Band’s singer-guitarist corrects the record: “It’s French history. Beheaded people, red wine, and blood all over the place — it’s romantic, it’s normal. There’s nothing satanic”
Anyone who tuned into the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony on Friday hoping for big pop music performances like Celine Dion’s and Lady Gaga’s was probably not prepared to see Marie Antoinette, beheaded and bloody, singing the 19th-century French anthem “Ah! Ça Ira” with the French heavy metal band Gojira. The quartet took the reins from the decapitated queen with aplomb, ending her reign with double-kick bass drums, pneumatic rhythm guitar, and frontman Joe Duplantier’s growled interpretation of the lyrics, which insist that after revolution, everything will be just fine.
Each member of the band — Duplantier, his brother, drummer Mario, lead guitarist Christian Andreu, and bassist Jean-Michel Labadie — performed their parts in a different window of Paris’ Conciergerie palace with fire spraying every which way in front of them and mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti gliding by on a ship, singing the song as opera. The performance ran only about two and a half minutes, but between the jaw-dropping surrealist visuals and Gojira’s bang-your-head-until-it-falls-right-off aggression, it became one of the most talked-about moments of the night. There’s been backlash from some right-wing commentators, who were quick to denounce the performance as satanic propaganda. But for metalheads, it was a different kind of validation — recognition of the genre on a world stage.
For Duplantier, it was a huge responsibility. Gojira have spent nearly 30 years perfecting their metal grooves, earning the respect of genre leaders like Metallica as well as the media; Rolling Stone named their 2005 album From Mars to Sirius one of the greatest metal albums of all time and their most recent album, 2021’s Fortitude, one of the best that year. As Duplantier tells Rolling Stone over a Zoom from his dad’s house in the southwest of France on Monday, he’s still making sense of it all.
How are you feeling about the performance today?
It’s a bit unreal. It’s been in the works for months. Ever since we were contacted by the Olympic Committee and the composer, Victor le Masne, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen just because it sounded completely unreal. The amount of people that would see us live kind of eclipsed the moment. I wasn’t thinking about what it was going to be because it was just too mind-bending to think about. So the reality of the moment was absolutely mind-blowing from where we were, up there at the Conciergerie and the view we had of the scenery and all the Olympic teams, passing by on boats. It was pretty surreal.
Did you think much about the responsibility of representing metal on the world stage?
I try not to think too much about that because it continues to blow my mind [laughs]. The Olympic Committee could have asked literally anybody to play. I’m thinking of bands like Metallica or AC/DC that are household names and powerhouses in our genre that we all revere and are our heroes. We never considered ourselves the biggest band in the world that would be worthy to play the Olympics or anything like that. It’s so weird.
The way I think about it is it’s a challenge in 2024 to give hope to people, to show something original. People have seen everything from landing on the moon to A.I. So it was a challenge for Paris and the Committee to express something fresh, new, and original [by booking us] and also show what France is all about.
At least for our part, the fact that metal and opera had never been seen together on TV and in front of so many people before is a statement for the country of France. It’s saying, “Hey, look. We’re still pushing the boundaries in the world.” So congrats to France for putting this together.
Who picked the song “Ah! Ça Ira” for you?
That wasn’t us at all. That was the team of young people and composers and designers that decided the whole theme. We were in the dark when it came to the whole ceremony; we were just concentrating on that picture and that moment of Marie Antoinette. We didn’t know how it was going to look or how it would fit in with a whole performance. I didn’t know Lady Gaga or Celine Dion were going to be there. We were in [the Olympic Committee’s] confidence, and we weren’t allowed to tell our people that we were going to do this. We didn’t know what was going to happen at all. We just went back and forth with the composer of the Olympic ceremony, Victor le Masne. He threw us a tempo and a guideline. And then we did our thing.
How did you go about making the song metal?
We very simply and organically came up with riffs and grooves that we like to play. We took it as an opportunity to represent the metal scene. So it was our task to really go for it and lay it down, not just be there and play a few notes to shock people. We decided to go full-on with double-kick drums, screaming, growling, epic moments, and a tempo breakdown at the end; we really wanted to show what metal is all about. And to our surprise, it was all accepted by the committee.
