MANO SOLO

MANO SOLO
INTERVIEW
(Paris - 30/03/2007)

In the most unlikely vegetable garden, a stone's throw from Paris's busy ringroad, Mano Solo stands back to admire his sprouting rows of carrots and radishes. The singer, who claims he is no more green-fingered than the next person, has managed to grow a bumper crop this year. For it was here in his own backyard that he fertilised his new album, In the Garden, a harvest of hardhitting songs designed to please even his most committed fans. With un-springlike temperatures not encouraging any sort of lingering outside, the following interview took place in his rehearsal room overlooking the garden.

RFI Musique: Where did the title of your new album come from?
Mano Solo: It's called that because my garden's the place where I turned round, picked up the pieces and started again from nothing. The end of the Animals tour was a really tough time for me. My backing band had got too big, too difficult to handle. It'd got to the point where the musicians were really stuck in a rut. They didn't want to change things around at all – even the running order of the tracks in the show had to be written in stone! I finally realised that I'd been responsible for creating a set-up I really wasn't happy with at all. I'd been convinced I needed a big group behind me so that when I got out on the road I could really bring the house down. And it's true, we did really blow people away! The audience ended up leaping around like mad things, but the problem was I didn't feel they were actually listening to me any more. And there were times when I got a bit pissed off because I could see them all leaping around, having fun, almost as if I weren't there!

So for your new album you honed the line-up right down to piano, guitar and accordion…

I've ended up with the same line-up as a tango group! In my first band, La Marmaille nue, we didn't have a drummer, you know. But after that I got sucked into making things bigger because I suddenly had the budget to do it. I could never honestly see myself being able to do punk without drums and a bass guitar, but for every other form of music I think you can do perfectly well without them! It's better, in fact, because it makes you get off the beaten track and experiment with different things. The three musicians I worked with on the album were forced to lay themselves bare in a way. They had to come up with something different than usual. There was a lot of room to fill in the sound structure of the album and we had to recreate other instruments. What I was trying to do is hint at certain things beneath the surface, you know, sort of suggest something and let listeners complete the arrangements in their head. I'm not saying we've done something out of this world or been amazingly original. But I think at the end of the day we've come up with a balanced form of music that we'll be able to play anywhere. We've gone back to something melodic on a human scale.

In the Garden was an entirely self-financed project. How did you manage that?
I went along to see my bank manager and I said, "Look, I've got a big house, and I'm willing to put it up as collateral. If you give me a loan I can finance the making of my new album." The bank lent me 130,000 euros to cover production, the manufacturing process and promotion. If we manage to sell 50,000 albums we'll start breaking even.

Talking of raising cash, you came up with a very novel idea for your new album, selling it on subscription. How did that work?
It was a test. I did it to show people that all this talk about there being a wonderful complicity between artists and their fans is basically just bullshit. I actually don't think there's an artist in the same category as me who's as close to his fans on the Internet. I can spend 24 hours a day communicating with them! But someone like me - who sells between 70,000 and 150,000 albums a go - only managed to get 2,600 subscriptions. Well, that's bugger all! I couldn't have made my album on that. And that just goes to show that people who aren't as get-up-and-go as me are going to die a quick death! Let's face it, I'm a total opportunist – so if I can't make it that way, no-one can!

Personally, I think managing to find 2,600 people willing to send off their money without knowing what's going to happen to it is actually pretty impressive. It shows they trust you, if nothing else…
Yes, that's true. To me, those people are total angels. I don't even know if I'd have done it myself! I don't begrudge people for being what they are. I'd just like some people to stop seeing motes in their brother's eye when they've got entire beams sticking out of their own! You can wax lyrical about the Internet all you like with all these utopian dreams about giving people access to culture and all the rest of it. But the truth is, five years after broadband and who's emerged as a big star from the Net in France? Kamini!* Meanwhile, lots of artists like Pauline Croze have been signed to record labels. That's where real artistic diversity comes from, not the Net!

Let me tell you, there's not one single artist in France who's making a living from MySpace right now. So let's stop talking all that up! MySpace is basically just a big fishtank record companies can delve into every now and then. MySpace is the modern-day slave market, a global form of begging! And all you're doing at the end of the day is making profit for the guy who owns the site, who's minting it in from all the advertising. All that to get so-called "visibility" that you can get anywhere else on the Net.
MySpace! You get to scroll through thousands of lives in a couple of minutes and if that's not a form of contempt, tell me what is! And the whole thing's plastered with ads for I-Pods and USB sticks. It's just an excuse to sell products off our backs!

