Alain Chamfort, author, composer and singer spends this week, with us, in Le monde d’Elodie to look back on the highlights of his career through five of his essential songs. Since his beginnings in the 1960s with Jacques Dutronc, Alain Chamfort has been part of the French musical landscape. He crosses the modes with consistency and is considered a pop icon with melancholic touches. More than five decades that his words, his voice, his writing, his compositions accompany us.
Recently, 17 of his greatest titles have been rearranged by Nobuyuki Nakajima, with 51 musicians from the Orchester national de Montpellier-Occitanie and brought together in an album Symphonic dandy.
For this second episode, the song Manurevafruit of his friendship with Serge Gainsbourg.
franceinfo: You are going to start with a big success alongside Claude François, but you are going to decide to stop everything, which is still a big bet on the future. Believing in yourself, in your projects, you will bounce back in 1976 by signing, solo with a record company, a contract which offers you total freedom in your artistic choices. Is this a real recognition for you?
Alain Chamfort: It was crazy because I was not at all in the position to be able to hope, to be able to impose such a thing. I have beliefs in me. I am someone who can be influenced, listens and who can not take things in a very serious and very serious way and at the same time, when it touches something deep in my artistic expression, I can be intransigent. That is to say that I was facing an important record company president, a gentleman who already had a lot of experience, who was close to retirement and I said to myself, deep down, I can’t let me do it.
When he offered me a first contract, I was really very intransigent on the fact that I absolutely did not want him to impose on me any artistic director, any employee of his major. He felt, certainly, that I had a great determination, he said to me: “Ok, I grant you that right.“. And for me, it was an incredible right, very rare.
“I wanted to have the freedom to go where I wanted to go.”
Alain Chamfortat franceinfo
And that will give the album: Marriage on trial. It’s a radical change in style. Was it obvious to you that you had to hit very hard to show that you were totally different, that you also aspired to something else?
At that moment, I knew what I no longer wanted to do. To be honest, I didn’t know exactly where to go so it was a transition album. The one that was more decisive is the second album: rock’n’rose. It was a nice turn because we were already less in a formatted song. Obviously, I had distanced myself a little from Claude François’ processes and then from his control because he had to accept that I go into the studio with the songs that I showed him. But you know, it still takes a little time to find yourself, to mature a little bit, to make your choices and to be able to assume them.
You fell in love with the quality of the musicians doing the backing vocals with Véronique Sanson for the album: Hollywood and suddenly, you had this idea of going to Los Angeles to find quality musicians. These are the musicians who later formed the band Toto, who accompanied you on Rock’n Rose. And above all, you decided to call on Serge Gainsbourg, who immediately accepted.
And he agreed for several reasons. The first is that I came back with the playbacks. The instrumental bases were recorded with the musicians and when he heard the rhythms, it was no longer a French variety sound, but with a more intense musicality. On the other hand, there was Jane Birkin who liked me. We had met several times, we had had time to talk and I think she had some information about me, which she was able to pass on to Serge so that he really decided to accept that we collaborate whole. It was a set of things.
You actually got out rock ‘n rose (1977) and then Poses (1979) which will allow you to experience incredible success. I think of the song Manurevanumber 2 in France in 1980. Basically, this song was to be called: Farewell Californiabut you disagreed with Serge Gainsbourg’s first version.
I think that the success of ‘Manureva’ rests as much on the music as on the text.
Alain Chamfortat franceinfo
I did it a little backwards because who cares about talking about Marilyn Monroe, Coca-Cola or American imagery? And one day, he was lucky enough to meet boat skippers who mentioned the name: “Manureva”, Alain Colas’ boat. As Serge was sensitive to words and he wasn’t very sure of himself, because you shouldn’t believe, but he was aware of the quality of what he had written on Farewell California, he wrote this little tribute. He called me the next day to whisper on the phone the first few lines.
What does this song represent for you?
It has become a bit of a “reference”. I really came out of the Claude school, really, and I offered something musical, current and it was a renewal. It was a little bit the beginning of French pop and I am one of those people who participated in the birth of this new culture. It was obviously inspired by what we heard via the Anglo-Saxon and American world, but despite everything, with the french touchwith our own way of doing things.