Phoenix: Suffering French Artists

Along with Deck D’Arcy and Thomas Mars, and later on his brother, Laurent Brancowitz, he’s been a member of the Versailles quartet since their early 90′s school days, but it’s only been with the release of their almost universally acclaimed fourth album this year, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, that their native critics have bestowed upon them the rightfully deserved amount of praise.

From the French perspective, it’s almost possible to understand the distaste at Phoenix’s musical collaboration horizontale. Long the butt of many jokes, French pop music’s goat could have been saved by the band’s 2000 debut, United – had they not eschewed their mother tongue to sing in English, thus losing the République’s famed support for native musicians and falling foul of the Toubon law, a quota which stipulates that 40% of music played on the radio must be in French. Laura Snapes met guitarist Christian Mazzalai.

This is the first time you’ve been in the UK for a while?

Yeah we did two shows in the summer.

Was that Camp Bestival and…

Yeah, we did one with only teenagers who were on ecstasy, who were on drugs. Bestival, non? People were all in costume, very high on drugs, it was a very psychedelic experiment! And everyone went on stage, there was a stage invasion, Thomas invited everyone to come in costumes, it was very chaotic in a beautiful way!

Were you dressed up?

We were dressed up as French guys.

This is the first time you’ve been here since the release of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix – has it been a different experience to previous visits?

Yes, there are more people! Tonight it’s the place where they are the less, but general, everything is sold out, so yeah it’s cool, very good, life is good!

It’s been a magnificent year for you – are you able to name a highlight?

There are a few, but maybe when we played Central Park, with Passion Pit, we did two shows, it was beautiful.

How’s the reception been in America, especially after Jimmy Kimmel and SNL?

We did lots of TV shows, it was very interesting to do that, to be in the heart of the American entertainment. We were like kids, you know! It was very very funny.

Was it as you had imagined it would be?

It was even more mystic, more mythological than we thought.

With your success in America, has there been any temptation to move there?

Yes a bit, but we are a bit like gypsies, we never really live in France, we are almost never there. We were there two weeks ago, for two days, just at home.

I read a quote from Air which was interesting – that the point that you and them have in common is that you “avoir une vision qui n’est pas evidamment francaise” (“have a vision which isn’t obviously French”) – would you agree?

Air said that?! We don’t have a real French vision?! Yeah maybe it’s right! We grew up in the same area, in Versailles, and we were the black sheep there. Our DNA is French, but we always wanted to escape you know, so yeah, it’s true.

What’s the music scene in Versailles like?

Nothing, nothing, there’s just one bar. One bar, and that’s it. Almost no scene. Every musician, he is doing that for his life after, you know?

It seems that there’s a lot of government support for music there. How does that compare to the reality?

It was good at the beginning because it helped electronic music and French hip hop, but after it was digested by mainstream crappy music, so now it’s not a good law. I think that law doesn’t help us.

That’s la loi Toubon ?

Exactly. So I think it’s like everything, bad people took advantages of it, and it’s not cool music, it’s only bad music that’s helped by this law.

It seems strange that it’s designed to support French music, but then if a band doesn’t sing in French they don’t get anything.

Of course. We are like strangers.

What’s the reception been like in France for your new album, I’ve read before that some of the press has been a bit scathing.

It was very few people you know, the old generation, when we did our first album it was very new what we did, we were the first to sing in English and our music was very shock for these new people. But now the new generation of journalists are with us, since two albums, we are getting bigger and bigger and France has accepted us. First they threw big stones at us, but it’s part of our French culture you know, to make artists suffer and then you accept it, and then you help them, you know!

I read Chag saying that you’ve given French bands the power to sing in English. Do you consider any obligation to use your success to help other French bands?

Maybe, I don’t really realise it. It’s true that now there are more and more, before there was almost no one. It’s cool because in the 60s, all the French bands were singing in French, but they were doing covers of American music. So us, it’s the total opposite. Now we are doing the opposite, we are singing in English, but we are talking about French culture, about Napoleon and New York and things.

In ‘1901’, some people seem to have interpreted the lyrics “1855 – 1901” as being about l’Exposition Universelle – is that right?

Yeah yeah, it’s about that era.

What makes you want to express modern day emotions through historical images?

We like the idea that it was a very modern era, all about the future, and we talk about this in the song. For us, it’s more intriguing than to talk about parties, you know, “oh you, I wanna dance with you,” you know? It’s been done too many times. I think the subject touched us.

Even though the lyrics on Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix can be melancholy at times, there are no ballads – was that a pre-established decision?

Yeah, we wanted to write a ballad, but we couldn’t, I don’t know why! That would have been good, but that we only thing that we didn’t really achieve…

I heard Phillip Zdar said no to the 45 minute Steve Reich-esque song!

We wanted to do that, but we didn’t achieve it. A record is a series of mistakes and failures – this is one of the failures. So we have a nine minute song, we wanted 40 minutes. Failure is the best part of creations. It’s a cliché, but it’s true.

You spent a really long time writing the albums – does that mean that there aren’t many unfinished songs, it’s just the ones that we hear?

We are not the kind of bands who write 30 songs and then do a best of. We had 15 hours of music, but it’s very beginning of songs, so we killed them before they are really, you know, big.

Were they parts that you’d recorded in New York and in the boat on the Seine?

In New York and in the boat, we didn’t keep almost nothing.

Where did you do most of the writing?

We wrote so many things that led us to other songs, so the creation part was equally important. Then we rented a place, a painter’s place, from the 18th century. We wrote ‘Love Like A Sunset’ as the first track there. And then we wrote everything mostly in the studio with Phillip Zdar in Montmartre.

