Jehnny Beth

The official blog of JEHNNY BETH (singer SAVAGES / JOHN & JEHN - co-founder of label POP NOIRE records) "Sometimes I feel there’s more to share, more than music and I need a personal platform for this, somewhere where it doesn’t involve anybody else" J.B.

[jehnnybeth]

MARK E. SMITH - R.I.P.

It was easy to imagine Mark E. Smith would leave us sooner rather than later, I don’t think he ever gave up on his lifestyle habits even after he got ill, but his music is immortal. All these years it defeated the passing of time and trends, and always will.

I have never met Mark E. Smith. I’m only talking here from a music lover perspective. I know he wasn’t liked by some people, especially some of his former band members (he said in one of his latest interviews few months ago that people still crossed the road from him when they met him in the street). He didn’t care of course. I always admired the man because of his constance. He was constant in his music, constant in his anger. There is charm in an artist who’s not gonna adopt the expected social behaviour. The same way old people sometimes do when they don’t give a damn about what you think about them anymore. In a way, Mark E. Smith was old even when he was young. Journalists would be terrified to speak with him, I know I would!

I think nowadays it is terribly important to celebrate an artist who was not politically correct and who did not give people what they want. He was radical in his art and he wasn’t gonna try to please his audience or change to suit a particular trend but: by not giving you what you want he was giving you exactly what you needed, and I think this is the biggest gift he gave as an artist. He was someone who saw things from the sides and we need that more than ever. We need personalities like him to help us bypass the mainstream supremacy of the hashtag #blessed and hashtag #grateful that we have to deal with all the time, the prison of love and sentiment of pop music, he offered an alternative to that. He offered a band for people who felt differently about life. 

A song like ‘Industrial estate’ for example, from The Fall’s first record ‘Live at the witch Trials’ released in 1979, can still feel relevant today. There is something incredibly liberating in hearing someone shout “Yeaaah Yeaaaah Industrial Estaaaate”, which is the power of any good punk tracks: to make you feel less alone. I don’t think Mark E Smith ever did it for humanitarian reasons, it was never done in a 1st degree political way, it was more philosophical and poetic than that, it was a rebellion with a brain and a smirk on your face.

Mark E. Smith was a reference point against which you could always compare yourself to. Mark E. Smith was always gonna be Mark E. Smith an no matter what year you would read him in an interview or see him live, he would still be the same guy - which is a rare and beautiful thing. In fact, it was so attached to his personality that today, in the wake of his passing away, one cannot help but wonder if this quality was lost forever with him. He will be missed. R.I.P.

[jehnnybeth]

ONE YEAR BEING A RADIO HOST: celebrating the music community with 'START MAKING SENSE'

I’ve been hosting my radio show on Beats 1 for over a year now. I started it for the love of radio and it has become a source of inspiration for my own work and writing. Every week I get to discover new music but I also get to sit down and speak with artists who I love and who have dedicated their whole lives to music. My goal when I started the show was to create a platform for artists to share their experiences. Being a musician myself, I quickly made the sad realisation that artists around me didn’t speak with each other enough. My goal for the radio show was partly driven by my own passion for deep conversations, but I also felt in need of a sense of community - to feel part of it and to make other artists feel welcomed in it. Why artists didn’t share their experiences enough? Were they afraid to learn from each other? The sad consequence of this (of any) lack of communication is that the same mistakes are more likely to be repeated. I felt that dialogue was necessary to break the chain. In a sense I hope my radio show to be a source of knowledge for artists as much as for music lovers. The latter would be able to understand better how music is made, and the former would have the opportunity to inform and relate to their other piers, musicians, poets, writers… I don’t think we can or should avoid making mistakes. Artists are pioneers of their own after all. But the life of an artist is made of doubts and feelings of vulnerability, all artists one day face the same kind of shit. So hearing what different artists (big or small) have to say has always been a huge inspiration for me. I think that’s the only way one can evolve. Don’t get me wrong, the show isn’t about complaining about the world, quite the opposite, it’s about reminding each other of the power of music, and honouring the life changing opportunity that music is. Music has this amazing ability to change us. I have fallen in love with it since a very young age. It was the only force that enabled me to believe I could become someone one day. It gave me hope and made me love life better and believe into myself. I will feel forever grateful to have and to continue to be welcomed and supported by the music community. I have found a new family. Doing my radio show every week is a way for me to ‘give back’, talk about our passions and our struggles, connect with each other, push forward and inspire the new generations.

