This Page Last Updated
August 17th 2001

JEAN MICHEL JARRE - THE GODFATHER SPEAKS

Over 20 years after Oxygene, Jean Michel Jarre is still finding fresh ways to make electronic music. Danny Scott gets the techno lowdown on his latest album Metamorphoses...

You can certainly see why Charlotte Rampling is shacked-up with him. Over 20 years after he introduced electronic music to the mainstream with Oxygene, Jean Michel Jarre is still blessed with boyish good looks, a paunch-free waistline and the kind of roguish smile that could put Bruce Willis out of a job.

He is a picture of unwrinkled health, emitting the sort of warm glow you only get from early nights, good food, fresh air, 50 million album sales and a mansion in the south of France. Or a very good plastic surgeon!

And did we mention charm? Hell, it drips off this fresh-faced Frenchman like sweat off a packed Saturday night at Cream. Within five minutes, he's offering tea and shoving the biscuit tin in your general direction. Within 15, he's swapping jokes like an old school chum. By the end of your allotted 45 minutes you're quite prepared to believe that this interview was the most important thing he's done all year.

"It's a shame we didn't have more time," laments the 51-year-old as he shows FM towards the door of Sony Records' cavernous boardroom. "We could have had a glass of wine, a few beers... there is so much more to talk about." OK, Jean Michel, see you real soon, mate!

Oxygene out

Jarre is in the UK for just one day. He's not sure where he is tomorrow, but he knows he's going to be answering more questions about his new album Meta-morphoses, his first release since the not-so-well received Oxygene 7-14 a couple of years back.

"I had a feeling that Oxygene 7-14 was going to cause a few problems for me," he says in that seductive Franglais purr. "It was perceived like Rocky 2, a poor sequel! That was not my intention. I have never felt that 40 minutes was enough time to explore the Oxygene theme. I always wanted to add more parts. Maybe I stayed too faithful to those original songs; maybe that was where I went wrong. Especially on the drum tracks. I was not concentrating on the texture of the drums, I just programmed some basic rhythms and added a little bit of phaser. It was just a platform for the rest of the song, when it could have been a lot more.

"Looking back, I enjoyed the album, but after I finished it I knew that I had to make a fresh start. I had to go somewhere completely different. Metamorphoses is like a blank page for me, a new beginning."

Trusty (Pro) toolbox

He reckons this "fresh start" is all down to just one new piece of studio gear... Pro Tools. As one of electronica's high-ranking ambassadors, Jarre was sent one of the very first versions, but it was only when he started working on Metamorphoses that he began to understand how much it was affecting his music.

"Two years ago, I could not have even conceived this album... that's the kind of impact that Pro Tools has had on me. I am experimenting in ways that I never even dreamed about. You can take a sound like this," he explains, flicking the table with his finger, "and you can turn it into the biggest kick drum you have ever heard. Or you can stretch it out and turn it into a wonderful string section.

"With just a few plug-ins, you can do the most amazing processing," he continues breathlessly. "You can add bass, you can add dynamics... anything. When I was making the album, I was thinking, 'Oh, I must get ready with my multitrack, I love the warmth of analogue tape'.

"But then I discovered that I can add as much tape saturation as I want by just pushing a button. If I want, I can make a song out of tape saturation noises... the possibilities are endless."

Jarre was so impressed that he bought the company! Well, not quite. But he did end up recording and mixing the entire album on Pro Tools.

"I have a huge SSL desk in my studio and I was just using it as a monitor mixer... can you believe it!? The entire recording process involved being stuck in front of that computer screen for eight months. We did use the eight-fader Pro Controller, but I'm sure we could have managed without it! I cannot tell you how very excited I am about this period of music.

"This really is all about the future... we're going to see a completely new way of recording. I feel privileged to have lived through it and to have been able to experience it for myself."

New for old for new

Even as recently as 1997 - when FM last spoke to him - Jarre was still relying on gear like the 808, the VCS3, the Jupiter 8 and the ARP2600. Indeed, such was his devotion to the analogue cause that he likened digital and sampling technology to 'Frankenstein'. But with Pro Tools at the helm, all that has changed.

