I found in my old jarre files from Internet an old interview from Australia (Adelaide), during a Jarre visit in this part of the world on 1985 to promove Zoolook:
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Interview with Jean Michel Jarre in Adelaide, South Australia July/August 1985, during his promotional visit (for Zoolook) to Australia that year.]
[Have removed all the "err"s even though they are often a part of the lovely French/English accent (!) Have retained what some would consider grammatical errors and rather than constantly writing (sic), I have put editorial "corrections" in square brackets. Have also tried to convey emphasis he gives on certain words by retaining pauses and using *asterisks* either side, of a word as per some of the e-mail norms]
[This interview was put together as a special feature by one of Adelaide's FM stations and was interspersed with tracks from all the (commercial) Jarre albums to that date. I have indicated in round brackets, between paragraphs, where this took place. Often, the subject material could change after each track. It may seem that there was more music than commentary but don't forget it's always much quicker to read something than it is to say it! (usually anyway). Interviewer hereafter is BW. No intro - cuts straight into JMJ speaking. Very few questions from BW which is no bad thing - most of our pop radio personalities either have no idea or are arrogant so and so's
]
JMJ: Even the word of "Electronic Music" somehow for me sounds like a ghetto... like a label you have to put everywhere these days. I think, it's not the music what [that] is electronic, it's the instruments you are using. If the music could become electronic, I mean that could be a danger, but I think there is no danger about that because I think music is made of, I would say sort of ... *constant* feelings or emotions of mankind. I think the Chinese or Japanese musicians 2,000 years ago, or a musician today, or in one or two centuries from now, have expressed, is expressing or will express more or less the same feelings, whatever it is, behind a flute, behind a synthesiser or behind a violin. (Oxygene IV)
The sound of a violin is much better than the sound of a synthesiser *imitating* a violin. What is very interesting for me in a synthesiser is the fact that rather than copying or imitating acoustic instruments, you can *evoke* an acoustic instrument or *any* sort of sound. What I like with a synthesiser is it's sort of ... *impressionist* attitude a musician can have with it. And for me, I never felt to copy or imitate any instruments with the synthesiser. If I want the sound of a violin, I will *use* a real violin - Nothing replaces nothing I think, you see, you'll have forever a piano, a violin, guitar, 'cello, trumpet, but a synthesiser is something actually be your own craftsman - you can invent your own sounds.
(Magnetic Fields II)
BW: Have you had the opportunity to perhaps pick up any feelings or any direct information or do any of your recordings and things that might pop up in future work as a result of your trip here?
JMJ: Oh yes I think so, you see, I think it was the American writer Hemmingway what [who!] used to say: "To know a country you need ten minutes or ten generations" and I think it's very true because, you see, to really *know* a country, you need to be almost born and part of the country, really to *feel* everything. But to get an overall feeling of people, of a town, sometimes just the *instant* feeling is quite valuable. I think there is [are] so many things happening in your country at the moment in terms of movies, in terms of music video, in terms of synthesisers also with Fairlight - I met the people of Fairlight. Fairlight is, as you probably know, an Australian company based in Sydney [now dramatically changed since then. MPA] and having invented probably the most advanced synthesiser so far.
BW: And now working on the video.
JMJ: And now working on the video! with the CVI, the Computer Video Instrument, what [which] is a video synthesiser. And you see, it's not just by pure chance if [that] these intruments are coming from Australia. I think Australia and Japan are the two countries from which will appear in the next few years the most significant things on an artistic level as well as a technological level.
[nice of him to say but I'm wondering if that's happened? Sorry, to continue...] (Orient Express)
Actually, after Adelaide I go to Ayer's Rock to try to meet the Aborigines, because I have on my current LP "Zoolook", I used quite a lot of Aboriginal music ... I mean not music but *language* and I have one project with the BBC in England to try to make a film, I mean as an actor and a musician, to try to confront the old instruments with new technology like the Fairlight, and to play maybe with the Aborigines, some music ... *in their place* not in *our* place. And also Ayer's Rock for me is one of the centres of the world, one of the most interesting places in the world. And maybe to think of doing an outdoor concert there would be great, so I'm also going there with this idea. [pity that hasn't happened!]
(Zoolook)
BW: What rate of production do you like to maintain? Do you set yourself schedules and fairly rigid disciplines of production or, is it a case of when you feel the urge to write and produce, that's when you do it?
JMJ: It's exactly that, I mean what you just said now. I would dream ... I dreamed all my life to be very regular, to get up very early in the morning and try to work every day but actually I never ... it never happened! I'm really working by crisis, stopping doing three months and then doing the following three months working day and night. And I don't know why ... I think it's based on the fact that if I'm starting something, I want to hear the final result at once so I have the tendancy to go on and on and on and on and on.
