๐ธ Dear all , for the last week of the year, I'd like to share with you an interview, with the best French radio presenter (this is quite subjective of me I must admit ๐ ), mister ๐ญ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐́๐๐๐ ! On the March 28, 2003, ๐ท๐๐๐๐๐๐ made an acoustic concert broadcasted on RTL 2, hosted by the band's dear friend, Francis Zรฉgut, on his program ๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ก๐๐ก๐๐๐. It was the first time Zรฉgut interviewed the band.
On that very day, ๐ท๐๐๐๐๐๐ played a special set where they first interpreted ๐โ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ก๐ข๐๐ and ๐๐๐๐ ๐ก๐๐๐๐๐ in acoustic version. On the interview, ๐ฉ๐๐๐๐, ๐บ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐บ๐๐๐๐ explained the recording process of ๐บ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐พ๐๐๐ ๐ฎ๐๐๐๐๐, the way ๐ฝ๐๐ ๐ด๐๐ฆ๐ ๐ did approach the songs and how the band and him managed to create a symbiosis so that the songs reached a new dimension. Why and how they've chosen this specific title for the album. And you can enjoy ๐บ๐๐๐๐๐ speaking French as well ! :D
๐ด๐ ๐๐๐ก๐๐๐ฃ๐๐๐ค ๐๐๐๐๐ข๐๐๐ ๐ค๐๐กโ โ๐ข๐๐๐ข๐, ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ข๐ ๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐ข๐ก ๐๐๐๐ฃ๐ ๐๐๐ ๐คโ๐๐๐ ๐ฆ๐๐ข ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐กโ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ก๐ฆ ๐๐๐ก๐ค๐๐๐ ๐น๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐́๐๐ข๐ก ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐. ๐ฟ๐๐๐ ๐๐ก ๐กโ๐๐ ๐๐๐ฆ๐๐ข๐ ๐๐๐๐ก๐ข๐๐ ! :D ๐ธ
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| Photo credit: RTL2 |
๐ฌ Brian : It's great, Led Zeppelin and Radiohead together.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Yeah, it was mixed and produced by the producers here.
๐ฌBrian : You could do a bootleg with it.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: You think so?
๐ฌBrian: Why not! It was all the rage last year.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Bootlegs?
๐ฌBrian: Yeah. Take two songs and put them together.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Yeah, make versus a little bit... First question before talking about the album, do you have a lot of bootlegs of your own?
๐ฌBrian: Yeah. There's a lot of bootlegs that you can buy in markets, things like that, in second hand shops. There's nothing you can do about it. But when you see them, you take them to listen to the quality.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Yeah.
๐ฌBrian : But we don't pay them.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Okay. Thanks for being here Stefan. Push the red button.
๐ฌStefan: Hi. Good evening.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Hi Stefan, and then Steve too.
๐ฌBrian: He always pushes the off button.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: We are together for an hour. You've brought a couple of records with you, one of which we played not too long ago and which was your opening act in England. We're mainly here to talk about Sleeping With Ghosts, which is the new Placebo album. You were in France not too long ago but you'll be back, and we'll talk about that a little later. Off air, this afternoon and after searching the net, because we're always digging around a bit before welcoming people to find out a bit more. This sentence, "Sleeping With Ghosts", caught my attention. So I thought maybe if I typed it into a search engine, it would take me somewhere. In fact I wasn't too far from where it eventually led me. You did a heist on that phrase there.
๐ฌBrian: Yeah, it was a line from a war photography book by an Englishman called Donald McCollin, and I saw it at someone's house.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: In the library of a friend.
๐ฌBrian: In his library. And the sentence stayed with me for years and years and years and I thought maybe one of these four, it's so beautiful that I might steal it.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Okay, so you stole it. Not only the title but you made a song.
๐ฌBrian: We wrote the song first but we didn't know the album was going to be called Sleeping with ghosts. We're always looking for a title that's not the title of a song because it puts a bit of pressure on not just one song but twelve, on the whole album. We couldn't find anything that was as good as Sleeping with ghosts so we stuck with it. But still, the song came first.
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| Photo credit: Jean Baptiqte Mondino |
๐ฌBrian: I thought it was a title that worked for war photography but the title was so deep that it could be applied to almost anything. It was quite ambiguous but something very moving, that's why it stuck with me.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Ok. Let's play The bitter end which is the first single from the album (...)
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Wow, as they say, it kicks ass and with the sound treatment, it does it well anyway. There are a lot of fans who have known you for a long, long time and then there are those who are listening tonight and who have been discovering Placebo for a while with the new single, but are discovering the band. So why do you speak French so well in the first place Brian?
