THEGOOD THEBAD ANDTHE CHEESY
BOB SINCLAR
Cynical cheeseball or misunderstood 70s disco genius? Step inside the strange world of Bob Sinclar
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AS VEGAS IS THE entertainment world’s lastchance saloon, the place where fame as stale as old cheese can be bartered into plastic opulence. Mike Tyson is here, running a training camp at the MGM Grand. Barry Manilow does Wednesday to Friday and two shows on Saturday at the Hilton. Toni Braxton is on every night except Monday and Sunday. The Beatles are eternal in tributes and Elvis, needless to say, never left the building. A strange place then, for the final night of Bob Sinclar’s US tour. He is, after all, one of dance music’s biggest crossover stars, an artist who finds himself ascending a faster, steeper escalator than any other. Last summer his mega-hit, ‘Love Generation’, was not only a surprise candidate for tune of last summer, but has so far sold over a million copies 068 NOVEMBER 2006
across the world from Kazakhstan to Mexico. Follow up ‘World Hold On’ was played at the World Cup Final as two billion people watched, has been wallto-wall on MTV across the globe for months and should have sold well over 600,000 when the final numbers come in. And now new single ‘Rock This Party’ has crossover written all over it. ‘Love Generation’ also came very close to winning “worst tune” in 2005’s end-of-year Mixmag awards. With its whistled hook (also used on the follow-up), reggae-lite guitar and lyrics like “Why must our children play in the streets? Broken hearts and faded dreams”, many clubbers found it as cheesy as a Frenchman’s sock. ‘World Hold On’ was more of the same – identikit whistled hook, lyrics about the ‘children’ and a daft video. While ‘Rock This Party’ – a bootleg of C+C Music Factory’s ‘Gonna Make You Sweat’ with a Fatman Scoop-style
vocal – seems precision engineered to appeal to people who haven’t been in a club in years. So is Bob Sinclar a cynical sell-out, or a misunderstood disco genius? “Anyone can be a pop star,” says Chris LeFriant, the man better known to millions of MTV Dance-watching clubbers as Bob Sinclar, stretching out on a sofa in his elegant hotel suite in Vegas’ plush Venetian hotel (freshly painted Renaissance art on the walls, four posts on the bed). “I want to be a DJ.” Chris LeFriant is a good looking bloke in a particularly French way, a little bit like David Ginola. When we meet he is dressed in pristine ripped jeans and a white shirt undone to the chest. He speaks almost flawless English with a strong French accent. Your mum would swoon. “When people tell me – ‘I got up in the morning, I listened to ‘Love Generation’ and it made me smile, it
CREDITS
Words Duncan Dick Photos Bernard Benant
Right cowboy or Sundance Kid? Chris LeFriant, aka Bob Sinclar, relaxes in Nevada, September 2006 NOVEMBER 2006 069
BOB SINCLAR
made me have a good day’ that’s what it’s all about.” At the same time though, he wants “every DJ in the world to love my tracks.” Chris claims not to see anything irreconcilable in these two ideas – he made the music with passion, and just because it contains lyrics like “If you ever meet your inner child, don’t cry,” has an epically daft video and a whistled hook, why shouldn’t DJs and clubbers respect it and him too? “What does commercial mean anyway?” says Chris. “It just means successful. Look at Mylo – he did that album in his basement, but then somebody put a vocal over the top and then it did really well in the charts. Is that still underground?”. Before Chris LeFriant was Bob Sinclar, he was the personification of cool. In the late 90s, as head of his own label, Yellow, Chris was putting out super-credible releases like Dimitri From Paris’s Lounge Project, and Kid Loco’s folky trip-hop. But swept along by the Daft Punk-driven explosion in Parisian house, Chris decided to put out an album, 1998’s ‘Paradise’. But first he had to create a persona. “The first album, I didn’t want to put my face on it at all. I thought it would be a one-shot album, just to create some disco tracks.” He took the name from a character in 1973 French movie Le Magnifique, a high-camp forerunner of Austin Powers. When ‘Paradise’ was released, Bob’s publicity campaign attempted to create an illusion, “a spy, jewel thief, Riviera playboy, mercenary, high class gigolo and hardcore porn star.” Chris has an easy relationship with his alter ego. He feels he owes it to the people. “The public deserve more than music. I wake up every morning at 8am to go to the office [Chris is sole head of his record company, and also oversees personally every bit of paperwork]. I work ten hours, I eat, I sleep. But people have to imagine I am living an amazing life.” Chris is prone to grand statements, and sometimes his clichés ring as hollow as the acres of fibregass volcano across the road from his room at the nearby Mirage Hotel (eruptions hourly after 6pm, every night). “Music is dreams,” he says emphatically, looking me right in the eye as if to prove the point. But cheesy as his pop star clichés might sound, it appears that he really does believe them. The trip to LA is also an opportunity to head out to the desert with his photographer and stylist to shoot pictures for Bob’s upcoming media campaign. A week later the shots look more like the publicity campaign for a pop pin-up. There’s Bob flexing his topless abs in a photo that wouldn’t look out of place on the cover of gay lifestyle magazine Attitude. Or Bob 070 NOVEMBER 2006
Bob Sinclar. Lasso and steed not pictured
BOB SINCLAR
Bob lines one up for the ladies during his US tour
5 STEPS TO BOB SINCLAR Jean Paul Belmondo Bob SaintClair in Le Magnifique Bob Saint-Clair, superspy, is the creation of struggling, embittered writer Francois Merlin (played by Belmondo).