Hear Episode #64 of START MAKING SENSE this week | On Beats 1 | https://itunes.apple.com/gb/curator/start-making-sense/id1082539352

[jehnnybeth]

POLITICIANS, THE POWER OF ART, AND WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE 

 [This text was first published by Massive Attack in their program during the festival curated at the Downs in Bristol on Sept the 3rd 2016] 

There are various responses artists can have when faced with injustice and the desire to take action in a world such as ours—especially when bombs seem to go off every second both afar and next door and when corrupted democracies operate without any real mandate from the people. I understand the feeling of powerlessness and in times like these artists are faced with a question: how do I contribute to making the world a better place? 

I’ve talked to several musicians and many believe that we should support politicians we believe in to encourage political change. I respect and understand that position. Any artist who finds coherence connecting their music, their videos, their live shows to a political agenda is completely entitled to do so, it is a personal choice after all. But as an artist myself, I choose to never associate my work publicly to anything political. 

I need to make a distinction: I’m talking about my political engagement as an artist. As a citizen, I have opinions about politics (which I discuss with my friends and family), I inform myself, and I vote. In this day and age I believe it’s irresponsible to tell anybody not to vote. I am part of the generation who saw the leader of the French extreme right nationalist party, (FN) Le Pen, rise to the second round of the presidential election in 2002 in France when I was still too young to vote. I demonstrated my feeling of powerlessness in the streets alongside all my friends. From that traumatic experience we learned our lesson: vote, or irresponsible extremists will take over your country. 

That’s my reason for voting now at each election and maybe it differs from yours but that’s democracy. The real issue, however, is that in reality democracies have become ‘dollar-democracies’. Politicians are not interested in ideas or public service. They are rising on the ladder of success just like any show-business aspirant would with an eye to making millions as soon as they walk out the door. I really wish that for an artist to support a politician it meant genuinely endorsing a just cause for humanity, but I’m afraid artists only become part of a PR plan for another money-driven political show. How many artists and writers in the past have supported politicians and ended up disappointed? It is a slippery road, bound to disappoint.

Why is a book so life changing? Why can a live concert be such a fundamentally transformative experience? Because art acts in a corner of society where nobody else goes: the realm of ideas and imagination. Artists have the possibility to address that part of us that is always alive and still malleable: the child, the true birthplace of evil and good, the root of our humanity. Politicians de facto only work on the surface. Their solutions are temporary Band-Aids on a wound that can only be healed from the inside. Art however preaches directly to the fundamental, the universal, the DNA of each individual, the only place where change and hope is still possible.

Social and political change starts with personal change. I don’t need a politician to prove that my work has meaning, I believe my work stands much stronger on its own and is already part of a movement. Every song written today contains all the songs that have been written before. Newton didn’t discover gravity all by himself. He let all the research and knowledge of his predecessors lead him to his conclusion. What is true for scientists is also true for artists. We are not alone, we are part of a community already.

Humanity was born yesterday. Even your great great great great grand-parent were here just an hour ago. Like the rotation of the Earth on its own axis, change is too small, too incremental, for our eyes to see. Everyone who tells you otherwise is a charlatan - and is probably trying to sell you something. Isn’t that a good enough cause to be living by? All we have is here, now and each other.

When creating a song, a book, a painting what are artists really doing? To paraphrase novelist Kurt Voneghut : for one moment, artists are creating “the world exactly as it should be”. That is the real power of the artists, and I believe in this power.

[jehnnybeth]

Monday 27th June at The Eden Project in Cornwall - Polly asked me to perform solo songs of my own before her show. First time I play piano on my own in front of an audience since I was about 10… Thank you PJ Harvey and all her team @pjharveyofficial and @edenprojectcornwall [📸= Richard Priest]

[jehnnybeth]

This week on START MAKING SENSE I am pleased to receive my dear friend Romy Madley Croft from The xx as my guest. She is one of my favourite people on this earth. We will talk about music (of course!) songwriting, shyness & performance, and lots more… It will be aired at 7pm PST today on Beats1 - Apple Music. [📸= Hannah Marshall]

[jehnnybeth]

The video for the track 'River in me' I wrote with Anders TRENTEMØLLER @trentemoeller is out now. Go and find it. It's really beautiful. It's an emotional song for me. I'm very proud to have worked with Anders on this. Thank you 🙏🏻.

