The first track, “P’tit Jardin” (Small Garden), describes Manu’s magical garden, which contains garbage, cockroaches, his dog and factories, but also includes pretty girls who cry, the bike of his brother, great pine forests and a single wild flower. “Il Faut Manger” (One Must Eat), with its Afro-blues guitar loop courtesy of Amadou Bagayoko from Amadou & Mariam, is about the struggle of immigrants for food and money. There are also echoes of Manu’s childhood in Sèvres. In “J’ai Besoin De La Lune” (I Need The Moon), which was recycled later on La Radiolina, he sings that touching phrase of how he needs ‘my father to know where I come from, and my mother to show me the way’.
Manu with Wozniak – and Woz-customised guitar – by the sea in Barcelona.
Sibérie M’Était Contéee was a first in several ways: it was Manu’s first French language album, accompanied by the vibrantly coloured book illustrated by both Wozniak and Manu, and the first time Manu had mixed and produced an album alone on his laptop. Another major step towards autonomy was the fact that the album was released independently, through his management company Corida, who distributed the limited run of 150,000 through bookshops.
After the death of his manager Jacques Renault, Manu had signed a deal with Emmanuel de Buretel, previously head of Virgin Europe, whom he had known for years. ‘It was a syndicalist decision,’ Manu said of his reason for leaving Virgin. ‘I worked with them for a lot of the time and many of the people working for Virgin, are my friends. They are workers and when EMI Virgin tried to say, “Next September thirty per cent of the people here are gonna be fired,” I immediately said “You can include me in the first thirty per cent. I’m in solidarity with my people.” They were not losing money, so there was no excuse to fire people.’
But Manu also concedes that the split was actually more complicated than that. The contradiction of being a leading advocate of anti-globalisation whilst also being signed to Virgin – by now part of the multinational EMI – was becoming a strain. Most importantly, Manu was ready to go it alone. When de Buretel left Virgin shortly afterwards, it seemed logical enough for them to team up. De Buretel started his own label and named it Because (for the pun – ‘Be Cause’ – and after the Beatles song). Its early releases included both Amadou & Mariam’s Dimanche À Bamako and Manu’s La Radiolina albums, and it now handles all Manu’s solo work, as well as launching bands like Metronomy and Django Django.
But if Sibérie signified a rapprochement with the city Manu had escaped from all those years before, it was still a wary one. He didn’t perform in Paris at all between 2001 and 2008. And this wariness was reciprocal. Many of the French capital’s arbiters of taste and music business trendsetters profess indifference or outright hostility to their most globally successful native son. ‘I’m not fussed’, one journalist said to me. Others I spoke to dismissed Manu as, variously, a rich poseur, a plagiarist, a dictator to his band, and – the most damning accusation in Paris – unfashionable.
It’s a biblical truth that a prophet is without honour in his own land. You might expect taste-makers and those concerned with being of the moment to be more interested in the next big thing than in an artist who has already achieved success and is therefore beyond of the thrill of discovery. Perhaps, too, Manu’s scruffy sense of non-fashion (seven-year-old sneakers, come on Manu!) was an affront to Paris’s dearly held ideas of style and chic.
De Buretel’s theory was this was a case of jealousy, pure and simple. Perhaps it was also that the Parisian rock elite never quite forgave him for being their bestselling export, and thus upsetting their long-cherished feelings of victim-hood. And Manu had never been comfortable in the hip, snobbish, high fashion bars and clubs of Paris, anyway, saying they made him ‘feel like a peasant’. According to Kieron Tyler, an English journalist who writes about French music, ‘his fans are mostly working-class and also largely in the south of the country (where rap outsells everything else) – the combination of working-class and a rap-type territory make Manu beyond the taste barrier for the urban cognoscenti’.
On a previous trip to Paris in 2008, on Manu’s birthday, I saw Radio Bemba play a free gig in Bondy, one of the banlieues or suburbs beyond the périphérique ring road. The burgers of Bondy still had positive feelings towards Mano Negra, ever since their Caravane des Quartiers tour and its fondly remembered mayhem. Manu was sharing a bill with Idir, the Berber Algerian singer whose hit “Denia” had been covered by Manu on Próxima Estación: Esperanza. The crowd were a mix of North African youth or beurs, as well as white working-class fans and a sprinkling of intrepid bohemians who had hazarded the trip to the suburbs. The reaction was fiercely partisan.