Zoolander
“It’s not really for me to play underground. I play music for girls. It’s not only about energy.”
Chris’s favourite movie, it’s the story of model Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller). “Did you ever wonder if there’s more to life than just being really, really good looking?”
Cerrone
“I have loads of cowboy hats, I have boots, I have the string tie, like JR in Dallas” taking five next to his horse, battered cowboy hat straddling his head like a character from Unforgiven. On the new album, ‘Western Dream’, Bob will take a new direction. “I wanted people to think that I am no longer a DJ, that I bought a farm, with cows.” He chuckles, excited about the prospect. “I have loads of cowboy hats, I have boots, I have the string tie, like JR in Dallas. It’s nice to put Bob Sinclar with cows.”
While Bob Sinclar may be at home on the range, Chris LeFriant has lived in the same quarter of Paris since he was born. He was born in 1969 in the Parisienne district of Le Marais. One of the oldest districts in Paris, in his lifetime it has gone from being a very traditional bourgeois area full of old people to the centre of Paris’s gay nightlife. In his teenage years the only instrument Chris cared about was one you hit a ball with. At 14 he had plans to be a professional tennis player, but realized he didn’t have the ‘mental strength’. He was ripe for a new obsession, and found what he was looking for in 1987, at a massive Zulu Nation concert in Paris. “Cash Money was there, Afrika Baambaata. It was like seeing God.” Chris got himself a pair of turntables and started scratching and making music on his Atari. His first residency was at Le Bain Douche club in Paris; “in those days the owner would tell you
what to play – I wanted to play hip hop, but he made me play C+C Music Factory.” At 22 he had a few months of national service (“awful”) and then went to college to study commerce and management. Everything was geared towards the music industry. The money he saved from giving tennis lessons paid for trips to New York to listen to the latest tunes. By 1998, when Bob Sinclar was born, Chris was the head of his own record company, Yellow Productions. The company built its reputation on following trends from the UK – acid jazz, then nu-soul, before branching out with Dimitri’s nouveau easy listening and Kid Loco. But the Bob Sinclar project began with one tune in particular, ‘Gym Tonic’, the Jane Fonda-sampling house anthem that vied with Stardust to be one of the tunes of 1998. At a time when French house was taking over clubland, Chris met Daft WWW.MIXMAG.NET
Punk’s Thomas Bangalter on the plane to the Miami music conference and they got talking. Chris offered to do a mix of Stardust and in return Thomas would remix one of Bob’s tracks. “I sent him the elements and he made it completely different. He did everything. Then I went over to his studio and he was scratching in the Jane Fonda work-out and I said ‘that is a great tune for Bob Sinclar’.” A sprinkling of Stardust in the shape of ‘Gym Tonic’ may well have launched the fledgeling career of Bob Sinclar, but Chris seems embarrassed about it – as far as he is concerned everything started with the next single, the similarly successful, if less memorable, ‘My Only Love’. “I don’t want to talk about ‘Gym Tonic’,” says Chris. “Thomas didn’t want to release it because it would be competition with Stardust.” The track became a huge hit on white label, but without Thomas’s blessing it never received an official release. Spotting a massive hit, major label East West released their own version, the cheekily-titled ‘Gym And Tonic’ by Spacedust, which remade the Jane Fonda-sample and went to number one in the UK top 40. Chris and Thomas didn’t get a penny – not that they would have anyway, as the cosat of the samples would have eaten up any profits, but there were rumours that Thomas was unhappy with the fact that Chris included the original version on the album. Chris insists they didn’t fall out “because we were never friends. It was just an exchange of work between two DJs.” If ‘Gym Tonic’ was what first launched the Bob Sinclar name into the clubbing consciousness, ‘Love WWW.MIXMAG.NET
