Bertignac, back on the line

The ex-Téléphone guitarist’s new release

Paris 

25/03/2011 - 

His new album, Grizzly, hits hard and strong. Singing lyrics by Boris Bergman, Téléphone’s former guitarist, Louis Bertignac, takes us on an unfettered journey into some powerful, violent rock.  

When you ask Louis Bertignac what made him take so long, he pulls a face, “I don’t know. I suppose that after Téléphone, I found myself having to sing. The voice started to take up more and more space… No, I don’t know.” Yet he clearly relishes having produced a guitar album – a rare animal on the French rock scene. Grizzly, his sixth studio album since Téléphone split, comprises thirteen tracks containing thirteen furious riffs that turn into fired-up guitar solos, thirteen riffs to which Bertignac sings in the style of the rock stars of his youth, like The Who, Led Zepplin and Co.

The album was the result of a meeting, or at least a new meeting, with Martin Meissonnier, an unusual producer for a hard rock album. An unexpected choice because during the eighties and nineties, Meissonnier was one of the great architects of the world music explosion, working with names like Fela Kuti, Amina, Papa Wemba and Ray Lema. “We had already met in Kathmandu and Shanghai, in unusual circumstances. I didn’t even know he produced albums, or that he liked this kind of music. But before starting out on his career, he was a drummer in a rock band when he was fifteen.” When they met, Bertignac had already written songs for an album to follow Longtemps, his 2005 release, comprising lyrics mainly by Carla Bruni, whose first record he had produced.

Meissonnier told him that he should do more of what he liked and felt frustrated about not doing, i.e. playing electric guitar very loud, Jimmy Page and Pete Townsend style. “Martin gave me the key to a door and the riffs were waiting for me behind it. He gave me advice even before I started composing. So I got really into it: no producer had ever worked on one of my albums right from the start, but he was there all the time and I really enjoyed the whole process of making this album. He encouraged me to coarsen my voice and do the recording in a couple of days. But when it was time to stop that and become the boss, he did it, like when we did the mixing and he really listened to what I wanted. He was a psychiatrist even more than a producer.”

The drums are played by Cyril Atef from Bumcello and Band of Gnawa (replaced on one track by Richard Kolinka, Téléphone’s drummer), with Hilaire Penda on bass. “They came to work a bit the day before. During the sessions, sometimes they listened to the demo again before recording, but apart from that they improvised almost everything. As to me, I concentrated on the solos in relation to the rhythms. The interactions with bass guitar and drums are hard to hear when you redo the solos at home after the recording. There was no way we were going to do any better after the studio. But I did rework a few rhythms.”

Boris Bergman, obviously

To write the lyrics, he turned to Boris Bergman, Alain Bashung’s legendary partner in crime, who made his rock début writing Rain and Tears for Aphrodite’s Child. “He’s a writer of proverbs. I’d have trouble doing without him now. I gave him some really rough demos and he wrote for them without me even giving him a subject. For each song, it was a complete surprise, even the topic. And the lyrics always fitted in perfectly with my music and with the few words swimming around in what I’d done. His words came in like images. Sometimes I didn’t understand what he meant. In fact, neither did he. I only asked him to rewrite two or three sentences in the whole album. Ultimately, it all gels with me. There are even things in that I would have liked to have said. We only met up two or three times. But I think it’s hard to misunderstand me: I’m pretty easy to figure out.”

It goes without saying that Bertignac is going on tour in a threesome. “It’s what I’ve been doing for fifteen years, and I wouldn’t do it any other way: I’ve got a guitar that takes up a lot of space. As soon as another instrument comes in, I have to restrain myself.” He will be on stage with his faithful 1963 Gibson SG Junior in its worn-out case. “I bought it for $20, which was all I had on me at the time, from a guy who’d given me a ride and had had this guitar at home for years and never used it. Actually, they were dealers just out of gaol who’d felt sorry for me hitchhiking from Los Angeles to New York. I’ve got lots of other guitars, but when I play live it’s serious stuff and she’s the one I trust. I feel like my fingers have changed shape for holding onto that neck. She doesn’t have many highs or shine much but her neck is amazingly flexible and she’s very light.”

He really does relish it all. And the back of the CD cover bears a sentence: “Ça, c’est vraiment moi” (this is really me).  Could it be a reference to the Téléphone hit Ça c’est vraiment toi (that’s really you)? The truth is even better: “Jean-Louis Aubert came to listen to the tracks at my place and at the end he said: ‘I’ve got a title for your album: Ça, c’est vraiment moi.’ But I’d already chosen Grizzly. So we put it on the back of the cover instead."

Louis Bertignac Grizzly (Polydor/Universal) 2011
On tour in France from 24 March and in concert at the Olympia in Paris on 8 June

Bertrand  Dicale