“I am anything but naive”

We expected to see him arrive crowned with his old school rapper's bob. At the end of the afternoon, Philippe Katerine opted for a blue cap. “I wear the bob to stay in my bubble. The cap is still more open », analysis, smirk, the singer-songwriter, also actor, designer, visual artist, radio columnist on France Inter since the start of the school year… Without forgetting the iconoclastic performer, as he demonstrated with panache during the ceremony opening of the Olympics in blue and paunchy Dionysus to perform in the simplest way his hymn to naturism ( Not).

A performance followed by a dizzying national and global buzz. Since then, the fever has subsided, and the 55-year-old from Vendéen has returned in great form with Zouzouthirteenth album in a career rich in radical ruptures, snubs and daring reinventions: British dandy in his early days, crazy screamer of the disco hit Luxor I adore, become a classic of village festivals, Dadaist zazou or delicate performer of piano-voice ballads… Meeting.

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THE TRIBUNE SUNDAY — In Zouzouwe hear your mother, your children who taunt you about your baldness, we are invited to your birthday… We have the impression of listening to a record made at home. Was this the case?

PHILIPPE KATERINE — Zouzouit's an adventure in a living room, in front of a fireplace, with your feet in goatskin. This has been my experience for three years. I traveled very little, I didn't want to go to clubs or concerts. I stayed at home a lot with my family without wanting to leave. I could almost describe this parenthesis as happiness, it's terrible to say, I'm almost ashamed of it in this world of chaos, but hey… I said to myself: ” It is perhaps important to remember that happiness exists without moving. » We don't take the plane, we don't have big ambitions, we stay confined… In fact, I think I've remained a little confined since Covid. Well, I still left the house to record Zouzounotably in the Air group studio in Paris, a place that is both welcoming and at the cutting edge of technology.

You were talking about confinement. Zouzou was written during this period?

I had written songs, but I found them horribly stupid. None survived. So, spontaneously, I turned to drawing, collages, olive oil painting… Basically I come from there, I studied visual arts at the university of Rennes. I love writing and composing songs, but I'm not a musician all the time. Making films and drawing are necessary breaths to return to Music with even greater appetite. So I took out a book, Cutenessin 2022, mounted an exhibition at Bon Marché which now travels to Montreal, Sweden and China. One thing is certain, I would not have made this record without the spirit of “cuteism”, I used it a lot. So, does Zouzou is a cute record? I think so…

How could you describe this artistic movement?

It's handling feelings of frustration, tension and violence, but in a light form that pulls upwards, without naivety, because I am anything but naive. This is my ambition withZouzouwhich talks a lot about the passage of time, old age, finitude. This is undoubtedly the influence of Charles Trenet. With Gainsbourg, he made me want to write in French. He has always touched me with his play of contrasts between often painful themes and luminous melodies. Behind the candor and a certain carelessness, his songs carried a lot of darkness. There is also Souchon in this record, who is also a child of Trenet.

Several times in the album, you remind us of our condition as mere mortals. Is it existential anxiety?

No, not really. I especially think about the countdown. I approach it calmly, but it's true, I talk about it often, my daughter pointed it out to me recently. She finds that I have a rather dark sense of humor on the subject. It must be said that I came into contact with death quite young. When I was 8 years old, I had heart surgery, an open heart operation because of a hole the size of a five-franc coin, as they said at the time. And they closed it up for me with a pig's skin… When I came back after the operation, it was like a second birth, but this early awareness of the fragility of life had a profound impact on me. In fact, I didn't care about anything. At the end of my adolescence, I no longer washed myself, I was on the road to becoming homeless, and then I encountered art. I realized that by drawing my little comrades, that by performing little refrains, I had an impact, a place. And if I continued not to wash, it wouldn't get me very far, the story would even be a bit dismal.

“Who is causing the darkness? » (Emil Ferris, designer)

Have you already imagined your funeral?

I even wrote the script for a documentary film to describe my funeral in detail. His name is The movie that makes you want to die. The action takes place in the Chantonnay cemetery, in Vendée, where I grew up. I will be seen meeting the clerical authorities, the town hall, architects, marble workers in order to have my funerary monument built, quite humble, but different from the others: an immense foot. The foot is what connects to the earth. It's also my great weakness, because I have a lot of cracks in my feet, to the point where I can read the future… I deplore that all the graves look the same in cemeteries, it's terrible. No law exists to restrict graves to three colors, black, gray or white. I opt for pink and blue. Pink because it is a mixture of blood and milk; blue because it is azure. Everyone will obviously have the right to cry, but with joy. Reciters will read poems, including Montparnasse by Guillaume Apollinaire, musical improvisations will be planned, without forgetting a harpsichord concert to play a Bach prelude, the essential music for me. What fascinates me in Bach is the clockwork, how the mathematics of music is an irrefutable mechanism at the service of pure emotion and spiritual elevation to the heavens. This dichotomy drives me crazy.

From your piano-voice album The Moviein 2016, you never spoke about yourself in such a way so direct and intimate. You wanted break away from this certain eccentricity Who characterizes you?

I have no problem with being called a “quirky singer.” If I don't bore people, that's not bad. What interests me is to offer a different, offbeat angle, even if we only retain the fanciful or clownish side. We can forget my music, be satisfied with the image of a blue man under a bell, that suits me very well. But it's true, on this album, I hide less behind the fanciful. When I play my new songs, I often say to myself: “ My poor Philippe, you're being too clever…» There, I act less clever.

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Philippe Katerine participated in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games on July 26, 2024. (Credits: LTD/apture France TV via Bestimage Philippe Katerine)

How did you experience the media overexposure linked to your performance?
during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games?

Singing for 2 billion people around the world is the craziest thing of my career. Well, after my one minute and twenty second performance, we set off as a family like thieves across France. The Olympics have regained their rights, and the athletes their thrones. But, during our journey, I still felt a fervor, either on one side or the other. I enter a bistro, the conversations stop. I'm talking to a lady, she starts to blush. It seems that I have even become a very popular all-blue pastry in Asia. It is an ideal future to be eaten with relish and a big smile.

In your song Under the duvet you say: “It’s true, I’m not Mbappé / I tend to have square feet! / Joe Biden could lose me.” Are you angry with sports?

On the contrary, I followed the Olympics with passion in front of my TV. I love sport, I really do. During my adolescence, team sports, especially basketball, were very important. I was even a physical education teacher in an agricultural high school. I practice less than in the past, but I still play a sport that I invented, freeball. It is played on a volleyball court but without a net. The rules are simple: no aggressive gestures, no smashing, but everyone can use all parts of their body to send the ball ever higher towards the sky. It's my favorite sport.

Are you going to have it approved for the Olympics?

I would love to! Given the modest dimensions of the field and the absence of a net, it would be the first mixed, intergenerational andhandicap friendly.It would be… a revolution.

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