(Paris) A double anniversary can be celebrated: Étienne Daho is available in reissues and new releases, the year of the 40th anniversary of his first album and the 10th anniversary of the tour of the Sentenced to death, with Jeanne Moreau.
The opportunity to come back with him for AFP on his past, present and future projects.
“Jeanne Moreau, the researcher”
The celebrations begin on Friday with a reissue of the Sentenced to death (original album enriched with two lives unpublished, in various CD, DVD and Blu-Ray formats).
On stage, in the midst of his own tracks, Daho sang On my neck …, set to music of a passage from a long poem by Jean Genet, The doomed man. One evening Jeanne Moreau comes to congratulate him in the boxes. “She is the greatest French actress, it is The Notte by Antonioni (reference film by The notte, the notte, title of 2e Daho album). Jeanne Moreau is the head researcher, always at the forefront to impose new directors, initiate projects with courage, ”rewinds the singer.
In the post-concert euphoria, he suggests that she take up the entire text as a duet, sprinkled with erotic-gay flashes. She accepts. He sings, she recites.
Against all expectations, it was a public success that took them to the Cour d’honneur of the Palais des papes at the Avignon festival. The actress, who puts her head between Daho’s shoulder blades and delicately embraces him, at the Nuits de Fourvière festival, remains the iconic image of this tour.
“Toxicity, light and sexy”
It’s all spitting Daho: a song to dance to while spinning the metaphor between pandemic and toxic sentimental relationship (from experience, of course). It is Virus X, new single which feeds a mini-album of remixed versions (CD and limited edition colored vinyl, November 19).
It all started with an invitation from the Italoconnection duo to sing on their record. And today we arrive at this track which balances between “toxicity, light and sexy” as depicted by Daho.
Among the proposed remixes, there are those of Sage (also collaborator of Clara Luciani), of the DJ Chloé and of Unloved, Californian group brooded by Daho, with “ten crazy minutes which will give rise to a mini-film”. Attention, the version of St Vincent is not signed by the American artist of the same name, it is a pseudo of Daho, in homage “to the cathedral of Saint-Malo and to Jade Vincent (half of Unloved)” .
For the next move, Daho is currently composing a new album that he hopes to “release in 2022”.
“Chosen family”
On December 3rd, there will be a double event. The French Academy will award him the Great Medal of French Song. A hell of a revenge when he remembers this spawn of the Avignon festival who, just before he came on stage for The doomed man, launches to him treacherously that “the spectators here can be very hostile”. To make him feel that he came from pop music and was a stranger to this world of so-called classical culture… “I did not see him afterwards”, snaps Daho, clenching his fist.
The same day will also be released He won’t say (CD and limited edition color vinyl), a mini-album of remixed versions of tracks from his debut album Mythomaniac, published 40 years ago.
This first opus is a “chosen family” affair, like the Daho brush. It was to the duo Elli and Jacno that he first announced in his apartment in Rennes that he was making music. “And it was to Elli (Medeiros) that I played the first model – the album was intended for him, but I had not told him (laughs)”. We also find among the musicians of the adventure Frank Darcel, of Marquis de Sade, legendary group from Rennes. “All of the people I loved, relatives or in the process of becoming,” summarizes Daho. For the record, the red jacket he wears on the clutch was Elli’s, which she had given him. “I didn’t leave it, I slept with it for years (laughs)”.