Michel Gaubert
As the leading sound director in the world of high fashion, Michel Gaubert creates soundtracks for clients (and close friends) like Karl Lagerfeld, Balenciaga, and Oscar de la Renta. With more than 60,000 CDs, 20,000 LPs and 360,000 songs across a multitude of hard drives and iPods, the next time you hear a track by IVVVO in a Raf Simons show, Steve Reich in Dior or Hudson Mohawke in a Chanel show, it’s more than likely that the forward-thinking Gaubert is behind that curtain keeping the vibes alive.
In his 2015 Red Bull Music Academy lecture, Gaubert talked about how he came to the world of fashion – and what keeps him hungry after decades in the game.
Hosted by Nick Dwyer We’re here in Paris for the Red Bull Music Academy 2015 and over the course of the next five weeks learning a lot about this incredible city and the musical output of this city. As we all know, Paris is a city that has produced so much incredible music that has had a big influence around the world, but as we’re here as well, we cannot deny the fact that we are in one of the great fashion capitals of the world. When it comes to this point where fashion and music intersect, I don’t think there’s a better gentleman in the world to be speaking to than this man sitting next to me. As the sound designer for the world’s biggest fashion houses – Dior, Chanel, Fendi, Balenciaga, Oscar de la Renta, the list goes on – he has been charged with the task of creating sound tracks for all of these incredible catwalk shows that maybe some of us have been lucky enough to be in the presence of us, but most of us have seen on the screens. Also the man charged with filling Karl Lagerfeld’s iPods amongst so many other things. Please put your hands together and give a warm welcome to Michel Gaubert. How are you, Michel? Michel Gaubert I’m good. Thank you. You?
Nick Dwyer Nice. Thank you so much for joining us here. Michel Gaubert Thank you.
speaker: Nick Dwyer It’s the end of October now. We’ve just finished what is the crazy period in your life. I believe Paris Fashion Week was the beginning of this month. Michel Gaubert Yes, Paris Fashion Week was the beginning of the month, but before that, early September, there was New York Fashion Week. Then there was London Fashion Week. Then there was Milan Fashion Week. Then there was Paris Fashion Week. It’s like the fashion marathon, basically.
Nick Dwyer I’m very lucky to be able to catch Michel Gaubert and be able to ask him questions in this quiet period, but what would it be like if I tried to come up to you in those few months, try and put a mic in front of you and ask you questions? Michel Gaubert I would answer maybe two questions, then I would tell you, “Can we see each other later?” That would be what I would do, probably. Nick Dwyer Before we keep talking a bit more about this topic, I think it would be really great to give all these people an idea in this room about what it is that you do. You’re a sound designer, I guess, far more in line with what a sound composer, a soundtrack artist, sound designer does and how they’re putting music to films, these short bits of theater, which are the fashion shows that you produce music for. We’re going to watch a video right now. I think what’s really interesting about this video, it’s taken from a Chanel haute couture show from January this year. I think any people in this room that really maybe don’t have so much of an idea of what is happening and what music gets played at catwalk shows, I think they might find this very interesting. This is a show that Michel Gaubert did the sound design for earlier on this year. [technical issue] We’ll come back to that. I’ll wait for you to give us a signal when we’ve got the sound, but we will come back to it very, very soon. I guess one of the things I will ask you though, regarding Paris Fashion Week especially, you’ve been living here all your life. You were born and raised here. Michel Gaubert I was born in Paris, yes.
Nick Dwyer You’ve been a part of Paris Fashion Week and all the other fashion weeks for a very, very long time now. How much has Fashion Week evolved since you’ve been working in this industry? Michel Gaubert Listen, I can say I started working in this industry early ’90s, but when I was working at the Palace and all these clubs I used to go to fashion shows, because I had a lot of friends working in fashion, going to the Palace. It was interesting for me to see. Basically, in those days it might have been five shows a day that were really nice to go to. Fashion Week lasted not even a week. It was Fashion 4 Days. Now it’s Fashion Week, it’s for 10 days. There’s 20 shows a day, one after the other. It became a very different thing. I would say that it still is very artistic but I think it’s more like a trade show. All those people are showing their new stuff, their new bags, their new shoes. It’s like, “Okay. That’s what we have to settle for...” I think it’s much more mercantile now than it used to be.
Nick Dwyer As you mentioned before, you were born here, you were raised here, you’ve had many a night out and many a beautiful day in Paris. You travel the world. You could set up camp anywhere in the world, but what keeps you living here, Michel? In 2015 what do you still love so much about this city, Paris? Michel Gaubert I love Paris, but most of all I love Europe. What I think is good living in Paris I can go anywhere I want to. Within an hour, I can go to London, Germany, Italy, Spain. I think it’s a very good harbor. Also, maybe I live here for practical reasons. I’ve got my office here. I’ve got all my records. I’ve got a lot of things. I have a lot of friends. It’s the city that made me. I also have a lot of people I work with in France that I see. I don’t see people only during Fashion Week. The people I work with like, for example, Chanel, I see them almost every two weeks. It goes for other things. We have other projects going on. We also do exhibitions for Louis Vuitton, for Dior, all these people. It’s an ongoing relationship. I don’t think I’m just some designer for a fashion show. The collaboration is more intense. The reason I’m in Paris is because of that, because that’s where all the action is, basically.
Nick Dwyer Going right back, even before these days that we’ll talk to you about soon where you found yourself DJing in places that are forever etched into the history books of Paris nightlife, what are your earliest memories of really loving music and falling in love with music in Paris? Michel Gaubert It started when I was five years old. It was very simple. When I was home and when I could watch stuff on TV, listen to music or listen to the radio, it was my own little world. Like any kid, a kid creates their world. I created my world around music. I wanted to be, of course, a pop star, a singer or whatever you want, play guitars, sing. I was fascinated by the whole thing. I was fascinated by the whole image also, not just the music. I liked the music, of course. When I grew up later, that’s why I went to England early. I wanted to learn English because I wanted to understand everything they were talking about, just not sing stupidly. It was just a pure obsession.
Nick Dwyer Who were you trying to sing along to back then? What was the one getting those English lessons so you could sing the lyrics to your favorite songs? Michel Gaubert I think it would have been the Rolling Stones, but then I guess I really started to speak English when it was time for David Bowie. I know all the lyrics by heart almost.
Nick Dwyer As the story goes, you would have been, what, 13, 14? You were a teenager, a young teenager. Michel Gaubert Yes, I still am.
Nick Dwyer Going to England to learn English, but as the story went, your parents would give you pocket money and you’d spend all your pocket money on records. Michel Gaubert Yes, within 48 hours. I found letters. When my grandmother died, I found letters she kept from me. “Dear Granny, how are you? I’m in London. I don’t have any more money. Can you send me more?” Because all I did was do that, buy all the records I wanted to.
Nick Dwyer Shortly after this period, on a school exchange program, you went to San Francisco. Michel Gaubert Yes. My God, you’re well-informed.
