JE T'AIME released their fourth album, Useless Boy (review), at the end of January. The Parisian cold-wave trio launched their long tour in Paris on January 24 (we told you about it). We took the opportunity to ask a few questions to dBoy (vocals), Crazy Z (bass, synths) and Little Bastard, the new guitarist who replaced Tall Bastard. They talk about showing off, melancholy and the hazards of touring. Their answers are just like them, a mixture of bravura humor and touchingly spontaneous introspection. In the end, there's a playful feel to it all, as these three poke fun at their shortcomings, play rock stars and glorious anti-heroes in the shambles. And what if, in the end, these brats had found wisdom in assuming their “uselessness” and fully embracing the vanity of things?
You've just released your fourth album in six years, and that's without counting your EP and remixes... What drives you to release so many albums at such a pace?
Crazy Z: Oh, well, I'd say boredom above all.
dBoy: We're not so young any more, so we've got to speed things up a bit. We've realised that if you want to become a legend, you have to have stopped the band for at least fifteen years and then come back...
Crazy Z: But if we come back in fifteen years' time, we're going to be a bit bedridden, so we've got to hurry. That's why we're releasing so many records.
dBoy: To be more serious, it's just the rhythm of a normal band. We release an album, we tour for a year, we add six months to compose the next one, six months to prepare the release and that makes two years.
Crazy Z: We got into this rhythm because of Covid. We had a tour planned when the pandemic hit, so we had nothing left to do, so we made two new albums, which launched us into this kind of frenzy that ultimately suits us, it's exciting. Once we got going, we kept up the pace.
dBoy: It's true that Covid saved us time, we were able to make two albums very quickly. We're lucky enough to be going pretty fast, so we're making the most of it. As we're really independent in terms of equipment and production, we can do that in our studios and be producers of the record, which saves us the hassle of having to book a studio here and there. It's pretty simple and straightforward.
A few hours ago, dBoy was still talking about the difficulty of learning all these new lyrics. Are you ready for tonight, or are four albums in six years a bit much to memorise?
dBoy: I know them well now, but if I stop rehearsing for a month I'll forget them all again! That's my problem, I can't print: I have very little RAM and my personal buffer memory is very small! We're going to be on tour for three months, so I'll really know them by heart, but by August I'll have forgotten everything again. That's my problem and it's really tiring psychologically because I constantly have to relearn everything. It comes back quicker each time, but it's a real pain. I admire theatre actors when I see the books they have to learn! I wouldn't be able to do that - two lines are complicated enough for me!
Crazy Z: Two lines that repeat themselves, when it comes to our lyrics!
dBoy: I'm warning you, the next album's going to be a lot more concise in terms of lyrics: four lines maximum!
You called the album Useless Boy. What does being useless mean to you? And is it such a serious problem?
Crazy Z: No, it's not severe for us. That's why we embrace it. It's true that we're no use to anyone, really. But I don't think that's why we called the album that. The general theme of the album is advancing age, loss of motor skills, illness... Everything that makes us realise that our time on Earth is what it is and that there won't be much left of it. Which makes all of us, the human race, pretty useless.
dBoy: We're all useless! After that, it may also depend on what you expect from life. If you expect a great destiny and it doesn't happen to you, you'll get depressed and feel useless. If you've never dreamt of becoming Julius Caesar, Napoleon or some other great figure in history, who cares? You're much better off living with your uselessness if you don't have overweening ambitions, I suppose.
Little Bastard: In my interpretation of Useless Boy, there's also a question of social ties, of how you relate to others, beyond the great historical frescoes and your destiny. On a day-to-day basis, it's more about the people around you, the relationships you have with them, the people who don't show you affection, etc... The song Useless Boy and its little mirror Wrong Fold can be read like that, and the themes Crazy Z was talking about offer keys to understanding the term ‘useless’ from different angles.
I found the album perhaps a little darker than its predecessors. Do you share this opinion? Was it a conscious decision?
