Laurent Garnier interview, from the archives
The French DJ indepth and exclusive, from 2014.
In January 2014 I interviewed Laurent Garnier at Silencio, Paris. We had a deeper conversation than I had expected; Laurent was so honest and talked about some very significant parts of his life. One of his most important shows; his motivations; losing his record label. And when euphoria turns to emptiness, and why he is isn’t envious of Daft Punk. I finish with a question neither of us can answer.
Plenty has happened in Laurent’s life and career since this interview; notably he was made Chévalier de la Légion d´Honneur in 2017, in recognition of his services to music in France. Laurent is also the centre of a film, Off the Record, which chronicles the rise of techno through his eyes and ears (the UK premiere was at the Manchester International Festival in 2021).
Just the other day, I met an eighteen year old Australian in Berlin (long story) and he asked me who my favourite DJ was. Laurent Garnier was my immediate answer. I’m not going out on a limb with this assessment. In 2017 I was talking to another one of the most successful DJs of the last decades, Seth Troxler, and he nominated Laurent too; I think just as much for his his attitude as his work. Laurent cares about his audience and the dance music community in an authentic and inspiring way.
I’ve known Laurent since 1988. At least, that was when we first worked together - although his debut at the Haçienda was in the Autumn of 1987. The other day I found the details of our first evening together - in my work diary; the set times for the Haçienda’s 6th birthday, 21st May 1988. The diary tells me who was DJing; Mike Pickering peak time, myself and Dean Johnson most of the rest of the night, and a relatively new guy who was given the warm-up slot - DJ Laurent Garnier, 9pm until 11pm. I’ve scanned and posted my diary page for that day at the end of this interview.
Laurent still talks about how the Haçienda transformed his life. It enthused him as a visitor, and provided him with a chance to DJ. He played a lot of Haçienda evenings - often alongside Jon Dasilva - and then into the 1990s, could be found at venues like Shelley’s in Stoke, Kaos in Leeds, and Frenzy in Blackpool. All of them, very wild, believe me! But also, back home in France, he was integral to the founding of the Rex club as an epicentre of house and techno. From then, he’s travelled the world; always uncompromised and forward-looking.
As a recording artist, Laurent’s most well-known work includes ‘Crispy Bacon’ and ‘The Man With the Red Face’. Outside of electronic dance music, his work with the Liminanas is definitely worth tracking down.
This Laurent Garnier interview marked the publication of the updated version of his autobiography Electrochoc - the first version had been published in French in 2003.
So let’s go back to 2014 (we spoke English, my questions in bold).
Welcome to Silencio, and welcome Laurent Garnier (audience applause). In this updated version of the book, there's a lot of new material. When you published the first version you said you’d learned about yourself. Now that you've come back to the book 10 years later, I guess you have learned yet more about yourself?
It's very different. When I say I've learned a lot from the first version it's because when I wrote it in 2003, it was 15 years since I started as a DJ, and I’d never really had time to sit down and to think about what I'd done before and why I've taken various choices in my life; and for a year and a half I had a journalist in my house every Wednesday (journalist = David Brun-Lambert, credited as co-author). He was there for four hours every single Wednesday, asking me very specific questions. And for the first time I started to realize why I did do all this you know it was really strange, and especially as we took so much time to write the first part of the book.
The first part it's factual. We're saying this is what happened, we were in France, it happened like this; I was at the Haçienda in Manchester, it was like that; it was such an important club for house music - yes there was a lot of drugs, there was a lot of gangs, but there was a lot of fun. We just say what happened. In the new version, because now I have now been in this business for 25 years, it’s been revealing to me why and how did I do all these things. I can start to have my own opinion about things, which I didn't allow myself to do in the first book. The second part is maybe a little bit more personal, where I'm talking about my own worries.
One of the things that’s clear is a lot of things you do is about taking risks. In fact, risk-taking is like a Pltheme in your career. Does it get harder to take risks the longer your career goes on because there's a long way down for Laurent Garnier.
I guess the more you grow up as an artist, whoever you are, whatever you do, I guess maybe the weight gets heavier on your shoulders. But at the same time, what I always say is for me, an artist that doesn't take risks is someone that is just digging their own grave. Certainly, you don't get very far repeating yourself all the time.
You know, other artists today which is still alive after 20 years of doing whatever they do, even if they're choreographers or painters or photographers. They all need to move, they need to reinvent themselves, they all need to go somewhere else otherwise they become part of the past at one point and that doesn't interest me because for me DJing is about being in something that is happening now - not that I want to be trendy I don't give a shit about this - but what I'm really into is to be coherent with my time.