On that trip I had lunch with Malcolm McLaren, who lived much of his later life in Paris. Malcolm, who had been a global catalyst not just for punk but also hip-hop, world music and even French chanson, was fascinated by Manu, and was contemplating doing a remix of one of his songs. ‘What do you think, Peter?’ he mused. ‘Is he a genius? I mean, he’s not Bob Dylan, is he?’
I said something about how both Manu and Dylan had carved out a distinct artistic territory – though in truth Malcolm himself was rather more like Manu. Both were anti-authoritarian, against the music business corporations, but strong-minded enough to have got good deals from them that preserved their autonomy. Both were fascinated by Parisian cultural movements, whether Dada, surrealism or the événements of 1968. In contrast to Manu, though, Malcolm enjoyed elements of fashion and the great restaurants of Paris.
Manu and Radio Bemba play Bondy, out in the Parisian suburbs.
When I was backstage at Bondy, just as Manu was tucking into his birthday cake, Malcolm called and I suggested a meeting to Manu. However, there seemed to be caginess on both sides, like big beasts unexpectedly confronting each other in a primeval forest. Then, in 2010, Malcolm died, and an introduction I would loved to have made was never to happen.
That other accusation by some Parisian hipsters of Manu being a ‘dictator’ is probably best answered by the earlier chapters of this book: Manu tried collective decision making in Mano Negra and it ended up a disaster – and an egalitarian approach to artistic creation only very rarely works. ‘But he forces his musicians to stay in cheap hotels’, was a further complaint that I heard in Paris. Which is half true. Manu hates expensive, bland chain hotels and uniform five-star glitz makes him uncomfortable. So he and his band tend to stay in quirkier, cheaper places. Is he non-materialistic, drawn to more characterful places or merely careful with his money? Probably a mixture of all three. He’s not so strict about this, anyway – it happened to be practical to stay at the Holiday Inn in New York, as banal as any top hotel, when I saw him there. Certainly, he’s not like some stars who stay in the good places and force the band into a local fleapit.
No doubt the band moan about Manu sometimes, and he can be demanding, but the esprit de corps and the good-humoured atmosphere on the bus, as well as the energy and cohesion onstage can’t be faked for long. In contrast, there are several big bands who don’t actually speak to one another, and arrive at their gigs in separate limos. And, impressively, according to de Buretel, if Manu wants to play a benefit, the band still get paid the normal rate.
Talking in Paris, I ask Manu bluntly about what happens to all the money he earns. ‘A lot gets raked off by lawyers and bankers, that’s for sure,’ he tells me. He has set-up a trust because, so he claims, ‘they make it difficult to give money’. A trust also saves tax. Manu has said in public that he has donated to such causes as La Colifata and the Zapatistas. After drinks in the Bar Mariatchi in Barcelona, he mentioned a few projects in Africa. He prefers to know who he is giving money to personally, as he doesn’t trust that money given to charities ends up where it is supposed to. I pictured Manu, like a backpacking Santa Claus, arriving somewhere in the Congo or high up in the Andes and distributing largesse for a school roof, a water-collecting unit, or whatever else might be needed.
Manu feels that announcing what he does with hi
s money would make him more of a target. ‘If I made publicity with all my support and donations, I would be labelled an opportunist,’ he says. ‘It would be said that I was profiting from it to sell my discs. It’s the snake that eats its tail.’ Then he shakes his head and adds, ‘The only thing I can say is that I have earned a lot of money and don’t have a bad conscience. I didn’t steal from anyone and I’ve earned my living from the sweat of my brow. What I do with it is my private life and it only concerns me and the people I’m together with.’
What does seem to get to people, even those quite close to Manu, is – according to Fabrice Brovelli, the manager of SMOD – his ‘schizophrenic attitude to money’. There’s some truth in that. Manu always says that ‘money is the devil’. But it also buys freedom. To Manu money is necessary because with it he can keep his treasured independence and feed his addiction to travel.
