JUNE 4TH: The NEW July 2007 Issue (Issue Number 164) of the UK Monthly Music Magazine MOJO (www.mojo4music.com), features an exclusive full page interview with Jean Michel Jarre, entitled 'Self Portrait', on Page 22.
Just bought the magazine so here goes with the small interview which I type.
WHAT GOES ON!
Oxygene genie: Jean Michel Jarre by Jean Michel Jarre
Self PORTRAIT
GALLIC SYNTH LOGICIAN IN HIS OWN WORDS AND BY HIS OWN HAND.
I describe myself as…a father, a son, a musician. Emotionally, I’m not necessarily stable, although these days I am slightly better. That’s because things are getting better with my dad [composer Maurice Jarre]. It was pretty heavy for a while, but for the last two years things have got better between us. It sounds banal because it happens generation after generation, but I suppose we’re just poor handicapped people trying to cope with mum, dad the pass…
Music changed me…in a way I find hard to explain because I don’t remember what it was like to live without it. I would say that it’s therapy and it’s cheaper than analysis! It’s a shelter also.
When I’m not making music…I like to experiment with lots of things, at the moment it’s video. With the new album Téo & Téa I am doing video stuff where I pirate myself and use You Tube to create alternative videos. It’s a fantastic palette of images and visuals.
The last time I was embarrassed…was recently. I was going on stage and I actually forgot my jeans! I was talking to somebody backstage and it was time to go on. I suddenly realised that I was just in these silly kind of shorts!
My formal qualifications include…a degree in French and English literature from the Sorbonne. At the time they were changing the education system so you had the chance to do whatever you liked. I also did a degree in plastic arts, and music and philosophy.
Vinyl, CD or MP3? Anything but CD. I am not a fan of CDs at all. The CD is the 78 digital. It killed, in a very devious and insidious way, the kind of emotional relationship we had with music. At the exact moment that CDs came in, the heads of the music industry became bankers. They said “Now we are going to sell music like yoghurts.†I did an album called Music for Supermarkets (in 1983) that I sold as a single copy through an auction to make a statement against that.
The best book you’ve ever read…One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez. You can read it 100 times, and you will find something new.
My greatest regret is…not having time to do more paintings, to write books, make movies and express myself in ways other than music.
When we die…the more I go on, the less I’m sure. The older I get, the more I realise how uncivilised we are with regards to death. We’re obsessed with the idea of eternal youth but we can’t face up to the reality of what happens to us. In Africa, Japan, India or China death it is part of life. And that’s how it should be.
As told to Phil Alexander
Jean Michel Jarre’s Téo & Téa is out now on Warner Music.
I would like to specially thank http://www.jarreuk.com/ for letting us know that Jean Michel is featured in the MOJO magazine.
Any typo mistakes from the interview are mine and mine only.
I hope you all enjoy the read.
The purpose is still quite intereting though.