I think if at some point if I start playing music from maybe five years or ten years ago thinking it was better before, I think for me it will be time to stop because that means I'm never going to be able to move forward and always what I wanted to do is to be honest with what I do. And the most honest thing I think for me is to take risks.
When I was reading the book there were a number of occasions when I wished that I had been present at the event because you write about some great occasions. Something that stands out was the live show at Le Playel (a prestigious, all seated concert hall in Paris). In the book you talk made your anxiety before that - you know that was about taking a risk and that was about redefining; and so tell us a little bit about that event and the lead-up to it and how it felt achieving that.
Playel is a very special place in Paris. In England the equivalent of Playel would be…
The Royal Albert Hall.
Exactly, it's something like the Carnegie, you know, whatever, in America. It's a place where there's never ever been electronic music before. First of all, Playel was the very first sitting-down venue I ever did in my life. And playing techno music in front of an audience, which is sat-down, was weird! That was a strange thing.
Playel has got an amazing acoustic, and it's full of people that pay a yearly subscription. So they pay for that, and then they kind of come for maybe 20 concerts, and sometimes they go to a concert and they don't really know what's going to happen. So I knew a percentage in that room; maybe 15-20 % of people would never of heard what I did before. And they made a mistake to come and listen to me! But my thing was to try to catch them. I had to. It was my job as well as I had to catch the people who came to listen to me.
When my agent rang me and said "We have this gig at Playel, would you like to do it?" I said to him "Ok, perhaps, maybe, yes". But then I said to him "You don't do Playel like you do any other concert". Immediately in our imagination, we began working towards doing a really special concert.
So we contacted people who had visuals. We contacted different artists to come with us, so we had more, a bigger brass section; we had Anthony Joseph, we had a DJ who did scratching, we had a percussionist. We've been talking about this concert every single day. Will we do ‘Crispy Bacon’ at Playel when people are sitting down? That was the big question! And then, how are we going to start - everybody's going to be sitting down - am I starting with an uptempo track or with something really down tempo? Am I using a choreographer or something like that? It was a very different task, very special for us, and then we only rehearsed with everybody only three days before the show but then three days before the show you are basically dead if it doesn't work. So it was a lot of risk.
I think I was searching - all the years I've been playing live - searching for something which I didn't know exactly what it was. I wanted to have some jazz musicians with me. I wanted to kind of conduct everybody on stage. I wanted to create something fresh. Have some improvisations. And, you know, we got to this place and you couldn't fuck it up.
If you watch the footage, you can see your euphoria during the event. You can tell from your face and your body language, it’s feeling so good! But in the book you talk about how down you were in the aftermath.
It was very hard after Playel because I felt that was the unique show in my life which represents everything I've been searching for without knowing what it was. I mean, after that it was like two months of complete you know, down.
This is a very special topic. We finished the show, we all came together backstage with the musicians, a lot of us had tears, and it was very, very strong.
My friend filmed with five cameras and we got really good footage, and he asked what can we do with it? I said ‘Well, we're going to release a DVD’ but he told me, at that time, it was really bad to do a DVD, he said ‘DVDs don’t sell anymore’. I had one good reason to want to do this DVD; to give it to my son because if there's one thing I'd like him to see when he's older, I'd love him to see that concert because at the end of the day it represents a lot of what I've always been searching for. But after we finally did the DVD, I couldn’t watch from the beginning right until the end; it's too strong, I couldn't do it.
I’m interested in this because you’re talking what happens with performers - not always in such an extreme way but even DJing when you when you have a night that you know deep down is a really special night, and how that euphoria can turn really quickly into a kind of emptiness, for days.
Yes.
For days and days.
Yes, of course.
So can you explain to people who are there who may be not performers or artists who maybe can't grasp this, what this is like and why does it happen?
It's really hard to explain. It's, it's visceral. I don’t know how to explain that, but I have lots of memories of special moments in my life as a musician - and a lot more as a DJ - but I can’t find the right words to explain what happens.
I talked in the book about the closing of the Yellow club in Tokyo (June 2008); I stayed in that club for three days non-stop day and night. I was like going back to sleep for two three hours and then coming back and I was DJing back-to-back with François Kevorkian and we all cried so much. I mean, for fuck's sake; we only cried because the club was closing down, how pathetic is that? It's all about building a community and feeling like you're with your best friends, best family, best everything. It's something extremely unique. It's something that is so outside of your normal life that it’s, you know. Sometimes it's very hard to come down.