"I think that maybe I now feel a little bit, er... ridiculous," he admits with a smile. "With Pro Tools, the original sound source is no longer important. In fact, it's almost irrelevant! It does not matter whether I am using samples, the Jupiter 8 or my old Fairlight... you can still create incredible sounds.

"I used a lot of samples as building blocks for this new album. I sampled myself, I took sample discs from libraries, I sampled the Fairlight, I sampled my coffee machine... I was making sounds by using my Walkman earphones as a microphone and recording the results. I know I might seem like a mad scientist, but I was just so excited by what I was able to do.

"Choosing a sound for your music is all about making an emotional connection with that sound. You hear something and it touches you inside. You are seduced by it. By using Pro Tools, I felt that I was able to keep that emotional connection all the way through to the final product.

"Let me explain. Imagine I want to use a Gregorian choir in one of my songs. In the past I would have to sample it, which is where the problems start. I have never been a great fan of that digital harshness. You can almost hear the sampler chopping the original sound into slices so it can process it - that is why I called it Frankenstein. All of a sudden you are left with a sound that is totally different to the original sound that you fell in love with. With Pro Tools you don't have to worry about that. You can put back that little bit of warmth to give it the right acoustic characteristics for your ears."

Choices of voices

Pro Tools wasn't Jarre's only musical departure. Metamorphoses is the first of his albums to feature vocals. New York-based performance artist Laurie Anderson provides the detached voice for Je Me Souviens, former Jah Wobble collaborator Natacha Atlas adds haunting touches to the current single C'est La Vie and even Jean Michel himself steps up to the mic for tracks like the heavily-vocodered Hey, Gagarin (imagine a bouncy version of Air's Sexy Boy).

"Er, what can I say about my vocals?" he laughs. "I will never cause any problems for Mariah Carey, eh? I used a lot of effects on the vocals, lots of vocoders and plug-ins, but they were all still recorded straight into Pro Tools. This is not just happening in dance music... these days, all the big pop singers are using Pro Tools, even people like Cher. As you can imagine, using words makes a big difference to a song.

"In the past, I have always attempted to create what people call soundscapes. I will use a synthesizer to recreate the pictures I have in my head, but once you add words, you are presented with a whole story and characters for that story. That, of course, allows you to do different things with the music, to change your habits... it gives the music more range, more scope.

"But those old habits can be very hard to kill," he frowns. "When you have been making music for a long time, you have your own way of doing things. If I was working on a bassline, I always used play that bassline. This time, I'd hear basslines on other songs and thinking, 'Yes, I like that'. So I would sample a few notes of the bassline, change one note, timestretch it, distort it and that was my new bassline. I was having a lot of fun in the studio... I was like a kid in a candy store."

Classical background

All this seems a far cry from Jarre's days at the famous Paris Conservatoire. The son of renowned French composer Maurice Jarre, he was studying classical music from the age of five, eventually composing for the likes of the Paris Opera.

It was during those years, though, that Jarre first became aware of experimental music when he joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. Run at the time by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry (other notable members included Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen) it was one of only two places in the whole of France you could find synthesizers.

"When I first entered the GRM [in 1969], it was a big shock to me. For the first time, I heard people talking about music in terms of sounds not scales. They were not interested in notes; they were interested in noises. I was told to go outside and record a car passing by and make some music with it. It was like a... a revolution! Their motto was that if you are a good musician, you can make music with a coathanger or a block of wood.

"This was the first time there had been a serious alternative to rock music. If you look at Elvis and you look at Oasis, you will see there is absolutely no difference. It is basically the same: drums and bass and guitars. Rock used to be fresh, but now it is just as predictable as the classical music our parents used to go and watch. The only thing that has changed is that we have swapped the bow-ties for T-shirts and we have swapped the Royal Opera House for Wembley Stadium!"