๐ฌBrian: My grandfather was French, the name Molko is French too, but me and Stefan grew up in Luxembourg. You learned German and I grew up with French, with French TV of course and comics and all that.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Alright, literature, comics and so on. The second question to find out a little bit more about you, I'm addressing both Stefan and Steve, at what point do you feel you become a musician and are born to do this in the end?
๐ฌBrian: It was when he was 11 years old, his brother wouldn't lend him his guitar.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Ok. But at no point did he think he was going to do another job? Carpenter, mechanic, etc?
๐ฌSteve : No.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Ok so he's a born musician right.
๐ฌBrian : He must have done a lot of jobs.
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| Photo credit: James Sharrock |
๐ฌStefan: When I was 12, I wrote a song, I took it with me to school and played it to my friends and they said it was a really good song so that's how I found I could write songs.
๐ฌBrian: That was when you were 2 years old?
๐ฌStefan : 12 years old.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Ok, and did you know you were going to play in a rock band or did you start with classical studies, piano, things like that?
๐ฌStefan: No, I started with drums and then with bass and then it was the keyboard. I didn't know, I just wanted to make music.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Ok, just to make music. It's noticeable in the band anyway, you're all multi-instrumentalists in the end, that everyone can move from one instrument to another.
๐ฌBrian: It's always been like that, we've always tried to make the sound of five people with three. But we never limited ourselves to one specific role because we thought it was quite boring and because we started out that way, quite arrogant so we thought why limit ourselves to one instrument. I want to play this, this, this. And we've continued to have this philosophy on all the albums we've done. We now have five people on stage but it's still the creative triangle in the studio that we respect and it gives us a lot of freedom because we haven't defined a specific role, we can play what we want to play. It gives us a big sense of freedom, we can experiment with whatever we want.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Do you learn to play music in a self-taught way, that is to say you sit in front of a keyboard, a guitar and try things out or do you take lessons?
๐ฌBrian: Me and Steve. I learned the guitar and I'm still learning to play the piano. Steve, he's learnt the drums. We have a pretty instinctive approach. Stefan has learned music in several schools. He has a more technical approach and there is a balance I think with that.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: We're going to listen to Sleeping With Ghosts which is one of my favourite tracks on the album. If you have any questions for Placebo (...)
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Was it the first time you heard it on the radio Brian?
๐ฌBrian : Yeah, I'm surprised.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Are you surprised at yourself?
๐ฌBrian: Yes, I'm a little bit shocked. It was very very beautiful.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: By the composition ? The production?
๐ฌBrian: The production, yes. It comes out really well.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: After the break, we'll talk about The Bitter End, where it came about, how it came about. And then we'll talk about your first choice.
๐ฌBrian : Ok. (...)
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| Photo credit: James Sharrock |
๐ฌBrian: For me, I found my first real home. I bought it. I came back down to earth in a very domestic way, I became the guy who needed to buy furniture, dishes and cutlery, stuff like that so it was...
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: And where is this house?
๐ฌBrian: In London. It's a flat. I found my first... "my Home".
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: When you walk in, you think: "this is where I'm going to put my bags".
๐ฌBrian : Yeah, so I dealt with that.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Okay. Steve, what did you do on that break?
๐ฌBrian: He got together with his family, spent time with his little girl, told her stories from the tour.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Ok. People don't speak the same language as us, etc. What about Stefan?
๐ฌStefan: The same for me. Seeing family and friends again. Moving around Spain a bit and writing some music, things like that. Sleep a lot.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Yeah, it's good because on tour you don't sleep much.
๐ฌBrian : No not much. Between the airports and the tour buses... Everything is moving while you're sleeping.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: You've done a lot of things besides that, you've done a bit of mixing in clubs as well.
๐ฌBrian : Yeah I've played the DJ...
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: A collaboration with Trash Palace too.
๐ฌBrian: Yeah. I did two songs for the Trash Palace album. But that wasn't really working. It was just stuffs I did with some friends. It took me an hour to do it. I wouldn't have done it if it was work. It was fun.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Would you allow yourselves to do solo projects, like releasing a Brian Molko album, a Steve album, a Stefan album?
๐ฌBrian: No, we feel really strong together as a strong entity, as a rock entity. But we don't mind, we don't have a problem when one of us goes to work with a mate because we have a lot of trust in each other. So it's not really a problem.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: A real unity between the three of us. Even if there is indeed an extra musician, a bass player who was there this afternoon, but this is really the unity. Let's talk about The Bitter End which is the first single. How was it born? Where was it born? Was it born on the edge of a table? How was it born?
๐ฌBrian: The Bitter End was written and recorded in two days at the very end of the Sleeping with ghosts session, at the end of the mix. We spent a lot of time on it, we were very precious with the mix and all that. We were using a lot of technology. We really wanted to do something very rootsy, something a bit punk, so we were jamming in the studio, while mixing. And then The Bitter End came about in a very spontaneous way.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Okay. It was born again as a three-piece.