The come down; I mean even the phrase suggests what I'm going to say. Performance, DJing, is an addiction in a lot of ways, and if you feel that visceral thing in your brain, soul, heart, and you know it's never going to be recaptured, that is the thing with Playel, you'd be like, I will never be able to recapture, so it's not like a drug where you can go and get another fix.
I agree with you but people here (gestures towards the audience); all these people here know what you're talking about because I am absolutely sure they all have a night which they can remember - and they will remember until the end you know. As a clubber before I was a DJ, we all have - I'm sure all of you have - one night which you can pinpoint thinking that was the best. And why? Why was that night so special compared to the other ones? Because you were in an environment which made you feel so good. And I think we all have these experiences. And our job is to give that to people.
But the great thing is there's still a mystery there.
Luckily, luckily.
I mean also it’s to do with the audience, When you're in that club, whether it's the club in Tokyo or whatever, you need to go on that journey together, and you need the audience to abandon themselves…
But before you let them or make them abandon themselves you need to be able to share with them the love or your passion for music. You know for me when I play music I can't lie - it's true, I make funny faces and I shake my body and I go a bit crazy - but I love what I play, and every single night I try to make the night special for people out there. And then when you do that, already you open the connection with the people - after then they might start to abandon themselves. It's true; when you're a DJ our job is to make people just let loose.
If we talk about some of your influences can you explain to people who are as old as me what was it about the Haçienda then, where your story begins? The first pages of the book …
Are on the dance floor of Hacienda, yes. Mike Pickering playing house music.
I used to live in London and then I came to Manchester for my everyday job. Back then, I was 20 years old, 21 years old. My dream was to be a DJ already. I was basically spending absolutely every single pound I was earning in a restaurant on records.
Even when you're in London you were hearing about Manchester, the Haçienda and then you go to the Haçienda and there's the Temperance Club with you playing - this man playing (taps me on the shoulder) - and then there was Mike Pickering doing Friday, playing the beginnings of house music. And on Saturday was a guy called Dean if I remember…
Me and Dean. Yeah.
He was playing soul and then you were playing…
Er, Trouble Funk…
And Trouble Funk, of course, because that was the music of the time. So I just came to the club which, as a dancer, I felt good with. I just loved the music and I was discovering amazing music before I even started DJing.
The great thing then was we didn't know what we were doing. I think of that somehow as an asset. I think it’s powerful to be unselfconscious about what you do, really. Sometimes it's good to be thinking. But what you're often thinking about is how do I get back to that moment where I'm not thinking, I’m acting instinctively. And not interested in who is judging me, or what is everyone else playing.
At the beginning nobody was thinking because we didn't know what the hell was happening. I mean, house music arrived with a new drug. In the club everybody went fucking crazy. I mean, you remember this time; you went from a club where you, on Thursday, you had what you called UB40s, which is, is that it?
UB40s? A discount for anyone unemployed.
And it was very cheap for students and stuff like that. And you were playing, I remember, you played Orange Juice, and you played stuff like that, and this is where I discovered all this music. The crowd was nice and easy and then from one week or one month to another month, the Haçienda became this place where you felt like it was crazier than a football match. People screaming their heads off. I saw some crazy shit down there!
There was no blueprint. I mean, nobody knew what to wear, nobody knew how to dance, nobody knew that music. It was new and unpredictable. Nobody knew what to wear, what the records were called, they didn't know if they were made by black people, white people, American people…
Yes! Who cares?
Exactly. So there was no premeditation or ritual, it was all just very spontaneous.
And the one thing which is very important Dave, in Manchester, which I've seen in Manchester much more than Paris, for sure much more than Paris and London as well. In Manchester people they get together; so when you used to go to a rave you could play New Order, as well as the very latest acid track from DJ Pierre. You could hear ‘Why’ by Carly Simon for God's sake and everybody was together. It was a normal thing.
At the beginning, yes…
At the beginning there were no boundaries, and then, yes, things changed of course, because it became a business, it was not a business at the beginning. I mean, I remember, aside from the Haçienda, I was working in a bar that Factory Records and the Haçienda opened, the bar was called Dry Bar and I was serving the food there. I served the guys from New Order, I served the guys from Happy Mondays, I served the acid kids, everybody was together, everybody got on. There were no boundaries at all.
In Manchester, you got these first DJ gigs at the Haçienda, you were working in Dry Bar across town, and you also got you signed your first record deal in Manchester…
I signed my first record contract at Eastern Bloc. No manager, no nothing! Who cares!
