at 83, actor and singer Jean-Pierre Kalfon releases his first rock album

We first know him through his acting career. But Jean-Pierre Kalfon has known a thousand lives: cinema of course, but also theatre, dance and music. As early as the 1960s, he recorded songs but never a complete album, something he achieved in 1993 with the group Black Minestrone. Today it is under his name alone that he comes out Mefistofelange (Deviation records). A disc full of sulphurous texts (sex toy), social pamphlets (Get the cash), and twilight atmospheres (black at night, Ghost Train). Digressions on music and words, accompanied by very rock arrangements (Solo return, Lonely, Champion), bluesy (A friendly hand), or rhythm and blues with flashy brass (Gypsies rock ‘n’ roll band). We come across marginalized people, solitary people, but also a certain “Bob” who sings “No direction home”…

There is no age to play and sing rock’n’roll, and Jean-Pierre Kalfon confirmed it to us in a friendly exchange around his inspirations and his future desires, because he does not count s stop there!

Franceinfo culture: despite everything you’ve recorded before, can we say that this is your first real solo album?

Jean-Pierre Kalfon : Yes. Black Minestrone was demos that we had improved in the studio but there was no real direction. Well there too there is no precise direction, it goes a little in all directions, each title tells something different, but that’s really what I wanted.

Why did you wait so long ? The opportunity had not presented itself?

I was not ready. I found that I did not sing very well. I worked a lot, with my friend Paul Ives who composed pieces for me, at home with my models, and I find that it’s starting to look like something.

We never feel you in the nostalgia even if you revisited the title of 1980 Gypsies Rock’n’Roll band

I totally changed everything, the lyrics and the arrangements. It’s a title that I really like, in which I present myself… in short of course. In 3 minutes you can’t tell 80 years (laughs). And I’m not into nostalgia, I’m living now. There have been much funnier things before, there we live in a very difficult period. But we must continue, we are not going to complain. As long as we live there is hope.

There is an almost adolescent energy in the record, we feel that you are living in the present moment

Yes I live now, surrounded by the people of now. And I try to communicate things to people now, not to people before. And to tell through the songs both what I like and what I don’t like.

There are several scratchy texts. Is it important for you to maintain a form of impertinence?

Obviously. Plus I’m in a label called Deviation, and that’s fine with me, because I’ve spent my life zigzagging, doing theatre, TV, rock bands, quitting, starting over, starting again … depending on what happens to me, I react. I’m reactive, that’s my story: trying to be reactive.

This acting career happened a bit by circumstance?

I was more interested in music. But when I brought home trumpet, trombone, guitar, my parents didn’t want me to play music. I ran away from my parents, I lived in Belgium, I did anything, I drank with people who were 10 years older than me… I did stupid things, I got gaulé, I was brought back to France in a center for delinquents. And then afterwards I went to a drawing school, I took someone who gave theater lessons, and then I took modern dance lessons to finish as a boy at the Folies Bergères… a constant zigzag. I then mounted parts. Encounters, one thing leading to another…

You are not tender with many people but also with yourself in Suit.

The first thing one must criticize is first of all oneself. Making fun of yourself is the least you can do. Humor is not making fun of others. I don’t make fun of anyone. It’s very nice to put everything on others, but we ourselves are responsible for a lot of things in relation to our lives.

Do you like to play with words?

I love the language. I did this whole album in French to make it sound French. Many French groups sing in English, we are colonized. I don’t want to be colonized, I want to move forward with my language which I like a lot, which is very rich and which also has striking sounds. French if you work it well, it can also be rhythmic.

The title track is itself a play on words. You dedicated it to Amy Winehouse?

Yes, it was a kind of angel who was taken in hand by a Mephisto, and she died. This girl was a genius, she wrote lyrics, music… I was expecting a long Bob Dylan career from her. She was too sensitive, she got carried away, she lived upside down. Mefistofelange it’s pretty, it sounds good, and it brings together a bit of what we are all about. We all have the bad and the good in us. For me it characterizes the human soul.

We open and close the album on twilight atmospheres but there are bright moments between the two.

For this song black at night I had written other lyrics, because I thought that the current Parisian night was no longer like that of the 70s and 80s. The Palace, the Bains Douches, all that is over. And all of a sudden the war came and that led me to change everything, to completely rewrite the song. But I’m also talking about the beauty of women, about love, about everyone being part of the story (the song Part of the part – Editor’s note). I try to make sure there are all the colors on the palette.

You seem tireless, do you have projects?

I have plenty of songs in advance. I hope this disc will work. I would like to move forward with another album. And then the musicians are great. Since the time I’ve been in music I’ve met a lot of people, and I tried to bring together the crème de la crème on this record, and musicians who are passionate about the same kind of music as me. I was fascinated by Elvis but also by Otis, Sam and Dave, Aretha Franklin… As I don’t rest on my achievements, I look ahead and I have to send wood to continue!

The Scrapbook “Mefistofelange” out this Friday, October 21 (Devation Records).

Jean-Pierre Kalfon will be in concert on December 12 at the Petit Bain (Paris).