[slight change in background ambience and sudden change of subject material suggests there was an edit here]
I would like very much to work with people like Stewart Copeland, for instance, I like very much his style. And he's also linked with ... I mean I like the way he is playing; he reminds of what a Chinese told me one day when I was in China, he told me "You know in music, the most important thing is silence" and I asked him what he means by that, and he told me "It's the silence between each note." And it is very true that. And Stewart Copeland for me is one of the seldom [few] drummers who has totally digested that - he has a lot of *space* in his music. And it's what I'm more and more interested in, in music, is to try to create space, not with layers and layers of sounds but with a minimum of sounds ... I mean when you get a real *musical* idea, you don't need so much, actually. If you need a lot of effects, that means in way that your musical idea in the beginning is not strong enough.
(Equinoxe IV)
I'm not particularly crazy about technology, I think technology is just a help, like the technology of the 17th Century doing acoustic instruments where it was based actually on *mechanics* and the result of it was the piano, violin, the organ. And at the beginning when the organ first came, a lot of people said "This instrument is the instrument of the Devil", it was then even prohibited in churches at the real beginning, saying "With these *big* pipes!" and "It's *too* noisy!" and "You can't express emotions because you have no touch sensitivity" and you have "pre-programmed things" [love the synth terminolgy creeping in here! This is all true BTW - this organist knows
] and then it became *the* instrument of the church, the voice of God, so you have to take care in judgement with technology.
(Ethnicolour I - 2nd section)
JMJ: I would say that the very interesting point about classical music is that there is this *timeless* flavour we were just talking about. But sometimes, you would like, if you're used to modern sounds, more dynamic ... more *power* sometimes. What I'm interested in is to use sometimes the qualities of both - I mean this timeless quality of classical music but with the power of modern sounds.
BW: Just talking about your studio for a moment, I'm curious to know how it's set up just in a physical sense, so you can be producer and musician at the same time.
JMJ: Yes, I used to work on [in] a main room where the mixing desk was in the middle and all the instruments around and I realised that it was a bit difficult because you must, for mixing, you must have a very precise sound and if the room is too big, you're starting to have problems. So, since a year and a half I changed the studio in two pieces, sort of "dining room" plus "living room" ... or dining room and kitchen, and in the kitchen, I have put the speakers, mixing boards and tape recorders and everything to record the music, and in the dining room I put all the goodies: Instruments and ... I mean musical instruments mainly, and I have a sort of Autolocater from the studio.
BW: So you're not having to run between one and the other.
JMJ: That's right, so that I can, if I have an idea at 2 in the morning, I can, without an engineer, record myself, what I want to play at that time.
(Equinoxe III) [and another sudden subject change]
Creating the sound of breaking glass, for instance, maybe *evoking* the sound of broken glass, makes you *feel* much more. Like ... somebody like... Coppola was saying after Apocalypse Now, to the critics saying: "but Vietnam was not like that". He said: "But I don't care because *my* Vietnam is like that! What was important in my film, in my movie, was to *evoke* Vietnam and to evoke the pain and also the shock of people in Vietnam - received and felt by people in experiments that time". It's exactly the same for me, in music. Now I am more and more involved by evocating rain or evocating sounds rather than copying them or taking the real sounds from that.
(Equinoxe V)
When you have finished something, it is still very fresh in your mind, and some people are saying "Okay, what is your next project?" And you are a bit shocked because you are still so much full of the sounds and the feelings of what you have just achieved. That would be like visiting a woman who just gave birth to a child and saying "Oh he's nice but what about the next one?" (laughter) You see it's more or less the same sort of thing.
BW: Do you find yourself often replaying your old albums, two or three albums ago, or do you lock them away, banish them from your mind and just ...?
JMJ: No it's very difficult for me to listen to my work again. I would dream to be able to listen to one of my records for the first time, but for obvious reasons, it's impossible.
(Equinoxe I)
A series of outdoor concerts I really would like to put together for '86 starting hopefully in America. And because these outdoor concerts are free, I need to find some sponsors so it be depending on them mainly. So it will use ... I will use for that a lot of different *visual* instruments, I mean I will use projections, big projections on buildings, video screens, video synthesisers, to try really to *visualise* the music because these days I think, because of the fact that the instruments, the *audio* instruments have changed so much, the audience needs a visual relation with that. And no more necessarily, only a band on a stage playing the music in front of an audience, because it works for some instruments and for some contexts, like jazz or pure rock 'n' roll, and it will last *forever*, that's the style. But it's a different story if you want, for instance, to work really with a different technology and put this technology on stage.
(Zoolookologie - maxi version)
From: Wendy Boyce and Matthew Atherton <
gooby@a011.aone.net.au>
I think not made by beer, it was made by to much "Red Bull" 
See that smiley ? 
