Prémonition #9, June 1998

Front's image

Inspite of the mitigated welcome of "Tyranny for You" in France, Front 242 remains one of the main pillars in European rock music and the last survivor of the 80's Belgian wave.

How did you react after the success of "Front by Front"?

Patrick: Of "Front by Front"?

Richard: Which success?

Patrick: If we were to draw a graphic of the band's popularity and audience, it doubled from "No Comment" to "Official Version", and in the same way from "Official Version" to "Front by Front". But the band merely feels anything. What we are interested in is to be able each time to make a different album and to inovate the more possible in the genre. Of course, if it sells well, that's better. But it didn't get us too much excited. We remain the same.

Didn't this recognition change your way of working?

Patrick: It's exciting since we get more financial and mediatic means.

Richard: As we're selling well, we receive more money, so it enables us to perfect our tools and our studio. There must be a change in the sound and the production.

Patrick: You can impose things that were forbiden before.

Richard: You can give better shows, as for the last tour. Except in France where we got problems in ticket sales, we can now play in bigger venues, with a setting, and larger team. We can go further in our ideas. There're many positive aspects.

Patrick: This is the recognition of a musical genre. When we started in 1981, it wasn't so obvious.

Do you want to get bigger again?

Richard: I think everyone, whatever he's doing in life - whetther it's music, journalism, or art - always want to go ahead, as long as it preserves the spirit that animated him at the beginning. It's clear that if we ever have the opportunity to play in bigger venues, with more means and money, we'll go on. But without concessions, I mean without saying 'yes' to anyone.

So you consider you kept the same spirit as the you had when you started?

Richard: I think it is much more present on "Tyranny for You" than it was on the last one. Two years ago, during our tour, we exposed too much to public, we were too deprived.

Patrick: We still have the same ideas, the same will, the one to make a music against many things done in rock.

A few years ago, you were pretending to be proud of releasing albums recorded on 4 or 8 tracks.

Patrick: That not a matter of pride, we had no choice. The only pride we could have is the one to have managed to do something with very small means. Now that we have much more means, ideas are harder to find.

Richard: But we're still excited by the very same things, whether we watch movies or we're in the street. What we're most interested in is what ears can hear. Hearing is to me the best gift nature gave us, only sounds interest me. That's what animated us at the beginning. And today, it's clear we've found a way to work sounds that's called Front 242, and we're fully satisfied with it.

Patrick: It's extremely hard and distressing to try to renovate yourself. Don't believe it's that easy! For the first two albums, we really had opportunities. But now, there's more and more competition on the market, even though we're not too much influenced.

Though you go through a doubt periode before releasing "Tyranny for You"?

Patrick: It's normal. Someone who never doubts will crap you tubes all day long. I think that whatever the artistic genre, it's necessary to have doubts to fullt live the material you're creating.

Aren't you affraid of reaching some day the limits of your own creation?

Richard: That's frightening to think about it. We can'timagine what we're going to do for the next album.

Patrick: Distress comes from knowing how to manage to do something new, exciting for us, and...

Richard: ... that will work.

Patrick: Because we could not care about it. The more authentic and honest you are the more your stuff will work. If you try to please the public, it's the best way to kill yourself. The typical exemple is 'Welcome to Paradise', with a very strong catch-phrase. You can hear tons of house and rap songs based on the same basis,and that however don't bring anything new.

Richard: The day when we'll think to have reached our limits, we'll stop.

Patrick: The small percentage of our music that makes Front being typically Front already makes us groan. But everyone has receipts, without exagerating. Someone like Peter Gabriel would have stoped after his second album... One can't be more Catholic than the Pope is; if you have receipts and the opportunity to use them, then do so.

Richard: I find it strange this behaviour of enjoying a band and hoping that its next album won't change of direction, although you are doing your best to renovate yourself and not to repeat yourself, without loosing your mark.

Though some consider you've been doing the same things from the beginning.

Patrick: How can one say so when hearing all the divergences between the first and the last song of a same Front album? Electronic music genre has the opportunity to dispose of a huge panel of sounds. There's absolutely no restriction as you can have with the bass-guitar-drums format.

Don't you believe you've reached the limits of technology?

Patrick: When we released "Official Version" we were discovering sampling, that was very exciting. We had more maturity when we released "Front by Front", so that was all the more interesting. For this album, sampling is at last something we totally assimilated. You wouldn't ask this to Lenny Kravitz. Isn't he a bit beyond technology?

You are absolutely dependent.

Richard: We are not slaves. We do control technology.

Patrick: I use my computer as a telephone. If it doesn't work, I give a kick. The one who writes with his pen may not use technology, but when he has no more ink he'll realize how dependent he is of his instrument. Technology is a tool, not a slave.

What remains of the Electronic Body Music?

Richard: That only was an expression, nothing more; don't be wrong. I never believed that except Front there were many bands with the Body spirit. Besides I don't know any who openly claimed this identity. The press did it. Our goal is to do some Front 242.

Patrick: The Body Music is a movement with a certain ideology and way of thinking. But the expression was associated with New-Beat, it was pasted on us, a bullshit!

