1000 lives

In May of 2007 I was contacted by Christophe Basterra of Magic RPM Magazine in Paris, who was collecting memories of different Stephan Eicher records from his collaborators in the process. I was chosen to write about the album Mille Vies, 1000 Lives, on which I had played and sung and for which I had written music and lyrics. This was in ‘96 I believe, the year after we had gone to Mali. Stephan’s career was at its peak at this time.

I normally write with a slightly exaggerated clarity for any document that will be translated.

I began writing songs with Stephan in an apartment in Zermatt, Switzerland. I wanted to go skiing, but we were too busy enjoying ourselves with pencils and paper, guitars and piano. Only two of the Zermatt songs arrived on the album, but several others are also very good; I have tapes of them. There is a brutal one about loneliness and how it can make one insane, and a beautiful one about a woman falling, falling. Another had a Big Band sound like Duke Ellington. Stephan likes everything.

My involvement with the recording was small. There were some vocals recorded in Saint Paul de Vence, in an apartment or room dégagé de l’hotel Colomb d’Or, a beautiful hotel with a small and ancient bar. The hotel had some connection to Picasso, and there were original paintings (or not) in the bar and restaurant. I have a photo of me, Stephan and Daniel Affolter in this bar, and we are all wearing suits. In another, Stephan (or Daniel) played with the image in his computer – or with scissors – and replaced me with suave Brit actor David Niven. It was in this hotel that I came to love the southern French cuisine more than any other. The carrot soup!

Stephan has always loved to record in unusual places, having a van filled with recording gear follow him to wherever he chose to live at the time. A restless man, always loving and absorbing cultures and languages and creating something beautiful after. Perhaps it is his restless soul of Les Gitanes. I did some singing for the album, but I don’t know if it survived. With Dominique Blanc-Francard producing, I sang through an amazing Sony microphone that sounded so good in my headphones that my own voice scared me – as it should. I did some Arabic-sounding scat singing, which now is so sadly ironic, and that may have been the inspiration for including Ismael Lo on the recording, but probably not. Stephan may have liked the idea but chose African singing instead, a wise choice. Also I helped Stephan with his prononciation englais. The englais sound “th” is difficult for the germanic tongue.

There at Colomb d’Or we heard the news of the Israeli rocket attacks. We were all very sad, and there was a dark cloud over us for many days. Stephan created a sound, or an image, on the equipment that expressed his emotion about it.

Stephan and I also did some recording in a house in Lugano. He was speaking Italien by this time. It was a period of creating sounds with things from kitchens and closets, dropping them on the floor or in buckets of water with a microphone very close, then completely torturing the sound with recording processors.

Stephan and I wrote the song Walking for our friend Daniel Affolter, and after I returned to the US he sent me an incomplete mix, and in my home I played blues guitar on it. I sent this tape back to Stephan and he put the data into his computer, but the final result is that I am playing a second or two early or late, I can’t really tell. It was blues, so it didn’t matter somehow, it still sounds good, but I remember hearing the final mix and wondering how I had played that. It sounded like me, but drunk on something very exotic and expensive. Stephan was surprised when I told him. He is very instinctive with computers and other complex equipment – he doesn’t read the mode d’emploi, he just dives in and understands things in his own way. The results can be interesting!

My final involvement was returning to Paris to play with Stephan for l’emmission Taratata. I remember we played Oh Ironie, the song that sounds like a dance track, but Philippe Djian’s paroles are very serious. I love his work. I am probably ignorant, but to me his writing is the essence of something peculiarly french, a thing that I love but cannot name. I could try, but I don’t want to say something stupid about a country that I love. His lyrics are quiet and still, but profoundly emotional. Like a classic french film. One hears not only the sound of a voice, but the room in which it is speaking.

I heard a story about the rise and fall of the song Oh Ironie. The record company did sondages (questioning people on the street), and half of the people said they liked the music but not the lyrics; the other half said they liked the lyrics but not the music, so the company (Barclay) stopped promoting the song. That is the way business is done here, and now you will have many opportunities to enjoy it as much as we do.

If Stephan’s star does not shine as bright as it once did, it is because of things like that. It is also because he is an adult and a true artist – please don’t judge him by the memories I have recounted for you! – but his art goes into a business that sells round things. J’ai mes avis de ça, mais je m’en arrete de parler ici. Bonne chance, vous qui aimer la musique.