Both Brovelli and Marc Antoine Moreau, the manager of Amadou & Mariam, commented on the fact that when Manu was working in Mali with them on Dimanche À Bamako, he never had any of his own money on him. You could argue that this was compensated by the fact that the album sold in the hundreds of thousands and established Amadou & Mariam’s international careers. But, for Bovelli and Moreau, it felt as if Manu was posing as a gypsy who didn’t need money. Nevertheless, it’s true that Manu can and has survived with no cash in many cities by jamming in bars and crashing with friends or fans.
One of the reasons I initially got on with Manu wasn’t just our common love of pre-punk bands like Dr Feelgood or obscure salsa, a mania for travel or a common fascination for metaphysical and spiritual matters. It was also that some friends and I had once conducted an experiment in living without money whilst squatting in the then shabby-chic Bloomsbury neighbourhood of London. We found our heating fuel in skips and our food among the crates of vegetables that were thrown out by the street markets at the end of the day. Travel was by bicycle. For a few months at least, we had the liberating illusion of defeating the demon of money.
But that was just a good jape. I wouldn’t like to live now in a house where the roof leaked and there was no central heating. Manu undoubtedly admires Zen monks who have no desire for material possessions, or even his mad homeless friend Aldi, who blew any cash he ever had. In reality, both of us are property owners (Manu never sold the flat in Barcelona, and bought the Mariatchi Bar – one way of making sure your local pub stays open – as well as more recently a flat in Paris where one of his cousins lives). The escape strategies of adolescence may be no longer appropriate in maturity.
But Manu is certainly an accidental millionaire. He couldn’t and didn’t predict the huge success of Clandestino nor Dimanche À Bamako. ‘The times when I have thought of the audience or having a hit have all been failures,’ he says. ‘When I do music for myself, by instinct, as a kind of therapy, that is when it seems to reach an audience.’
Although it’s not a problem he will get much sympathy for, what to do with his riches is a problem. There are endless possible projects: an online network of local political and cultural websites and new water retention technology for dry countries, for example, have been discussed. But charitable projects are time-consuming as well as in need of good managers and, when he gets involved, Manu wants to know the people and see the results for himself. And, unlike many celebrities in the arts, he remains a French citizen, paying his seventy-five percent taxes, rather than opting for a change of domicile to Spain or elsewhere.
At what point does a pose, if kept up every day, become real? One of the great things about pop music is the artificial but sometimes heroic personal reinvention of its stars, usually into something more deviant and glamorous. With stars that have certain prophetic qualities, they get to become close to sainthood with their fans. John Mellor, a diplomat’s son, becomes Joe Strummer, David Jones of Bromley becomes a space alien, Robert Zimmerman dons shades and visits Woody Guthrie and becomes Dylan, José-Manuel Chao dreams in the suburbs of Paris and gets to become Manu Chao, some kind of cross between Bob Marley and Che Guevara. All these figures become inspiring and powerful symbols, harbingers of potential new worlds, walking archetypes.
The danger and potential for self-destruction lies when the star gets confused between public and private personas. That way madness lies. Manu himself seems to have a relatively sane attitude to his fame and both the brickbats and the adoration, recognising that an unreal attitude to oneself is part of the deal when you get famous. As he had told me in Córdoba, the thing about fame is that ‘People treat you as a god, or as a fucking asshole.’ What is difficult for the people around any star, including Manu, is the disconnect between the icon and the man. ‘I bet Che Guevara was a bastard to his friends sometimes,’ was Marc Antoine Moreau’s rueful comment.
Manu’s need for spontaneity and aversion to planning ahead can unhinge those around him. One small example is Manu’s refusal to carry a mobile phone or a watch. ‘I look at screen all day doing mixes. Looking at a small screen the rest of the time would be too much’, is how he excuses himself. But as rock star foibles go, Manu’s are hardly mortal sins. If Manu wants to spend his money on staying free, giving himself time to daydream and escape the leash, rather than on sports cars and houses in the country, that’s his choice. Likewise, the people around him, his band, managers, labels, agents or the journalists, have a choice whether to work with him or walk the other way. No one twisted our arms. The inconvenience and his elusiveness is more than outweighed by the amazing energy you’re exposed to when you’re part of the Manu circus.
