Thomas, making the most of every minute often resonates with you and even more so here with “It’s never too late”. Have you always said this sentence to yourself, where did it come from seeing time slip away?
It’s still this story of carpe diem, of “live happily today, because tomorrow it will be too late”. It’s always this theme that is dear to me. More than once, I remember listening to good music with friends, and not at all being able to say “well, guys, we have to go to bed because tomorrow we’re going to be exhausted” . We feel so good, we say to ourselves “too bad, we’ll see tomorrow”. Plus, with age and time, it’s true that it’s good to tell yourself that you can still do incredible things, that you can do anything. It’s the passion, the desire that counts above all.
You talk about the passage of time. “At the end of your age”, to paraphrase the poem by Aragon that you set to music, what did you find?
It’s a difficult question because in addition I’m starting to get tired, a little at the end of my rope, I can start to be a little bit depressed, to see things in a negative way. There, I arrived from Corsica to talk about this album and I was as excited as hell. But I’m starting to get a little tired and thinking about sadder things. I can’t wait to go on tour because, as I get older, I realize that all I love is playing music. I am happy in nature too. Now, I’ve been in Paris since September 5, and already, I can’t take it anymore! That’s really an age thing. At 35, I didn’t give a damn, I went out almost every evening, I went to see concerts, I was happy to live in the capital. Now I need space, I need air, I need quiet. I refocus on the essential things.
Is it your perfectionism that doesn’t allow you to be calmer, 100% satisfied, when releasing a new album?
In any case, today, I no longer understand how the recording industry works. You see, streams don’t make any money. I’m not young enough to be in a youth thing anymore… and I don’t know what to do to rejuvenate my audience. This is all that worries me. We wonder, we wonder if people will continue to listen to our music. Me, I’m happy with this record, I’d like it to do well.
These questions, these doubts, do they explain the fact that it took you 9 years before releasing a new album of original songs? Even if during this time, you took on other projects, including a tour with your dad. Over 9 years, have you accumulated things, and since then have only kept the themes that are dear to you?
Yes, each of these songs really means something to me. I didn’t make the mistake I made on my second album of putting too many songs, or on my third of not being 100% happy with the arrangements. I really took the time to go back and forth with the arrangers too so that I liked it. But this kind of thing can drive you crazy! I know my mother was the same. But there comes a time when you have to let go of the songs. That’s why I love “live” so much, because the songs live, we live in the present moment. Well, now people have their phones out all the time. It’s not that I don’t like it, but I like the ephemeral side, you play and it disappears.
But are you happy with yourself at a certain point?
Yes, there are times when I am very happy. But I obviously put a lot of pressure on myself given where I come from and the friends I have. I had a Dalí record when I was young, where he talked about the paranoid method (he pronounces it with a Spanish accent, Editor’s note). And that’s it: you redo it all the time until you’re happy. We can’t arrive at “La Javanaise” every day, but at least we do something honest. It’s artisanal, it’s a bit my method of criticizing and redoing again. Not everyone can be a genius but everyone can really work hard to do their best, that’s what’s important. It’s a little philosophy that I like.
That’s how you were raised too. Your mom never hesitated to tell you when she didn’t like what you were doing…
Yes, she was demanding. And I inherited this requirement anyway. In relation to that, my mother was sometimes not easy with me, with my father, with Etienne Daho… She could not have had a career in diplomacy! (smile)
You, could you? Are you more diplomatic?
Yes, I could have… except that I shouldn’t get angry afterwards! I have close friends who have never seen me angry but when I’m angry it can go very, very far! But I’m not like that anymore… Because we tame ourselves. But you shouldn’t look for “Toto”! (laughs)
The song “L’horoscope”, which evokes all the astrological signs, undeniably makes you think of your mother…
I would never have gone with a theme like that but it was Antoine Laurain, an old friend from college, who went with this theme and I found it cool. He writes really well and so he’s a new recruit to the group. I had lost sight of him for 25 years and he became an author translated into 23 languages, Queen Camilla even cited him among her 10 favorite authors, it’s incredible! I love being among friends, with my friends. It’s great to know people who are not in the circuit, in showbiz. And then it’s friends first.
It also makes you unique to work with friends, to be among friends, as was more the case in the 60s and 70s. This is no longer really the way of living today…
Yes, we go on tour with lots of musicians, whereas today, everyone uses machines to limit budgets. You see lots of singers who make big leftist declarations on the airwaves and then you see them at their peak and they don’t pay their musicians! I could do even more – and I don’t know if my musicians would agree 100% with that – but I really try to pay them as much as possible. But there is a form of hypocrisy that I don’t really like either. We are truly in a completely hypocritical era since we can no longer say anything, because with the slightest sentence that goes beyond, we get trashed on the internet by trolls. There is a kind of madness, verbal violence.
We could deduce from this that you would have preferred to live in another era?
Listen, yes. I would have liked to know the period of the 30s, I would have liked to know the 60s too. Even 70, great music, no AIDS, sexual liberation, it’s nice! Not too much overpopulation yet, it was the beginning of pollution but we didn’t really realize it. Today, young people are born into a world that is leaden. And it’s surprising to see that over time, this world of the 70s gradually fades away, fades a little. It’s a world that people no longer know, where we stopped on the sidewalk in cars, where parents limped in the car, where everyone talked to each other. There was a lot more interaction between social strata and types of people. That’s my feeling anyway. It’s more and more difficult to have a somewhat simple life. It’s very expensive.
Has it become a luxury?
It’s a luxury, yes. Time, well-being now is a luxury. To live a little happily, it becomes very expensive. We feel a little black cloud of violence building. In Corsica, I am calmer.
The “to live happily, let’s live hidden” suits you quite well by the way. You have always managed to avoid the front pages of the celebrity press…
I don’t like it at all, I think it’s really ridiculous. For example, I was offered an ad for Le Bon Marché when I was 23 and I refused. Afterwards, I regretted it because I told myself that it would have made me money! (smile). I made it a point of honor not to take advantage of my status as a “pipole” and to be judged with my guitar, and now for my songs, my lyrics, my way of singing, etc. Afterwards, I don’t blame people who do it. Why not, that doesn’t shock me. It’s just that for myself, I wouldn’t have liked it
You could also have found yourself on the front page of this press without looking for it, being a little “hunted”…
Yes, I think it was my parents who already dug a furrow, like that, of not being too “people”, a little apart.
Your faithful guitar, what does it represent in your life? Is she a companion, a best friend?
It’s like a genie’s lamp, you rub it and things come out of it, dreams you never imagined. Afterwards, I also work on it a lot on a technical side. Sometimes I get a little tired of it, but the gypsy guitar, if you don’t touch it, then you really lose your muscles, because it goes very quickly. There’s something “infinite” about the guitar and it’s scary. Because as time passes, we say to ourselves that we will never have done half to a quarter of everything we can do in our lifetime. I like life, I’m still a good living person and as time goes by we regret all the different lives we could have had and that we might have wanted to try…
