RFI/Musique: After two studio albums followed by a live album – and now your new album Strange - it's pretty tempting to begin this interview by saying "At last! Aston Villa are getting the recognition they deserve!"
Fred : Well, it's fair to say that we haven't exactly been an overnight success story! And I think one of our greatest merits is to have got this far without throwing in the towel. Somehow we've managed to maintain the group's solidarity along the way too. What's really great is that we broke through with a live album. And that's the most flattering thing that could have happened for us because we really built up our following on the live circuit.
Doc: I think one of the reasons behind the success of the live album is that it's simple and accessible. You hear the songs exactly as they were written, just guitar and vocals and that makes a difference. I think the impression of hearing the actual framework of the album makes people appreciate individual tracks more.

Looking back on things now at all your early struggles and mad switching between labels, do you feel that your new album is some sort of victory at the end of the day?
Fred : Well, obviously the struggles we've been through have helped us evolve and forged our character in some way – and maybe we had to go through that somewhere down the line. I think the way the French system works you have to survive for around seven or eight years to prove you can make the grade in French showbizz. Let's face it, the record industry isn't particularly open to bands who've just arrived on the scene from nowhere. But it hasn't all been torture for us because at the end of the day we're all totally passionate about music.
As to the question whether we can now sit back and say 'We're finally getting the success we deserve!', I don't really know about that. All I can say is this time round we can sit back and enjoy ourselves whereas the release of our previous albums was always a bit traumatic because we didn't know how it was going to go down with people or where we were going… It's different for us now after the "Victoires de la Musique" Awards. We feel our work's been recognised in some way. And we didn't just win any award either, we won the one voted by the public so that makes it all the more special in our eyes!

Do you ever get the feeling that Aston Villa are the new guard of French rock?
Fred : We don't see ourselves as the new guards of anything – and all the more so as the French rock scene is absolutely thriving right now! The only problem is, it doesn't get the media coverage it deserves. I can tell you, we're constantly out there on the road and we know what's going on. There are hundreds of kids out there playing some great stuff on their guitars while record company directors are sprawling round their offices waiting for new talent to come knocking on the door. All I can say is, it's a pity that the same freedom of expression isn't given to all styles of music in France. If you come from a rock background you're really limited to the live scene. You don't really have much access to anything else. Well, all I can say is it might take longer to break through that way but it's better than being the new starlet from a TV show like Star Academy because everyone will have forgotten your face in a year's time!

Invincible is a song inspired by your time on the sun-drenched terraces of Marseilles. Why did you decide to leave Paris and make a new life for yourselves down there?
Fred : Invincible is about sitting back and taking stock of things, putting a bit of distance between where we are now and a pretty shaky period you go through artistically when your work isn't recognised at all. When I moved down to Marseilles two years ago I was really thinking about quitting the music business. I felt like calling a halt to everything and creating an empty space where things could just happen – and, as if by magic, shortly after arriving in Marseilles we came into contact with a label who were completely on our wavelength, a bunch of people who really love music. So that just goes to show sometimes you have to sit back and get a bit of distance on things rather than slaving away at the same old routine.

I notice Jean Fauque wrote the lyrics for one of the songs on your new album, Prière. How did you come to work with him?
Fred : Well, Jean happens to be the favourite songwriter of a singer we've all been huge fans of for years – Bashung! It was great meeting such a genuinely witty, funny and generous person. We did actually take the time to get to know Jean before we worked with him, of course. It's not like you can walk in and say "Ah, Monsieur Fauque, we like your work. Can you please write a song for us?" We had to sit down and discuss things together first, you know, make sure we were on the same wavelength and all that. And I have to say what he came up with is simply wonderful. I can't describe the emotion I feel singing a song like Prière. He based the song on Le Cid, a famous character from French tragedy, but in Jean's song Le Cid really enjoys being in Hell, he's happy, you know, everything's going how he wants it, so it's like leave him alone. Then you've got all these other themes going on in the song like romanticism, tragic love and the power of the state…

After working in close collaboration with Jean Fauque where would you say his talent lies?
Fred : I'd say he's got a gift for getting a message across in a particularly shrewd and subtle way. If you look around at other songwriters working on the French music scene today, there's really no one to match him! The wordplay in his songs is never gratuitous. There's always something behind it – there are always underlying themes and a clever association of ideas. I find what he does completely extraordinary and I have to say his work rids you of a lot of inferiority complexes because the French language has never been very easy or flexible when it comes to setting it to music… But in the hands of a songwriter like Jean Fauque it really comes into its own!
You've played a very active role in Survival International over the past few years. Can you tell us something about that?
Doc : Well, Survival's basically an organisation, which was set up to defend the rights of indigenous peoples around the world. People like the Peuls, for instance, who - unluckily for them – happen to live in a region full of mineral and natural riches which multi-national companies and international governments are just itching to get their hands on. They'll stop at nothing to get what they want, sending armies in to invade the land or wiping out entire tribes. The role of an organisation like Survival is to alert public opinion to what's going on in the world, to open people's eyes to the fact that right now gold prospectors in the Amazon are killing the local Indian population. Survival are trying to put pressure on the Brazilian government by encouraging people to write protest letters and sign petitions. And the organisation's won several victories in the past thirty years – in 1993, for instance, the Yanomamis won the right to keep their land. But the fight's not over yet and it's something we really feel we can help with. We recently performed two fund-raising concerts for Survival and at one of them there were a whole stack of other French artists like M, Dolly and Tryo.

Slow Food, the last song on your new album, is a real ode to French gastronomy. How did a bunch of rockers come up with such a foodie idea?
Doc: Well, with a title like Slow Food you might think we're launching an attack on bad restaurants – but this is actually our way of paying homage to French cuisine and our country's food culture. We were lucky enough to meet one of France's top chefs, Pierre Gagnaire, on a radio programme we did together and after that he got us to sit down one day and read one of his menus. I was blown away. The way he describes the dishes on his menu is pure poetry and we immediately got the urge to set his descriptions to music. So we called up a bunch of our friends - Zazie, Jean-Pierre Coffe, Bashung, Renaud de Lofofora and Les Robins des Bois and got them each to read one of Gagnaire's menus. We thought it was about time someone paid tribute to the world's food champions as well as its football champions!
Pierre Gagnaire: I was absolutely delighted when Aston Villa came to me with their idea! And all the more so as their audience tends to be made up of a younger age group who aren't necessarily interested in cuisine. I get the impression that a lot of the young generation these days think gastronomy is for boring old sods and rich bourgeois people. So I think it's great that Aston Villa are trying to open up a new universe to their fans. Of course, I'm really touched by such a tribute to my work but what most struck me most about the idea was that a rock group would take an interest in something that's not really their world. I must admit I derive great pleasure from hearing musicians reciting the texts I've been writing for the past twenty years now… It's a pleasure to hear the menus set to music. When you listen to them reading out the dishes you can hear real gourmandise in their voices and the way the music builds up underneath fits in totally with my idea of what a meal should be!

Interview: Frédéric Garat

Translation: Julie Street

Aston Villa Strange (Naïve) 2002

Aston Villa online
Survival International

Concert dates: Nov 4th and 5th 2002, La Cigale (Paris)