Juliette Gréco

Je me souviens de tout (I remember everything). Having begun her career just
sixty years ago, no-one would blame Juliette Gréco if she had forgotten a
thing or two, but no, she confidently maintains that she remembers
everything. Everything… and especially the poets. “Célestes, si lestes, mes
frères de joie” (Divine, so agile, my brothers in joy), according to the
words of her new album’s title song, written by Orly Chap.
Je me souviens de tout is an extraordinary album, coming at a time when
everyone is sheltering behind their hits, artists are told to avoid taking
risks and the word “innovation” smacks of danger. Juliette Gréco has brought
together Abd Al Malik, Olivia Ruiz, Maxime Le Forestier, Brigitte Fontaine,
Orly Chap, Christophe Miossec, Marie Nimier (along with her associates
Thierry Illouz and Marc Estève), Adrienne Pauly and Valérie Véga: the most
exciting cast of the year, a formidable maelstrom of audacity, youth, poetry
and invention.

Indeed, Juliette Gréco loves these patchworks of generation, shade, style
and material, which she kneads, tames and colours with her voice, spirit and
independence. On 2003’s Aimez-vous les uns les autres ou bien disparaissez
(Love Each Other or Perish) and 2006’s Le Temps d’une chanson (For the Time
a Song Takes), she showed how flexible her talent could be, ranging from
François Rauber’s vast orchestral swells, great international pop classics
or rock experiments to the glorious lyrics of new “new French song”. A
unique woman, she adopts a hundred different guises.
On her new record, Gréco has chosen the magical format she used in her
concerts at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 2007: accordion, piano and vocals.
The accordionist is Jean-Louis Matinier, an extraordinary musician who has
long risen beyond mere virtuosity, a former pupil of the legendary Joe Rossi
(yes, the man who recorded the timeless solo on Accordéon, the java that
Gainsbourg wrote for Gréco). On the piano is Gérard Jouannest, Jacques
Brel’s accompanist and writer of his finest songs, a partner she has been
working with for forty years and the man she married. Then (as she says
herself), the singer is “a living singer, to make living music”. An alert,
infinitely precise, attentive artist, she masters the art of song better
than anyone and is always fond of surprises.

“I’m always at home when I record,” she says. Her producer, Jean-Philippe
Allard, took her at her word. Cables were laid out and mikes plugged in
around Gérard Jouannest’s great Steinway upstairs in the 17th-century
presbytery where Juliette lives, in a small village in the Oise district.
Contemporary technology and old, direct-recording techniques; modern words
and the traditions of classic French song.

I remember everything, she announces, and we remember a stunning career that
began with three songs one evening in 1949, the lyrics by Jean-Paul Sartre
himself and the music by Joseph Kosma. Then came whirlwind success: Jacques
Prévert asked her to sing Je suis comme je suis (I Am the Way I Am), a
number of great writers secured a place in musical history through the
medium of her voice (Raymond Queneau, Robert Desnos, François Mauriac), Léo
Ferré and Georges Brassens entrusted their latest creations to her, and she
herself gave a helping hand to singer-songwriters just starting out (Jacques
Brel, Serge Gainsbourg, Guy Béart), introducing their work to the public. We
remember the censorship that kept entire records by Gréco off the airwaves;
we remember the outrage of conservatives when she made no secret of her
identity as a liberated woman in pre-1968 France; we remember her loves,
anger and superb photos; we remember the song Déshabillez-moi (Undress Me),
so loved by all of France; and we remember the legendary songs she
introduced to the public: Si tu t’imagines (If You Believe), La Javanaise,
C’était bien (le p’tit bal perdu) (It Was Good - The Little Lost Dance),
Votre fille a vingt ans (Your Daughter is Twenty) and so many others.
However, Juliette Gréco refuses to remain over-reliant on memories; she has
no wish to play the grande dame of French song, the venerable elder, the
living legend. What if she has been singing for sixty years? Marie Nimier
and Thierry Illouz have provided her with a splendid profession of faith to
bring her album to a close…

“I’ve never been
Good with the past
With things that are wound up
That are completed
I’m for everything changing
And turning it all upside down
And I haven’t stopped
Starting all over again”

So she has started over again. She speaks openly of “the tons of lyrics” she
received over eighteen months once the news was out that Juliette Gréco was
to record a new album. She turned a lot down. “I hear myself singing or I
don’t hear myself singing. If I don’t hear myself singing, I’ll never do it.
There has to be immediate emotion.” It does not matter if her writers are
the age of her grandchildren or come from the worlds of rap or rock. The
words have to mean something to her, she has to get inside them and be able
to convey them with the same voracity that Prévert and Gainsbourg inspired
in her.

Then “the boys get to work”: Gérard Jouannest writes the arrangements with
Jean-Louis Matinier. Her husband says she does not rehearse. “I don’t build
myself up with rehearsal,” she agrees. “When I rehearse, that means it’s
finished.” She lets the lyrics follow their own path in her memory, mind and
desires. Then she joins Jouannest at the piano, but mainly to listen to the
wonderful melodies he writes. Finally, when the time comes, upstairs in her
home, she brings the song to fruition. One take - sometimes two - and there
it is: the song is done. After that, it is our turn. And we remember
everything.