I’ve got a hole in my chest. An emptiness that’s eating me up. And I hate everyone. You know, Vernon, Jesus only ever gets angry once in the Gospels. Just once. When he drives the moneylenders from the temple. Everything else—everything else doesn’t matter. I know, I’ve been talking a lot about Jesus these days. Why should I leave him in the hands of impostors?
Tell me something, Vernon, when was the last time you listened to a record that did what music is supposed to do? Quit the fucking snoring and answer me … I’ll just have a little line to toast your health. It’s not the music that’s changed, you know. It’s us. We’re petrified with fear.
You know why I respect you? You knew everything there was to know. You had shelves of vinyl behind you, LPs lined up in their white inner sleeves. You only ever put empty albums in plastic sleeves in the display racks out front. And you have every single one of those records filed away in your head. Someone would mention a track and you’d turn around and, without thinking, pick out the disc you were thinking of, play the track, set down the stylus in the groove that interested you. You knew fucking everything, Vernon. You were the keeper of the flame and I was just some kid. And never, not once in your life, did it occur to you to play me ska, or reggae, or jazz, or funk. The only time you ever mentioned that I was black was when you got the limited edition white vinyl Bad Brains album. You can’t imagine how often people have talked to me about Coltrane or Bob Marley since. You’d never have put on Max Romeo and told me that I’d dig it because of the color of my skin. There weren’t many like you. I think it must be sheer stupidity that saved you. First off, you spend your whole time sleeping. It’s as good a way as any to make sure you don’t get taken for a ride.
I never wanted to be number one. That’s something you’re not supposed to say. Get with the program, fucker. Success is great. If you don’t want it, fuck off and don’t piss on our parade. I never wanted to be number one. There is an intoxication to the depths, you know you should go back to the surface, but you linger, enthralled, on the bottom. I sold my fair share. Fuck knows, I sold a shitload … I learned to count. But what god do you pray to with numbers?
By the late nineties, it was over: we were past it, past everything. Past the phase where you worry about dumb questions. Questions of principle, of emotions, questions of mutual aid, the questions about playing not to satisfy the basest instincts but to serve your sense of what is beautiful. We were past the time of questions. We laughed at utopias. We were biddable, but we were no fools, we controlled everything. We weren’t worried about getting our hands dirty anymore. We should have been. People say it’s no big deal, selling your soul is no big deal, you’ll get it back, intact, at the end of the show.
I had my share of success. And I discovered I was black. I don’t see how I could have been expected to work it out before, being raised by a blond mother in a village in Creuse. Yeah, sure, people sometimes called me Snow White and laughed, yeah, I was the only black kid in the class. But I was good at soccer. Like a black guy—not that anyone said that at the time. I never really had any grief in the playground: everyone wanted me on their team. I concentrated on whatever worked. What else are you supposed to do when, in your mother’s eyes, you are the embodiment of sin, of the fall? I grew up to be a white guy like everyone else. These days, people call me an Oreo cookie—even pasty-faced white freaks think they’re entitled. And, yeah, maybe I am white on the inside: How could I possibly feel otherwise? Oreo cookie. So what? I’m descended from the Gauls, so fuck that. They make me laugh. “Oreo cookie.” What did they expect? Did they think African culture was going to spring from my blood in the deep dark ass-end-of-nowhere in Creuse? I loved Motörhead and the Stooges. First time I ever heard them. It was a cousin—one of my stepfather’s nephews—who used to listen to them. This kid showed up one weekend with a mixtape. I didn’t realize music like that even existed. It was a revelation. I remember watching Aznavour on TV and I thought, they can’t share the same name, these things. They can’t both be called “music.” Don’t ask me why, but that was my first thought. Somewhere inside me, the wolves had been unleashed. A minute earlier, there was nothing but desert, and suddenly I was a pack of howling wolves. It swelled in me. And it’s not like I thought, I’m a black guy who listens to white music. Though God knows, that’s what everyone has been telling me ever since …
You remember the lyrics—“He’s white, I’m black, the difference is only visible in the eyes of racist fucks”? NTM—remember the first time we saw them on TV? Some show on FR3, I think. We didn’t know shit about hip-hop. The lyric just made sense to us, “the difference is only visible in the eyes of racist fucks.” But times changed. I was put back in my box. Every which way I turned. The people who were angriest with me were other black guys. I’m a traitor. Alex “Oreo cookie” Bleach. Not that that’s something I can complain about—all I had to do was stay pure. What the fuck did I care about purity? I don’t listen to Iggy Pop to feel pure … Blacks look down on me. I don’t care. I can ignore them, I don’t have to work with them. But there’s no way to avoid white people. They’re music journos, producers, booking agents, record producers, designers, photographers, they’re the people who decide radio playlists. You can’t ignore the boss man. You can’t diss the white man.
