The many lives of Line Renaud

New album,Rue Washington.

Paris 

17/12/2010 - 

Almost thirty years ago, Line Renaud decided to give up the music hall for the theatre, bringing an end to an international career in French chanson that took her from Paris to Vegas. Three decades on, she has gone back to her first love with a bright new album, Rue Washington.

“I almost regret not having gone back to singing earlier, I enjoy it so much. I thought it was dead and buried and wouldn’t come up again.” She returned to song at the insistence of friends and fans. Line Renaud agreed to enter a recording studio once more, for the first time without the man she shared so much of her life and career with, Loulou Gasté.

As luck would have it, Dominique Blanc-Francard, who produced the album, worked right by the building of Loulou’s music publishing house, in rue Washington in Paris. A strong believer in fate, she decided to give the same name to her record. “Ah yes, I only believe in fate! The chance events that pepper your life are signs of destiny. Only, you have to see them, I’m lucky that I feel them and I’m rarely wrong. Sometimes you aren’t aware of the signs until years later. It’s just how I am!”

And so Line Renaud felt that she was obeying her fate when, smiling and full of wonder, she agreed to record an album that even she, the self-confessed perfectionist, describes as a “little jewel”. “How could I refuse such lovely lyrics when they so match the message I want to put across? They were made to measure for me by some of the greatest, the best song writers, without me asking for anything. That means more than anything. They wrote about me, my very own me.”

Colour portrait

The songwriters have crafted twelve little jewels dedicated to Line Renaud. People like Jean-Loup Dabadie and Julien Clerc, with La Mémoire dévêtue, which talks of friendship and the ups and downs of an artist’s life: “They showed me up in all my colours/ In all my pains”. Line has a thought for absent friends, “The way that Dabadie evokes the memory of Thierry le Luron is wonderful,” and for the difficulties of her trade: “On a station platform, without a glance/A working face without work”. “There are two ways of having your memory taken away. No one remembers him anymore, he’s on a station platform, with no more work and the memories gone; and it’s also the artist who’s memory has gone, and it’s very beautiful.”

Then there was her meeting with Grand Corps Malade, another happy coincidence! He was recording his latest album, 3ème temps (also produced by Dominique Blanc-Francard) in the studio next to hers. He told her he was “getting back to basics”, and she asked him if he had a song for her, even though he only usually writes for himself, because “you never know”. And he penned J’écris cette lettre, a spoken song, a slam piece, like a reflection in the mirror: “I’m writing this letter to life/Like a thank you letter/ I’m writing this letter to my desires/Like a beginning.” “He called me up the next day, I mean he wrote it during the night and read it to me over the phone. I was crying on the other end of the line, I was crying because if I had written a letter, that’s the letter I would have written and I would have addressed it to the same people.”

Between jazz and modern

The album abounds with different orchestrations, like the gypsy-like swing of Tu m’tues Lulu, the cabaret tone of Une Minute and the bossa nova sway of Happy birthday la vie. “These songs are very modern. What surprised me was Dans ma tête by Christophe Maé. When I was told that he’d written a waltz, I was really worried that he’d told himself Line Renaud would need a waltz. Then he came to sing me this totally Mexican waltz, and it was extraordinary, with all the mariachi sounds.”

Line also talks about her musical career, because she has never put aside her love of jazz, after so many music hall years and all the wonderful moments. “I wanted to include an American classic in this album. I wanted it to be What a Wonderful World, because I knew Louis Armstrong and his wife Lucille well. At the time, in Las Vegas, Louis always included the song in his tours, and I adored it.” Then her record label, Warner, and Johnny Hallyday had the idea of doing a duet of a French adaptation of the song, Un monde merveilleux. “It was so symbolic. My godson and I, fifty years on… We thought we’d do that song, and it was Johnny who had the idea of calling Michel Mallory to write these lovely lyrics.”

She did, however, include another American classic, I’ll be Seeing You, this time in English, in the album bonus, like a reference to her Pygmalion. “I didn’t have a song in English anymore and I wanted one to be able show off what I like doing most, which is playing with words. I’ll be Seeing You was the perfect choice. It’s the type of song where you let go of the tempo, then catch it up again, and you go walking with the words and I love that. And it’s something that Loulou really liked me doing, so I’m glad I did.”

Line Renaud “paints her memories” in Rue Washington. It includes all the different facets of her life, like a kaleidoscope portrait in which she pays homage to happiness and love, friendship and partnerships, and never stops looking to the future. And when you ask her if she sees her album as a continuing process or a nod to the past, she replies with discreet emotion, “I’d call it an interlude.”

Line Renaud Rue Washington (Warner) 2010
Playing live at Olympia in Paris on 24 and 25 May 2011

Marie-Catherine  Mardi

Translation : Anne-Marie  Harper