Nobody cared about anything but at the same time we cared about everything. The music for sure.
At the end of the new version, I say, I think, I'm not sure, but I think one of the only reason why I'm still there now is because I'm still very passionate about music. And it's still the force that drives me every day. I want to make music, I want to hear music, I want to share music; I care about this, this is why I'm here the business never interested me.
There is a man in the book that I didn't know about because you write about him with a lot of affection; he's a guy called Jean-François Bizot (see photo above). He died after the first version of the book; you write about him in the first version, but you write affectionately in a different way in the new version. He was the guy who set up Radio Nova.
Yes. But again, also Actuel, a very big magazine in France. He was an amazing man. He was using all his money for what he believed in. He was fighting for people. He was an amazing guy. I met him through Radio Nova but he's gone so much more than Radio Nova.
And also some of his spirit that comes through when you talk about him, particularly how he was avant-garde and eclectic and pioneering – that spirit, those things, are really valuable and that's what we all pass on to other people.
Jean-François was such a super wonderful, amazing man. He devoted his whole life, his whole money; he spent everything in Radio Nova for years because he believed that you could do a good underground radio. And he had a very good underground magazine (Actuel). This guy was all about the underground. That was his life. And he devoted his whole life to that. He was a truly, truly passionate man.
There’s someone else who you mention in the book, a very different kind of character - David Guetta. He DJ'd at the Rex, didn’t he? Playing hip -hop.
He was doing a midweek party, called Unity, at the Rex Club, and then I was DJing on Saturday, so we kind of started at the same time.
Was there anything about him then that gave a clue about what was going to happen to him later?
No, I don't think so. I mean, we wrote about David on the first part because I started with him, and also he was one of the first guys to play house music in France; maybe he went in a different path than me, but I'm not here to judge that. He was there at the beginning, we're telling the story at the beginning, I'm saying he was there.
I said to David Brun-Lambert, we cannot avoid talking about the success of David Guetta, and for people to understand a bit more about what he did. People know I don't like his music, but that is not the topic. We don't care about this. David has always been a very honest guy about it, what he does, sometimes he's making mistakes, but when he makes music, he's honest, he likes this. And yes, from the beginning, from when I met him 25 years ago, he loved basically the same music as he's producing now - he used to love R&B; he used to love hip -hop, and he used to love house music. He put the two together or the three together, and this is who he is now.
What I found interesting to talk about in the new version about David is the fact that it's a French guy that changed completely the urban radio stations in America. With two records, two tracks (‘When Love Takes Over’ and ‘Sexy Bitch’), he completely changed the music that urban radios were playing in America.
Today I had a conversation about the success of Daft Punk (a few days before, Daft Punk had won five awards at the Grammys). And I said that maybe without David maybe they might have not won because David changed the whole way of thinking regarding dance music in America. I'm not saying bad things and I'm not saying good things about him, I’m just saying this is what he did, he's changed everything.
You mentioned Daft Punk, and the performance at the Grammys with Stevie Wonder, Nile Rodgers was...
I didn’t see it.
Was there a part of you thinking I wish that was me?
No, truly never ever. I am not against Daft Punk but do I envy? I've never been somebody that envy other people's life, I'm so happy with what I do. Because you know what? I feed my family, I'm happy, and I live in kind of a nice world. I have very good people I work with that truly believe in what we're doing; not just what I'm doing, what we're all doing together. And I make music I love. I don't give a damn if I sell 5 or 10 copies. It doesn't bother me. I don't care, I don't care.
When I'm in my studio, I don't have to please anybody. OK, when I'm on stage to DJ, I need to please the crowd. That's my job. But when I'm in my studio on my own, the only people I need to please is myself. And that, I always work that way. Always. And I don't want to change that. Because I think by being true to myself, the people who might like this music will think better; because I haven't lied. I think there's two different ways of seeing yourself as a musician; making music thinking I'm gonna sell a fuckload of this, that's one side of the world, and then there's other people - which I think are belong to - is where I just make music for me.
I'm just going to finish with a couple of more kind of abstract things. You talk in the new book also that one of the things that has happened since the first version is the explosion of mp3 digital file sharing. That whole scenario has changed how people produce and consume music. And not in a good way? It seems for you, or not?
Of course not. I lost my record label. I had a record label called F Communications. We had six people working with us, and then we had to stop working with these people, and then Eric Morand - which is the person I've been working with 20 years - carried on the label for two years without getting one pound. Nothing. He got nothing for two years, but we were still trying to do things, and every time we were releasing an album for the last two years, we lost money. It was not a good thing.