By the time we got to the late nineties, I thought that if I talked about other stuff, people would stop obsessing about the color of my skin, but it just got worse. I adapted. I met Victoire, she was pretty intense about anything to do with post-colonialism, she was pretty intense about everything, I suppose. The relationship didn’t last long, but she was the one who made me read Frantz Fanon—she was shocked when I told her I hadn’t really heard of him. I started reading The Wretched of the Earth because she gave me no choice, but after a couple of pages, I felt a chasm open up inside me. Not only was I a fucking Negro, but I’d never been given the opportunity to be anything else. And the worst thing was that I’d pretended it didn’t matter. That intolerable violence. In my innermost being. I’d just looked the other way.
The tombeau des Caraïbes, the Negro parks, the quality of the cargo, the suppression of the Haiti riots … I read other books. No one has forgotten, but that’s the past, we’ve moved on. So, you do your job—you talk to the white guys at the record labels, who work with the white guys in the PR companies and the distributors who are financed by white guys, and you deal with the white record producers, the white managers, the white photographers, the white journalists, and the white TV hosts. Everything is white when you reach the top. People are always asking what difference it makes. And the truth, at least for me, is “not much”—I’m in the inner circle and I’m thinking about all the people who are excluded and have to accept that that is their place. It’s not just about black people. The most important thing is to stop saying: this thing that’s going on inside me, this constant bombardment imposed on me, I will no longer look away. I will no longer turn a blind eye.
You know people often suggested that I record an album of zouk. Every time I met a new label manager—Jesus, there were a lot of those bastards, it was like they grew between the cracks in the sidewalk—he felt he had to come up with a suggestion for my next record. Hip-hop. Reggae. Funk. Even fucking zouk. They’d listen to my records. They’d hear me play rock. I sold a shitload. And all they could think was “world music.”
I’m glad you’re asleep, you little shit, ’cuz otherwise I couldn’t bitch like this. I know what you think when I start bellyaching. You think: I’d give my right arm to have problems like that. Because your life is shit. And mine isn’t. It’s not fair, I know, do you know how much this jacket cost? Twice your monthly rent, man, twice! And I’m not even going to tell you how much I paid for these shoes. That’s the last thing you need, me pulling a guilt trip.
There’s a monster inside me that’s been growing ever since other people started to think I was important. You know, that moment when you walk out onto the stage and the whole place how
ls. It can be amazing or it can be horrendous. I’ve felt both. But by the time it gets to be truly enormous, the monster has taken control, and it’s hell. Stepping out under the spotlights is like stepping into a blazing oven. That precise moment—and the hours that come before it—I feel like a kid who’s been beaten black and blue and locked in a cupboard under the sink. It’s like there’s an inner eye watching, and when it sees me playing the big man, it gets angry, it corners me and beats me senseless, “you little shit,” the voice says, “how dare you?” and I get the punishment I deserve. For the pleasure I was about to receive. I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t remember ever being locked in a cupboard under the sink. I had my share of beatings. These days, if I saw a kid being disciplined the way I used to be, I’d be fucking furious. But back then, it seemed normal.