But they gave us some guidelines and things that were mandatory, for example, saying “Ah! Ça Ira,” which I ended up saying three times in the song. It’s rare for me to sing in French in Gojira. So it was a bit of a challenge. I was the one pushing to put some English in the middle of the song to make it more international.
JIMMY FONTAINE*
How did you prepare and rehearse the song for the performance?
There were a lot of steps. The very first demo that Mario and I sat down and made took three or four hours. We sent what we came up with to Victor, who did some arrangements for classical music. We met in New York City, maybe three times in my studio in Queens. It was all laid out pretty quickly and then it was a matter of fine tuning and some political issues about things we could say and could not say. And then Marina was thrown into the mix as well. And we did some Zoom meetings. So it was a long process.
The second stage was to rehearse with all of the classical musicians, la crème de la crème of classical French music. So that was also a privilege to be in a room with almost 300 musicians that we barely see during the performance, but they’re all there: cellos, tubas, percussion, and bells, you name it. There were all these instruments present. It’s a bit frustrating to not see what’s happening in terms of music; the Marie Antoinette scene and the choir that sing, “Ah! Ça Ira” stole the show completely. But I want to give a big shout-out to all the classical musicians that participated in the song.
There have been some strange reactions to Marie Antoinette online. Andrew Tate, who’s a social media creep, suggested it was satanic. What do you make of that?
It’s none of that. It’s French history. It’s French charm, you know, beheaded people, red wine, and blood all over the place — it’s romantic, it’s normal. There’s nothing satanic [laughs]. France is a country that made a separation between the state and religion during the revolution. And it’s something very important, very dear to the foundation of republican France. We call it laïcité. It’s when the state is not religious anymore, so therefore it’s free in terms of expression and symbolism. It’s all about history and facts. We don’t look too close closely at symbolism in terms of religion.
Speaking of religion, the other hullabaloo online about the opening ceremony was the supposed “Last Supper” reenactment. What did you make of that?
I haven’t seen it, as surprising as it seems. I have a family. I have children. So right after all that work and concentration on the Olympics, I was totally in the dark. I didn’t get to sit and watch the whole thing properly.
That’s OK. Getting back to your performance, were you able to rehearse it at the Conciergerie on the platforms in the windows?
We did not rehearse on site, so that was a bit of a challenge. Even with four musicians playing a few songs together, you have to do it 10 times before you get it right. And each time we get on tour, although we know each other very well, it always takes a week to be really locked together and to provide something truly powerful. So when you think about that … it’s a challenge to present a show on live television that was never rehearsed properly. All the people that participated showed a lot of professionalism: the lighting people, the sound people, the camera people, the sound engineers, the musicians that didn’t know each other and they had to perform together, the dancers. Everybody gave their best. We were all handpicked, too; it’s not like you make a decision to go to the ceremony. So all the people present that did this were invited and had to really work around their schedule to make this happen and a reality.
So no, there was no rehearsal on site. I got to climb on that balcony just one time, for 10 minutes, three days before. I tried the harnesses and everything, but without my guitar, so I didn’t even know what it was going to be to stand there with the guitar, rocking out. My microphone stand was bolted onto the board I’m standing on, and that had to go into the room of the Conciergerie. Even for the Olympic Games, that apparently required months of negotiation to have access to the building.
We did have a day to rehearse with the orchestra, but it was in a separate location to keep it secret. It was very complex to organize, very political, very methodical, and it’s a miracle that it actually worked — like a moon landing.
So you’re standing there, there’s all this pyro, you can’t see your brother or the other band members … What was going through your mind in the moment?
It was very strange. I am naturally a little shy, so when I perform, I switch and I go into “show mode,” so I wasn’t worried. I knew I was not going to freeze. But I gotta say, I don’t know how high this thing was — 30 meters, 100 feet high — with the rain, it was really, really weird. And we had to be to be up there after doing makeup and hair with all the stuff and the costumes and the harnesses and the guitar — “Am I gonna be able to play?” — we had to wait 15 long minutes over there ready to go live in the rain before performing. So it felt like such an epic challenge for all of us. The classical cellos and instruments were wet. We had to try to protect them and the electronic equipment we play with. We had our crew with us, thank God. They were all hidden, but they weren’t far, right behind the walls, trying to make sure that everything worked together.
