Jean-Michel Jarre Quotes

“As a musician, I have always strived for my albums and live performance to render a sound as close as possible to perfection.”

“At the time, 'Oxygene' was considered a totally 'far out' concept... What was 'in' at the time was disco, hard-rock, and the early days of punk... and moreover, 'Oxygene' was instrumental. And I was French!”

“Back in the Seventies, we had a romantic, poetic vision of the future, like it was in the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey'. It felt as if everything was still ahead of us.”

“Bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, who I respect, have a very robotic, dehumanised approach. They're almost an apology for machines. It's very German.”

“CDs are not as good as vinyl, and you buy one in the supermarket along with the yoghurt.”

“Creative industries are more important than the car industry, luxury jewels, and fashion.”

“Dance fascinates me, and it is perhaps the most enriching audio-visual realm for a musician. Film-making also fascinates me.”

“Early music in all kinds of movements is always a mixture of innocence and ambition.”

“Electronic musicians are quite like writers or painters. They are quite isolated in their home studios. We often don't have that the opportunity to collaborate with that many people, like in rock or jazz.”

“Emotions are the basics of any art form!”

“Even if we artists are all very privileged, there's a constant frustration about how to do more or better, and never being satisfied.”

“For me, electronic music is like cooking: it's a sensual organic activity where you can mix ingredients.”

“For me, electronic music is the classical music of the 21st century.”

“From the outside, being an artist seems like a dream life, but there are much darker aspects to it.”

“Generation after generation, there is this never-ending, contemptuous, condescending attitude to the next generation or the next way of thinking: music, art, politics, whatever. And I have never been like that.”

“Governments can help support European music by promoting public awareness that when people take music that doesn't belong to them, they undermine the future of those very artists whose work they enjoy.”

“I always dreamed, when I started writing music, to find a way of immersing yourself in it.”

“I am not someone who is afraid; I am someone who reasons.”

“I collect robots. They're mainly Japanese, American, and especially Russian – small robots, big robots, and old toy robots made between 1910 and the Fifties.”

“I consider music like a mirage in the desert. You're obsessed with the ideal piece of music, and the more you think you're getting closer, it's not there.”

“I did the first 'Oxygene' on an 8 tracks tape recorder with very few instruments, with no other choice than being minimalist.”

“I feel very privileged to have played China, and the pyramids, all these fantastic places, but it created a kind of smoke curtain between the audience and me as a musician.”

“I have always been of the opinion that when those in power are promoting actions and ideals that risk harming or impeding us, people should stand up to this.”

“I have played a few times in Barcelona, including the fantastic Olympic Stadium. It's undoubtedly one of my favourite cities in terms of the people, arts, food, architecture and design.”

“I just had one occasion in my life when suddenly my private life was everywhere, and that was an accident and beyond my control.”

“I leave everyone to have their own opinions of my music and my influence – or not – on others.”

“I remember, for my fifth birthday, Chet Baker sat me on the upright piano, and he played just for me for a few minutes. I can still remember the pressure of the air on my chest. It was my first physical contact with sound.”

“I think that in any language when you have a real relationship, and there is love and respect between people, infidelity is always something difficult to accept – whether you are Chinese, British, French. I think that is a universal concept... or problem.”

“I thought we had opposite visions of electronic music. Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk had a very robotic, mechanical approach. I had a more impressionist vision – a Ravel/Debussy approach.”

“I understand more when I travel why people believe that the French are arrogant.”