Crazy Z: We're always torn between two things. We like dark things, and sometimes we'd like to be darker, but we can't, because the band's basic premise is also to get people dancing. It's difficult to make people dance while at the same time being very dark, so that's why we have this sort of sad joy, two things that seem antinomic. There are darker tracks like Useless Boy, Wrong Fold and Stories not Told, and we like to go in that direction, but we also always want to get people dancing live.
dBoy: Our lyrics have never been very happy with JE T'AIME, but it's true that we're a bit darker lyrically on this album. You're not the first person to tell us that about the music, but it's funny, I don't get that feeling. Well, maybe on Stories Not Told, because that's really done on purpose, with the idea of going into the dark a la The Cure... but as for the rest, I don't get the impression that it's any darker than what we've released on our previous albums. I'm going to have to go into psychoanalysis to find out why! It's true that personally I'd like to go even darker, but a band is also a balance with several people, you can't do everything for yourself. I'm firmly convinced that an album made up entirely of songs like Stories Not Told wouldn't go down well with the team. That's why I don't find this album so dark - we could go a lot further! But it's already quite grim, that's true. My father's read the lyrics and he's completely depressed because it's not very cheerful.
You mentioned psychoanalysis: JE T'AIME revolves around recurring themes from the start. Does writing make you feel better, or does it put you in a more negative frame of mind?
dBoy: Recently, particularly with the release of this album because we've started doing a bit more interviews, I've realised that the psychoanalysis happens more at the interview stage! When I have to explain my lyrics, things come up that I hadn't thought of.
Crazy Z: There are some fairly unconscious things that you discover when you pull the thread together with the people who talk to you about them. Our lyrics are a bit like automatic writing and we're so caught up in production issues and all that we tend to think about them after the fact.
dBoy: It was listening to what people had to say about our songs that made me understand things I wouldn't have understood if I'd performed them live on stage. For me, the cathartic aspect is more about the answers I find myself giving to journalists than about the writing or the performance! For example, when I was thinking recently about what the ‘silent monsters’ of the track Silent Monsters were, I concluded by saying that I'm someone who likes to go out a lot and be surrounded by my friends at night because that's when these ‘silent monsters’ come to make me doubt and keep me awake... and so the fact that I'm partying puts them off because I'm not sleeping! That's probably why I like going out so much. That's an example of an analysis I wouldn't have made just by singing this song on stage. That's why I love interviews, and writing them down is even better because you've got time to think!
Little Bastard : Does this new reading you've got post-interview change anything in the way you sing or experience these songs live?
dBoy : Yes, but it's still an internal thing, so I'm not sure you can really feel it. It's a bit like a little girl who thinks she's got a great dad when she's six and won't have the same vision when she's fifteen. Something has changed in me when I play certain songs with you, but I don't think the public realise it. In any case, I'll always move in much the same way, I'm not going to invent new gestures... But that's why I love interviews, I've rarely had as much fun answering questions as I did with this album. We get asked a lot more questions about our lyrics than we used to, which is great, but it also makes me feel like my lyrics were crap on the previous albums! It's good, it allows us to go into a bit more depth than when people ask us ‘why are you called JE T'AIME?'.
You were talking about the mix between sadness and a festive approach. There's often a kind of comfort in melancholy, it's hard to get out of it, it's as if it makes you feel ‘good’. Is this the case for you? Do you enjoy being sad? And is it possible to have a party that isn't sad, because you know it's going to end anyway?
dBoy: Yes, you can have a 48-hour party and then go on to another one! On a more serious note, I don't think I'm a sad person and I don't indulge in sadness at all. On the other hand, I've always been much more attracted to dramas and dramatic comedies than to humour. It's not a question of ‘better’ or ‘worse’, I'm just personally more affected by it. That's why those are the angles I've always dealt with but it's not really being sad, it's just appreciating that state of mind in a work of art. I like dealing with drama... and I love villains! We all prefer Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker!
Crazy Z: I was very comfortable with melancholy when I was younger and I've detached myself from it too because I don't think I'm a sad person either. But it attracted me enormously, I liked being alone and thinking about lots of things, maybe too much, and I actually found it comfortable in a way.
It's easier to get sad when you're celebrating than to laugh when you're sad, isn't it?
Crazy Z: Well, that's never stopped me from laughing, but it's a sardonic laugh... I've always got my façade to remind me of what I have to present to people. On the other hand, when I'm on my own I can completely sink into my demons and let myself go with them because I feel good in them.
