punk on my cover of their track Too Long and half of Daft Punk (Thomas Bangalter) agreed to appear on my DVD From Major to Minor. I was also lucky enough to work with Philippe Katerine on his album Human After All. Personally, I think Philippe Katerine is the great genius of our times. He’s a really all-round artist. In my opinion, Daft Punk and Katerine have changed the face of music for a long time to come, both from a conceptual point of view as well as pure entertainment. These artists push things really far in their work. Right now, in fact, Katerine and I are working together on a TV series produced by Céline Sciamma. It’s a satire about the French music world and I provide the outsider’s view on the monarchic French showbiz system.
Is your new album, Soft Power, intended to be ironic?
I don’t do ironic. My music is entertainment. All the way from Mozart to Madonna, all the great music legends have understood that being an artist is about entertaining people. It’s not about struggling to be some sort of ‘authentic’ artist. All the great music legends have accepted and integrated the superficial aspect of music in their work. When I see an artist trying to be all serious and sincere, I just find it abnormal.
If on the one hand music is entertainment, can it also be a form of power?
Music can be both. But I think the kind of music that uses the force of communication has a much greater chance of controlling people’s emotions. Being a musician is basically an attempt to get some sort of power. When the audience pay for their concert tickets they’re actually paying to be manipulated. We give them the illusion that we’re creating something very personal, something that’s going to touch them on a very intimate level. Music is like politics in that respect. But it’s less dangerous in music because everyone knows that once a concert’s over you walk out the door and get back on with your everyday life. I’ve had a really hard time of it with journalists actually because they think that on record my music’s some sort of joke. But I’m very serious, especially when it comes to respecting the basic rules of music.
There are moments on Soft Power when things get pretty nostalgic...
Yes, I am nostalgic. I’m nostalgic for the days before music became ‘democratised.’ The thing is these days we’re living in a world of amateurs. Music seemed so much better back then, when things were dictated by a small elite who were the only ones who knew how to make music. Back in those days music was a real profession.
Does your new album reflect the music you listened to in your teens?
This is not the music I listened to as a teenager. I was born in 1972. The influences on my new album are more acoustic and soft rock from the ‘70s (The Bee Gees and Billy Joel) than ‘80s new wave. I’d say this is the music I enjoyed in my own naive way before developing proper taste. I used to hear music rather than really listen to it, soaking it up without any kind of expectation whatsoever. 
No, in fact, just the opposite. Working Together is the only track where I played all the instruments, including drums, myself. What happened with the rest of the album is I recorded it with a Canadian drummer. The video clip was intended to be a bit of a joke. The track’s called Working Together but then you’ve just got me on my own playing all these instruments. This is actually the first time in my career that I had an outside producer involved on the whole album - and that producer was Renaud Letang who was intimately involved at the core of things. Renaud played lots of different roles, in fact. He was the sound engineer, he was in charge of all the mixing and he fielded all the calls with the record company, making sure we stuck to the schedule and spent the necessary amount of time on each stage. Renaud and I proved to be very complementary, in fact. I played the artist, he played the psychologist. That’s often the role he’s required to play with artists!
But why should someone need to play psychologist in the studio?
It’s normal. Artists are notorious pains in the neck - and I include myself in that category! We’ve all got our little complexes and we’re all completely blind to what’s going on around us. Artists never know what’s best for them because they can never stand back and get any distance on things. As to what my own personal complexes are, you’d have to ask Renaud Letang! (Laughs).
Concerts at L'Européen, Paris, 22 - 26 April.
Nicolas Dambre
Translation : Julie Street
06/09/2010 -
09/12/2004 -
