Les Beaux Dégâts finds Cabrel teaming up with several of his old partners in musical crime such as Gérard Bikialo, who co-produced the album (on keyboards) Denys Lable (on guitars), Bernard Paganotti (on bass) and Denis Benarrosh (on percussion) Most of the tracks have more of a pepped-up electric feel than the songs on Hors Saison. And at times Cabrel also ventures back to the bursts of good old rock'n'roll that drove his albums in the 80s, although this time around the sound is more rounded and polished, the lyrics honed with the emotional precision Cabrel has acquired in the course of his long career. In short, Les Beaux Dégâts is an album of exemplary clarity and accessibility which one can easily imagine shooting to the top of the charts (where most of Cabrel’s other records have ended up!) RFI Musique talks to the man himself.

RFI Musique: Five years between albums - does that mean you’ve kept to your normal rhythm ?
Francis Cabrel: Well, I always vow that I’m going to try and go quicker the next time round, but I never seem to manage it! It’s not the work itself that takes the time, because once I’ve decided to get down and start an album it takes the usual twelve months. The problem is, that I tend to be a bit reticent about throwing myself into things straight after a tour: I’m mentally exhausted after touring and it gets to the point where I’m fed up with my songs... That’s why I like to leave a bit of time between touring and recording. It’s not like I feel this unstoppable urge to make music immediately: It tends to take three years, or even three and a half years, before I get the urge. I feel this pressure building up in me and know it’s time to get down to work.

I take it that, given the fact that your album’s only just appeared in the stores, you’ll be waiting a while before hitting the road again on tour...
You can’t rush into everything all at once, you know. You have to take time out to chat with people and enjoy a break. Talking of breaks, I’m going to take time off for a holiday very soon... I think if people have been prepared to wait five years between albums, they might just remember who I am when I get back... I’ll be hitting the road for three or four months late autumn, kicking things off in October in medium-sized venues, like theatres in the provinces. I’ll also be doing a stint at the Casino de Paris.

Do you find it difficult to decide which songs you’re going to perform live on stage ?
Well, there’s obviously a handful of songs I absolutely can’t get away with not doing in concert. There’s a core set of seven or eight songs that fans have to hear. Then there are generally two or three old hits I revamp because I know my group will have fun reworking them. After that I tend to do songs from the latest album plus a few tracks from the one before – and that’s it! Oh, and we pause in between songs to give the audience a chance to applaud. I don’t have any kind of stage plan apart from that!

When it comes to composing and recording your songs, are you open to input from your musicians ?
When I go into the studio all the songs are finished, in the sense that they exist in their final version. We tend to go into the studio in the morning and what happens is I present demos of the songs to the group on which I've laid down vocals, backing vocals and there are guitars, bass, piano and drums. Then we get down and work together on a song for a day or two. The others sometimes have better things to suggest here and there, so we record different versions, listen to them and make a few corrections. We can decide to change the rhythmic feel of a song, but not the essential structure. That's already been established before we go into the studio, the lyrics and the music have been fixed and there's no going back on them!

One of the songs on Les Beaux Dégâts is an ode to the Fender Telecaster*. Does that mean you're more of a Telecaster man than a Stratocaster man ?
Well, in actual fact, I’m almost as much of a Stratocaster man as a Telecaster man. I just feel that Stratocaster is a bit more of a tricky word to work into a song! One day I happened to come across a song by John Hyatt where he managed to use the word Telecaster. With his American accent it was an absolute joy to listen to – and I’ve wanted to use the word Telecaster ever since!

Do you collect electric guitars ?
Most of my collection’s made up of electric guitars, actually. I’ve got a good collection of acoustic ones – ten of them, in fact – but all the others are electric. I haven’t got that many Telecasters, in fact, because genuine vintage Telecasters rarely come on the market. I’ve mainly got jazz guitars from the 50s, Gibson L5s and Super 400s...

And do you actually sit down and play any of the guitars from your collection? Or do you prefer to lock them away out of harm’s way ?
The way I see it, they’re guitars that were made to be played, not kept in a museum. I used a good dozen of them on the new album, in fact – and there were even more of them on the last album! One day I accidentally gave one of my guitars a bit of a knock and I was really upset about it. I took it along to the guy who had made it for me and his take on it was ‘No, you shouldn’t keep guitars locked away out of harm’s way. On the contrary, a guitar should show traces of the life it’s had. You shouldn’t worry about guitars getting scratched or knocked against a table. And since then...

But your passion for the guitar has never led to you getting carried away and doing mad instrumental solos, has it ?
I’d obviously love to be an Eric Clapton or a Robben Ford, but I’m just about good enough to do what I want with a guitar. All I want to do is accompany myself in a bit of an original way and that’s enough for me. I’d love to be good enough to accompany other people, but I’m limited to playing guitar for myself and that’s that!

You’re 50 now and this is your tenth album to date. Have you reached the point where you’re starting to think about what kind of legacy you’ll leave in French music history ?
I have to admit that that’s a question I’ve asked myself ever since the first day of my career. Maybe it was easier for me to start out when I did, rather than launch a career more recently. In my day there was Joe Dassin, Michel Sardou, Claude François and people like Maxime Le Forestier, Jean-Michel Caradec and Yves Simon, but there was still a bit of room on the French music scene. As far as my songwriting’s concerned, I used to look at the way Dylan evoked his relationships and love stories, going off on these completely impossible tangents and never actually speaking about them at all. And I thought to myself 'Now there’s a niche for me!'

What kind of a legacy do you think you’ll leave then?
A couple of love songs, that’d be enough for me, if the public remember Petite Marie and L’Encre de tes yeux... It’s funny, but sometimes songs seem too simplistic when you’re in the process of writing them. You don’t think they’ll last... I think I’ve come up with certain songs that are deeper and more complex, songs I’ve really put a lot of myself into. But you can never tell which songs will stay in the collective unconscious, which songs people will choose to identify with. One of my personal favourites is La Belle Debby, for instance. But I’m well aware that that never had the right ingredients to become a 'popular' classic. Actually, I think the songs people have really loved are the ones that were destined to pass into the collective unconscious.

Ah, but is the public always right?
Yes!

*a famous American make of guitar

Francis Cabrel Les beaux dégâts (Columbia/Sony) 2004