Hot Press Meets Phoenix

A former Ghostbuster is on stage at the NBR Awards 2011 in New York City, chewing candy and delivering an introduction for Sofia Coppola. She’s directed him before, in Lost In Translation, and now he’s paying a long, surreal tribute which suddenly gets personal.

“She’s married. Now she’s got a French lover. She has two beautiful children by this French lover. And I, for one, am sick of these directors with the homely kids. I can’t stand it anymore. She’s got beautiful children, and she lives with a man who is the only Frenchman that could play rock and roll, ever. Fuck Johnny Hallyday!”
The audience gasp through the comedic pause. “Pardon my French.”
There have been a lot of Bill Murray stories you wish were true, but end up as myths. Sneaking up on strangers on deserted streets, covering their eyes before a big celebrity reveal and the punchline, “No one will ever believe you”? Never happened.
The speech did, however. The French rocker in question was one Thomas Mars, lead singer with Versailles band Phoenix. He was sitting in the audience that January night.
“Yeah, he insulted (France’s answer to Elvis) Johnny Halladay that night!” Mars recalls in deep Parisian tones. “It was incredible. Bill is the coolest guy I’ve ever met. He’s the best. He’s just constantly redesigning the system, everything. He is the law. There’s no higher. And that night? Really funny.”
It was an example of Phoenix pricking America’s consciousness. A band trading in sophisticated, catchy new wave since 1999, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix arrived a decade into their career and properly changed everything. It won a Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album in 2010 and its accompanying world tour wrapped in Madison Square Garden, where they were joined onstage by fellow Versailles men (nay, robots) Daft Punk. And then... silence.
Eager to get back to work, they pretty much left The Garden and drove straight to the studio. That’s where they’ve been ever since.
“We were in a cave for two years,” he deadpans. “I’m pretty pale at the moment. I guess it’s good for press pictures, it has a vampire look.”
There was no time for lounging on a beach, cocktail in one hand, Grammy in the other?
“We did the exact opposite of the Grammy and the cocktail on the beach! The Grammy we couldn’t even look at. It was just too much. I mean, we loved it because it’s the only award we’ve ever had. But at the same time we don’t want it to put the wrong kind of pressure on us. I think we are just bad at taking holidays.”
Their first port of call was Oscilloscope Laboratories in NYC, a studio built by the late, great Adam Yauch. The Beastie Boy sadly passed away in May 2012.
“He was extremely generous. He said we could go there as long as we wanted, for free. We thought three months was long enough to make the trip worth it for everybody and not too long so that it would be embarrassing and seem like we were taking root. The atmosphere was incredible. The level of integrity that Adam showed... Everything there is made all for the love of art. It’s incredible. I don’t feel the loyalty to really talk about him that much because we didn’t know him but the little we saw was really impressive.”
Guitarist Laurent Brancowitz has said that the time in New York somehow reconnected them with France. That being in a foreign place brought out some dormant ‘Frenchness’.
“Our friend made jokes that our album was going to sound very urban!” says Mars. “I think it did the total opposite. When we’re in France we don’t feel “French” at all. We feel like foreigners, we feel like we don’t belong. But then when you are away, people make you feel like what you are.”
In the band’s early days, they felt trapped at home. Music was a means of getting out.
“We grew up in Versailles, which is almost like a Mormon country in the city! It’s the same atmosphere. It’s a bit of a cult, you know? We didn’t really have any choice to make because there was not really any decisions to take. There was no crowd to play in front of so we just went into the studio. But there was no real professional studios... so we would make albums in our room.”
Working on the songs that would become sixth album Bankrupt! in expensive recording rooms thousand of miles from home, they were gripped by nostalgia.
“We were listening to awkward, French-sounding late night TV shows from the late ‘80s. Some very specific things from our childhood that we wanted to just steal a little bit. That was an inspiration.”
The press release for Bankrupt! cites Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as one such inspiration.
“Ha! I think an American journalist asked me to describe my lyrics in four words. Because, you know, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles don’t make any sense, the same as our lyrics. But you’d be sad if they were gone. Renaissance-named turtles? It’s just so far out.”
With a title like Bankrupt! people’s minds will instantly go to recession and politics. Instead, it’s more to do with Phoenix wiping the creative slate clean.
“It’s also dealing with us being attracted by things that seem a lot different than the previous album. We always were looking for some sort of elegance or perfection when it came to recording. This one is a big shift where we are just attracted to things that are more mediocre, ugly. That are unnoticed. You know how high-end perfumes, they have a repelling element in them? We are looking for that.”
The concept of “une jolie-laide”, a beautiful ugliness, is very French of course. And a discussion of essentially Socratic philosophy somehow involving talking cartoon turtles is very Phoenix.
Bankrupt! was mixed on the same console Michael Jackson used for Thriller.
“That was on Ebay,” Mars shrugs. “As simple as that. It was on Ebay for a million dollars the day after MJ died. Which was telling a lot about the guy selling it. Then a year later it was for $17,000 so that was a big discount. We didn’t want to buy it to put it in a museum. It’s a very specific console that a lot of people worked on and a lot of people tweaked. When you go in the studio you have things that are just functional. It’s almost like if you would buy a car. It’s not that exciting to buy a car – at least you should buy something that has a little more meaning to you than just to get from A to B. And that’s why we bought this console.”
They have often declared themselves to be massive Prince admirers. Have they switched ‘80s pop allegiances?
“We grew up with both these icons. There are acts that the whole family likes. Your grandma would like. Prince? Yeah, maybe not. But Michael Jackson, even my grandmother liked. And then you have bands like My Bloody Valentine that not only your parents don’t get but your friends in school don’t get. You feel like you are the only one that gets it. Trust me, in Versailles if you liked MBV you knew you were part of the elite. You felt lucky. So we grew up with those two contradictions. Something very pop culture and something more elitist, that defines your personality more.”
Would Phoenix like to be embraced by the grandmothers or be something more elite?
“We have no choice, we’re a bit of both. But it creates a new possibility. Everything that you reject becomes a part of you. You are always in those sort of contradictions and that is what’s interesting about it I think.”

Phoenix play Longitude in Marlay Park on Friday, July 19.