Nick Dwyer Hey, I’ve got to do that. Michel Gaubert Yes, I did. That was back in… It’s hard for me to say the year. It was the year of Watergate, basically. It was early ’70s. I went to America for a year. I think that’s truly what opened my mind musically, because when I was in France, when you go to school, all the kids, they’re like, “You listen to this. I’m not your friend. You listen this. I’m your friend.” Everyone had their own section. Everyone, the soul kids, the progressive kids, all that kind of stuff. In America, I just arrived there. I thought, “I don’t know if people were more open,” but I was listening to music I never knew really existed before. It really changed my way of…
Nick Dwyer What kinds of things were you hearing that you weren’t hearing on French radio or French television that really blew your mind? Michel Gaubert I would say soul music like Al Green, Temptations, stuff which was more local to San Francisco like Sylvester and Dr. John, the very early Pointer Sisters. There was this guy called David Rubenstein who was producing really amazing music in that period of time. I was very much into this. I came from Led Zeppelin and Roxy Music. I still liked it. It’s not anything against it but maybe I was introduced to jazz and stuff I would never listen to like the Jazz Crusaders, more things like that.
Nick Dwyer Because one thing that anyone that has any idea about the life and times of Michel Gaubert is this incredible record collection that you have, which we’ll go into a bit more detail later on, but you have essentially been collecting a lot of music since this whole period. Michel Gaubert Oh God, yes, ever since I was six years old. Nick Dwyer When you were getting into your late teens, was there a point where… what was that point where you’re like, “I feel like music is going to somehow be in my life as a job, as a career.” Michel Gaubert I hesitated for a long time because also as a teen I loved fashion, and not fashion for fashion but I was fascinated also by all the looks of the musicians because I thought it was part of their world. It could have been Jefferson Airplane, T. Rex, Roxy Music, all these people. I just liked the fact that they built their own image with music. For a long time, I was thinking maybe I would love to work in fashion. Then I thought, “It’s too complicated. Music’s much easier.” Nick Dwyer Did it seem from the outside, in the late ’70s, the fashion world of Paris, did it seem like a very exclusive club? Michel Gaubert Yes, much more than now, of course, because it was very elitist. Very, very elitist, because people didn’t have access to that. Now fashion is still considered a luxury but you can go to other places like even Zara, you go to a flea market, you can make your own look yourself. You don’t need to buy anything from anywhere. In those days, it was a bit more complicated, but then we did a lot of vintage shopping. I think growing up, I was going out a lot to clubs. Then I met a lot of people from the fashion world, so it made it easier. Nick Dwyer What you’re about to talk about now is, anyone that’s read a little bit about the history of nightlife in Paris, there is an incredible individual called Fabrice Emaer and a club called Le Palace, which I guess in a very lazy, generalistic way people would say it was Paris’ answer to Studio 54 but it was a bit more than that. Michel Gaubert It was better. Nick Dwyer I think in order to talk about Le Palace we need to talk about le Sept first, which was Fabrice’s first club. Michel Gaubert Yeah, first club. He had one before but I forgot the name. Nick Dwyer Paint us a picture of this young and impressionable Michel Gaubert, who was finally old enough to get into nightclubs and entering this wonderful world of Paris nightlife for the first time. Michel Gaubert Oh my God, it was a flash. I had a friend of mine from school I saw again after I came back from America and said, “Let’s go to club Sept. It’s a super cool club.” I arrived there. Of course, the music was impressive because it was stuff I heard in America like the old jazz, Temptations, all that kind of stuff again, stuff you wouldn’t hear in a club in France. People were more like mainstream USA. All the records they had were imported from the States. The place was simple but there was such an atmosphere. In there, there was lots of fashion models, lots of cool creatures. It was a gay club. It was my first time in a gay club. I could see two men kissing together, girls kissing together, it must have been 1974. It was like, “That place really exists.” Nick Dwyer In terms of the social climate at the time within Paris, was it a conservative time? Did this place feel like a wonderland? Michel Gaubert It felt like a wonderland but also what I liked about it is you could go there any day basically. It’s not like today. You would have the same players more or less every day. You made friends. You go to a club and you made friends so you wanted to go back more and more and more and more and more. Then we ended up being part of the group. I met a lot of people I still see now there. Nick Dwyer The DJ there was a guy called Guy Cuevas who people would say is like the Nicky Siano of Paris nightlife. Where would you put Guy in this picture? Michel Gaubert I don’t think he would be like Nicky Siano but he had super good taste. He was a very colorful character. He could come dressed like a peacock. He would play all the cool stuff but he had a friend of his, it was his boyfriend as a matter of fact. He was working in the record store called Givaudan which was on Boulevard St. Germain which I think is now a Issey Miyake store. They’re the ones who would import all the records from America. All the stuff like Barry White, all that kind of stuff, it was all coming from there.
Then Guy of course would go to the store and get it all. Then they would play it all night long. People would go to the Sept for the music actually also, not just because it was a cool place. It was the whole thing. Nick Dwyer Was this the first time that fashion and music were really mixing because there’s the book that came out, “A Beautiful Fall,” this tale of Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, before the had a falling out, this is where they would go to party. That’s where for Paris, the Parisian fashion world, and also the jetset of the world would come to party. Michel Gaubert Everybody would go there. There were other places I went to also. They were more traditional like Regine’s, the Privé and that kind of stuff. They had cool people there to but it was much more wanting to sell lots of bottles. You had to be wearing a suit, all that kind of stuff. It was like you had to be all dressed up. The Sept, you could be dressed, I would be dressed like this today. If it was cool, it was cool. They were the first club in Paris that didn’t care what people were wearing as long as it looked nice and cool. Nick Dwyer Then shortly after that, he opened Le Palace, which was the massive grand event, you found yourself DJing there. Michel Gaubert Yes, I found myself DJing in the Palace because it opened in March 1978. The opening was quite insane because that place was enormous. No one had been to the Palace before. You had lots of things to discover. Grace Jones was going to sing for the opening night, but she was scheduled to be in at 1:00 in the morning. She sang at 5:00 in the morning. In the meantime, since it was opening night, all the barmen was like…You would ask for a vodka, but they would put that much vodka in a glass. Everyone was plastered and slipping everywhere and they left at 12:00. Then it closed for a month because it was not finished. They wanted to open it just for Fashion Night. In May they had what they called a downstairs that turned into a... Nick Dwyer VIP, kind of? Michel Gaubert No, it was more like a chill place. They turned it into a roller skating arena. They asked me to play music there because they wanted to have a different kind of music. Then it turned to be a super cool place. Nick Dwyer You became the resident DJ at the roller rink. Michel Gaubert Yes, but then the roller rink didn’t last very long. They turned it into a proper dance, because at the Palace upstairs sometimes they would have 1,500 people coming at one night, which was a lot. The music was very heavy disco at the time, like the Bee Gees and all that kind of stuff. Downstairs I would be more experimental, if that can be a word. I would play all kind of stuff. It would go from Sex Pistols to Flying Lizards and then to Rick James. Then I would play Diana Ross if I felt like it. Sometimes we would play some Henry Mancini. It was going all over the board. It was more fun, I thought. Nick Dwyer Musically, it wasn’t just fashion designers and Paris’ fashion set and the rich and the famous. There were musicians and artists from all over the world that would come into the Palace, right? Michel Gaubert Of course. We had lots. There was a man…His name is Assaad Debs. He had a small production company of concerts. It’s the most creative I think. We had lots of people come in there. We had the B52s, Talking Heads, Prince, Funkadelic, War, Grace Jones, of course, Serge Gainsbourg, a ton of people. I remember the first time I saw Prince. There was maybe as many people as there is now in the room. It was in the year of Controversy. It was super nice. Nick Dwyer Obviously, there were a lot of memorable nights. Michel Gaubert Devo was also very good because Devo was in the main room. They had a concert. When the concert was finished, everyone left and there was five dead rats. Just some kids came with the rats. I don’t know what they did. They were dancing the pogo away. Fabrice said to a girlfriend, “Oh my God. Have you seen? There’s some dead rats from those kids.” It was a cool place. It was very fun. It was was very, how do you say…Fabrice would spend all the money he had on doing parties, concerts and whatever. I don’t think he made money but it didn’t matter. He wanted to have a good time. Nick Dwyer Sadly though, that good time didn’t last so long for Fabrice with Le Palace. It closed, what, ’82, ’83? Michel Gaubert Fabrice died quite early. I think Fabrice died in ’82. I don’t know what he died of. Then the Palace was open until, I would say, early ’90s, but then it really went downhill. At one point, the place I was working at downstairs, it turned into a more exclusive club called Le Privilege but he had a famous French mentor Gérard Garouste, the whole décor and everything. It was absolutely beautiful. I went there a couple years ago, and they just kept a painting and the rest is like blue and pink lights which is absolutely disgusting. But that’s the way it is. Nick Dwyer You’re smack bang in the center of this mix of music and fashion in Paris, and we’ll talk in a second about the beginnings of Michel the sound designer, but you were also during this whole time working as a record buyer at a really notable Parisian record store. Michel Gaubert Yeah, that place was called Champs Disc because it was on the Champs Elysees. I started that before the Palace anyway. I was working there and I was the buyer for the record store, but I was only buying imported records, so everything that came from England, from Italy, from Belgium and from United States came through my office. I was choosing all the records that were going to be in the store.
