Jean-Michel Jarre
The French synthesizer composer who recorded Oxygene in a makeshift Paris studio in 1976, took "Oxygene (Part IV)" to the UK top five, and went on to stage some of the largest outdoor concerts ever held.
Lyon, the GRM and a kitchen studio
Jean-Michel Andre Jarre was born in Lyon on August 24, 1948, the son of the film composer Maurice Jarre, and was raised mainly by his mother and grandparents. He worked with Pierre Schaeffer at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales from 1969, and set up a home studio that year with an EMS VCS 3 and an EMS Synthi AKS; he played in the bands Mystere IV and The Dustbins. His influences include Schaeffer's musique concrete, street performers, Paris jazz clubs, the painter Pierre Soulages and Stravinsky. He recorded La Cage / Erosmachine (1971, recorded in 1969) and Deserted Palace (1972), and wrote lyrics for Francoise Hardy, Gerard Lenorman, Christophe and Patrick Juvet between 1972 and 1975.
Oxygene was recorded between August and November 1976 in a makeshift studio in his Paris apartment near the Champs-Elysees, which Jarre calls his kitchen; he told the Guardian in 2018 that he had done production work for rock artists, earning enough to set up a studio, with just a few guitar pedals and his first synthesizer, an EMS VCS3. It was released in December 1976 in France and internationally in 1977, 39:39, produced by Jarre and released by Disques Motors and Polydor after, OndaRock says, labels first rejected it. It reached number one in France, two in the UK and 78 in the US, and won the Grand Prix du Disque in 1976; the UK press in 1977 was largely negative, NME's Angus MacKinnon calling it another interminable cosmic cruise, and Mojo later called it an elegant cornerstone of electronic music.
Concerts, China and the later records
On July 14, 1979 he played Place de la Concorde in Paris to about a million people, the first Guinness entry for the largest outdoor concert, and in 1981 he was the first Western musician invited to play post-Mao China, with five concerts in Beijing and Shanghai. Equinoxe (1978), Les Chants Magnetiques (1981), Zoolook (1984, an early use of sampling), Rendez-Vous (1986), Revolutions (1988), En attendant Cousteau (1990) and Chronologie (1993) followed. Later events included Houston on April 5, 1986, the London Docklands on October 8 and 9, 1988, La Defense on July 14, 1990, the Eiffel Tower for UNESCO in 1995, Moscow on September 6, 1997 and Giza on December 31, 1999; audience figures differ between the table and text of Wikipedia. He became a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in 1993 and a Commander of the Legion of Honour in 2021.
Oxygene 7-13 (1997), Oxygene: New Master Recording (2007, a 30th anniversary re-recording on vintage gear), Electronica 1 (2015, UK number eight, his first UK top ten in over 25 years, with a Grammy nomination), Electronica 2 and Oxygene 3 (2016), Equinoxe Infinity (2018), Amazonia (2021) and Oxymore (2022) followed, and a virtual New Year's Eve concert in 2020 set in a Notre Dame reconstruction. His collaborators on Electronica include Gesaffelstein, M83, Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter, Pete Townshend, Pet Shop Boys, Hans Zimmer and Gary Numan. He played the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles in 2023 and the Paralympics closing ceremony in 2024. A 50th anniversary Oxygene, remastered from the original tapes, and a tour called Oxygene and Beyond were announced for 2026 and 2027. He received the Mojo lifetime achievement award in 2010 and the Stephen Hawking Medal in 2017, and wrote the autobiography Melancolique Rodeo (2019).
Albums
- Oxygene 1976 · Disques Motors
His 1976 album: six untitled parts on analog synthesizers, recorded at home, number two in the UK and about 15 million sold by 1981.
Songs
- Oxygene (Part IV) Oxygene · 1976
The fourth part of Oxygene, a number four hit in the UK in 1977 and Jarre's most played song in concert.
Sources
- Jean-Michel Jarre, Wikipedia
- Jean-Michel Jarre discography, Wikipedia
- A breath of fresh air after 30 years, The Irish Times (2008-04-09)
- Jean-Michel Jarre, jeanmicheljarre.com