There's a river in me Running to the sea There's a river in me A river when you hold me

I am the rock She is the sea Shaping each other's forms

As time goes by And waves go forth Her face is relaxed Her body Climaxed

Now the river is dry Left me unsatisfied There's no river in me anymore No more kisses on the shore

Feels like loosing my head Footprints deep in the sand As I cast about my options (I see) Close to the shore A diver who descends To the ocean He may come back with my girl Or he may never never return

Feels like loosing a leg Something on which you stand As I cast about my options (I) Become aware I'm the diver who descends To the ocean I may come back with my girl Or I may never never return

Whatever you choose Don't choose to look away Whatever you choose Don't choose to fade away

[jehnnybeth]

I am B in LGBT

I’ve dedicated this week’s episode of my radio show to celebrate the LGBT community. After last week’s tragic event in Orlando I thing it’s important to speak about sexuality, freedom, and the right for everyone to choose for themselves the way they live and love. 

There is a mindset around the globe that says gay people do not have the right to live in peace. This is a topic that I particular take at heart. Not only I have a lot of friends who are LGBT but I am a firm believe in liberties when it comes to love and sexuality.

I’ve been a bisexual since a very young age. I am B in the LGBT. I also know what it feels like to be attracted to someone of the same sex and not being accepted for it. When I was 8 my first love was a neighbour, a blond girl named Ingrid. I visited her many times on my bicycle, to bring her gifts, until her mother asked me to stop and Ingrid was suspiciously not around anymore every time I came by. At school, I would be rejected by groups of girls for being different and too boyish. In retrospect I’m glad things like that happened. It meant I would turn towards the more interesting people with better values, better life stories - and more often than not, better music taste.

The acceptance of my own bisexuality, which I repressed for years, has been extremely freeing for me. It felt like finding myself completely. When asked about it in interviews, I always reply with honesty, because I know people around the world are still threatened in their own life for who they’re attracted to or fall in love with, and maybe they can feel less alone. It makes me terribly sad and angry to think anyone could be stopped on their personal journey to become who they are supposed to become.

One question that has been hammering my mind for the past few days: how do you begin to challenge the ideology that says that one’s natural instinct is shameful? I still don’t have the perfect answer to that. I just know that talking openly about sexuality has never killed anyone, but on the opposite, can save lives. 

Find freedom in who you are. 

Jehnny

‘Start Making Sense’ Find the Episode about LGBT community: itunes.apple.com/fr/curator/start-making-sense-jehnny/id1082539352

[jehnnybeth]

Suicide - A Punk Mass

When I moved to London in my early twenties, me and Johnny Hostile had a real obsession with the band Suicide. Being a duo onstage ourselves, the inspiration was obvious, but it was more than that. The simplicity of the music and the investment into the live performances played a very large part into our imagination as artists and our first steps onstage. Other musicians would impose their mark on us equally, Johnny Cash and June Carter, The Cramps, The Kills… People whose lives and commitment to music (and to each other) felt exactly like something we were experiencing ourselves. We felt we belonged to the same family tree, each of us a different branch. But Suicide was at the root of it all. 

Last summer, in 2015, the Barbican organised a ‘A Punk Mass’ in honour of the NYC band Suicide. The evening was to comprise of new solo work from both Martin Rev and Alan Vega, classic Suicide material, as well as ‘collaborations with famous fans’. 

I turned up at the Barbican in the afternoon because I had been invited to take part in a very unusual choir which was opening the evening. We rehearsed the different vocal variations, which were all improvised, in a small room at the Barbican. The conductor was a very strange man and although I was with my friends from Bo Ningen, I remember wanting to run away the minute we started practising. I didn’t want to leave my friends behind though, so I stuck to the task for the rest of the night.

Before the show started, I met with Henry Rollins backstage. We had been talking on emails before but had never met properly. We had a very nice conversation about Jazz and his friendship with Alan and Martin. He said he was going to perform ‘Ghost Rider’ with them later on. The backstage area started to get crowded. I was hanging out with my friends from Bo Ningen and met Bobby Gillespie, who was there to perform ‘Dream Baby Dream’. 