There's an aspect of JE T'AIME that was great and that's disappeared a bit lately... You used to talk a lot about all your problems, from lost luggage to dBoy breaking his foot on stage and so on. It was a lot of fun, and it demystified the whole rock'n'roll fantasy. You don't do it as much. Has your luck changed or are you worried about the image you're giving to the bookers?
dBoy: It's a combination of all those things! Lately we haven't had too many problems, we're doing pretty well.
Crazy Z: We're starting to get the hang of things and when we do have problems they're not really problems any more because we know how to deal with them. Quite honestly, it's true that at one point we asked ourselves the question: aren't we starting to scare bookers and venues by telling all our bullshit? Some of them might say ‘we'd love to invite JE T'AIME but we don't know if they'll make it!' So at a certain point we decided to put less faith in that. I liked it a lot too, it made people laugh, it made me laugh... but you also have to appear more serious if you want to get past a certain level. Little things can always happen to us but we talk about them less, partly because we know how to deal with them and partly because we don't want to scare people.
Isn't it annoying, this sort of modesty and only having to present yourself in a cool light?
Crazy Z: Maybe, but it used to make our fans laugh, whereas it didn't make the bookers laugh so much! You also have to know who you're talking to: the first people to hire us for our show are the bookers... We have to show them something that's at least a little bit reliable and attractive.
dBoy: Well, after that, we're going to have a bunch of concerts, so it's obvious that there are going to be a lot of problems...
Crazy Z: Of course, but the question is whether we're going to talk about it or not!
We should have done this interview after the tour, in two months. If you're still alive...
Crazy Z: Oh, statistically there should be at least one left. It's always going to come down to me and I'll have to go home carrying all the gear because the other two will be dead... ‘Where are your mates - well, listen, you're going to laugh but...’ !
Little Bastard: ‘You know all about cruciate ligaments...’.
Crazy Z: Instead of showing off, have you got your European health insurance card? You're going to have to do it, mate, because I assure you it's come in handy a couple of times! I can tell you that when dBoy broke his foot in Liège and we ended up in the hospital at three in the morning, you realise that this is the kind of thing that can come in handy!
Little Bastard: You see, all those stories made me wonder when they asked me to join the band... But I soon remembered that I'd laughed so much about it that I wanted to be part of it!
Crazy Z: Well, that answers your question: even the guy we asked to join the band was freaking out! So we should ask ourselves a few questions!
dBoy: I don't think we've had any more problems than any other band. It's just that when you start travelling so much, you multiply the risks.
Crazy Z: Yes, we used to talk about it and make jokes about it, but I think everyone's been through these kinds of problems. We took it on board and we saw that it made people laugh... But I think other people go through the same things too. Putting the wrong fuel in the car, everyone's done it! Ending up in hospital because you fall on stage, Dave Grohl's done that too! Forgotten luggage at the airport, etc...
(Editor's note: it's interesting to note that this reply was given on 24 January, dBoy has since been run over by an SUV, is currently suffering from oedema and that the band has chosen to re-brand the tour poster as ‘J'ŒDEME’).
JE T'AIME often evokes the Peter Pan syndrome, the refusal to ‘grow up’. If you had the chance to be in the shoes of someone totally different, someone without the anxietiy of those ‘silent monsters’ for example, would you be tempted?
dBoy: I'd be inclined to say that I wouldn't change my life for anything in the world, but the problem is that my life today is so shitty that I'm beginning to doubt that statement I've always made. Yeah, come on, a computer scientist in Geneva living in Annecy, that's not so bad... but in fact I'd be so bored! No, it would be horrible. I don't really know. Even in the worst situation I'm in right now, I don't think I'd want to trade my life.
Crazy Z: Anyway, it's too late.
Little Bastard: In the end, what I appreciate most in my life is the people around me. If I had to change my life, it would mean I wouldn't meet the same people. I'm not sure I'd be lucky enough to be surrounded by such colourful and varied people. That's also the advantage of not fitting into a certain societal norm of a 9-7 routine, to put it simply. Maybe I'd be fine with that, but too many of the people I care about wouldn't be part of that kind of life. So I wouldn't change a thing.