Were you at all apprehensive about the release of your new album ?
I think the new album's really going to take off! It's brilliant! I can already see how much the longterm fans are enjoying it. Basically, there are more melodies and much darker moods this time round - people love me when I'm dark and gloomy! My main aim now is to get another proper contract with a record company. I'm not sure I'm going to make enough money from this album to be able to repay my loan, live off it for a while and finance another album in a couple of years' time. This time round I managed to come up with enough of a budget to work under professional conditions, but I won't be able to do that again. Anyway, it's not my job to take care of the production side of things, even if I did enjoy myself this time!

You have a very hard-hitting, provocative sense of humour. Do you think people have got used to that now?
I love any kind of conflict. It really makes me laugh, but I'm well aware that a lot of people don't find it funny at all. The older I get, the more I tell myself that it's up to me to adapt. But it's difficult because that means I get to laugh less! People always think I act the way I do because I'm a star, but in actual fact I've always been unbearably pretentious! And there's no doubt that's what's made me Mano Solo. But I have to say, if I hadn't gone into this profession I'd have ended up a lot worse!

*a French rapper who rose to unexpected fame via an amateur video

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DISCOGRAPHY

From classic chanson (think Jacques Brel meets Les Negresses Vertes) to more rocking territories (particulary on the almost punk Frères Misère), Mano Solo has been considered as one of the greatest new talents of the french scene. A reputation well earned as the following albums will demonstrate. Enjoy this unique artist with his complete studio discography and one of his two live albums (I don't have the other one, sorry)!

LA MARMAILLE NUE (1993)
320 KBPS
1. La barre est dure
2. Allo Paris
3. Je marche seul
4. Sacré coeur
5. Chacun sa peine
6. 15 ans du matin
7. Pas du gâteau
8. Julie
9. Allez viens
10. Toujours quand tu dors
11. Au creux de ton bras
12. Le monde entier
13. La lune
14. On boira de la bière
15. Trop de silence

LES ANNEES SOMBRES (1995)
320 KBPS
1. C'est en vain
2. Tango
3. Soir de retour
4. Y'a maldonne
5. Paris boulevard
6. Dis-moi
7. Tu t'envoles
8. Barbes-Clichy
9. Quand tu me diras
10. Une image
11. A pas de géant
12. Les poissons
13. Mes amis d'enfance
14. Le limon
15. Je reviens
16. Tous les jours
17. Pont d'Austerlitz

FRERES MISERE (1996)
320 KBPS
1. Il ne suffit pas
2. Deux mains pour demain
3. La débâcle
4. Nous partirons
5. Pauv' petit
6. Je n'ai pas
7. La révolution
8. Rien de pire
9. Fandango
10. On vous aura prévenus
11. Salut ça va
12. Je me suis fait du mal

JE SAIS PAS TROP (1997)
320 KBPS
1. Te souviens-tu
2. Les fées
3. La liberté
4. Sens-tu
5. Le drapeau
6. Ca n'a pas marché
7. Janvier
8. Il m'arrive encore
9. Que reste-t-il à vivre
10. Je suis venu vous voir
11. C'est plus pareil
12. Novembre
13. Tchou-tchou
14. Planète Seultou
15. Naître gitan

INTERNATIONALE SHALALA
LIVE AU TOURTOUR (1999)
320 KBPS
CD1
1. Je Reviens
2. Les Fees
3. Tu T'envoles
4. Le Limon
5. Le Monde Entier
6. Janvier
7. Dis-Moi
8. Le Drapeau
9. Allez Viens
10. Julie
11. C'est En Vain

CD2
1. Soir De Retour
2. Te Souviens-Tu
3. Tango
4. A Pas De Geant
5. Sacre Coeur
6. Trop De Silence
7. La Lune
8. Une Image
9. Je Suis Venu Vous Voir
10. Novembre
11. Sha La La

DEHORS (2000)
320 KBPS
1. Des pays
2. Je taille ma route
3. El Mungo
4. Pour gagner
5. Les Gitans
6. Là-bas
7. Les habitants du feu rouge
8. Canal du midi
9. Le périph
10. Soif de la vie
11. Les hommes seuls
12. Métro
13. Les enfants rouges

LES ANIMALS (2004)
320 KBPS
1.Savane
2.Paris avance
3.Les animals
4.Du vent
5.Je n'y peux rien
6.Rêves du coeur
7.L'aventure
8.Rien n’est à toi
9.Barrios barbès
10.Moi j'y crois
11.Botzaris
12.La suie
13.Les sentiments

IN THE GARDEN (2007)
320 KBPS
1. In The Garden
2. Les Endurants
3. Les Petits CarréS Blancs
4. Palace
5. Aimer D'Amour
6. La Fortune
7. Entre Nous
8. Dans Ma MéMoire
9. Le Repas
10. No Future
11. Toujours Le MêMe Tableau
12. Ne Sens-Tu Rien Venir

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