RFI Musique: Your new album’s serious business – sixteen songs !
Arthur H: Yes, it’s an hour long. I did think about cutting things down at one point, but then I sat back and said to myself, "Well, so much the better. This is going to be a rich album packed with tracks. There’s no point being stingy about things. It’s better to go the whole way and get in as many stories as possible !"
There’s a lot going on on Négresse blanche and there’s definitely a lot of words. I take a great deal of care choosing the words I use and the way I put them together. I try and give as much importance to the words as possible, to draw the most from them and make them vibrate. That’s something I’m concentrating on more and more these days. I have to admit I got a great deal of pleasure out of making this album. This was the first album where I can honestly say I wasn’t stressed in any way. I was just happy to be there at home working with my friends and feeling lucky enough to make music. This time round I really wanted to surpass myself without complaining or placing any kind of restrictions on myself in any way.

The album opens with a song called Marilyn Kaddish. That’s quite a strange association of ideas…
Kaddish is the prayer for the dead, so the song’s a sort of prayer to the spirit of Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn wasn’t a Jew but she could have been, maybe in a past life or something. It’s like me, I’m a Jew in some ways. Basically, I think we’re all a bit Jewish somewhere. I love Hassidic literature. It’s something that really moves me and I read quite a lot of it. I think it naturally fires my imagination because I’ve spent so much time immersed in Jewish culture.
Marilyn Kaddish is also a bit of a pop art take on things, you know, mixing two completely different universes together. I don’t feel awkward about associating a spiritual term with Marilyn’s name either. She was a luminous spirit in her lifetime, someone who had this totally angelic side to her. She irradiated this very pure energy.

Next up in your celebrity portrait gallery is Nancy et Tarzan. Is this song meant to be a reference to Nancy and Ronald Reagan ?
Yep, got it in one! I felt like writing a bit of a light, unpretentious song that would sound fresh and spring-like, like a fairground tune or a children’s ditty or something. And I wanted the lyrics to be funny. The song’s got a bit of an autobiographical side to it, too. It’s about a guy with a big mouth who likes sounding off but when something serious happens he prefers to go away quietly without hurting anyone. That’s what the song’s about too. It’s something that actually happened to me… I’m no great specialist when it comes to social comment. I prefer to write songs that deal with feelings and emotions, so that obviously means I end up talking about my own feelings a lot.

One gets the impression that you’re never totally happy…
It’s called melancholy, but melancholy can be a joyful feeling too, you know! I have to say I’m rarely sad, actually. I tend to be pretty happy most of the time, but when I am happy it’s a bit of a solitary experience. Some days I just feel happy to be here, you know, I can sit down and look at a tree or watch life passing by. At other times I’ll simply get a kick out of having a laugh with my two daughters.

City Of Light, a song about Paris, features Serge Gainsbourg talking over some trippy electro sequences à la Björk - what might be described as another totally audacious Arthur H mix !
The song’s about this guy in a plane dreaming about the woman he loves. There’s a lot of distance in the song. Obviously there’s a distance from the ground because he’s up in the air looking down over the whole city. There’s the air, the sky, the city and then this distance from the woman he’s just left behind. The guy’s dreaming and this woman’s totally there in his head. It’s like his brain becomes this vast airy space, a sort of dream space if you like. It’s an uplifting song I think.

So are you someone who likes escaping from earthly constraints ?
Yes, I need a bit of space every now and then. Personally, I don’t think people should feel condemned to live tight, narrow little lives. We’ve got the right to have wings. We’ve got the right to project our imaginations into vast open spaces and allow ourselves to be absorbed by the universe every now and then.

Musically speaking, the striking thing about City Of Light is this incessant techno beat which just pumps on and on and on...
Oh, that was simple ! I went out and bought myself this crappy old synthesiser. It only cost about £100. I went home and pressed the "techno beat" button and the song came from there. Afterwards, Nicolas came along and added certain tones and arrangements to vary things a bit, but the song was basically born from a simple beat. It’s rare to find these two totally different universes brought together in this way. City of Light is basically a techno beat pumping under a text that could almost be a poem. These two universes never meet really. You never have techno with Léo Ferréstyle songs – and I think it’s a pity not to bring the two togetherin some way !

City of Light, like a few other tracks on your new album, seems deliberately dance-oriented...
Yes, I’d say there’s two or three tracks on the album you could really get up and dance to. I have this dream that people throwing a party at home will get up and put the record on and everyone will start dancing to it. But I can’t say I’m particularly bothered about my records being played on club dancefloors.

There’s a second tribute on your album after Marilyn and that’s a song about Bo Derek...
I don’t know why but I had this vision of an old star sitting alone in her villa abandoned by her lover. I thought that was a very poetic idea...

Serge Gainsbourg once sang "Beau… oui, comme Bowie" and now you’ve come along with "C’est beau, comme Bo Derek" ("beautiful like Bo Derek")...
Well, there’s an obvious Gainsbourg influence there that I’m not going to deny. But I’d say that influence is shared by a lot of people working today. It’s a sort of natural emanation we’ve grown up surrounded by and it’s got to the point where it’s become part of us now. I think it’s fair to say that Gainsbourg pretty much invented a French identity. He came up with this particular "French" sound, this real mix of modernity and poetry. I enjoy exploring the path that was opened by Gainsbourg. That’s very much the road I’ve followed, in fact.

The title track on your new album - Négresse Blanche (White Negress) – revolves around this wonderful kind of Paul Eluard surrealism...
Yes, I think I’m still influenced by surrealism, but it’s become so natural for me these days that I don’t have to think about it any more. It’s something I’ve absorbed into my system. But I’m not surreal for the sake of being surreal, you know. I think I’ve always been a bit surreal by nature – my surrealism’s not an artificial chemical one, it’s 100% organic !

There’s another track on your album called Raïssa. Is this a reference to Mrs Gorbatchov ?
No, you’re wrong on that one. Raïssa is a song I wrote for this Sicilian brass band I play with on a regular basis in Italy. They’re these 40 musicians who do their own musical heritage, playing traditional religious music, but they’re open to modern compositions too. Anyway, the band asked me to write some lyrics for one of their compositions and I ended up going off to perform at the Milan Opera with them and in Florence too. The track actually ended up coming out on the album La Banda Ionica. I have to say I get a huge kick out of playing with them. It’s a totally unique experience ! I love music that makes you travel in your head, that takes you somewhere you’d never expected !

Arthur H Négresse blanche (Polydor) 2003