Crazy Z: Did you warn all these people that you weren't going to see them again for three months after the tour? And that's if you come back alive...
Little Bastard joined the band recently. Did the remixes you did for JE T'AIME in the past influence the work on Useless Boy?
Crazy Z: No, because the album was made before we asked him to join the band.
dBoy: He did add his own touch to certain tracks though, because we started rehearsing them together and there were certain passages where there wasn't as much guitar. The guitars he added were so good that we decided to add them before we sent the album off to press.
Crazy Z: Basically, the album was written before he arrived and Tall Bastard had written and recorded the guitars before he left the band.
Little Bastard: Yes, in the end I've got very little to say about the album, apart from giving my point of view. Having remixed their work in the past I'm sure it was a very natural thing to do, both for me to join them and for them to offer it to me, and I was very pleased to do so. As someone who appreciates the band and knows them from the outside as well as the inside, I think I have a different interpretation, both when I listen to them and on stage. In a way, I'm almost more in the position of a live musician at the moment, I've just arrived, I've learnt the songs, I'm reappropriating them a bit and it's a bit of a bastard position at the moment... Which goes hand in hand with the little name they've given me, so I'm living it well, but I can't wait for the rest!!
Since you mention this nickname, I suppose it's to mark the transition from your predecessor...
Crazy Z: ...yes, we had Gilles as Tall Bastard, so it's continuity...
... because that's also the name that was given to James Dean's car, which some people say is cursed because it ‘killed’ four people and to this day nobody knows what happened to it!
Little Bastard : Well, now we finally know what happened to that car: it plays guitar in JE T'AIME!
When Tall Bastard left, did you think about continuing just the two of you?
dBoy: Yes, we did think about it: two people touring together would make more money for each one of us! But seriously, we quickly got rid of the idea. It's complicated on stage. Going from a trio to both of us on stage would be tricky.
Crazy Z: That's not the band's DNA. We're still a rock band and we already don't have any drums... We need to keep the strings on stage. There was talk of me taking over the guitar but we'd have missed out on some bass. We want a resolutely rock formation, we come from there, we have our English references, Manchester and all that... We're already getting a lot of comments about the lack of drums, and that would have annoyed me. Maybe it would have worked just fine, maybe it'll happen one day... when Little Bastard's dead!
We love gossip. Is there a juicy story to tell about Tall Bastard's departure?
Crazy Z: It's the most boring story on earth: he's retired!
dBoy: He politely asked us for permission to leave the band to rest, and he offered to stay on while we looked for a replacement... Unfortunately, we don't have any juicy details on that. We're often asked about it, and a lot of people think we had a row, but no, not at all. It's a laugh. I imagine that in people's minds, there's no such thing as a musician who just leaves without a fuss!
Crazy Z: Well, we've got old and boring. That's why we don't tell funny anecdotes any more.
You've mentioned Stories not Told several times, which sounds a lot like The Cure's One Hundred Years. Why did you pay such a blatant tribute to that track?
dBoy: Actually, it wasn't written with that song in mind. I was on my own and I had a lot of fun doing it. Tall Bastard, who's a huge fan of The Cure, heard it and walked straight into the door I'd left ajar and smashed it to smithereens! It's a complete copy/paste from One Hundred Years, yes. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of The Cure, but if I had to choose just one of their songs, that would be it. There was a lot of discussion between us about whether we should put it on the album. Were we going to be blamed for it? I'm completely comfortable with it, I've got no problem with it. And without necessarily saying that I'd have copied The Cure, if I could have done more in this universe, this storm, this animal tension, raw and saturated, very hypnotic, I would have gone for it! There's also a play on duration, with these very long tracks... There's a risk of tiring out the audience, but I find that during the whole time you're in this constant storm, your body and soul are living in it and it's a state of mind that I adore, it would be my absolute delight to do that on a whole album! It's not so much the idea of copying The Cure as this idea of storm, this state of being on a long hypnotic layer while telling stories, because this song is about my father who's suffering from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. There's a search for depth. I love this stormy side, I'm a fan of this kind of very intense stuff. Of course, in the context of JE T'AIME, getting people dancing all night to that kind of mood might be a bit out of place, so we decided not to go too far in that direction either.
