RFI Musique: Why did you decide to split your new album in two?
Paul Personne: Well, quite simply because I ended up with lots of songs with radically different ambiences. What tended to happen on previous albums was that I grouped everything together and made a sort of cocktail or patchwork out of everything. But this time round I really wanted to get to the bottom of things. I wanted to use the melodies that have been running round my head since I was a kid. I've used them before in my work but only in minuscule homeopathic doses.
This time round I said to myself, "OK, I'm going to do an album in a much cooler, more melodic vein with a strong acoustic feel." I really tried to go the whole way and take the country/folk pop song thing that I love as far as I could. So what I suggested to the record company was that I would do a second much more rock and electric album later. That's my Jekyll and Hyde side – there are times when I'm really into laid-back acoustic ballads and others when all I want to do is pick up my Les Paul (electric guitar) and get it screaming out of a good old Marshall amplifier. That's the two radically different sides to Paul Personne!

You've got a reputation for being someone who has a totally prolific output. On your last album, Patchwork, for instance, you created at least 50 songs and then whittled those down to a final 12…
Basically, I just let life take its course. I've always got this dictaphone on me somewhere either in a pocket or in my car and when a melody comes into my head I record it immediately. I always carry around a little notebook to note down a phrase or a rhyme too…What with one thing and the other by the end of the year I end up with a whole stack of things to work on. To begin with the thing that makes me keep a song or not is whether I grow tired of it or not. Take a song like Le diable en hiver, for instance, on the new album. That song goes back at least four or five years; it's something I originally wrote with Boris Bergman for the theatre. It's a song that's really survived over the years and when I picked it up, dusted it off and played it again I was really happy because it didn't feel stale at all. There was a big risk on the new album and that was that I'd end up with too many overly slow numbers. I mean, I wanted the new album to be cool and laid-back but I didn't want to send everyone to sleep (laughs). That's why we ended up pruning things down a bit.

The title of the album Demain…il f'ra beau (The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow) sounds like a maxim you could apply to yourself. After all, you've had a lot of ups and downs in your career…
Yeah, there are times when I've been at rock bottom and others when I've been riding the top of the wave! That's life. As far as my music goes, I've never tried to charm anyone by force. I've never put myself out and done things I didn't want to do in the hope of selling more records. I've never sold my soul and gone on TV shows I didn't want to do in the hope of boosting my sales or anything. And that means there's obviously a big element of chance involved when it comes to having hits or flops! When I hear that I've sold 100,000 records or that one of my albums has gone gold it's like wow! cool! But I've always kept my feet on the ground – I've always been a musician through and through! I've only got one desire in life and that's to get up on stage and play. I've never tried to clown around and grab people's attention!
Having said that, I obviously write songs in the hope that they'll please the public, but that doesn't mean I'm prepared to get down on my knees and lick anyone's boots to get on prime time TV or get my records played on the radio!

What are the biggest disillusions you've suffered in your career?
The first ones were the worst, especially the ones I lived through when I was just starting out in the music world. We had this group called L'Origine when I was 17. I was so young that my parents had to sign the contract on my behalf with Pathé-Marconi. The thing is, you start out as this excited young teenager with his head full of the Beatles and the Stones and then you find yourself confronted with these artistic directors who lure you in with all these false promises. Then six months later they're not even returning your phone calls any more! So that was my first big knock in this business. That was when I first started to become disenchanted with the world of showbizz and the bearers of good news!
My second big disillusion came six or seven years later with a group called La folle entreprise. I really believed in that group. Anyway, we went off to record a single in England together and then nothing much happened after that and the group just fizzled out. So from an early age I'd already become hardened to the disillusions of the showbizz world. So when many years later I brought out the album La Chance and I had all kinds of legal problems and stuff I had a lot more distance on the whole thing. But it's strange, you know, no matter what your disillusions have been you can't help putting so much energy into things…

And what would you say your moments of greatest satisfactions have been?
Working with certain people. Getting up on stage with someone like Albert King for instance was a real blast – and something I never expected to happen either! There've also been some fabulous jam sessions and concerts like the one I did with Johnny Hallyday at the Parc des Princes in '93. Johnny and Eddy Mitchell were my two big idols when I was growing up so actually getting to play with Johnny was amazing! It was unbelievable being up on stage with those two dudes and playing in front of 20,000 people.

Talking of Johnny, will you be part of the upcoming Hallyday festivities?
No, I don't think so, but with Johnny you never really know until the last minute. It was funny, when he did his mega-concert at the Parc des Princes he sent this chauffeur-driven car to fetch me with a police escort. In fact, we had a police motorcyclist in front and another one behind because I was meant to be playing somewhere else the same night and the organisers didn't want to take the risk that I'd get stuck in a traffic jam. I felt like I was a real American superstar or something, it was a total blast! But we don't have anything fixed up for Johnny's concert this time. You never know though, maybe he'll send me over a helicopter at the last minute!?! (laughs)

I notice your new album was produced by Jay Newland, the guy who produced Norah Jones's best-seller. Given the phenomenal success of her album Norah has moved out of the jazz pigeon-hole and touched a mainstream public. What do you think of all those pigeon-hole clichés, you know, jazz/not jazz, blues/not blues?
I'm not too bothered about all that. I've never denied my blues influences but I've never tried to copy my idols either! Back around '86/'87 things got a bit distorted really because the posters that were put up advertising my concerts said "Tonight: Paul Personne plays the blues!" But the thing is, I wasn't just playing blues I was doing all these rock numbers and ballads too. And people would be like "OK, so when are you going to break into the blues?" You could tell there was a bit of dissatisfaction going on there somewhere. And I said to myself, "OK that really touches a nerve!" People have to learn to like me for everything I am and everything I want to play and not just my blues side. I think people have finally got to the point of accepting my all-roundness these days. But there's a bit of a strange syndrome in France, you know. As soon as you start doing anything with a melody you're instantly pigeon-holed as "middle of the road." But all the groups I grew up loving, the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors, the Kinks… they all did really melodic stuff and no-one ever accused them of churning out middle of the road rubbish! In fact, in my day the Kinks were a bloody subversive band! It's a strange thing though, as soon as you make a melody-oriented album that actually sells OK people turn round and classify you as "middle of the road" or say you've sold out. Mind you, I can't wait for the day people say I've sold out – that'll mean I've sold a whole stack of records!!! (laughs)