It’s not always easy to be Manu. As Fabrice Brovelli said, Manu is a ‘loner’ and fame only increases that sense of loneliness, of separation from others. One Spanish woman who had met Manu numerous times once made a curious observation to me. ‘I like Manu, but each time I see him it’s as if we’re meeting for the first time.’
Being a loco mosquito means it’s problematic to really nurture close friendships and a difficulty is that many friends could be seen to have a vested interest. Madjid, Gambeat, Philippe and the other musicians are close, but Manu is also their boss. Emmanuel is a good friend but he is also the manager. Jacek Wozniak has done a picture book and designs album covers. Manu is kind enough to call me his friend but he knows that I’m writing a book and anything he says could end up here. Johnny McLeod benefits from Manu’s endorsement of his bar in Ménilmontant and is launching a music career. Even his girlfriend makes tour videos.
People expect Manu to be this indefatigable champion of the underclass. They continually ask him for help with some project or another. But, while he may sometimes get angry with his band or his management, I’ve never seen him be less than civil with the myriad of people he runs into in the street or backstage at his show, even if it takes hours to say hello to everyone.
When I met Ramón, Manu’s father for a coffee at the Café Ondes near the RFI radio station where he works in Paris, he tells me an instructive anecdote. When Manu was touring Peru, an old friend of Ramón’s called him – a man who was once an imprisoned activist but is now an ambassador. ‘I rang Manu to tell him he was going to be in the gig and that he would like to meet him.’ The day of the concert Manu didn’t pay much attention to him. ‘Days later, I told him off. He is a respectful man and a friend of mine, and Manu replied “Yes Dad, but he is an ambassador.” Manu doesn’t want to become friends with the powerful.’
Ramón also said he was worried that Manu was actually more fragile than he seemed. He’d seen him at rock bottom, in Galicia, depressed and vulnerable. Does he think Manu is happy? ‘No,’ was Ramón’s answer, ‘but then that is the fate of all true artists, to be continually dissatisfied.’
That evening, after our chat in his garret, Manu tells me he’s doing a favour for some friends who are in a band called Les Ogres de Barback. He cycles to the gig, plays his old faithful acoustic guitar on a few numbers, says hi to a few friends backstage including Johnny McLeod, puts his arm round some fans who want their pho
to with him, then bikes back to his monk-like cell for a night of work on his computer, editing films, mixing music. Andres Garrido points out that any other star of even a fraction of his magnitude might easily have caused a fuss about his guitar and had his own special guitar roadie or two.
It’s all rather impressive. But it is also what keeps Manu going, what defines him. For Manu, playing music is all about ‘the exchange of energy’. The live experience is the heart of it for him, when on a good night the audience and, for Manu too, can be lifted out of despair into hope into a collective ecstasy. ‘One good thing about music,’ as Marley sang. ‘When it hits, you feel no pain.’
Before leaving Paris, I meet a Brazilian photographer for lunch in Le Marais. She’s a bit of a hippy chick, and a huge fan of Manu’s. She wants to know what I have learned from him. I say I knew a lot more about the refugees in the Sahara Desert, the mental patients in Buenos Aires and the machet-eros in Mexico. I think Manu is right about the importance of neighbourhood action and the lack of power of politicians – I had, perhaps naively, expected Obama, for example, to take on the banks and support things like the rights of Palestinians, whereas Manu was more realistic. ‘Yes,’ she replies with intensity, ‘but what about more spiritual matters?’ I answer that perhaps I trust my instinct more and am more aware of things like coincidences, that maybe they are signs of an unknowable force trying to create order out of chaos. That maybe there really is some bigger universal energy we should all trust, which may take us in directions our ego hasn’t planned.
The day after returning to London, I watch a YouTube video of Manu sweetly teaching some kids how to play the guitar in the favelas of Fortaleza. It had been watched by about ten people. I also received an email from the scriptwriter and film director Menno Meyers. ‘I love Manu,’ he wrote. ‘He’s a really positive force in the world.’ And I thought – that’s true.
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