What kind of feedback have you been hearing since you performed? Have you been getting a lot of texts? Did President Macron reach out?
I didn’t hear from President Macron, but I have received an overwhelming amount of text messages. I’m really, really terrible with my phone. I lose it all the time. I forget to check my messages on this app and that app and so there’s still messages I haven’t seen, but I have to say the metal community was ecstatic. We are a tight community. All over the world is metal bands that keep an eye on each other, and we work together, we go on tour together, we support each other. So a lot of people expressed their support and their happiness for this, for the whole community, for the whole genre. Maybe now people are thinking that metal is not that bad after they had to go through three minutes of it. I received text messages from some of my favorite bands and some of my best friends in the industry, and some athletes, and some people that I don’t know who they are, but it’s very overwhelming.
I haven’t spoken to Emmanuel Macron yet, but I would love to, because he and I have something in common right now as we speak, and that’s knowing Captain Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace, co-founder of Sea Shepherd and founder of Neptune’s Pirates and the Paul Watson Foundation, that is protecting whales and marine wildlife internationally, is currently held prisoner in Nuuk, Greenland, by the Danish government. I would love to meet President Macron and the Prime Minister of Justice of Denmark after the whole buzz and the whole fuss around the Olympics to talk about Paul Watson being held captive for trying to do the right thing for trying to enforce international laws that protect marine wildlife. He could stay in jail for the rest of his life. So this is my fight today.
I know Emmanuel Macron supports Paul Watson and asked the Danish government to release Paul Watson today, so he can continue to be an activist and educate people on the importance of preserving wildlife and the importance of not breaking international laws. He got arrested while trying to simply put himself between whales and a boat, as he usually does. I know he has bad press, and people call him ecoterrorist, and all that kind of stuff. But he’s a friend of mine. I know he has a good heart. And I know what he’s doing is very important. I’ll actually be on the way to Copenhagen in a few days and I hope to meet with the prime minister of justice there.
You said earlier that there were political things you weren’t allowed to talk about during your performance. Is that one of them?
We were very, very honored to be part of this. Not for one second did we think, “We’re gonna disrupt this or use this to hijack it and spread the message.” We’re musicians; we have a career. We’re extremely honored, and we thought it was a great thing for the metal community. So we simply played the game and did our best to make it look fabulous. But it doesn’t mean we don’t have things to say, and I am going I’m simply going to use the buzz around the band to maybe spread a few ideas here and there.
I interpreted the lyrics of “Ah! Ça Ira” as meaning, “Everything will be OK. People should come together.” Do you believe that’s a possibility?
When we talk about that song, there’s a double meaning. Literally it means, “It will go,” meaning, “It will be OK.” So it’s saying to the world, “It will be OK, everybody.” But when said a certain way with a certain tone, it actually means, “We’ve had enough.” You could say, “Ça ira bien,” like, “OK, that’s enough.” It’s very old-school. People don’t use that nowadays anymore.
The original meaning was, “It will be OK, we can do this.” But during the Revolution time, it transformed into, “We’ve had enough: We’re going to hang the aristocrats. And we’re going to change things.” It’s a very long and archaic song with a bunch of lyrics. I got to write the lyrics of my part. So what I did was try to pinpoint the parts of the song that were actually positive that could not be an invitation to violence and riots and beheading people, but more, “It will be OK, literally.” So that’s the angle that I chose to take.
Literally, what I say is, “Let us rejoice because good times will come without fear of fire or flame.” It’s a message of hope for the world in these troubled times with all these wars going on and interesting “leaders” taking over everywhere in the world. There’s kind of a weird vibe going on in the world. And I think people need to hear, “It’ll be OK,” especially the youth, when they hear about global warming, and the gloomy clouds that are on the horizon. We can change our future. We can be the change. It’s never too late to make things right.
The revolution is individual. If people decide to be more compassionate, and make the right decisions for themselves, things can be OK.
From Rolling Stone US.
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