Alan Vega and Martin Rev performed their solo stuff separately. The crowd loved it but you could sense they were getting eager to hear the classics. At some point, Suicide’s manager came to me and said “do you want to perform ‘Dream Baby Dream’ with Bobby later on?” At first I didn’t know what to say. “Does Bobby want me to do that?” I asked. It felt weird to tag along without asking him first. Also, what do Alan and Martin think? Before I could get a proper answer from the manager, he was already walking away. I asked several people around me for their thoughts but I soon got the impression that no one really knew what was going on. “Believe me, I don’t even know when I’m supposed to go on!” said Henry with a tone of excitement and surprise in his voice.

Bobby came back after a while and we talked about the idea to sing ‘Dream Baby Dream’ together. He responded with a “fuck-yeah-come-with-me-let’s-do-it” attitude which felt convincing at the time. I said I would follow him and see what happens. I was right behind him as he walked to the side of stage. At this point, people were standing on their seats at the front row, clapping along and screaming. There was a palpable feeling of wildness and chaos in the air, the like of which I had never felt before. It was so peculiar, a weird sensation of uncertainty when entering the hall. Like time standing still at this awkward edge between disgust and longing that left you wondering if everything had just stopped or was just about to begin. We stood at the side of the stage for a few minutes next to the crowd who were all standing up now. Henry was finishing ‘Ghost rider’ onstage with Martin and Alan. I felt so nervous. I grabbed Bobby’s arm and said “I can’t do this, you go alone”. “No way” he said “You’re coming with me”, and he rushed to the stage. “Damn, fuck!” I murmured and followed.

At this point Alan Vega had left the stage. He had simply followed Henry when Henry stepped out after his song. Later, I’d be told that he didn’t want to finish the show, and they had to push him back onstage. Martin Rev was playing the intro of ‘Dream Baby Dream’ on his organ, turning his back on me and Bobby. It was all a blur at this point, I wasn’t sure what to do. I kept close to Bobby, waiting for him to start. He lunged like a rock star on his first line: ‘Dream baby dream, dream baby dream, dream baby dream…’ literally reaching for the people on the front row. He had such confidence that it came as a chock at first. I thought “Oh wow. Ok. let’s go with that!” I joined him and we sung together for a few minutes, then stopped. Alan had reappeared onstage, probably pushed by his wife and Henry. We looked at him, waiting for him to sing the song, but he wouldn’t. Martin was still playing and he kept turning back to shout “Alan! Alan! Alan!” to not much effect. After what seemed an eternity, Alan finally raised the microphone up to his mouth and mumbled the words with an incomprehensible soft voice, then stopped again and kept staring at us. Bobby did a couple more lunges and touched a few more hands on the front row singing “Dream Baby Dream” to fill the gap, but Alan’s silence was persistent and his stare was starting to freak me out. “Does he want us to get the fuck off his stage?” I thought. The whole thing felt like a beast with too many heads.

That’s when I heard a voice I hadn’t heard before coming out of the speakers. It sounded like someone in the crowd (a child?) had grabbed a microphone and started singing along, completely arrhythmically and out of tune. I looked everywhere in front of me but couldn’t see anyone with a microphone. I looked behind me and there was a very young boy with dark hair onstage staring at me with a grin holding a microphone with his both hands and singing ‘Dream Baby Dream…’ He wasn’t actually singing, but more ‘talking’ the words. What I didn’t know then was that this boy was Alan Vega’s son. The crowd didn’t seem disturbed at all by the surrealism of the scene (I know I was!) Some people were still standing on their seats and singing along. Alan, who had walked back to his big chair onstage, didn’t show any intention of singing anymore. I felt it was time to leave the stage for good. 

Before the end of the song me and Bobby walked down the stairs to the backstage area, probably looking bemused. Bobby turned to me: “Well, at least we did it.” he said “we’re the only people on this planet who can say they have performed with Suicide - except for Henry Rollins.” I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way before.