In those days, it’s hard to understand now, but in France, like a lot of countries, there was nothing to get. The only place to get music was record stores, so we were the informers. We were like a website of today. Come to the store and like, “Okay, what else? What do you have new? What do you have new?” And some records, stuff like New Order, “Blue Monday” for example, I think we sold 15,000 copies in that store alone. Soft Cell, “Tainted Love,” same thing. Because the French record labels would not release those things. They did not believe in them or whatever, so we’d buy them in England and people would go crazy.
We had all the clubs from France and even Belgium coming to Champs Disc to buy the records. The place was located in the mall in the Champs Elysees. We’re blasting the music all day long and people, “Oh, what is this? I want this. I want that.” Which brings me to say that also, when you’d play it in the club… it’s still there today, but people were more receptive to music because they were more open. They didn’t know that much. Now, everyone here is educated, they know what they like, “Oh, I like this, I like that.” People were going to places like that and like, “Okay, that’s cool. I’ll take it.” Nick Dwyer During that time as the record buyer, were you going on buying missions as well? Michel Gaubert Sure, of course. Nick Dwyer You were going to London, to Manchester, to Brussels, to New York? Michel Gaubert No, I just went to London, Antwerp and New York. And L.A. Nick Dwyer I’m going to hazard a guess that you were going out at night as well and enjoying the nightlife. What clubs were you going to, and did that play a part in... Michel Gaubert In New York I was lucky enough, I went to Studio 54, but I didn’t really like it. I don’t think it was as good as the Palace. It was like a polished American version of the Palace. I didn’t like it so much. I went to the Mudd Club, and I survived. It was fun. I think they played ... It was the same year as Soft Cell, “Tainted Love.” I think they played “Tainted Love” for two-and-a-half hours non-stop, and people were just going to crazy, like dancing like this. I went to Pyramid also which I really liked.
Plus, it was in the time where lots of cool music was coming out. You had stuff like Tom Tom Club, the Talking Heads…I liked it because it was a mixture of a bunch of worlds together. Everyone was coming together, like soul, rock, reggae, whatever, turning into one. It was shaping the future in a way, you know? Nick Dwyer Did you see yourself at this point as a career DJ, like, “This is what I am, I’m a DJ?” Michel Gaubert No, because I was still working in the record store, and I was doing the DJing at the Palace as a side gig, because I thought it was fun, but then I couldn’t take it anymore. Because I was working two nights a week from 10:00 pm until 7:00 am in the morning, nonstop. That’s really, really hard. When you don’t feel like it or when you’re in a bad mood, it’s really painful, let me tell you. It’s not rewarding enough. Out of nine hours, you get maybe two or three hours you really have a good time, and the rest is being there, you know what I mean? Nick Dwyer Yeah. I do believe that we’ve got visuals with sound right now. Michel Gaubert Okay. Nick Dwyer We’re at a point in the chronology of Michel Gaubert anyway where we’re starting to get to this point where you’re doing what we’ve brought you here to talk about, which is the idea of sound designing for these fashion shows. (video: Chanel fashion show / applause) Michel Gaubert Wow. Nick Dwyer Thank you, by the way, team. I would love nothing more than to be a fly on the wall when it’s you and Karl Lagerfeld sitting in a room and you’re like, “No, Karl, we’ve really got to play Oneohtrix Point Never for this show.” What I would love to know is, when you’re sitting with Karl Lagerfeld and he’s like, “Yes, we’ve got this haute couture show coming up,” and he gives you an idea and you’re like, “Right, this is what we need, Oneohtrix Point Never.” How does that process work? Michel Gaubert Oh my God, it’s a tricky one, but basically I know him very well, I’ve been working with him for a long time, so there’s a language we have together. He knows what I can do and I know what he expects from me, basically. The idea started on the set because, as you saw, when the music was going on, the flowers opened and all that kind of stuff. We said, “We don’t want it to be poetic. We don’t want it to be like a Tim Burton or anything like that.” To be more abstract. I just received the track from Oneohtrix. I mean, I downloaded it, of course. I thought, “Oh my God, it’s really really nice,” and I liked the introduction. I just played it for him. I said, “Well, listen, this is maybe not what you would expect, but I think it works really well with what we’re doing.” He said, “Perfect.” Nick Dwyer So you are literally sitting in a room with Karl? Michel Gaubert Yes. Nick Dwyer You’re playing him that- Michel Gaubert Yes. In the Chanel studio, blasting on the speakers on the ceiling. The ceiling was shaking, but still that’s fine and we did it. Nick Dwyer When was the first time you met Karl? Michel Gaubert God, I met him in the days of the club Sept and all that, because he was going out a lot in those days. We didn’t really talk but we knew who we were, and one day when I was working at Champs Disc he approached me to ask me if I wanted to do the music for his shows and I said yes. I was petrified. When he asked me I was like, “Fuck. How am I going to do that one?” But I just, I did it. Nick Dwyer I’m sure everyone in this room at the very least knows what Karl Lagerfeld looks like, but I think the people in this room that don’t know, what has always been, for a very long time, what’s the reputation of Karl Lagerfeld within the creative world? Michel Gaubert I think he’s very cool. He’s very cool because he’s very trusting and he knows…To me, that’s one of his biggest qualities, is he knows what people can bring him, and he knows how to trust people, and he knows if I tell him this is good and this is what we have to do, if he believes in me, which he does, then he lets me do it. I always also listen to what he has to say. Sometimes he doesn’t like something, or after a show he could tell me, “Oh, I didn’t like that much,” all that kind of stuff. I always listen to what he has to say, because he doesn’t know the music as well as I do, but he has a very good sense of what’s right for him or not. Nick Dwyer As you mentioned, when you first met him, as I’m sure most people are when they first meet Karl, you were petrified. I guess that’s a very interesting question which I wanted to know, which I think might be interesting for a lot of people in this room, Che Pope was talking about these sessions with Kanye and there’s ... Michel Gaubert I’m sorry, who was talking? Nick Dwyer Che Pope, who’s the president of GOOD Music, does a lot of production for Aftermath, for GOOD Music, works with Kanye West. The way that someone like Kanye works, all of the sudden you have these new amazing creative beatmakers from around the world and how do you separate that thing of not… These people command respect and they are some of the most famous, talked about individuals in the world. How do you not put these people on a pedestal but still respect them so that you can get your ideas to them without just going, “Oh, I think you’ll like this.” Michel Gaubert Well, first of all, you don’t have to be afraid of them because I think if they call you to do something for them, because they know who you are and they know what you can do, so they need you, basically. You should never be afraid of who you have in front of you, whoever it is. If people ask you to do something, say, “Okay, I have to do that.” You can be afraid when you leave, and say, “My God, I have to come up with this stuff,” and it better be good. But when you’re with them, you’re just with them, you listen to what they have to say, and you just come up with it, basically. You should never be impressed, or try not to be impressed, is my advice for that. You’re just as good as them, basically. It might sound pretentious, but that’s the way it is. We’re