‘Serge Gainsbourg pretended to be an alcoholic’: Jean-Claude Vannier on making a masterpiece with the louche legend
He has influenced everyone from Beck to De La Soul to Arctic Monkeys. As the great musical ‘disruptor’ unveils his new murder-and-mandolins epic, he looks back on his most famous collaboration
Ask a set designer to create a bohemian Paris apartment and they’ll probably come up with something that looks a lot like Jean-Claude Vannier’s: books everywhere, vintage Bauhaus armchairs, art on every bit of wall space. You would say the living room was dominated by his grand piano, but your eye keeps getting drawn to a plethora of toy pianos that sit on and around it. On closer inspection, there are toy pianos on the shelves too, crammed among the books. “I’ve got more in the other rooms,” shrugs Vannier, speaking through an interpreter, “and I have a house in the country that’s full of them too. I take them to concerts and play a note or two. I find it adds something to a live performance that is filled with virtuosos. I have an open-tuned guitar that I kick, too – it makes a big boom.”
Disrupting an orchestral performance by playing a toy piano or kicking a guitar seems characteristic: Vannier, now in his early 80s, has been a disruptive presence in French pop for 60 years. His latest project is pretty odd: a song cycle performed by a vast mandolin orchestra, accompanied by a story written by Vannier that involves a broken romance, alcoholism, homelessness and murder.
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