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Oui oui,
we are French, live in Sheffield, love cheese and wine from
Languedoc (in particular
'Minervois'
and
'Fitou').
We met though a common Jamaican friend and producer
Paul 'Groucho'
Smikle after years of him telling me (Marion) I should meet 'Fred de
Fred'.
I was just coming back from New York, only with my suitcase and
pretty much heart- broken. I had all sorts of jobs there including
one as a Bunny Girl. Before that I was in San Francisco where I was
singing Jazz.
We finally met on
September 11th 2001.
We were in the studio recording a song called ' Metropolis ' :
"Tear down the building, tear down the walls, tear down the
churches, tear down it all.
We’ll smash up the bridges, smash up the walls, we'll write a
history and never fall ".
...when the phone rang and we learned what had just happened !
I had met Groucho when I was leaving in London where I had a band
called
'Mademoiselle',
qualified by The Guardian as "arty poppy-punk sexiness"!
At that time I also worked with different producers, and one of my
songs
'Wonderland'
got picked up by
Nellee Hooper. Featuring
Roisin Murphy (Moloko)
it
got to No. 2 in the UK Chart Club, with a remix by
Roger Sanchez
the
summer before I met Fred. So it’s that Sheffield connection again !
Fred had been friends with
Mark Brydon
for years. He came to
Sheffield in the mid '80s after a party in the South of France where
he met his long time friend
Brad Scott
(double bass and ukulele
player). Brad arrived at the party from Pamplona dressed in a
tuxedo, in an old Hillman car, with a ghetto blaster playing The
Doors, and paying for his petrol with bottles of champagne along the
way, as he had no money.
After 2 weeks of partying down there, Brad invited Fred to
Sheffield. There he met
Chakk
and the
Fon Force
and decided to stay.
Since then he has been involved in many forms of music in different
countries :
~
Electro in Sheffield with Robin Taylor Firth (Nightmares on Wax),
Robert Gordon (Sweet Exorcist), Sarah Jay (Massive Attack).
~
Rock album in Texas (about the 19th century Dandy of crime Lacenaire)
with Joe Gracey (Stevie Ray Vaughan…) and 'On picture in a frame'
with 'la crème de la crème' of alternative Country Music, Kimmie
Rhodes and Willie Nelson.
~
Flamenco show in Valencia with a Master of Flamenco Lele de Triana.
~
Voodoo Dance show in Ivory Coast with Haitian singer Ife.
Before and in between all that, he had a stint as a smuggler on a
boat, run-ins with the Mafia in the old Soviet Union, lengthy stays
in monasteries, and involvement in the student riots in Paris in 1968,
and Notting Hill in 1975.
The Lovers started when we met
Jarvis Cocker at a gig of
Richard
Hawley (a long time friend of Fred too), and started to talk about
wine with him. Two weeks later we had a call saying Jarvis had
written a song for us. It was
'La Degustation'.
Then Jarvis wrote
'Basque Country' (which is my story...I am Basque)
and
'Fred de Fred'.
We wrote the rest of the album and co-produced it with
Parrot and
Dean Honer (All seeing I, I Monster),
Kevin Bacon and Jon Quarmby
(Finley Qaye, Pretenders…),
Leigh Devlin (Minus Blue) and our friend
Robin Downe. |