all individuals, and we’re all as good as each other. Nick Dwyer What was the first show that you did for Karl? That moment when he approached you in the record store. Michel Gaubert Yes, it was the time of Frankie Knuckles, Soul II Soul, De La Soul, all that kind of stuff. He came to me with that Malcolm McLaren record, House of Blue Danube and all that kind of stuff. He said, “I really like that record, could you do something inspired from that?” In those days I didn’t touch, I never touched a reel-to-reel tape, I didn’t know anything about samplers or anything like that. Dimitri from Paris was a good customer at Champs Disc and I said to Dimitri, “Listen, would you like to work with me on that?” He said yes, and we did it. We mixed Frankie Knuckles with Luciano Pavarotti and some Strauss and the Soul II Soul and some opera lyrics on top of the beats from De La Soul. Everything was looped like that. When the show was finished, everyone said, “Who did the music to this?” It was good. That’s the way it started with him. Nick Dwyer When would you say was this moment in the evolution of the catwalk show where music started to be used as a tool, because there was a period, even a decade or so earlier where music was really an afterthought. Michel Gaubert It’s a whole thing, because in the ’80s, fashion shows would have themes, so you would have the navy theme, the technicolor theme, whatever. People would have one track for a theme, then fade it out, then have another theme. It was quite childish. It was like a school play or something like that. Then, in the ’90s, people realized they had to be more focused, so the collection was about one idea, this is what I feel like, and one kind of music, and the whole thing. The shows became much shorter. They used to be 45 minutes up to an hour. In the ’80s, I’ve seen shows that were like an hour and 15 minutes long, so you have time to do basically everything. You can do file your nails, order a pizza, whatever. Now, go see a fashion show, it’s like watching a video clip more or less. We’re trying to be as focused as a video clip, because you have to get it within the first 25 seconds. Nick Dwyer Off the back of that first show, obviously your name started to spread as a sound designer. When was that moment for you that was like, you realized that that’s what you did for a job? You were a sound designer, and you were firmly working in the world of fashion? Michel Gaubert I realized that before because when I was at the Palace, there was this interior designer, architect, her name was Andreé Putman and she came to the Palace and she wanted to ... She opened this gallery called Ecart International and she was showing furnitures from René Herbst, and I forgot the name of the other one ... René Herbst and Mallet-Stevens. She told me, “Well, listen, I’m going to present them, but I would like to, can you do the music for that? You’re the DJ from the Palace.” I said okay. She started to talk to me about Poulenc, all that ... I didn’t know anything about those people. I said, “Sure, I’ll do it.”
I had to research. I found myself researching music that I’d never heard of before. I never got in the game, and I thought it was more rewarding to me than making people dance and just being on the dance floor playing cool stuff. I got caught in that game of research, and after I worked with Karl Lagerfeld, after the show was finished I said “I can’t wait to do another one,” because I liked collaborating with Dimitri, learning all these tools and learning all these new toys to work with and it opened new possibilities for me. I thought it was super challenging. Nick Dwyer How long were you working with Dimitri on that for? Michel Gaubert I worked with him until, I would say, five years. Five, six years. Nick Dwyer I guess one of the things that you learned very, very earlier on is it’s one thing to be a massive music fan, but you’re doing a job, and making sure you’re being careful that you’re not pushing your own musical tastes on people. Is that very much a thing that you always have to bear in mind? Michel Gaubert Yes. I know to put my musical… Of course there’s always going to be my vision or something I like, but when people ask me for music and sometimes they bring ideas to me which I never thought would have been right, but if I think it sounds cool and it’s relevant to what they do, I say, “Sure, why not?” Then, it’s probably the way it’s mixed and the way it’s approved, it’s also seen through my eyes and ears. I’m very open to what people tell me anyway, it’s just not, it’s Michel Gaubert doing that, and I’m not taking your things. I’ll listen to them a lot of time. What I like the best anyway when I work with people is collaboration. Whether it’s with my partner or whether it’s with clients, when there’s an exchange of ideas I think that’s when it works the best. That’s the way music should be dealt with anyway. Nick Dwyer From this whole period, how quickly did things start to just grow and grow and grow for you? Obviously Karl Lagerfeld, he’s the head designer for Chanel, for Fendi. These were becoming your clients, but all of the sudden you find yourself in a situation where the large majority of the biggest fashion houses in the world are employing you. Michel Gaubert Yeah, but then I started to go to Milan. I didn’t go to Milan before that. I went to Milan, and then I guess some more people asked me to do stuff. Then, in the late ’90s I went to New York and I started to do more in New York, so people asked me to do more in New York, and then I went to London. It’s the whole thing like that. Also, the fashion week has become more, there’s more shows, basically. There’s more things to do. I’m not doing all of them. There’s more need for music now, and also people need music for their stores, music for their websites, they need music for dinners, for exhibitions, for showrooms. It’s a nonstop process, so once they trust you, they rely on you a lot. Nick Dwyer How do you start to develop that trust, and especially when you’re dealing with highly creative people, some of the world’s most creative people who might not have a musical language, but they will say to you, “Michel, I’ve got this show, I need something that sounds blue, or it must sound wooden?” How do you start to understand what it is that each one of your clients, these designers, wants? Michel Gaubert Listen, I guess I went to “fashion talk school,” so I understand all these fashion words. Basically, it’s like they’ll talk to me about a mood, and I know where they’re coming from. A lot of things in the fashion show comes also from the location, the way it’s going to be set up. The set, the design, the time, the kind of clothes they show, also their taste, so I take all of this into consideration and then we talk about it. Like I said, I can work for very diverse people, and they all have a different understanding of blue. If I work for Sonia Rykiel she would say, “It’s going to be “Love is Blue” by Paul Mauriat but if I work for Phoebe Philo, it’s going to be Isaac Hayes for some reason. Everyone has their own definition of blue, so I need them to translate that. Nick Dwyer Shall we have a look at another show right now? Michel Gaubert Sure. Nick Dwyer The video we’re going to play is from a Chanel show again, 2011. Before we play this video, talk us through the process. How long before the show took place did you start meeting with Karl? What was the brief? What clothes did he start showing you, and how did we end up with what we’re about to see? Michel Gaubert Okay, well this one was, we started in July and the show was shown in October, because basically it was the first time Chanel could use the whole Grand Palais. The place is huge. You can have like 2,500 people in there. Karl decided to make a garden to be more or less the mood of the movie, Last Year At Marienbad there was this great, there’s this beautiful staircase in the Grand Palais that we never use, and this time it was being seen. I just thought, “Oh my God, what if we had an orchestra?” An eighty-piece orchestra, and I just told him, “Well, do you think we should do that?” I said, “Sure, I love the idea. What do you want to do?”