[jehnnybeth]

Short but sweet feature in the NY Times written by Chris Lee. [📸=Nathaniel Wood]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/t-magazine/entertainment/savages-band-jehnny-beth.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/t-magazine&action=click&contentCollection=t-magazine

[jehnnybeth]

The walls in Henry Rollins’ house are covered with posters of your favourite bands. He is a real collector. Fan letters of Generation X, master tapes of Alan Vega, original manuscripts of his own book ‘Get in the van’ (my favourite!). He could curate a whole exhibition on the history of punk rock. Generous and open to talk about himself, the 30 minutes interview quickly turned into a 2 hours meeting. He showed me his collection of records which he keeps in a 'vault’. Everything is clean, organised and categorised. Really impressive and interesting. It was very important for me to have him on my radio show. If there’s someone who can talk about using music to do some good, it’s Henry 😇

Listen to our conversation on @beats1radio @applemusic | https://itunes.apple.com/gb/curator/start-making-sense-jehnny/id1082539352 | [📸= TIM @trstnm ]

[jehnnybeth]

There's a beautiful film directed by Antoine Carlier that you can watch on ARTE Tv. It captures SAVAGES live in Paris and it's truly a beautiful piece of movie. I am very proud to be part of it. Here is the link for you : http://concert.arte.tv/fr/savages-la-cigale

[jehnnybeth]

I’ve been working secretly on a new project for a while and now it’s finally time to reveal it! Tomorrow will air the first episode of my new radio show on Beats 1. It’s called START MAKING SENSE and every week I’ll be playing new records and telling you why I love them and why music matters so much to all of us, because it does, doesn’t it??

[📷=TIM]

Tune in for START MAKING SENSE broadcast tomorrow at 7pm Pacific / 10pm Eastern and again on Wednesday 2pm London / 3pm Paris.

Link to listen live: http://apple.co/Beats1

[jehnnybeth]

MY LIFE WITHOUT LIQUOR

Not everyone would have the same reasons to change their daily habits - and definitely quitting alcohol isn’t for everyone - but for me it has been one of the best decisions I have made in my life. 

 Before touring around the world with Savages after the release of our first album 'Silence Yourself', drinking alcohol had never been a conscious problem in my life. In fact, to this day I can say I have never really been addicted to anything. I know I'm pretty lucky this way. People really struggle with addiction to a level I will never be able to experience. But I know dugs just ain't for me, and I've known that since I was a teenager. My body was never strong enough to take it, and my mind was never really attracted to it genuinely - which I tend to view as a blessing, as I know I will never have to deal with the desperate sensations of emptiness due to the lack of it. This said, touring got me into drinking everyday. That's something I hadn't planned and it was a daily habit that drove me into a bad place which I didn’t notice at first. 
 At the time, I wasn’t able to go on stage without alcohol. It started with me drinking only a shot or two of vodka before walking on. Then I’d set myself rules like ‘drink only an hour before the show’. Then ‘ok two hours before the show but never after the show’. Then I started drinking full glasses of vodka and cranberry juice onstage whenever I was feeling thirsty. Later I switched to red Martini. I’d drink almost a bottle every show. That’s when I got ill and lost my voice. 
I remember the last time I drunk alcohol. It was at the British Film Institute (BFI) in London more than two years ago. Savages were curating an evening around the legendary Australian guitarist Rowland S. Howard, screening the documentary about his life. This was quite a coincidence now I'm thinking about it. The documentary relates the story of Rowland's musical genius and struggle with drugs until he sadly died much too early (liver cancer in 2009) after he just finished recording his masterpiece 'Pop Crimes' with Mick Harvey, JP Shilo and my friend Jonnine Standish from the Australian band HTRK. My mental and physical health was very weak at that point, due to the intensity of touring and my bad habit with alcohol. I was ill and my voice started breaking, sounding more and more like a broken kettle. I drunk red wine all that evening and went home quite early around midnight. I remember cursing everyone and everything on the ride home, and waking up with a terrible hangover and nausea. Andy, my tour manager at the time, showed up at 9am at my house to take me to the next show. I was still in bed, unable to move, unable to imagine myself physically doing it again, getting in the van and playing another show…
 That’s when you desperately need someone who knows you very well. Luckily I had someone like that. Johnny Hostile sat on the side of our bed. I looked at him and started to cry. I was feeling so miserable and helpless. My heart felt empty and my emotions numb. I wanted to go on tour and play the shows, but I just didn’t have the strength anymore, and I felt I was letting everybody down. I was ashamed of the state I was finding myself in at that moment - and letting anyone witness it was humiliating. He took my hand and said: “you’re gonna get ready, slowly, have a shower, eat something, Andy is going to wait for you. But as soon as you step out that door, you won’t drink another drop of alcohol". At that time, I had known Johnny as my partner for 9 years, and known him sober for 6, so this was coming from someone who was aware of what he was talking about. Everyone can stop alcohol for various reasons, beyond the real damage done to your body and your mind, there's a real stupidity surrounding alcohol consumption in certain cultures when you think about it. From numbing your access to first hand experience, to excusing idiotic acts (including encouraging the mass to mediocre sexual intercourse!), alcohol is too often used to excuse a lot of crap happening in the world. We drink because we want to forget, make space in our heads so we can chase away the annoying thoughts. For people who are constantly thinking about how to change the world and find ways to make things better, drinking alcohol quickly start not making much sense at all... At that point I knew I couldn’t physically finish the tour if I didn’t change something. Johnny is a person who I'd always known for suggesting good solutions for me to be happier my life. I trusted him. His words were the only light of hope at that moment, so I took it. I haven’t drunk since then, but most importantly I haven’t felt the desire to drink at all - and it’s been more than two years. That day I realised that drinking was not only putting my health in danger but it was putting my work in danger too, and that was the most important signal to me. Not being able to play a show is the worse thing that can happen when you’ve build all your life around music to achieve what you want to achieve.
 I guess it's called a survival instinct, and mine was pretty strong when it came down to music. Few months after that, Savages embarked into another three months of touring during which I was completely sober. Australia, Europe, South America… Never did I enjoy the life on the road so much. I wasn’t tired, my voice was at its best, my spirit was high. Surprisingly, I would go out a lot more after the shows, partying until 5am, waking up feeling tired but fine, no hangovers! 
Quitting alcohol has really been amazing for me. I would recommend it to anyone who feels trapped and needs a change - or anyone who (like me) has a weak resistance to drugs in general. Alcohol can be fun and I would never judge someone who wants to drink. But as much as it numbed my pain, alcohol also numbed my happiness. I feel so much freer now I know it’s only music that makes me loose myself onstage. Nothing and no one but myself is making me connect with the people in the room. I’m doing that! Me, the people and the music. Nothing more. I think there’s definitely some magic in that.