I complain a lot. Too much. I know I do, but that doesn’t change anything. Does it make me happy, having a carte bleue that can make money spurt from any hole in the wall without me ever having to wonder how much I’m withdrawing? Oh, yes. If money didn’t give me a buzz, things would be very different. But money is much better than drugs. It’s the same basic principle, but overwhelming. And people say there are no side effects.
You mind if I close the shutters? Hey, you’re crashed out, why would you mind? I’m a vampire, I swear. I can’t stand to see the sun rise.
The main side effect of money is fear. This shit is so pure that the fear of going into withdrawal is unbearable. You’d die if you couldn’t just walk into a branch of Benz tomorrow on a whim and treat yourself. Money whispers in your ear you’re nothing without me and the fear is so bad that you end up wanting more, and the more you have, the more distance you put between who you are now and who you’ll be if you don’t keep going: a bum.
I remember the first time I was on TV, Canal+, that was the first time I felt loneliness. After the gig, the record company threw a party—I wasn’t a local hero anymore, I’d become someone everyone wanted to meet, but no one gave a shit about. I was an open door—I was supposed to grant everyone access. I didn’t get off on the idea. I didn’t much like that fact that anyone could come and tell me what they thought—about my latest single my TV appearance my haircut my latest remix my record sleeve my answers in some interview the lyrics of my songs. While they waited around for the next big thing—someone younger, more exotic—I was the latest gadget, the stuffed toy you use to jerk off. It wasn’t the high point of my existence. Every fucktard felt they had a right to expect something from me. I’d be out somewhere and some loser would come up and say, “Oh, I’m not disappointed at all, you’re just how I imagined.” Meaning I made a lot of mistakes in French, and the guy found that exotic. Or you’d get someone making that little pout of disappointment when you think something’s fake: “I expected you to be a bit more ethnic.”
Jesus, Vernon, do you never get bored of snoring? If you were really a friend, you’d wake up and say, “Don’t talk shit, I love you the same as always, nothing has changed.” Because you haven’t changed. When you were hanging out in your record shop, you never looked down your nose just to prove you weren’t impressed.
Then we come to the 2000s, record companies start canceling contracts with artists who weren’t generating enough profit. They were summoned, one by one, to the office of the guy whose whole job was downsizing. The artistic directors responsible for the genocide got terminated as soon as they’d completed their mission, no one wanted to run into a contract killer in the hall. Everyone knew, when they were asked to prepare a purge, that they would be next. The music business turned into a concentration camp. Imperious orders, arbitrary decisions, dime-store management consultants, suicides, tumbrels, threats … and the terrified submissiveness that goes with it. Not that this stopped us making rock, hip-hop, antiestablishment music. After all, we were told there was no contradiction, only retards worried about issues anymore.
I never got a thank-you from my record company. No way. Back then, people like me were filling stadiums. The sacred cows who, when the gig was over, trudged back to the barn, heads down, good, honest milch cows. There’s no strategy. No one offers you a drug so you’ll enjoy spending the whole day in a stall, unable to move, being milked dry. But the drug is there, it’s fun, that’s the whole point. Every night, they let you out of your stall and put you onstage: you’re one of the lucky ones. And you get blitzed, because even an hour of sanity would be more than enough for you to realize what you’re becoming.
I found my rhythm—getting wasted. First spliff before my morning coffee, booze with lunch, first bump of coke as soon as lunch was over—and in the evening, whatever, take it as it comes. But never sober. I didn’t write songs anymore. That wasn’t a problem—my old hits were being used for TV commercials and ringtones. You can earn a pretty good living that way.