Of course, we didn’t want the orchestra to play classical music or that kind of thing. I tried to listen to a lot of music, probably ’90s and 2000s music with lots of string arrangements. I truly like the music of Björk with strings, like “Isobel,” all of these with lots of strings. I thought, “Oh my God, let’s try that.” I contacted this director, Thomas Roussel, conductor, and asked him if we could do it. So we mixed John Barry and Björk and all things like that. It was quite impressive. Nick Dwyer Should we take a look at this right now? Michel Gaubert Sure, sure. (video: Chanel haute couture show 2011) Nick Dwyer Anyone watching that video, you definitely get the impression very very quickly that the house of Chanel, they’ve got some budget. Michel Gaubert Yeah, they do. It’s also very interesting to work with them because when they do something, it’s like they do it. It’s not like, “Oh, we should have maybe only 30 musicians because it’s less expensive, we shouldn’t do that on the floor because it’s too expensive.” You know what I mean? But it’s also the way they consider people. They have budget, but also we’re extremely well-considered and respected. It’s the same within the company. I think they’re a fantastic house. Nick Dwyer Sometimes can you find having an almost limitless budget can be a little bit of a hindrance? For example, if you’re a musician or an artist and you’re creating with a limited palette, then you know you’ve got boundaries to work within, but when basically the limit of the idea you could come up with is as wide as your imagination is… Michel Gaubert No, because to begin with, I can do with little. It’s the same as cooking. If I come home and I open the fridge, there’s like five things in the fridge, I can make dinner. With music, it’s the same thing. I may have 20 records, I can make a soundtrack. In that case with Chanel, I’m not trying to make them spend money. This place was calling for this, and I thought, “Are you willing to go there?” Sometimes we’ll make a soundtrack which is going to cost maybe the usual cost of a soundtrack. It’s not a necessity. I don’t have limitless budget because we’re doing something, they’re showing in Rome in December and we have a few ideas that, “Oh my God, we have a budget to respect,” like it’s too much. Of course, they’re like everyone else, but if they think the idea is good, it’s also very good.
Also, something you shouldn’t forget now is that this show from 2011 has been broadcasted on the Chanel website, and this is a tool of communication for them. When you go, there’s a magazine called Style.com. I don’t think it exists anymore, but every season they have a review of all the fashion shows and the number of million people that watched them, and Chanel is always number one. This is like advertising for them. It’s more than just doing it for the show. Nick Dwyer You’ve been doing this for a long time now, you’ve been collaborating with Karl for a long time now, you’ve found yourself on the Great Wall of China for a Fendi show, you find yourself in some amazing situations. Are you constantly finding yourself surprised and delighted with what Karl comes up with? Michel Gaubert Yes, but also with other people. We’ve been doing some amazing things. Last year we went to Japan for Dior and they did a show in a sumo arena. Against all odds, it was one of the nicest shows we did last year. It was actually amazing and Ryan was there, too. It was like, “Wow.” We got finally impressed. Of course, sometimes it’s too much because you travel quickly, you arrive somewhere and you have to do it right away, and it’s under pressure because, like, “What are we going to come up with?” You have to do this, you have to do that, but of course you get challenged all the time. Nick Dwyer Can you talk us through some of the different designers that you’ve worked with and how the process will work depending on the designer? Do some give you a minimal amount of information? Do they let you look at designs? Michel Gaubert They’re all different. They’re all very different. To speak again about Chanel, it’s more about a general mood. They’re never going to show me a sketch and say, “That’s what it’s about.” They have massive sets, ideas, and all that kind of stuff, so we just do a mood board. When I work with Phoebe Philo for example, it’s much more last minute. She starts thinking about the music maybe ten days before when she sees the collection, the way it’s going to look, so she’s got different ideas, and then it’s often like…It can go from A to Z and back to B and back to Z until the last day. It’s the way it evolves.
When I worked for Nicolas Ghesquiére at Louis Vuitton, he knows maybe three months in advance what he likes, because the show is very precise. Even when he was at Balenciaga everything is very precise for him. Two or three months before he knows exactly what he wants. He doesn’t know what the song is going to be, but he knows exactly where it’s going to be. Sometimes, they show me the clothes, sometimes they just show me a mood board, and sometimes they just talk to me on the phone. Everyone has their own process. Nick Dwyer Some of the designers that you work with are really big music fans and they know music, right? I understand Raf Simons is a really big music head? Michel Gaubert Yes. Nick Dwyer Right. Michel Gaubert He’s got his own specific taste. It’s like the way he likes everything anyway. It’s very created, so he’s got one thing. Nicolas Ghesquiére likes music. Karl likes music in different ways. Who else likes music? The thing is, most of the time when they play me their iPods, it’s always their guilty pleasures. “Oh, I’m not going to play you what I’m listening to because it’s so bad.” But it’s fun. I like that people listen to Justin Bieber or that kind of stuff. I think it’s cool, too. Nick Dwyer What are the greatest lengths that you’ve gone? You’ve had a very, almost far out idea and you’ve gone to some very great lengths to get it right. I’ve heard stories of spending 48 hours recording a water drop. Michel Gaubert Oh God, yes. That was in the pre-internet days. Yes. Yeah, we did that kind of stuff. Sometimes editing can be also very, very demanding because it seems like it’s going to be easy but it can be very difficult. In the case of the Great Wall of China for Fendi, we were supposed to do a duplicate of the Milan show, where the music was by Brian Eno and David Bowie. That period of Low and very instrumental, so we were keeping it that way. The night before, they took me to the location to see the Great Wall of China. I just said, “Fuck, we can’t have that.” So we spent almost 16 hours editing and researching stuff, and it’s something we did overnight.