Little Bastard: Yes, but it's still part of a body of music where the ‘dancing/crying’ aspect is present and accepted, whether in the goth or alternative scene in general. It's music for people who...
Crazy Z: People in their sixties!
Little Bastard: ...I wanted to say ‘who aren't afraid to dance to things like that and take responsibility for their emotions’. And that can just as easily be something catchy or a much more tormented but equally liberating monolithic block. I think it's still relevant.
dBoy: Imagine it being ten tracks... I'd love to, but I can understand why not everyone wants to!
It's a bit like trying to make people laugh or cry: for it to work, you need contrast and nuance and you can't keep hammering the same thing over and over again...
dBoy: That's exactly it.
Little Bastard: Yes, Korean cinema plays with that very well. There are these moments of unbearable tension that are suddenly defused by comic moments to boost our ability to cope with the horror that's about to happen.
Crazy Z: There's a bit of that in JE T'AIME, with exaggerations bordering on the grotesque. Sometimes we do so much that it becomes funny. You might think we're showing off a bit, but it's not that, it's quite the opposite.
That was my next question. You've got this attitude that's a bit like brats, you really show off on stage! Crazy Z, with his cigarette in his mouth, his dark glasses, his shirt open right down to his navel... aren't you a bit poseurs?
dBoy: We're big poseurs! No, I don't think so. Crazy Z lacks self-confidence so he needs to be like that on stage! It's true that people often say we're a bit poseurs. Well, I don't know about that! I'm a big fan of Steven Tyler, Axl Rose, Michael Jackson, all those heroes. These are the people who made me dream when I was a kid and I don't give a damn about being seen as a poseur. I do it for myself, to have fun, because I have fun. I don't think we're just showing off. We're full of doubts and uncertainties.
Crazy Z: Same thing for me. I don't really ask myself whether I'm doing too much or not, I don't care, I'm really doing it for me. That's just the way I am and if it makes some people laugh, or others dream, too bad or so much the better, at least it will have evoked something in them.
Little Bastard: When you go to a dance show, you're not going to say to yourself, “What are these poses?" It's totally assumed.
Crazy Z: When people come to see a concert, it's not just to see their mates on stage. It's to see a show that's going to transport them in one way or another. They may find it grotesque, or they may say to themselves “Fuck, I'd like to be that person, he seems to dig it”, that's what's important.
dBoy: That doesn't stop me from loving certain bands who are very static on stage. If you want to have fun, have fun!
Crazy Z: In any case, I'm not showinf off on purpose. I'm a bit shocked!
I'm sorry, maybe you shouldn't listen to the next question then... You released the album with three different artwork, each with a portrait of one of you. The version highlighted on streaming platforms is the one with Crazy Z's face. Is this because, as bassist, you felt he was the most “useless” of the group?
Little Bastard: It's because he likes to show off the most on stage! Besides, it's not true - the most useless guy in JE T'AIME is the drummer, just like in Metallica!
dBoy: Actually, the answer is quite simple and quite mathematical. We either had the choice of using Little Bastard's photo, but as he'd just joined the band it would have seemed incoherent, or the choice of putting the singer's photo, but all the bands in the world would have made that choice and it was a bit phony. So that left Crazy Z, the bassist. We don't't have an over-inflated ego that would have made it a problem between us. To finish the story, we hadn't originally planned to use these photos for the cover, but we couldn't find any. It was when we saw this photo of Crazy Z that we finally decided to use it as the cover. It all came together quite naturally.
Crazy Z: I'd like to add that dBoy had other projects before, he'd already had his face on a cover and didn't really like the idea of doing it again! He said “Oh no, I'm traumatized, I don't want another cover with my face on it”, so I gave in.
dBoy: He's happy now, he's got flyers, vinyl records, posters for concerts, coasters... He sees his face everywhere!
Crazy Z: I'm beginning to understand what he meant when he said it sucked.
dBoy: In ten years, you won't be as comfortable with it!
Little Bastard: Especially if by then it looks like the cover, indeed.
