“We have lost our vision for the future. Before, we say, ‘Nothing will be the same. Cars will fly, and we go to the end of the universe.’ We have this kind of naive but exciting idea of the future. Now, the vision has been reduced to ways to select our garbage and how to survive global warming.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“For me, electronic music is like cooking: it’s a sensual organic activity where you can mix ingredients.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“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.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“The value of streaming platforms is estimated at a few billion dollars, and creators can only afford a pizza without pepperoni at the end of the year with the revenues. Without musicians, all those platforms wouldn’t exist, so we urgently need an appropriate and sustainable business model for musicians for the 21st century.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“People don’t realize enough how important and influentical John Carpenter has been in electronic music. He did his soundtracks by himself, using mostly electronic and analog synthesizers. He’s a cult figure with DJs these days for good reasons.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“With electronic music, you are not confined to the acoustics of a concert-hall, and that inspired me to bring my performances outdoors.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“As a musician, I have always strived for my albums and live performance to render a sound as close as possible to perfection.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“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.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“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.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“For me, electronic music is the classical music of the 21st century.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“When I heard Edward Snowden’s story, it reminded me of my mother in a strange way. She was in the French resistance from early on, 1941. At that time, the Resistance were considered troublemakers – even traitors – in France.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“When you think after 25 years of Mao, Chinese people had no idea about western music or even western culture. They had no idea about James Dean or the Beatles or Charlie Chaplin, modern music or modern cinema.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“It’s sometimes better to have a father figure to rebel against than nothing, than just a black hole or an absence.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I was recently realizing that I’ve probably spent 80 percent of my life in studios! It’s very difficult to do that and still have a private life; it’s very difficult to do anything else.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“If music is to continue to support the livelihoods of artists, it cannot be taken without the permission of artists.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Most of the time, when you are in the studio, you are revealing yourself; you’re a bit naked. You can express your weaknesses, your awkward way of approaching sound. Sharing these intimate moments is like inviting somebody into your private room.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“People who do music do it because it is all they can do. And that’s me, I suppose. I can do nothing else.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“What is very interesting when talking about electronic music is that – I would say that rock and roll is called the ethnic music born in America that invaded the world. Electronic music is certainly kind of ethnic music born in countries like Germany and France that has invaded the world.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I’m convinced that the earth is much stronger than us.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Our senses have changed, even though our emotions have not.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“From the outside, being an artist seems like a dream life, but there are much darker aspects to it.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“We all think we are connected to the world now, but we are not talking to our neighbours any more.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Saying that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“What may not have value to you today may have value to an entire population, entire people, an entire way of life tomorrow. And if you don’t stand up for it, then who will?”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“When I was at the Group for Musical Research, with this idea of discovering electronic music, I quickly realized that that it was a very interesting and exciting approach to music, but I also saw that it was very intellectual and quite dogmatic.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“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.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Music is the backbone of my shows.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“When I compose an album, I don’t think about how to adapt it on stage.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“With the violin, for example, one understands culturally that the sound comes from the instrument that can be seen. With electronic music, it is not the same at all. That’s why it seemed so important to me, from the beginning of my career, to invent a grammar, a visual vocabulary adapted to electronic music.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I am not someone who is afraid; I am someone who reasons.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I don’t necessarily like anniversaries that much.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“When I did the first ‘Oxygene’ in the vinyl days, I had a structure in mind divided in 2 parts fitting the A&B sides of an album.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I did the first ‘Oxygene’ on an 8 tracks tape recorder with very few instruments, with no other choice than being minimalist.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Some collaborators might join forces in certain cities or special concerts. I’m excited to share the stage with some prestigious people that I love and respect.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“My father and I never really achieved a real relationship. We probably saw each other 20 or 25 times in our lifetime.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Even if we artists are all very privileged, there’s a constant frustration about how to do more or better, and never being satisfied.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Sometimes, you try something, and it works in terms of success. That doesn’t mean you like what is a hit. Sometimes you like the most obscure song on your album.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“In a lifetime, you can say, yes, you have instances of pleasure, of happiness, you like some of your work, but your work is the entire story, and if you are not satisfied with a few moments of a few parts of that story, you would like to be able to adjust that.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Suddenly, we are putting ourselves as the next dinosaurs. It’s rather dark; we have narrowed our dreams. It is time to restore our visions. And so it’s not a nostalgic idea; it is based with this unconscious need to restore a kind of dynamic for tomorrow.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Emotions are the basics of any art form!”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“People are rejecting the power of the elite, but individuals such as Snowden are doing so in a positive way, trying to change things for the better. He is a very intelligent man and obviously interested in electronic music.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“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.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Snowden has demonstrated true love for his country. He has done something to improve the lives of people.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I always dreamed, when I started writing music, to find a way of immersing yourself in it.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“CDs are not as good as vinyl, and you buy one in the supermarket along with the yoghurt.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“The whole ‘Electronica’ project is about the ambiguous relationship we have with technology: on the one side, we have the world in our pocket; on the other, we are spied on constantly.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I would say to anyone starting out that if their priority in life is happiness, then don’t be a musician.