Are Friends Electronic?

Electronic pioneer and global superstar, Jean Michel Jarre is renowned for his mega, one-off live extravaganzas such as his celebrated London Docklands show in 1988 before an audience of a quarter of a million, or his Houston, Texas appearance in collaboration with NASA, that attracted an astonishing 1.3 million punters. The French legend has since performed massive shows at the Egyptian pyramids and at the Acropolis in Athens, among other exotic locations. But more recently, he’s scaled down the enormity of his live performances, allowing him to play in more conventional venues – thus his first ever world tour, which includes a Dublin date.

“A lot of my generation of musicians are doing their farewell world tours, but this is my first proper one,” he jokes. “The challenge was to make it the kind of ambitious production that my audiences are used to, while keeping it intimate. With videos and lasers, people feel they are part of the band and we have cameras up on stage – even a camera on my glasses, which gives me a direct link with the audience.”
Since he first emerged in the public eye during the mid-’70s with his 12-million selling Oxygene album, Jarre has remained a huge live draw, if not always a critics’ favourite. He has also witnessed the growth in popularity of electronic music — a revolution which he helped kick-start. “It’s kind of funny,” he says. “Back in the ‘70s, electronic music was seen as futuristic, but now it’s seen as retro. It has never been a completely hip movement anyway. It started out in the ‘60s as an experimental thing, in the ‘70s it was all about prog-rock, the early ‘80s was about synth-pop and bands like the Human League, then it was dance-floor music — Massive Attack and Moby and then came Air and Royksopp. Now it’s become a timeless thing. I don’t see it as nostalgia. I think what I do is rather fresh.”
When Jarre started out, there was little of the digital paraphernalia that is par for the course in electronic music these days. Computers, samplers and sequencers – where they existed at all – were bulky, primitive and manually operated. Despite the advances in technology whereby almost any sound can be sampled and pre-programmed, Jarre prefers to keep it as real as possible by using vintage analogue instruments, as he explains; “There is a huge temptation and pressure, usually coming from the sound engineers, for me to program some of the sounds in advance, rather than play them live. But I absolutely stick to my guns on this issue. A sequence being played with an analogue sequencer live is much more real compared to a computer. In fact, we did some experiments recently comparing analogue sounds being playing live, with the same sounds recorded on pro-tools and then being relayed on the PA system. It just wasn’t the same. It lost something in translation – a kind of warmth. When you do it live, you expose yourself, whereas when you are dealing only with a computer you are passive.”
He has become something of a mentor for younger musicians and offers the following advice to anyone interested in electronic music. “The main thing is to understand that music is not made of notes, it’s made of sounds. If you have something to say, you have to try and perfect and improve on it. More practically, you need to start out with a simple analogue synth – the Rolls Royce being the Minimoog.”
His current tour will include a mix of the most popular pieces from his repertoire and possibly even some new material, as he hints. “I’ve been using a laser harp a lot lately, which is quite a spectacular instrument and I’ve decided to practise some new songs on the road for my next album. But mainly I’m thrilled to be finally playing Oxygene in a venue called The 02 (laughs).”

Jean Michel Jarre plays the O2 Dublin on October 4