INTERVIEW
He is the artist of record concerts. Throughout his long and successful career, Jean-Michel Jarre has multiplied the huge performances, beating four times the record number of people for a concert. While publishing his autobiography, Mélancolique rodeo , the musician returned for Europe 1 on some of these mythical performances, notably that of the Place de la Concorde, in 1979. "I took a year to to give back, "he confides.
"It amused me a lot to tell these concerts," each of which "could have been the subject of a book," he says at the microphone Nathalie Levy. But, he says, "I did not initiate anything, these are proposals that were made to me". Regarding his concert in collaboration with NASA in Houston in 1986, the artist admits to having "refused for a year and a half to go to Texas".
"Jacques Chirac told me that there had been seven deliveries during the concert"
But the founding concert remains that of the Place de la Concorde, in 1979, where had pressed a million people. "Everything started from the Concorde concert," says Jean-Michel Jarre. "This is the first time I initiated the idea of making a concert using visual techniques, videos, lighting projections on buildings."
"I took a year to recover," says the musician, before recounting his meeting with Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris, at the same concert. "He told me that there were seven deliveries during the concert," he recalls.
But Jean-Michel Jarre did not stop there. In 1990, this time two million people attended his concert in La Défense, before a new record of more than three million people in Moscow in 1997. "It's quite strange. time to find out if people have come for you, "he describes. And to explain his special affection for outdoor performances: "There is a kind of connivance, familiarity when playing outdoors, and people settle a little where they want." "It has nothing to do with a concert hall, which is much more formatted," concludes Jean-Michel Jarre.