Alain Chamfort, author, composer and singer spends this week, with us, in Elodie’s world to look back on the defining moments 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.
In this fourth episode, he returns to the song Laura’s beautiful eyes.
franceinfo: After your collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, there were notable titles like Clara wants the moon (1993) and The enemy in the ice (1993) and I have the impression that there was a wavering period which was not easy at the beginning of the 90s.
Alain Chamfort: It was my debut with Jacques Duvall. Jacques was a boy on the reserve, a boy with whom the time was necessary to create a real bond, a real bond. He really needs to know who he is dealing with. We took time to appreciate and discover each other and we had to go through that to evacuate modesty, to determine this contour line which allowed us to express things that we had not necessarily had the opportunity to express between us.
Me, I am not someone who expresses what he feels. I’m a little restrained.
Alain Chamfortat franceinfo
It was wonderful because he was someone who expressed, not mistrust, but a certain distance in his relationships with others and in particular with me, fortunately there was another character called Marc Moulin . Marc Moulin was my musical partner, my co-director, the boy who was very close to Jacques and he did the same work that Jane (Birkin) had done with Gainsbourg. He led Jacques to discover me and to trust me. This friendship was born over time, it is unfailing. Even if we don’t work together anymore because he doesn’t want to write anymore, it really allowed us to create something unique and all that in the most total trust and friendship. . The more we collaborated together, the more our songs went to the heart of what was needed.
Tailor-made. The enemy in the ice will be rewarded with a Victoire de la Musique for the best music video in 1994, directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino and yet, it will be very complicated with the record companies. You said that the record companies fed on successes, but that indeed, when he was not present on certain albums, that could have a very harsh effect. How did you experience it?
What happened was that the disk crisis set in a little underhanded. We artists didn’t really realize that. We felt that the records were selling a little less, that there was less investment in marketing, etc. We didn’t really know the reasons and little by little, they came to light. Me, I had just signed a contract with EMI with completely legitimate conditions after a certain time and that we had sufficiently proven ourselves, etc. So it was a contract in which they were really committing to investing significant resources so that I could make the three albums that were the subject of this contract. Arrived at the head of world EMI, a Frenchman, Alain Lévy. He gave the order to all of its global branches to carry out redundancy plans and restitution of contracts in which they were committing too many resources. I belonged to his carts.
I had just signed a contract and three months later it was returned to me, in a somewhat brutal way, like when they also released some of their employees. People who had been in their service for years, in 24 hours they were ejected. In these cases, we don’t really make feelings and there is no reason for artists to escape that either. But now, I did not expect it and indeed, it was a bit of a violent period. Especially since everything was collapsing, that is to say that I no longer knew what I was going to do afterwards, since there, I had a project for three albums, over years. So as I’m quite slow to do them, I was starting from scratch, I no longer had a contract, I had nothing left, I had no more means, so it was indeed a moment that had to be spent . But he passed.
At the same time, you knew how to bounce back. In 2004 came out: Laura’s beautiful eyes, Victory for Best Music Video the following year. A revenge, a bubble of oxygen also for you?
It’s quite strange. I expressed in this clip, my situation with regard to what was becoming of this profession and despite everything, they are the ones who vote, it is the managers of the record companies who voted so, it was a bit of a situation of no longer knowing exactly whether I should enjoy this Victory or not. Finally, it was still the way to express what I was becoming in a frontal way like that, and to express it to the public above all, before expressing it to people in the profession. And I think it also allowed people to understand a little better who I was. It is through our actions that we reveal ourselves, through the choices we make. This choice was quite political, quite particular and quite strong.
Alain Chamfort will be in concert on June 2 in Rennes, June 3 in Vannes, July 9 in Mâcon etc…