I didn’t realise that you didn’t keep much of the material that you’d written in NY and France – ‘Love Like A Sunset’ seemed to divide the record in two, and I’d imagined the first half as the NY side, and the second as the French side. Is it supposed to be split, like two sides of a record?

Exactly – it’s the only idea we had before doing this album, to do a long tunnel of instrumentation.

In a video of you talking about your favourite records, you put on Can. Were you particularly inspired by krautrock? It comes through on ‘Love Like A Sunset’ a lot.

Yeah, we are fascinated by Germany in this era, its very beautiful aesthetics.

Having recorded It’s Never Been Like That in an abandoned former East German radio station, making the new record in NY and beneath the Eiffel Tour must have been a completely different experience for you?

Totally opposite. In Germany, we went there with no songs, nothing, and very short limits of time, we just had two guitars, a bass and a drum. This one, we had no limits of time, instruments, no boundaries – so both are very interesting ways.

Was having no limits for WAP down to not having a record label?

No, it’s just that we wanted to go back to this direction again because we did that already on our first and second album, to have no limits, but for our third album we are tired of it so we wanted to do something very raw, simplistic and minimalistic in terms of style. We wanted to go back with this album and discover. We had no record company to go even in a situation without even less compromises.

Did you have to compromise when you did have a label?

No no, but we had to struggle a bit. In terms of creation, we never had any compromises, but then this one we’ve done things we could not have been doing with a major label, for example we spend all the budget of the album on creation, and almost nothing on the renting of a big nice room, or a hotel room in NY which was crazy, expensive!

That was inspired by Truffaut?

Exactly. But our record company wouldn’t have allowed us to do that, but we really didn’t care because now we own our own record company. So we like the idea, we think it’s very romantic to spend all the money on stupid things! It’s part of the creation.

Even though you didn’t come away from NY with anything concrete for the album, you must have had some great experiences there?

Exactly, the memories are very important for us. Every album has its own memories. [For WAP] In New York, we knew all the members of the hotel, it was a good memory!

It sounds like The Royal Tenenbaums, where the father lives in the hotel!

Yeah yeah, I remember! It’s very beautiful, it’s very dangerous because you are not with reality, but it’s a nice feeling for like one month! It’s a very nice thing to try.

Would you say that, creativity aside, has controlling your own label and releasing your own album, has that been easier or a struggle?

To be alone, no it has been easier. Even after we are now we are collaborating with indie labels, so now for example we can do all our crazy ideas that we have, like to give a song for free but without any things in exchange – usually when people are giving songs, you have to give your email – and us we didn’t, we just gave the song in a very high quality, which is very stupid for a big major company! But at the end, we realised it helped us a lot because the song, we didn’t want it to be a single, but it spread all around the world. It’s crazy, and this is beautiful because it’s not controlled by, it’s controlled by music lovers, by blogs you know? It’s the best, it’s a chaotic moment in the music industry, but we love it – there is less money, but there is more freedom, satisfaction, and less… we can give a song – if I want to give a song in one hour, all the world, all the fans could have access to it. And I won’t have to ask anyone, and this is beautiful.

Would your label not have let you do that?

Before on EMI, I’m sure even now they don’t do that.

Because you’ve been friends for so long, is it hard to give control over your music to someone else, someone who doesn’t know you so well?

No it was ok because we created a situation where they didn’t have any choice, but it was more fight you know, but of the albums we did, it was always a way of fighting. But we did what we wanted.

The remix album came out recently – there seem to be a lot of other unauthorized remixes on the internet. Did you give out the original tracks for people to make the songs out of?

Yeah.

It seems like putting it out there like that was a way for you to dispossess the record, for people to take it and make it personal to their lives. Was that the intention?

Yeah, we liked the idea – before, when we gave ‘1901’ even the track by track, they don’t own it, we like the idea that when we finish a track they don’t belong to us any more. So it was more an aesthetic idea.

Talking of remixes and people interacting with your music in their own way, the fan who made the video of John Hughes clips synced to ‘Lisztomania’. I’ve read that you’re big Hughes fans – what is it that you like about his films so much, what would you recommend?

We just watched uh… on the tourbus, we watched – it’s not a John Hughes film, but it’s the same era, it’s got Tom Cruise…ah fuck what’s it called, it’s so good! Risky Business! Yeah. But we love John Hughes movies because they are about, he describes the beauty of teenage romanticism and it’s quite rare, movies about that. And the era, it shows perfectly an era, and teenage emotions. We did ‘Lisztomania’, we thought about the beats, we were talking about John Hughes, and when we saw on YouTube that the girl did that, it’s crazy! We never told anyone we loved John Hughes, but the girl did that just for herself, and she even didn’t send it to us! It’s maybe our favourite video, it’s so cool, again, it’s a beautiful part of nowadays, the mythology. It’s perfect – it’s done just for her, it’s like Casanova when he wrote his biography, he wrote it just for himself, he wasn’t even famous, and that’s the beauty of his autobiography, it’s very pure, he doesn’t want to show off, and for me that she did that just for herself, she never expected it to be so huge!

It’s got more views than your video!

Yeah! She deserves it.

Have you made contact with her since?

Yeah we did, but we never saw her. We really thank her.

You seem to have some really lovely fans – her, and Shoichi…

Yeah, he’s a Japanese guy who knows everything about France. Everytime we’ve been to Japan, he’s been with us. He didn’t come to Central Park because he doesn’t like America! On his passport, he only went to France! He’s a crazy guy, so he came to lots of shows in France, but we say always to him, you have to come to New York, you will love it! We’ve been to Japan a few times, it’s beautiful, one of our favourite places.