I did a greatest hits of stuff we used for Fendi or for Karl because I thought it was going to be…Then we twisted them around, mixed them with harpsichord, with bells, whatever. It had to be super spectacular, but I didn’t know what the place was going to be like. It was just like this Great Wall of China in the open air, it was super big and super imposing. I said, “We can’t do that.” I just told them, “I’m changing everything.” They said, “Okay. Fine.” Nick Dwyer In order of importance, obviously at the end of the day the clothes are the most important thing in the show. In your opinion, in terms of set design, location, all of the other elements that make up the show including music, where do you rank the importance of the soundtrack? Michel Gaubert I think everything is important, to me. I’m not going to give it a rank, but I think when you see a show, to begin with also in the look of the girls, I think the hair is important, the makeup’s important, the shoe is important because it’s a different walk, it’s a different attitude, do you know what I mean? You can put on a jacket like mine and you can put it with an evening dress, a pair of jeans, low shoes, high shoes. The girl can be all made up and be a different thing.
I think all these elements have their own value. The set also is very important. I think they’re all the same, basically, and sometimes just as important to the collection. People have to like the clothes, basically, but they have to come out a fashion show feeling like they saw something that really changed their life, maybe. I don’t know. I wouldn’t go as far as this, but, “Oh my God, I saw something that was cool,” and “I like the collection, I like this. The girls looked pretty, the music was cool, the set was nice.” That’s the way you have to come out of a show. It’s one thing.
Sometimes, when people say, “Oh my God, the music was so great, but I hated the show,” then it’s like, “Okay, well, then the show was bad and I’m not interested.” Nick Dwyer Have you ever walked away feeling that you got it wrong? Michel Gaubert Sometimes. Nick Dwyer Right. Is there any particular moment? Michel Gaubert Yes, but sometimes I don’t like the show, basically. I don’t like the set, I don’t like the way the girls walk, or something. It’s too long, or if someone tells me the shows going to be that long and it ends up to be shorter so you don’t hear some part of the music, that’s truly annoying. Some people are very precise when they organize a show. They tell you, “Okay, the girls are coming out every 10 seconds,” and they really follow this, so you can truly build a soundtrack to a given amount of time. But some producers, especially in Italy, they say, “Oh, I changed it. The show’s going to be much shorter.” What do you do? They tell you that half an hour before, so some stuff you don’t hear. You don’t hear the crescendo you were expecting, or you don’t hear that part. It’s a bit disappointing. Sometimes people don’t say they just like it, but as far as personal experience, that can be disappointing. Nick Dwyer I think we’ll go and we’ll watch another video now. This is a Raf Simons show from how long ago? Michel Gaubert It’s the last one, right? Yeah, it was July. Nick Dwyer I think this is really interesting. I wanted to talk to you about this in particular because, so far, the videos that we’ve shown, they’ve been these very very big, very lavish Chanel shows. But for this show you chose a particular piece of music from a very underground Portuguese electronic artist called IVVVO, and we’ll watch the clip first. Michel Gaubert I’ll tell you after, yeah. (video: Raf Simons Spring/Summer show 2016) Nick Dwyer Again, that question of: Raf comes to you, he’s got a few ideas, he’s got a collection, and then you have that eureka moment of, like, “I know. It’s going to be IVVVO this time.” How does one end up there? Michel Gaubert That one was quite easy because that track from IVVVO is called “Mark Leckey Made Me Hardcore.” Mark Leckey is a video artist that did this video called Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore maybe 10-12 years ago. It’s one of Raf Simon’s favorite pieces of art. When I started to work with Raf, we did a whole show with the movie Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore projected in the background. But we didn’t use the music. When I downloaded that track again, IVVVO, I just sent it to him right away. “Listen, I think that’s made for you.” And like, “Oh, yeah, I’m not sure.” I come and see him four days before the show and the track was blasting in the showroom, all the models were fitting the clothes on the things, so I said, “I think we should do that.” So, “Okay.” Then we thought we had to be more clever than that, so Ryan got in touch with ... Was it Gavin Brown? Yeah, with Gavin Brown, the gallery in New York, and we asked him if we could use an original soundtrack from Mark Leckey and we did. We made a mixture of the two of them, because the IVVVO track, that was a ten minute show, we couldn’t just do IVVVO. We just do all the chronology of the Mark Leckey soundtrack, and we interjected it into the IVVVO track. Because I know Raf, and I know that was his thing, so it was quite an easy one to figure out, and it worked. It was cool. Nick Dwyer I always heard he was a massive Richie Hawtin fan, loved Plastikman. Michel Gaubert Yes. I can tell you that. Once I went on holiday with him for a week, and it was like 24 hours a day Richie Hawtin. By the swimming pool, on the beach, everywhere. Plastikman, Plastikman, Plastikman. But then you can get yourself detached from it after a while. It’s true, it’s the kind of music that if you don’t want to listen to it you can just escape from it, so it’s fine. He’s super obsessed with Plastikman. Nick Dwyer Obviously one thing you talked about before was this whole thing of not pushing your own musical agenda, but one of the ideas with fashion is keeping things fresh. People present you collections that are fresh and they update and things are moving forward. Do you feel yourself more inclined or wanting to, although not pushing your own musical agenda, discovering new music and pushing new music and new musical ideas out through these shows? Michel Gaubert I try to. I try to, but it’s got to be right. We can do anything we want, basically. There’s no agenda of playing new music or old stuff or whatever. It all depends on the brief I’m given. Sometimes there’s cool new stuff that’s coming out and if we think it’s right, I truly like to push it. I like to push new artists, of course. That’s definitely, when it’s right, but I don’t want to just, “Oh my God. This is the cool record to play, let’s play that.” It’s not the idea behind it. Yes, we do, and sometimes we can make concerts even for private parties and stuff. We try to do that. Nick Dwyer You brought a USB full of some tracks. Are there more interesting examples of forward-thinking music or music that you’ve got into a show that you’ve been particularly proud of? Just a couple of things from recent times. Michel Gaubert I don’t know about the ones I brought on my USB key, but we did the Fendi show in Milan with Kelela, for example. We really like Kelela and we also asked her if we could get all the stems from the tracks so we could remix it, and of course we did. That was quite forward to do that.
It’s not always all about new music. We did a show for Dior this summer and it was kind of weird, but we used the music from the movie Crash mixed with old Pink Floyd, and then we also used Alessandro Cortini, all that mixed together so it’s kind of like telling a story. It’s not just about doing a demonstration, “I’ve got all the new cool records,” I’m trying to build a story along a lot of things like that, but there’s things we can listen to if you want to. Nick Dwyer I think before we listen to another track, one thing I will ask, I guess on behalf of everyone in this room, the reality is in 2015 if you want to make a living off making music you tour, or if you’re lucky enough you can get your music synced and I’m going to hazard a guess that having your music played in a fashion show is probably a good way of paying that month’s rent. How does someone get their music in front of you without turning you off? Michel Gaubert It never turns me off. There’s several schools. I like it when it’s people that I know that send me stuff, “Oh, listen to this.” Record labels have a super heavy approach, or even publishers, “This is my stuff, all that is clear to sync.” We try to establish new relationships with different artists. We go forward, like you say. We got in touch with Visionist, we got in touch with Kelela, we got in touch with Koreless, all these kids, and they’re all, most of the time, very willing to give us stuff because we work with a few people now that also license music for their webcast, and I think it’s interesting that in return we can provide that. Because the fashion show, it’s also a good way to get your music known.
