WHERE EXACTLY does someone like Jean Michel Jarre fit into the whole then-and-now debate about electronic music? The 62-year-old composer and musician dirtied his bib with the critics by becoming immensely popular (12 million copies sold, and counting) on the back of his 1976 album, Oxygene, and having the nerve to follow this up in 1978 with another multi-million seller, Equinoxe.
Added to such record sales was the first of what might be reasonably called his epic outdoor performances – his 1979 performance in Paris at the Place de la Concorde, where over one million people swayed in unison to his flowery swirls of music.
Becoming immensely popular at a time when playing to 50 people in a dive bar was the epitome of punk rock success initially tainted Jarre, marking him out as an outmoded European acolyte of Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream.
Cultural shifts and cycles being what they are, however, we now have Jarre being held up as a pioneer of electronic and ambient music, and viewed by some of the brightest, most critically revered electronica acts of the day as something of a movement figurehead.
Born in Lyon, France, in 1948, Jarre’s background as an artist, he says, assisted his passage into music. “I have always thought of electronic music being very close to painting or cooking. By that I mean mixing textures and ingredients in a rather organic and sensual way. This is something that has always been part of my work in music.” His student days also brought him into contact with the works of Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, and it was his love of opera, coupled with his experiences at the Conservatoire de Paris (where he studied harmony, counterpoint and fugue) and the guiding hand of the so-called father of musique concrète, Pierre Schaeffer, that his gradual blend of music and theatre began to form.
“I more or less decided from the start that I wanted to create a bridge between pop music and experimental music, by bringing notes and sound together. It was my aim, my obsession, to meld the classical structure with pop and rock. I also considered music to be very much like architecture. In other words, I try to create shapes and lines and designs that could fit the structure of the music. Also, I loved to go to concerts, and lots of times I considered them to be quite linear, from start to finish, whatever the quality of the music or how the performer is. So from that I wanted to inject a kind of dynamic, of the performance having some kind of momentum.”
While Jarre seems more aligned, musically and commercially, to Vangelis than to Kraftwerk, there is no denying that his melody lines are smoothly insistent.
“Melody is quite essential,” he says, adding, “I was shocked at one point to hear someone say that everything possessing emotion in music was suspect. To me that is not true, because emotion is very important – as is intimacy.” Did he say intimacy? The man for whom the epic, elaborate gesture seems to be the norm? It’s all down, Jarre claims, to a “matter of atmosphere” than physical size.
“When I started to add visuals to my concerts and music performances, I played outdoor because I couldn’t find the right indoor venues, and then it became more and more popular. And then I was asked to play places where I could integrate land art, such as the Pyramids, and important events such as celebrating the 150th anniversary of Houston. Sometimes I don’t choose these places at all, but am chosen by various people to play there.” And yet it would seem that Jarre’s concept of bigger is better can often undermine his music, which isn’t always as dull as it is portrayed. Why not perform more often in smaller venues, where the dynamic is surely more pronounced? “They are not that different, to be honest,” he says of the size between indoor venues and outdoor spaces, but frankly it’s difficult to believe him.
“Being on stage at any venue is like a love affair, in a sense, between two entities –the audience and the stage, and what is taking place on stage. That chemistry is important, and doesn’t necessarily depend on the location, or the amount of people. Sometimes you can feel at ease in front of 100,000 people and sometimes feel embarrassed in front of 200 people.”
The Frenchman has said the word “affair” and so it behoves me to remind him that he has been involved in relationships with at least three actresses (Charlotte Rampling, Isabelle Adjani and Anne Parillaud, whom he married in 2005). What gives, Jean Michel? “I think an audiovisual mixture is always quite a positive thing, yes?”
Jean-Michel Jarre plays Dublin’s O2 tonight