Personalities are like stones on a riverbank: it takes time for the elements to mark their passage. In the early days, you’re vigilant, attentive, you keep yourself in check. But over time, you let your guard down, you go to seed. You learn to adapt as though learning your place. There is nothing reprehensible about adaptation in itself. It all depends on the demands of the system you’re adapting to. Because compliance quickly becomes the ability to look the other way when you walk past the slaughterhouse … Did you even think about that, Vernon? With all the improvements that have been made to abattoirs, how many human units could we exterminate per day. And don’t try telling me that the day they start testing high-tech human slaughter on homeless people and undocumented immigrants, people will rise up and say: Stop, this is unconscionable. We’ve been the victims of government brutality for years. We behave like the battered wives you see on documentaries: we are so gripped by terror, we have forgotten the basic rules of survival. And as soon as high-tech human butchery is a booming business, we’ll watch our nearest and dearest head off to the slaughterhouse with only a single shudder before the unacceptable. Our neighbors will put on their headphones and their dark glasses, pop a pill, and go shopping. Pills will be our best friends. When night draws in, very few people want to be in a fit state to think about what they’ve done during the day.
You still dozing? I need to talk, and you’re zonked out. I like that about you—you’re never in time, but never really off-beat. You’re a syncopated guy. I don’t care, I’ll talk to you anyway—you’re asleep but at least you’re here. One day, you’ll listen to me. You’re the one I have to leave all this with.
There was no turning point. No red-letter day. Just a protracted exposition leading to an extremely restricted middle: the circles of power. I was a first-class pain in the ass. That was the only opposition I could muster. I swallowed all the lies, I drank the Kool-Aid. Oh, I kicked and screamed a bit, but I did it. I felt like it was worse because they put me out there, in the public eye, everyone could see. But in the end, I endured the mandatory treatment: in a totalitarian system, submitting to humiliation is a mark of good conduct.
I became perpetually self-conscious. I couldn’t wash my own prick without wondering whether this was how Alex Bleach would do it and what the haters and the trolls would think. I couldn’t make a single spontaneous gesture. That’s another reason why you end up getting wasted all the time—you’re no longer capable of keeping yourself in check. If you chug enough booze, other people’s voices fade. After that—how could I have known what was happening to me? I’d lost sight of myself—in a raging sea, I was trying to stay afloat.
Satana died. That’s when I realized. You remember Satana? I’m surprised you didn’t wake up when I mentioned her name. I had a lot of girls in my life, Vernon, but the only one that made my friends jealous was Vodka Satana. When she died, I didn’t say anything. That was when I knew. What it felt like. To live, to behave like a living being. When there’s nothing inside. It’s not the fact that I didn’t say anything that really shocks me. It’s that for months, I thought it was no big deal. Sad and unfair. But, well, logical …
Then, the morning after a gig in Marseille I was down by the beach, watching the skaters, hoping one of them would fall on his ass, I was sitting in a bar and suddenly the speakers started blaring out Burgalat’s “Aux Cyclades Electroniques.” In that split second, I was sitting next to Satana in Greece that time we went on vacation together. I had the album on my iPad, and we were listening on separate sets of headphones connected with a Y-jack. She went into a trance—later, it would be her favorite piece of music, but that first time, she laced her fingers through mine and there was a strange intensity to the moment—some moments are like that, they seem to have hidden depths—like when you’re swimming underwater and a gulf opens up beneath you. Listening to “Aux Cyclades Electroniques” I found Satana again, and I realized. I’d assumed she had been murdered and I found that sad but unsurprising. I had disappeared, Vernon. Swallowed up, body and soul.
I had first met her outside l’Olympia. I was with a friend, Gabriel, we were going to see Bowie. She was already in line, but it was taking people ages to get inside so Gabriel, who knew her, said come with us, and we walked straight in. Because a guy like me can’t be expected to hang around waiting with other people. Everyone wants a photo with the VIP. They want him to listen to their demo, give them some random singer’s number, they want him to come and play their bar, hear what they think of the production values on his album, take them on his next tour as lead guitarist. Satana was wearing a short kilt and a Ramones T-shirt slashed at with scissors to show off her cleavage. Her breasts made no attempt to appear natural. I had no idea who she was. But when we went into the concert hall, I noticed all eyes on her. I asked if she was a TV personality. Gabriel burst out laughing and Satana said: “I’m a porn star.” I was shocked by the pride with which she said it. She was as famous as Zidane back in the day. I had probably seen her in something, I watched porn in every hotel room where I stayed. But I was never interested in finding out more about the girls in the films.
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