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Pursuing music eats into your life to the point where there is no space left for anything else. You are lucky if you find a partner who is able to understand that, but even then, they will only understand it for a while, and then things get – you know, difficult.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I wanted to create a bridge between experimental music and pop.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“The major rock instruments and classical instruments were designed for performance, for sharing the music with an audience, and then later people put microphones on them and recorded them. But for electronic music, the opposite was true – they’re designed in laboratories, and later, we tried to put them on stage.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“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.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“If you get rid of music, images, videos, words and literature from the smartphone, you just have a simple phone that would be worth $50.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Music, photography, media, film – it’s all going to be free on the Internet. We have to accept it.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Think about when you listen to a song on the radio. You are not paying for it; it’s not illegal to do it, because the rights have been paid for on top, beforehand, by the radio station, by the network. We have to find exactly the same kind of system with the Internet.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“We should never forget that in the smartphone, the smart part is us creators.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“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.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I was obsessed with the idea that no two sounds on ‘Oxygene’ should ever be exactly the same. I wanted a heartbeat feel, something human.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“When I first heard Kraftwerk, I thought they were an American band singing in German.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“When you have a young man, I mean, questioning the power in place for love of his country, not to say ‘stop’ but to say ‘be careful about the abuse of technology,’ I think it deserves to be promoted.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Technology does not always rhyme with perfection and reliability. Far from it in reality!”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I’ve always been involved in the visual aspect of my work, and moreover, it’s very important in days where technology allows us to push the boundaries even more than when I started out.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“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!”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I studied classical music in the Conservatory of Paris.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I used to play in rock bands. Then I went to the first school of electronic music in the world. It was in Paris headed by one of the most important people involved in electronic music.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“To me, the original VCS3 synthesizer is like a Stradivarius.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“My first synthesizer was the VCS3. I got it in Bristol in the late Sixties, long before Pink Floyd used them. I had to sell an acoustic guitar and an old reel-to-reel tape recorder to raise the money. You can do fantastic things with modern computers, but you cannot use them in the same intuitive, spontaneous way you can a VCS3.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“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.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“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.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“What is important to me is that the world understand that the problems of the Dead Sea concern not only residents of the region but humanity.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“My mother, who was in the Resistance in the Second World War, passed away at 96, and it was like she was 60. I almost have to apologise for my genes.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“The paradox is that Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and all the tech giants are bigger fans of music than some of the executives working at major record companies.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Creative industries are more important than the car industry, luxury jewels, and fashion.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I was always interested in mixing experimentation with pop music, and Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream – we were all doing it at the same time, just very isolated from each other, all in our different cellars, in different worlds, without the Internet – underground in every sense.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“In my opinion, British women are more romantic than French ones.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I understand more when I travel why people believe that the French are arrogant.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I just had one occasion in my life when suddenly my private life was everywhere, and that was an accident and beyond my control.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“In electronic music, staying behind your laptop for two hours is not too exciting to watch.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“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.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“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.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“All those ethereal string sounds on ‘Oxygene IV’ come from the VCS3. It was the first European synthesizer, made in England by a guy called Peter Zinoviev. I got one of the first ones.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I wanted to find a bridge between Musique Concrete, electro-acoustic music, and proper rock music.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“The characteristic of ‘Oxygene’ is a mixture of innocence and ambition, of trying to do something different in a different way.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Early music in all kinds of movements is always a mixture of innocence and ambition.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“When I began making electronic music, the only thing I was thinking about was creating music that I really liked. I didn’t think about what effect it would have; I was busy doing it.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“The difference between noise and music is in what the musician does with the sounds.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“One of the first things I created was music for the Paris opera’s ballet troupe. That was the first time that electronic music was played at the opera. I really like the relationship between the music and the choreography.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Dance fascinates me, and it is perhaps the most enriching audio-visual realm for a musician. Film-making also fascinates me.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I had no precise plan when I started ‘Electronica,’ but I think it has been a very positive journey for me.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“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.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I leave everyone to have their own opinions of my music and my influence – or not – on others.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“’Oxygene’ was one of the first, if not the first, popular electronic music album.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“This project, ‘Electronica,’ is about working with people who are a strong source of inspiration to me.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Peace is neutral, and not very sexy.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“Technology is neutral, but it all depends on the way we use it.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“I want the Dead Sea, like Masada, to be part of UNESCO’s world heritage.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“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.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
“My first break was in my home country with some pop songs that became hits, writing for French singers Christophe & Francoise Hardy, which became hits.”
― Jean-Michel Jarre
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