I think it’s like, when you have Kelela or Visionist or all these people on soundtracks for shows, they can use it as a promotion. It’s like, “See, my music is also cool for that.” It’s not a bad way to make promotion for yourself. I know some artists don’t like it, they’re just, “Oh my God, fashion. Fashion, fashion, fashion.” But listen, they don’t sell records, basically, so they’ll have to make money. Some fashion shows have got 250,000 or 500,000 people watching it. It still gets the music across, so I think it’s a good way to make yourself a name and some money. Nick Dwyer Obviously there’s a wide range of music that you’ll bring depending on the brief to the job, but there’s definitely, as we’ve heard so far, in other shows you bring a lot of electronic and club-based music. Are you constantly going out to clubs to hear new music in context so you understand it better with which to put in your show? Because if you listen, as we all know, you can hear some cavernous techno in your headphones or playing through your Mac speakers, but if you’ve go to Berghain you kind of understand things, or clubs like that. Michel Gaubert I don’t do it enough. But I do, and sometimes I love it and sometimes it gets on my nerves. Sometimes I can just imagine what it’s going to be like. I was saying earlier when I was talking to, I forgot his name, who runs the Gaîte lyrique, all the programs ... Nick Dwyer Oh, JP. Michel Gaubert I don’t know if he’s here, but we saw the Chromatics here, and I thought the song was so good. I knew the Chanel show was going to be three months later and I thought it would be good to have them live. That came from that. Maybe Alessandro Cortini came from that too, by listening to him live. I’ve seen some other concerts recently, I wouldn’t touch it. It’s also for my own enjoyment. We came to the Queer Festival in July, I had a good time here. It was super, super good. I’m also very picky for music and what I like. It’s super personal. Nick Dwyer Everything that I’ve read online, the numbers keep differing, but I guess in terms of the growth is immense in a very short space of time of your record collection. The last count, how big, where was your collection at? Michel Gaubert I don’t know. I don’t know how many CDs I have or how many gigabytes of music I have in my iTunes. I don’t count it. Nick Dwyer You don’t? Michel Gaubert No, I don’t. It’s not the way I see it. Nick Dwyer It’s immense though, it’s absolutely immense. Michel Gaubert Yeah, yeah, it’s immense, but I don’t…It’s too big. It’s too big. Nick Dwyer It’s at that size. Michel Gaubert Yeah, it’s too big. Nick Dwyer Too big to be counted. Michel Gaubert I have a big room, not as big as this, but I’ve got a big room with lots of CDs and I never look at them, I never do. Because it’s too complicated now. If I want to listen to something it’s easier to go iTunes and buy it than search in all the shelves and put it into the computer, import it, and all that kind of stuff. Nick Dwyer I want to know, how do you stay enthusiastic? You’ve been doing this for a long, long time now. Your job, you have to constantly discover new music and stay on top of music. When you’ve being doing something like this for more than 30 years, 30 plus years, how do you keep yourself enthusiastic to wake up every day hungry for new music? Michel Gaubert I don’t know if I wake up every day hungry for new music. First I want breakfast, and then I’ll decide if I want more music or not. Nick Dwyer But you’re finding ways to. Michel Gaubert Of course. I’m like everyone in this room. When you’re looking for new music, there’s like five million ways to get new music. All it takes is a computer and then you go to whatever sites you want. Before that I used to read a lot of magazines, go to a lot of record stores, and obviously record stores in Paris now are very rare. The good ones only do vinyl. Vinyl for me is annoying because I cannot put it into the computer. I have to play it, record it, convert it. Online is the best way to listen to music, but it takes a lot of fucking time. It’s a whole job. It’s a 12 hour job and you don’t get everything you want. It’s hunting. It’s very Japanese that way. When you look for and address in Japan, looking for a record on the web, it’s like the same kind of thing. Nick Dwyer Do you want to play a track right now? Michel Gaubert Yes, let me see what I brought. Nick Dwyer Are you still ever DJing in the traditional sense at shows? Michel Gaubert What do you mean? Nick Dwyer Actually just DJing. Doing a set at an after party, at parties. Michel Gaubert Not really. Nick Dwyer Okay. Michel Gaubert No. I can do it for an hour, an hour and a half and that’s it. After that I don’t want to do it. Nick Dwyer You get much more enjoyment out of the notion of sound design. Michel Gaubert Yes, and I also like to create parties. We did one recently, two weeks ago and we booked a few DJs and tried to do booking for people that same way. We try to find a perfect match. We did that for Valentino. They had an African collection, so we booked a very famous French percussionist, African percussionist. Very good. To me, that was the best drummers, the best percussionist ever known. That was very good. Then we did a Chanel party in London and we casted Jarvis Cocker, Johnny Wilkes, and Lily Allen because she was part of the… And she’s a good DJ, she played all the coolest hip hop stuff at the beginning of the party. She’s a real cool girl. We’re doing another one in Rome, and same with Dior. We casted Optimo that we talked to in Japan, and the party was incredible. We try to do these kind of things. I don’t want to be, I’m not a DJ, so people should know that. Nick Dwyer Basically you’ve given us, you painted us a picture of outside of those hectic few months of fashion week, your whole year is pretty much travelling, events? Michel Gaubert Yeah, this year was a lot. This year was a lot. No3 we’re going to go to America for three weeks, but it’s just little things here and there and it will be fun. December is going to be four days in Rome and that’s it. Then next year it’s going to start again. London, Milan, New York and all the cycle again. The whole month of September doesn’t exist for me. But it’s okay. Then October exists and November exists, so that’s fine. Nick Dwyer What would you like to play for us? Michel Gaubert Let me check. I might have to play it for a little bit, but it’s a Loewe show of last season, the first track was Onra, right? Yeah, his name is Onra. Then this Japanese record by a girl called Maria that was ... You know her? For some reason we had it for a while, it was reissued, so can we take five minutes of music? Nick Dwyer Yeah. Michel Gaubert Or I can forward it if you want. Okay. Nick Dwyer What is this we’re about to play? Michel Gaubert This one is a Céline show from three years ago. It was made with an Isaac Hayes track that we took all the vocals out and mixed it with RZA, is that his name? (music: Michel Gaubert remix) Nick Dwyer Paint us a picture, what was the show again? Give us an idea of the environment in particular. It’s a very, very emotional track to begin with. Michel Gaubert It is, it is. It is, because Phoebe Philo is a woman who loves emotion. She plays a lot with emotion, her fashion is not emotional, but it’s very warm and very sensual in a way. She liked the Isaac Hayes track, but I also liked it. This one I wanted to play because to begin with, personally, I really like it. It was very difficult to do. It doesn’t sound like it, but that track from Isaac Hayes, we stripped it. We took only the best parts with all the weird guitars and everything like that. Then, the RZA track, he says “n---er” and “motherf-cker” every second, and of course we had to remove all of that because, it’s not we’re against it or even Phoebe Philo is against it, but when you go to a fashion show, which is by Céline and a coat costs maybe 3,000 Euros or whatever and you have all these beautiful girls, when you hear a song like that, it’s a bit silly if you hear “mother-cker” all the time, like some kind of rebellious kind of thing. But we loved it, we loved the emotion, so technically there must have been 16 hours of editing on that soundtrack alone just to make sure all the parts were good and finding out which part we could use together with Isaac Hayes. The effect was beautiful. It was really nice. Nick Dwyer I’m just going to wrap up things, we’ll throw it over to these guys very soon, but as we’ve established, Michel, you spend your days and your nights working with some of the most creative people in the world, and you find yourselves in all kinds of situations where people would like to think it’s democracy, but sometimes other very strong, strong minds are pushing their ideas the most. What is your best advice for trying to compromise, get your ideas across, when you’re dealing with possibly difficult creative people. Michel Gaubert Everyone’s difficult anyway. I’m also very difficult for that kind of thing. There was something happened recently. I said, “We should do this, we should do that. We should do this, we should do that,” and the other person said, “No, we should do this, we should do that,” and in the end at the show, five days later after five days of negotiation, it was what I said that happened. That person said, after, “Oh my God. I took the right decision.” I said, “Yes, you did.” Do you know what I mean?