[jehnnybeth]

Why manifestos?? This is a question that keeps being asked to me. In order to break the prejudice of seriousness surrounding the idea of writing manifestos for Savages, I wrote about it in my blog a couple of years ago. Still relevant today, here it is again :

“I was invited a few weeks ago by Mary Anne Hobbs to talk about Manifestos in music on BBC6. It made me think about why I started writing them at the first place. A year ago, we released ‘Husbands’ and ‘Flying to Berlin’ on my label Pop Noire. I didn’t want to send a press release to journalists - which is usually a biography of the band and a boring list of influences that journalists are going to pick from. I didn’t want our press agent to write anything about us either. So I decided I was going to write something myself. A short text which became a sort of ‘manifesto’ for the band. It described our music and our intentions behind it. It said that human beings were not evolved so much and music could still be straight to the point, efficient and exciting. It was comparing our music to an armor, which is what I considered it should be, a protection : strong, indestructible, minimal. Then it became natural to accompany each releases with a text. Trying to describe our intentions in the most accurate way with the smallest amount of words possible. It became rather playful for me. I was reading Milan Kundera and things like the Surrealists manifesto - it was essential to express something else than music and address people with our few discoveries. As we evolved they evolved with us too. I wrote the ‘I Am Here’ manifesto at a time when I was becoming more and more aware that young artists have difficulties to find and express their own voice. And I wanted to understand why. I discovered the hard reality of a conflict between generations, in the business we work in and especially in ‘guitar’ music, there is less money nowadays and young artists with great talent are pressured to compromise before they’re even born. I think this crisis has given us a lot of power and its time to take it. But when you are young and you’ve never given any serious thoughts about the business side of things (all you wanted to do is play music and write songs) you become the perfect target. You are constantly threatened with your decisions - if you don’t do this you won’t get that, if you say this you will upset this person, and so on… So in the end, you are working FOR the business, like an employee. And all this eventually has a direct effect on your art. I have sometimes the feeling that writing Manifestos can be perceived as too ‘serious’. For me, it’s just that I find it difficult to work without purpose. I constantly ask myself ‘why I am doing this’ or ‘what am I trying to achieve here’… simply because otherwise I get bored. I find myself far more excited when I enter a rehearsal studio after I’ve set myself a set of goals which I try to achieve, which doesn’t necessarily mean I am going to succeed by any means. Also, the place I’ve ended up can be miles away from where I started. This is not school, you don’t have to please anyone but yourself, you don’t have to be a good student. However, you are your own teacher, you need to document your evolution, you have to learn new tricks, you have to evolve. I see Manifestos like a sort of documentation of what we are now and what we are trying to achieve. Like placing stones on a path to remember the way we chose to travel.”

