In the past you've often said that you don't particularly enjoy working as a singer. Do you still feel that way today?
Yes, I do. These days I feel a lot less like writing material for myself - and I generally feel a lot less like singing too. I'm happy when I'm writing or making music, but the problem is that between the two you have to deal with people from the record company, heads of the marketing department and stuff like that ... What's more, I seem to have a bit of a problem assuming my public persona sometimes. Basically, I have a problem with fame, with people coming up to me in the street and asking for autographs. I don't find it flattering and it certainly doesn't boost my ego in any way. On the contrary, it ends up making me a bit paranoid!

When people come up to you in the street and ask for your autograph, do you ever feel like they've got the wrong person?
I've always been in the habit of going out in the street and going about my daily business. You know, the worst thing you can do if you don't want to be recognised is put on a pair of dark glasses and walk along hugging the wall - people spot you immediately! I just act normal. I go out and walk my dog a lot in my neighbourhood and local people know who I am. But if people start coming up and asking for autographs, I don't react well at all!

Is this why you regularly go to ground and hide yourself away from the limelight?
Back at the start of the 80s there was a period when I was in the public eye all the time. I was putting out an album a year back then and there were non-stop articles in the press. It was at that point that I began to feel unhappy with the way my career was going. I like living a normal lifestyle, you know, behaving like everyone else - because otherwise what can you possibly have in common with people? If you spend your life locked up at home or driving round in limousines going from fashionable restaurants to TV stations, what on earth are you going to write about in your songs? I mean, it's hard enough writing lyrics in the first place!
From a songwriting point of view who would you say you admire most - someone like Gainsbourg for example?
Gainsbourg would be a possible role model. His songs are never mediocre, they're filled with all these really minute details he observed. Trenet's another major role model - he has such an extraordinary way of using the French language and hits just the right note without trying too hard to be modern. What I really can't bear in a lot of modern mainstream music is the blatant opportunism of it all. You know, it's like now everyone's on the Net, so someone will inevitably come along and write a rubbishy song called "Cyber" just to cash in on the phenomenon. I can't bear that kind of thing!... Talking of really great writers, though, you have to look outside the music world as well. The real gods were people like Éluard, Maïakovski, Cocteau and the Surrealists. They really liberated things! You know, if you have this crazy idea buzzing round your head and it just stays in your head, then that's madness; but if you get that idea out there and actually manage to share that craziness with other people, then it's transformed into art. Personally, I really like Surrealist images, images which I've tried to use myself in a song like "Athis" on my new album. There's a line which goes «Il pousse autour de ma fenêtre une maison vide». "An empty house is growing round my window" - it's like you can actually feel this house with a life of its own, getting bigger and bigger outside the window …

And you use such simple words as well...
I don't like it when words fly out and hit you in the face. I guess that's why I've never really got into Rimbaud. I prefer words to be more subtle, not to stand out too much but disappear beneath the images. I find it really irritating reading novels which are written in an overblown 'sculpted' style - I prefer the simple style of Colette or Maurice Sachs.

And yet you yourself seem to make ample use of unusual words and phrases ...
Oh yes I really go for it. I love mixing the modernists with 17th-century stuff and throwing in a few Belgian expressions here and there ... It's hard enough sitting down to write in the first place but if you have to start restricting yourself to what you use in your songs, well…!

Electronic music features heavily on quite a few tracks on your new album. How do you keep up with new music trends?
Well, I rely a lot on my kids for a start. They recommend good new albums to me. And the sound engineers I work with tell me about new releases too. Personally, I'm still listening to Massive Attack. I listen to Marilyn Manson in secret too - I'm not interested in his image or the controversy he stirs up. I listen to his albums to see how they're produced.
Do you think composers find it easier to work with machines than musicians ?
No, not at all. I mean machines are obtuse. They can't think for themselves, you've actually got to stand there and tell them what to do. But I enjoy that. I find it produces the same sensations as when I compose classical music. The sounds end up producing these visual images.
When you hear a bass, guitar or drums the picture you get in your head is a bass, guitar or drums. But when you're working with electronic pulsations you get this depth of sound which produces amazing images - like some sort of dream landscape. Normally you wouldn't be able to get this depth of sound unless you were working in the studio with an orchestra of 100 musicians.

The kind of music you're making now seems to be moving further and further away from the 'norms' of French chanson.
Well, there's less and less French chanson around these days.

But musically speaking, you're definitely moving in another direction now…
In a way I feel very close to someone like Véronique Sanson. But at the same time I know we're in different music categories these days because I'm closer to what's going on on the British music scene now. However, having said that, when I was in the studio with British musicians working on my album Albion, they spent the whole time saying: "wow, that sounds really French!"

But then you'd already started moving away from the "variété" style way back in the early 80s, of course ...
Exactly. I took a two-year break from the music scene at the time because I wasn't doing what I wanted any more. I was spending my whole time doing promotional interviews and TV appearances, you know, going along with the whole star thing - I didn't even have time to sit down at the piano any more. But that's not the way I see my profession. I'm a musician and I want to keep being a musician.
In the end I started doing a lot of concerts and that gave me the courage to try new things and start moving in a different direction. As I'd shown my record company I could still get out there and sell albums, they basically left me alone and let me go off exploring…

Interview: Bertrand Dicale
Translation: Julie Street

William Sheller is on Tour from January 29 and in Paris at the Olympia from February 22 to March 2.