Images of Peter: Finding Peter Godwin

Popshifter:: Much of your music seems inspired by French Pop music (including “French Emotions”—the French-language remix of “Emotional Disguise”—and “Rendezvous”). Are there any particular French-language musical artists you may have chosen to emulate? One example would perhaps be Gainsbourg, or even the Belgian synth-pop trio Telex? (Being fairly obsessed with French language, and other languages in music, I am interested in your answer to this).

Peter Godwin: I have had an affection for French language music that goes back a long way and continues to this day. Perhaps it began when I was seven and my father taught me to play the piano accordion, my first instrument. The accordion evokes a French flavour of cafés on the Rive Gauche, Juliette Greco singing sultry torch songs, poetry and politics lubricated by wine and absinthe, dancing at the bal musette to Piaf’s “La Foule” or “L’Accordéoniste.”

Strangely, I had never recorded myself playing accordion until I made my latest Nuevo album. It is most featured on “Milonga Moon,” which is a dark tango tale of desire and lost love, presented as a French-Spanish duet, and this is ornamented with tumbling accordion lines throughout. . . I was surprised that I could still play quite well, after some years of neglecting the instrument. I’m actually playing my late father’s accordion on that song.

Serge Gainsbourg, 1970
Photo © Jeanloup Sieff

It began as a song I wrote and sang in French, but I recorded the accordion first and then decided I wanted to leave space for the its melancholy melodies, so I chose fragments of the original and just spoke them. . . later I decided that I wanted Amanecer Sierra (who adds some beautiful vocal ornaments, improvs, and choirs to the Nuevo sound throughout the album) to sing some of the original melody, but in Spanish, because of some of the tango overtones, the Spanish milonga guitar. . .

But I’ve always loved French spoken, because I love French verse. When I was 15, I was a huge fan of Arthur Rimbaud, who at 16 wrote some of the greatest poetry in the French language. Years ago in “French Emotions” I had spoken and rapped the French version—a very, very early rap I think you’ll agree—that rhythmic middle section that begins “optimiste, pessimiste, tous les deux, mais jamais triste. . . ”

I always felt that in French chanson especially—but also in chanson-pop crossover like Serge Gainsbourg—the language allows you to speak of sexuality and romance, and every place they collide, in a way that is much more difficult in English. In French you can be explicit, earthy, and lyrical, all at the same time. In English—as translations of Jacques Brel have demonstrated—to cover this, you can end up sounding either prissy. . . or sleazy. . . the same possibilities you find in French are also there in Spanish to some degree. You can see this clearly in my favourite Spanish-language poet, the Chilean Pablo Neruda.

Duncan Browne, who was the co-founder of the original Metro with me, used a verse from Neruda’s “Niña Morena Y Agil” in his song “Niña Morena” on The Wild Places album and this is actually my favourite song that Duncan wrote after he left Metro. That poem by Neruda was written and published when he was 19 years old—another young poet-genius!

There are two songs on The Wild Places that Duncan and I wrote together in the early days of Metro. “Samurai,” where I play a lot with Japanese imagery and ideas so you see I wasn’t exclusively a prisoner of Europa! And “Planet Earth.” This is not to be confused with the Duran Duran song of the same title that was released three years after “Wild Places.”

When the Correspondence album was released in France (“Correspondence” is a title and idea I stole from the poet Charles Baudelaire), I did a tour of France: 23 cities in 23 days and four days in Paris. They were so pleased that I could speak French and so do all the interviews and radio and TV in French. Apparently, that’s very unusual for an English act! Plus, they found out that I had a fair bit of knowledge about their music, their writers, painters, and film-makers and they found this respectful of their culture, which, understandably, they’re very big on in France: they feel their heritage is under threat in a way, on such an English-centric planet.

And I even knew the words to the songs; they couldn’t believe it. They said, “You know our songs better than we do!” (Probably not true!) Anyway, when the tour ended, out came the champagne and Polydor France presented me with a gift: a boxed set of every recording ever made by Edith Piaf!

Click here to read more from Peter Godwin on. . .

Setting The Scene
Influences
Cult Following and Italo-Disco
Benitez, Bowie, and Electronic Music
French and Spanish Inspirations
Producing and Writing
The English and European Aesthetic
Working with Steve Winwood
Off The Map
Working with Others
Forays Into Acting
More On Acting

Introduction:

Cherchez la femme: “Images of Heaven”
Discovering Peter Godwin
Rediscovering Peter Godwin

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