Philippe Manoeuvre is famous in France. For decades, as a writer and
broadcaster and the editor of Rock & Folk magazine, the French Rolling
Stone, he has been the father of rock music, the keeper of rock memories. We
sit in his flat, surrounded by thousands of records and pieces of
memorabilia. With a lot of gesturing and quoting of Cocteau, he tells me why
France may finally be saved from “cheap, unimaginative pop music”. All this
without ever removing his Ray-Bans.
Even this old world-weary rock walrus admits he was surprised to discover that
rock’n’roll was alive and well and living in Paris. It hadn’t retired here
to meditate on Jim Morrison, but was born afresh, jumping, posing, strutting
and screaming into microphones. In sweaty, cave-like bars across the
capital, a new wave of adolescent bands was giving French music a
much-needed shot in the arm.
Les Bébés Rockers — as the bands are collectively known, because their average
age is just 16 — are causing a stir. They have sparked debate in Libération
and Paris Match and been the subject of hour-long, Panorama-style
documentaries. These teenage rock stars in waiting aren’t art-school
dropouts or kids from the ghetto. They are the progeny of France’s
much-derided bohemian bourgeoisie — aka la gauche caviar. For
the French press, it’s as if a bunch of privileged Islington kids had picked
up their guitars and proclaimed themselves the new Sex Pistols.
It was Manoeuvre’s teenage daughter, Manon, who switched him on to the
frenetic new live-music scene back in 2005. At first, he could not believe
that her enthusiasm was well founded. “I did not care about French bands,”
he says. Yet as soon as he saw these kids in their skinny jeans and velvet
jackets, with “raw, raw energy”, he lent his weight to the cause.
When I go to interview Plastiscines, one of the few all-girl groups on the
scene, they are late. Respectful of the rocker’s right not to turn up at
all, I assume hangovers. Someone else assumes homework. Eventually, the
bass-player, Louise, rocks up, wearing a yellow hoodie, neat little
high-waisted shorts and sneakers. She is impeccably, Frenchily gorgeous.
They all are.
Her story is common to them all. “I learnt about rock’n’roll through my
parents, the internet and reading a lot of books. The generation before us
could not learn about rock’n’roll because the stores here were rubbish. When
our generation started looking up the true story of music on the internet,
it was like nothing we had heard in France before. We heard the Libertines,
the White Stripes and the Strokes and thought, ‘We love that, and we can do
it.’ ” Undeniably, some of the bands are technically lacking. Their infamy
comes not from record sales — most are unsigned — but from the fact that
they’re all such beauties. The perfect moues, the pretty,
pouty lips, the floppy, Byron-esque hair — this nascent French rock’n’roll
scene could have been artfully constructed by Italian Vogue or Hedi Slimane,
though the 17-year-old lads in Second Sex, one of the most fêted bands in
the movement, wouldn’t care to hear you say it. “I don’t like what he does —
it’s too precious,” says one. “If Hedi Slimane gave me some clothes, I might
keep something, but I’d sell the rest,” says another.
I talk to them backstage at a dive club in Pigalle after Plastiscines’ gig,
where the rider is biscuits, fruit juice, Toblerone and beer. Although it’s
a heavy school day tomorrow — one of Second Sex has a French-literature exam
— they all pitch up to support their friends. It’s very Bébé Rocker
behaviour. I ask them how their days run: “Go to school, meet girls, play
music, rehearse, see girls, play music, eat.” It’s a fantasy teen lifestyle,
and they’re not shy about telling you how great it is. “In Paris the rock
scene is more exciting than England, because it has never been here before.
What we are doing is for the first time.”
While Plastiscines, the Shades and Second Sex are happy to count into songs in
French, most of these bands want to sing in “the language of rock’n’roll”,
English. That runs counter to the wishes of the government, which ruled that
40% of all music played on the radio be in French. It means they are
unlikely to get signed, but Benedict, of the band Brooklyn, says: “English
is cool. It means we can all communicate. The important thing is not to be
signed, but to be free.” It’s enough to make an Anglo-Saxon heart melt.
The press has lambasted les Bébés Rockers because of their bourgeois bohemian
(or BoBo) backgrounds, saying they are rebelling against Brooklyn nothing
and are just the spoilt kids of rich parents playing at being rock stars.
Even the children of the French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, have
had a go at being badasses. But who cares if Paris Match and Libération
don’t like you? I ask the affable, handsome mopheads in the Rolls what their
parents do, and Thomas says: “Sure, our parents are BoBo. We come from
comfort.” He motions towards his bandmate Grego: “His parents are rich; they
live in some kind of a castle.” He is an aristocrat? “You could say so.” But
so what? These bands have a sexy, raw, fresh appeal. The band the Parisians
have opened for the Libertines, the Brats have opened for Iggy and the
Stooges and when a compilation of some of these bands came out in France,
Pete Doherty was at the launch. As, typically, was the minister for culture.
These are good kids, you hear the adults say; they are respectful. But this is
still rock’n’roll, albeit done in the style of well-brought-up middle-class
kids. Gustave, 14, from Naast, looks like Doherty and acts like a cross
between Donny Tourette and Mick Jagger, with his plump fur coats and ironic
proclamations — “Yeah, I’ve never seen a poor person.”
After hours, at a rock bar called Shebeen, Bruno from Neïmo says he should not
drink any more beer as he has to drive his girlfriend back to her parents’
place. Alex from the Victorians, who reminds me of the ultra-sarcastic guy
at school — the one who read Moliãre, took his lifestyle leads from Camus
and occasionally drank aftershave to alleviate his boredom — is pushing on
through. His band will soon be short of a guitarist, because he is going to
Washington to study international relations. The future of rock’n’roll is in
English, and just maybe, if school gets out early enough, it will have a
beautiful French accent.
The Paris Calling compilation is out on April 2 on Because Music