Your work with Revolting Cocks?

Richard: that wasn't the same spirit as we have in Front, that's why it was interesting. An opportunity, a month of delirium. I had a lot of fun, but when it started to get serious I wasn't interested anymore. We had a Fairlight, but only had three days to know how to use it. If the music was so repetitive, that's because we didn't know how to program more than two different sequences. In that case, we really were dependent of technology. We have many projects, Daniel for exemple produces some Belgian bands, but we don't really have enough time.

Patrick: Front is the only band worth. We decided to do everything on our own, which takes us a lot of time. We want to have control on anything. It's exciting, but unfortunately sometimes we miss the mark. Videos for exemple, it's pure slump. We did five up to now, and we're not satisfied with anyone. We would really like to seize video recorders, but we'd need fifteen months a year to keep on releasing albums. We do have ideas, but we'd need more time.We're all cine fans, and it's quite frustrating. But, living with frustrations makes you go ahead.

Your image remains very agressive on stage.

Patrick: Neither more nor less than a hard-rock band. Our music is physical, not agressive. Madonna is also someone very physical on stage... We are wearing so-called para-militarian uniforms on stage: the first ones were base-ball player's clothes, and now it is mountaineer's clothes. I can't see what's militarian in these clothes. It is true that on stage, we are virile, and that our music is muscled... but we are men! When I'm on stage, I give the best of myself with the same intensity as when I play a match of mini-foot indoor, I'm as much stimulated. I think I'm lucky enough to find a certain armony between what I am and what I do. A man can have various characters: he can be romantic or sentimental, but there're enough people doing this. You can go to a Patrick Bruel show! (P. Bruel is a cute singer loved by young teen girls - LeoN) When I was born, I received muscles, I'm not responsible for it. But my ideas are clear, and I'm absolutely not macho. Everything comes from the inside, our music can't be described as agressive. If you interview George Miller about Mad Max 3, you won't ask him why his movie is so agressive. In movies, it's far more accepted, you have to go very far to choke people.

Your fascist image has though choked more than one.

Patrick: The only fasist stuff we've worked for is the tv news program of La Cinq (a chanel they wrote a music for). Talking to us of fasist is unfair, stupid. Noone ever asked about this to Sardou (an old French singer - LeoN). But, if there were "Forbiden to skinheads" papers at the entrance of our shows, I wouldn't agree. I wouldn't fight to death for their right to enter, but I would find that a shame. And, they will treat me of 'facho', that's so ambiguous, and boring. If we were fasist, we'd make politic, not music.

Richard: These guys, especially in France, are proud to be so, and don't hide themselves to say so. And, as Patrick was talling me for laughing, if we wanted to sell more albums, we'd only have say we are fasist and 15% of French people would buy our music.

Patrick: For the 85% of the people not fasist there are 5.000 bands fighting; in the 15% remaining, we would be alone. Life would be much easier for us, we could get a contract to play at every Le Pen (Head of the fasist Party in France - LeoN) meeting across France, we'd earn a lot of money, we'd spend our time in castles, and it'd work as hell.

Richard: When journalists interview some movie makers who spread more outragous ideas than the ones we are reproached, they talk about cinema, not about politic. Think of "Europa", that movie is really ambiguous. Has anyone annoyed the director? Anyway, we're not going to spend our time about this. I'm ready to show my ass to French Press and to tell we're not fasist...

Patrick: Some people in our circle would like us to make a fifteen seconds speech between two songs to explain ourselves. But I don't need to excuse myself, I've nothing to blame myself for! That's as if I said: "misters, I don't betray my wife".

Richard: And if we were doing so, 15% of the audience would leave! (laughs).

Patrick: I can remember a DAF show in Brussels, at the time of their single Der Mussolini, which was a pure anti-fasist product. There were some fifteen skinheads, arm in the air in the middle of the crowd. The band didn't react. The audience did, because they esteemed they had to be hurt. the issue was settled that way. Maybe we'll do politics when we'll stop. But that will surely not be in the extreme right wing; even though I'm less leftist than when I was sixteen.

Richard: If I were French, I wouldn't really feel ok; there's the extreme-right, the right wing, the center that is on the right, and socialists who have power are shambling as hell everywhere, they have cops who beat every single north-african they meet. After the billions spent for the bicentenary of the Revolution, they suddenly realize they need to build foot fields for immigrants. So, everything is well in France! And we're told to be neo-nazis. We had the bad luck to be mis-interpreted by one or two persons in our beginnings, and that went in a snowball. French people like that. I'm pretty sure Paris-Match (People magazine) is sold as hot-cakes here.

Patrick: But for the first time, we're going to react. We hired a lawyer, because we're really bored.

Richard: I don't want my sons, when learning at school what nazism, concentration camps were, to ask me if these are the ideas I'm folowing, because they would have read it somewhere. My father who's known the band for ever, and who was fighting with me when I was sixteen because I was going to leftist meetings, asked me some questions. Now he has understood; but hearing your father ask you if you're a fasist... there's something really wrong. That's why we're going to be much firmer in the near future.

Chrisophe Labussičre & Eric Semenzin

BACK