But at the end of the day, we've always pushed a music which was innovative, new, fresh, and we always were fighting for music made with computers – we were forward-looking, you need to look at the future, and so it is now; you need to accept new things.
Of course, these changes you’re talking about, some people get hurt, but I moved on. I've changed my way of DJing, you know, I don't play vinyl anymore because I can have USB keys, and now I can carry with me much more music. I have now in five USB keys the equivalent of 25 record boxes I've been carrying record boxes for 20 years and I do not want anymore to kill myself carrying these huge boxes with me!
So now I can have five USB keys and I can be ready for anything I can follow you if you play Iggy Pop, I can follow someone that plays hip-hop, I can follow a guy that plays reggae because I have it all with me, it's all there.
In the book, you are a little bit more negative about the effect of the internet on consumers, particularly wanting everything very instant for example.
(Pauses) Hang on, I'm just trying to put my thoughts together.
One thing, I think when an artist is putting out an album, they’re spending a lot of time, a lot of thought into a piece of work, which is, you know, that final product; the album. I find it very hard when someone just picks two tracks and say, "Oh, I like number seven and I like number nine," but doesn't give a shit about the rest, but without the rest the album would never be there. And I feel that's how it is for the generation that grew up with music dematerialized.
It’s now normal to not listen to an album. You cannot have a proper idea about who the artist is, because when an artist is spent a year and a half thinking about something, even though you don't like every track, that doesn't matter. It's like buying a DVD and you say I'm only going to watch a scene 5 and scene 7, the rest of the film, fuck it. You can't do that. And it's true, this is exactly what happened with music. People started to choose what they liked and they didn't care anymore about getting more involved with the artist.
James Joyce said that it took him seven years to write Ulysses and that it should take a reader seven years to read it.
Maybe not but at least you should have the respect to read it all.
Investing time and respect.
Yes, I think getting involved with an artist is about investing yourself; if you want to know about them. I want to read one of your books, I'm not gonna read 20 pages, I'm gonna read the whole thing. Maybe I'm gonna start, and then do 100 pages, and think, "Oh, I don't like it." But do you know what I mean? I'm investing myself in somebody's work because I know what it is to make music. I know what it is to write a book. I know what it is to invest yourself for a long time on something. And it's true, when you spend 15 years of your life to release albums, to do a label, when people come to you and say “Music should be for free”, you know you feel a bit hurt about this.
I’m going to end with a really huge question. Back then when we met and all the time that we are talking about, the era of techno house parties, people have often wanted that what we do has a positive effect on our culture; specifically, for example - and this may be a political positive effect – but, in the words of the Joe Smooth song, that “We will make it to the promised land”. Am I right in saying that? And if I am right and as we're not there yet, what can we do as people involved in club culture to keep that dream alive that we will make it to the promised land?
What is the promised land? I'd love to know what Joe Smooth meant.
Well, he meant, a world of unity and it’s about tolerance and it was about people coming together and sharing. A collective, communal…
Isn't that a very strong topic in black American music, whatever style of music it is, for ever?
Yeah, absolutely.
What do you think about it?
Martin Luther King, I have a dream...
So, the idea of the track ‘Promised Land’ is not only connected to our music. It's a very general thing. I haven't got the slightest clue what we should do and what we should do to get it better.
Those moments are so powerful when we are in a club and we do feel that we are sharing that kind of positive communal experience…
And I still feel like that today.
Yes, I agree. But then after what happens, those experiences, how can we influence, how can we translate some of that into the big wide world of division and hate? I’m trying to figure this out.
For me, I was in Amsterdam on Thursday and the next day I was in… (thinks)
Prague.
How the hell do you know that!?
(I point to my research notes on my lap)
Oh, OK! Yes, I was in Prague on Friday, and Prague was amazing. I felt, wow, I felt it. People were going so crazy and I could just take them anywhere - I still have special moments like this of complete love, and sharing and everything else. So I have to carry on doing, I want to do that and I want to share with other people, to carry on sharing and being as honest as we can to make people want to do it as well.
Okay, thank you.
I don't know if that's the right answer, but this is how I see it.
In England, we always think that the French like to spend their evenings talking deep, political, philosophical discussion.
(Laurent laughs)
Thank you very much to all of you who are came to listen to us, and would you please thank and applaud Laurent Garnier. Let's have a drink.
Oui, let's have a drink!