Contrast and compare

Electronic music, insists Jarre, is something completely different. "You don't need to go to school to learn about it. Just think about how the DJs work. They go to a club or a party and they watch another DJ to find out how it's done. Then they go home and they try it on their own. There are no rules... once you have got the basics, you can learn your own tricks. I know this might sound a little pretentious, but I think technology has given the music back to the people.

"Look at classical music and opera. It is supposed to be the highest form of music, it is supposed to be the most sophisticated... the best. But it is also the most remote. It is out of the range of most people. Technology and Africa changed all that. Africa gave us the groove while technology gave us the equipment... together they have twisted up all those old attitudes and proved that there is no right or wrong way to play music.

"I have got my degree in classical music," Jarre sneers, "but who gives a shit? What does it matter to me? I might as well have learned about Egyptian art or how to drive a bus... that's how important it is to my music today."

Danny Scott - Future Music February 2000

With Special thanks to Senior Editor Andy Jones for allowing us to include this interview here on Jarre UK.

Future Music Issue 92
February 2000

On JMJ's turntable

"There has been a lot of great stuff released this year. The Orbital album is fantastic. I love them. We are trying to get them to remix one of the singles from this album. And Underworld, of course. I know that Beaucoup Fish didn't get maybe the best reviews, but I think it's far superior to Second Toughest In The Infants. OK, so it might not have any songs like Born Slippy on there, but who cares? This is their strongest album, I think, the one where we are beginning to see the true band.

"I have to mention the Chemicals. Another great album. And the singles have been amazing! Nobody can make the drums sounds so powerful. Well, maybe Aphex Twin! It would be great to work with the Richard... I really admire his music. He is someone who doesn't care about trends, he just does what he wants to do. Then we have the new Leftfield album... Les Rythmes Digitales... the Micronauts... there is so much. Last year was a great year for electronic music.

"If I have been just the smallest influence on a band like Orbital or Underworld, then I am very honoured. To know that your music actually made a difference to someone's life is the biggest compliment that you can receive. I still listen to some classical and jazz music at home, but these are the bands i want to listen to. These are the bands that I consider are part of my tribe."

Great Godfather

"You know what... when I hear people talking about me as the 'Godfather Of Techno', I think they must be talking about someone else. I look in the mirror and I think, 'Do they mean me? Do I look like a godfather?'

"Of course it's fun and sometimes it can be flattering when I read these things, but I do feel quite removed from it all. As far as I am concerned, I am simply doing what I have always done.

"The only difference to me is that these days I now feel a bit more 'in-sync' with the rest of the music business. I don't think I have ever been a victim of a trend, but I do think there was a time in the 80s, when things were very dark for me. When I first started out in the 70s, there were also bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, but they all seemed to disappear. I felt like I was on my own for several years and that people were almost making fun of me...

'Oh, there is poor old Jean Michel with his lasers and his fireworks and his synthesizers'. I was still selling lots of records, but that wasn't the point. I felt that something was wrong, I felt that I was out of step with everybody.

"When I look back, I think of the 80's as the era of the Golden Boy. It was about managers and about teeny bop bands and, of course, the DX7. I'm afraid none of that made much sense to me at all."

Analogue Vs Digital

"Well, here's the problem. There are lots of great new digital synths that have amazing features on them - like time delays, great arpeggiators, cross modulation, etc, the stuff you wish the old units had - but as far as tone goes, i'll go to my grave being a fan of the old keyboards.

"I've yet to find a digital synth that provides a tone for me that's exciting. I think the Nords and the Waldorfs are just fantastic keyboards, but at the end of the day, the basic tone of the told Moogs, Oberheims, ARP2600s, all that stuff, moves my guts much in the way a good Les Paul or Telecaster guitar would.

"Today, although they do a fantastic job emulating the filters and stuff, well, it's the organic drift in the circuitry. An old analogue oscillator is constantly drifting and fluctuating, and it has to do with the moving current."

Kit List

PC running Pro Tools, Logic Audio with Waves plug-ins and GRM Tools

Clavia Nord Lead 2
Quasimidi Raven
Roland MC-505
Roland XP-80