[jehnnybeth]

That moment just before stage… I always tell the girls “I have no idea how this is gonna go”. Because it’s true, you never know how it’s going to be. Years ago when stage fright was too intense, I had to come up with tricks to find the courage to walk on. I used to have a phrase that I wrote down in my notebooks. I came up with the stupid plan that if I remembered that phrase before walking on, then I would be fine. Sometimes however, I wouldn’t be able to remember it. I would try as hard as possible but it wouldn’t come up in my head. Impossible to remember the phrase that I knew would be the key to my performance. I would try as hard as I could to think about it, search as deep as possible inside my brain, without success… Then suddenly, a few minutes before show time, sometimes a few seconds, finally, the words would reveal themselves to me : “DO NOT THINK!”

Photo by Stuart Staples (Tindersticks)

[jehnnybeth]

[jehnnybeth]

It all started with the audience...

It all started with the audience and the love they gave to us. Each night during the Silence Yourself tour, we’d witness something was happening. The shows were getting warmer, people around the world were opening their hearts to us. It had a profound effect on us (the four of us individually but also as a band), and we wanted to find a way to respond to that.

First there was Fuckers, a song written for the people, in direct response to the way our shows were evolving during the Silence Yourself tour. It was our way to give back. We wanted to write a song that would be useful to people, that they could take home after the shows. It was a way for us to honour the love they gave to us. The words ‘don’t let the fuckers get you down’ were given to me by a friend who had written them for me as a note in order to help me in a difficult time. I thought that was a simple and easy way to communicate and I wanted to use these words in a song, so I could communicate with the audience in the same simple and easy way.

The expression of Love when you are onstage is one of the most amazing and intense feelings one can experience in life. People are kinder in venues than they are in the streets, they are open and generous, they are ready to feel alive. Somehow one finds in the passion of the crowds what every human is looking to experience : the assurance to be alive and the freedom to love and be loved. To me personally, I can definitely say that audiences around the world cured me from most of my terrors.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the figure of the looser, the one who has missed his vocation, has failed in life. It was my biggest phobia, to become bitter. I must have picked up on feelings of resentment in adults around me. Since then, the idea of missing out on my life terrified me. Music represented a chance for an escape, a chance to become that person I imagined myself to be. I grew up in a small city in France wanting to eat the world. I never wanted a normal life. Everytime I told myself maybe I should settle down, I always ended up saying yes to some sort of crazy project or life-choices that would contradict the whole concept of settling down. I never fantasised about a family, a husband, nor money… I guess it just didn’t click that way for me.

I remember one day my dad handing me a piece of paper on which he had scribbled a few words: “Impose your luck, hold on tight to your good fortune, move towards your risk, when they see you, they’ll get used to it!” I was maybe 12 or 13. These words (by the French poet René Char) struck me like lightning, they spoke to my young soul. Later, they resurfaced during the writing of ‘Adore Life’.

The new album is infused by all these ideas of inspiration, freedom and the poetry of life. Sometimes it’s hard to talk about it, because the message is quite delicate. What it means to be alive? When I look back I realise that it was the intention all along: to make a positive record, a record that makes you feel vulnerable and strong at the same time, where each breath feels like the last one. The feeling of urgency, the drama and vulnerability, the feeling of immortality (‘live forever!’), they’re all in there, they’re all necessary. They’re all offered as a gift to whoever need them, to take their own freedom and enjoy it, maybe now even more than ever.

Stay safe. Keep rocking & Adore Life.