Immortalised in their original version by Sinatra then covered by hundreds of jazz singers and music-hall stars, the songs on Studio cover the full musical spectrum, running from big band classics to intimate jazz club numbers. Clerc has assembled an impressive cast on his new album, bringing together the talent of Biréli Lagrène, Florin Niculescu, Manu Dibango, Toots Thielemans and Philip Catherine (as well as Carla Bruni and Véronique Sanson on backing vocals). Decades after their memorable collaborations in the 70s, Clerc also hooks up with his old arranger and band leader Jean-Claude Petit for some original reworkings of Sinatra classics adapted into French by Maxime Le Forestier, David McNeil, Alain Souchon, Jean-Loup Dabadie, Carla Bruni and Benjamin Biolay.

RFI Musique : Do you think the decision to record an entire album of Sinatra songs might leave some of your fans feeling a bit disoriented ?
Julien Clerc : On every album I've ever made I've tried to bring something new, either in terms of songwriters, arrangements or by branching out in a new direction... But I have to admit this time round I may have been a bit more radical! It's funny, English and American music fans grow up on a diet of this kind of music from the cradle, but it's still relatively little known in France. Jazz fans know the repertoire, though, because these kind of songs – which were originally written for musicals – were used by jazzmen. When I did a concert in New York a few years ago I discussed my idea of covering Sinatra songs with Phil Ramone and little by little the idea took hold. Then Bertrand de Labbey (Clerc's manager) brought it up again last year.
I needed to work within some kind of framework, to take some angle on Sinatra's vast repertoire, so I used The Capitol Years as a base. I can't say I'm a big fan actually. But there are definitely one or two absolute musts in Sinatra's discography such as Sinatra at the Sands – the album brought out in 1966 when he turned 50 where he's accompanied by Count Basie's band conducted by Quincy Jones and The Main Event, when he made his big comeback at Madison Square Garden in 1974. Apart from that I can't say I've been an avid listener to Sinatra.
Anyway, what happened was I went through the Sinatra songs and ticked off the ones I liked and then I compared my list of favourites to Bertrand's. We also did a bit of research to try and track down any other versions of the songs we liked. When I was on tour with my musicians I asked them to note down the chords to the songs so I could practice them on the piano. That way I could learn them as if they'd been my own, as if it had been me that had written them. Once that basic work had been done I got in touch with songwriters to create French versions of the songs.

Did you have any trouble convincing French songwriters to work on the texts ?
You know, paradoxically the French – even those working in the music industry – aren't all that familiar with this kind of repertoire. They have a certain prejudice against Anglo-Saxon songwriters too, considering that they're absolute primitives when it comes to lyrics. OK, so there are definitely some weak songs around, stuff by Ira Gershwin, for instance, but working on these songs I think French songwriters came to realise that the Americans have also created some absolute masterpieces in terms of both music and lyrics. Take Maxime, for instance, he wasn't at all familiar with this kind of music before he started work on the project and he ended up becoming totally passionate about the work.

Did you find the songs easy to sing ?
No, quite the opposite actually, they were the most difficult songs I could have found to sing. Even the vocal techniques used in these songs are tricky. It's funny, you can sit and whistle the melody line of a lot of these songs but at least two thirds of them are much more complicated than they appear. They push your voice through the whole register, starting extremely low and ending on some very high notes. What's more, they rarely last more than two and a half minutes – that's the famous 'hook'!You have to get the listener hooked in the first thirty seconds and in that respect Sinatra songs are a bit like early Beatles stuff.

Your new album's called Studio. Does that mean you've got no intention of ever doing the songs live ?
I'd say this album's very much a product of the times. By that I mean that when you worked in the "old" way you didn't have to get image people on board. The first fifteen years of my career Etienne Roda-Gil took care of all that. When we were trying to come up with an album title what we'd do is take a song that corresponded to the idea behind the album – Jaloux (Jealous), for instance – and we created a photo around the chosen title. With this album we wanted the title and the cover photo to convey the idea of the project – that's to say music from a certain period reappropriated by a singer of today, an album on which music plays an absolutely primordial role...
I have to admit I came up with some absolutely terrible titles for the album - and the songwriters I worked with didn't do any better either! So we ended up asking the image people to come into the studio and watch us work to get an idea of what we were trying to do. Their feeling was that we should try and use the look of old jazz records from the 50s, with sepia photos and everything... That's how we ended up with the title Studio which has got nothing to do with the songs themselves really, but sums up the spirit of the album rather nicely.

There's a rumour that you've got an instrumental album on the backburner right now…
Well, what's happening with that is Mick Lanaro and Michel Colombier recently recorded an album of orchestral versions of twelve of my songs in the States – including Jaloux de tout, La Cavalerie etc ... They've done these sort of lounge-style covers, as is the fashion right now, but that's fine I told them they should just go for it and do whatever they wanted. So far as I know the album should be coming out some time soon.