It has to be their idea, whatever, but when I do what I do, when you provide someone with your knowledge and your service and you push something, if they take the idea back, then that’s the way it is. It happens to all of these people. I don’t care. But you have to be very democratic, almost like a therapist sometimes. Like, “Tell me who you are, I’ll tell you what you listen to,” or just, “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine. I can do this, I can do that.” It’s as important as making the music, really. It’s just to get your point across. Nick Dwyer I think we’ll throw it over to these guys. Audience Member Just to clarify, when they’re walking, there aren’t any musical cues, right? You’re writing an hour’s worth of music, and then you’re just making what sounds good to you for them to walk to? Michel Gaubert No. Audience Member Okay. Michel Gaubert It doesn’t work that way. Basically a show is anywhere between eight to twelve minutes long. I don’t make an hour of music. Audience Member Yeah, however long the show is. Yes. Michel Gaubert I make twelve minutes of music, but the clue is, logically, when you work with a producer, they know exactly where the girls need to be when the music happens, so it’s chancing it sometimes, but we can cue a few things, yes, definitely. We do it before because of course it sounds much better. If I have to cue live, let’s say, “Loop number 16, we want that special track on it.” If I have to do as soon as she comes out, I don’t know where I’m coming out from, and the mix could be really dreadful, so it’s better to do it transitioning very smoothly, editing before, and maybe she’s going to be on cue maybe five seconds earlier or five seconds after, but it doesn’t really matter. Audience Member Right, it’s like close enough. Michel Gaubert Yeah, yeah. It’s close enough because plus, in the room when you have one girl coming out, no one has the same vision, really. It’s better that way because you can make really nice mixes rather than do something a bit messy when it’s live. Audience Member Great. Thank you. Michel Gaubert You’re welcome. Audience Member Just curious to know if you mostly work with pre-existing material as your raw materials, whether you’re reinventing it or using it in its original form, or do you ever work with composers from scratch? Michel Gaubert I do work with composers from scratch every now and then. Not very often, I must admit, but most of the time it’s original stuff, but that can happen also. Audience Member Presumably for convenience sake though, you have it all in front of you. Michel Gaubert Well, the thing is, like I was saying earlier, unless some people are ready a long time in advance. Last year, last summer, Louis Vuitton wanted a new version of “The Sound of Silence” and we commissioned three different people. I commissioned three different DJs or musicians to do it, and we chose to work with Leopold Ross. We had time to do that, so it was perfectly fine, but otherwise if I use prerecorded music, because a lot of time people decide three days before what they want, and composing music takes much longer than that. It’s more a matter of having the time to do it or not. Audience Member Sure. That’s great. Thanks. [inaudible from audience] Nick Dwyer Right. Ryan An artist or label that didn’t want their material used for commercial reasons, so the track was given to three people almost as a contest I guess you would say. Michel Gaubert Yes. Ryan Mark E was one of the people, and he submitted something that was really great in his style, and then Leopold, and then Keith from Optimo. Michel Gaubert Yeah. Ryan They each gave it a few different drafts, so they were all wildly different. The challenging part was that was an exceptionally long show, so they needed to stretch, without having stems, “The Sound of Silence” into a composition that was basically like 20 minutes. Michel Gaubert Ryan Yeah, but there was more than that. Anyways, a lot longer, without any stems and to make a whole ‘nother thing. They had material to use, and they had to compose on top of it and make it super dramatic and have different kinds of transitions. It was a really challenging one. Michel Gaubert But Leo did very good job at that. Plus, in that case he had the ideas, but it was like I was stepping it up with him, telling him, “You should make that part longer, and then do a crescendo here and do this and do that.” Nick Dwywer Did you say Leopold Ross? Michel Gaubert Leopold Ross, yeah. Nick Dwywer The brother of Atticus Ross, Trent Reznor’s partner. Michel Gaubert Yes. Nick Dwywer Okay. By the way, does that happen a lot where you guys have an idea and as you just mentioned, Ryan, the record company would not let you use the original track. How often does this happen? Michel Gaubert Well we could use it for the show. For the show we used the original, but for the webcast or anything like that it was impossible. We wanted to use the stem so we could have the lyrics all the way through. Leo asked his girlfriend Oleana to sing, so she sang a few lyrics. Sometimes record companies don’t want to, you don’t know why. For example, when you want to license music for the web, I know if you ask people like Prince, Björk, The Cure, they’re not interested, they don’t want to. It’s not even a matter of money, it’s an artist’s point of view. They don’t want to, which I respect. You never know where you’re going to…You never know what’s going to happen. It’s a big gamble. [inaudible from audience]
Yeah, well it’s also the same thing. We used, of course, we had a show in Viennaand we used of course the Grand Hotel Budapest, but there’s the fee for the composer and there’s a fee from the movie, so sometimes the track they can ask you for €40,000 to use two minutes of music on the web, so you just don’t do it. Nick Dwyer You had a question up there? Audience Member Yeah, so these shows that they showed were spectacular looking, and I feel like it’s probably some of the stuff that you’re most proud of. Best case scenario between the show and the music that you brought, that’s why they were selected. Michel Gaubert There’s others I like, yeah. More simple. Audience Member Well, I’m curious about, because you provide a service, and many of us who, if we’re not just artists and living off of that, then we’re providing a service on some level if we’re working with other people in music. How do you handle it when you’re not happy with the work that other… You mentioned some shows you’re not crazy about. Do you ever turn things down? How do you navigate that? Michel Gaubert In the beginning when someone asks me, I always consider. Now I’m seasoned enough I know exactly who’s going to do what in the show, and if there’s people I don’t like to work with I turn it down, because I know it’s going to be either a painful process or I won’t be happy with the result. Sometimes it happens that you do something with someone and then in the process there’s just like, “No, I want this, I want this, I want that,” and you just give up because you don’t want to be…I don’t want to lose my sanity anyway, and then I just say “Okay, that’s lost, that’s the way it is,” but I can live with it. In the beginning it was painful, I said, “My God, they did this, it’s awful.” Now, it’s like, it can happen. I would say 80% of the time I’m quite satisfied with what we provide. Audience Member That’s great. Michel Gaubert Thank you. Audience Member Thank you. That’s a nice high number. Michel Gaubert Yeah, I learned to deal with it. Audience Member Thank you. Nick Dwyer Any other questions? Well, I think that is the point in time where we go, Michel Gaubert, thank you so much for coming along. Michel Gaubert You’re welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you. [applause]