๐ฌBrian : Three of us, yes.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Okay. And Sleeping With Ghosts, is that another writing?
๐ฌBrian: Yeah, at least, there were three different versions of Sleeping With Ghosts. We started with a little bit more of a Dj Shadow version, a little bit more hip hop and then we did a more acoustic version and then Jim did something completely... He tore it up, like he did with a lot of our stuff on this album, and he put it back in a very, very surprising way for us. We rolled with it, we did that on several tracks on this album. He kept surprising us with ideas that we never thought of. That's what we were excited about during the session.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: You came up with ideas during the recording and then during the production and recording, something else happened, your songs exploded with the producer.
๐ฌBrian: Yeah, there were even songs that on the album were waltzes, that completely changed, that are not anymore. Yeah, they used to be 3/4 songs, now they're 4/4, 5/4 songs. It's funny.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Will these songs or demos that were practically done be bonus singles?
๐ฌBrian: Yeah, we like to do that, we like to do covers, different versions of all our songs. Because we think if you can do that with a song, then it's a really good song. You can play it any way you want like With or without you by U2. You can go into a hotel, and a musician plays it on the piano. The search for a song like that is also very important because it's a universal song a little bit. That's why we do acoustic versions, not really with an acoustic guitar but rather a cabaret version. Sometimes we imagine ourselves in a movie.
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| Photo credit: James Sharrock |
๐ฌBrian : Exactly.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: So your choice... Everyone brought a CD, so there will be Stefan's and Steve's choice a little bit later. Tu as choisi Janis Joplin.
๐ฌBrian: Of course. One of my heroines, a huge influence, the music of my childhood. Yeah, she's a super strong character that inspires me, who broke a lot of taboos and was stronger than a guy, in a 60's guy world.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Yeah, she was the first great female rock singer, with a voice.
๐ฌBrian : A beautiful voice yeah.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: A fatal fate but it still made a lot of things happen.
๐ฌBrian: But I've always been attracted to people like Billie Holiday or Janis Joplin or PJ Harvey or even Bjรถrk who have completely unique voices and I don't think there's anyone who... There are people who try to sound like her...
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Yeah, no it won't happen. She had a gift, it fell on her and it's hard to reproduce. (...)
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: It was Janice Joplin, a musical figure... Placebo, Sleeping With Ghosts, it's the new album. This afternoon Steve, Stefan and you, Brian, came to record an acoustic session. So you played three songs: This Picture, Plasticine and Special K. Two of them are on the new album. How did This picture and Plasticine come about?
๐ฌBrian: This Picture started out in a form quite similar to what you're going to hear. We wrote it on tour and it was a very REM song, an atmospheric piano thing, quite abstract. Then in the studio, we covered it in a punk way but the original version was...
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: It was close to this one.
๐ฌBrian: That's it. Plasticine, Stef came into the studio with the music as it is on the album, almost exactly as it is and then we did a little bit of a cabaret version for you today.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Everyone in the band brought their idea, their music, their text eventually... Steve was the same?
๐ฌBrian : Steve started writing songs on guitar.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: So far it's got a sound we know but there's a little bit of electro in it. Can we say that Placebo's sound is heading towards something like Gorillaz for example? Blur?
๐ฌBrian: I think we'll always have to be an organic rock band in some way or another.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: But with the sound, ideas and technology of nowadays.
๐ฌBrian: Yeah I think that's important, you can't be an artistic ostrich and stick your head in the sand and say that technology doesn't exist. And to make a modern sound, you have to use the tools of today. But when we go on stage, we are interested in making rock music.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Yes, we can feel it when you are on stage.
๐ฌBrian : But we listen to a lot of hip hop and a lot of electro but I don't think in the future we're going to be Kraftwerk or anything like that because we're quite obsessed with keeping it very human.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: Bass, guitar and drums for a start.
๐ฌBrian: Initially yeah. But it's not completely super necessary on every song but it's what we do best too. You can't turn your back on who you are.
๐ญ๐ฒ́๐ด๐๐: It's true that Placebo is great on stage. We're going to listen to your afternoon's set, This Picture, Plasticine and Special K. Thanks a lot for this, because there is the sound, the interpretation in one take, very professional. And your voice too. You were talking about Janis Joplin but you also have a gift that fell to you.
๐ฌBrian: Thank you.
⭐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐
๐ฅ https://bit.ly/3pXVnIU ✨
⭐๐ณ๐๐'๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ป๐๐๐ ๐ท๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐น๐ป๐ณ2
๐ข https://bit.ly/3ynEqLL ๐ต๐
Post by Laetitia
Translation and transcription by Laetitia