Generation’ is the tune that made Bob Sinclar into a household name. “It was an accident,” he says of the million seller, “a total accident. If someone said to me that I would make a track with four chords on acoustic guitar, a reggae track, I would have laughed.” The lyrics were written by Gary Pine (current vocalist with Bob Marley’s band The Wailers, no less) and Duane Harden. Chris decided that the whistled hook and the melancholy sound were like a lullaby, and asked Gary to do something “for children”. He also insists that the similarity of ‘World Hold On’ was not a calculated cash in. “I did ‘World Hold On’ way before ‘Love Generation’,” he says. “I wanted something with the same vibe, and when I listened back I thought ‘this needs something.’ So I added the whistling again.” Chris will not concede that he has compromised in any way to get success. “You can’t programme a hit,” he says, although Stock, Aitken and Waterman might not agree. “Sometimes you get a hit because something is fresh, and catchy, and different.” The tune’s success means that Chris is now a chart fixture around the world. The tour of North America seems to have been a success. The glamourous image of Bob Sinclar means that he is booked to do VIP parties. “It’s not really for me to play underground. I play music for girls, it’s not only about energy.” Chris is happy to play to the glitterati. He met Paris Hilton in New York. “She came into the DJ box to say hello,” he says proudly. “She was shy, but we spent half the night together, she’s nicer than her photograph.” But while Chris may be making new mates with the rich and famous, a lot
French disco star, and the man behind disco hit ‘Supernature’. Bob recorded a Cerrone remix album in 2001, and his first album in this Caption ‘Paradise’ space was named here after a Cerrone track.
Yannick Noah Flamboyant French tennis hero, and the first native to win the French Open for 37 years in 1983. Yannick was also only the second black player to win a major tennis prize.
Ferrari F430 Bob’s car. “For the power, for the horses, for the beauty and of course for the show off. It’s not a bling thing. I said to myself ‘one day when I make it, I want to buy the car of my dreams, and now I’ve done it.”
of the friends he had when he was just Chris LeFriant, head of a super-cool French label, have disappeared now that he is Bob Sinclar. “In France, you are not allowed to be successful, to make money,” he says exasperated now, pacing around the suite. “There is jealousy. Some people who were very close have left me, I don’t know why. I am a little alone. But then I have been like this since I was born so…” He shrugs and then throws another cliché onto the conversational fire. “My door is always open.” Not to worry. Plenty of new friends await at the Tao club, venue for tonight’s gig, the current hottest night out in Vegas and hangout for the likes of Nicole Richie and Nelly Furtado. The club is magnificent. A terracotta army marks the entrance. In the barelylit corridors, lingerie-clad models fondle each other enthusiastically. Bob Sinclar’s first tune is new single ‘Rock This Party’, and the “everybody dance now!” sample grabs the crowd. The next two hours take in ‘World Hold On’ twice (there is, after all, an album to sell), ‘Ride On Time’, Mixmag office bete noire ‘Put Your Hands Up For Detroit’ and Eric Prydz’s frankly unacceptable version of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’. It’s the aural equivalent of being force-fed chocolate éclairs for three hours by an animatronic Julie Andrews. But by the time Chris drops ‘Love Generation’ and bubbles fall from the ceiling, the Vegas crowd, hands in the air, is looking towards Chris’s perch in the DJ box with the rapture of a nest of new born birds watching their mother return with a beakful of food. By this point I have also ended up on the dancefloor with my arms in the air. If house music is ever going to become the soundtrack to Saturday night in the US the way it has in the UK, maybe Bob Sinclar, the cheesiest, sincerest, fakest, most genuine fictional alter ego in dance music, is the ultimate Trojan horse. Bob Sinclar’s album, ‘Western Dream’, is out now
Bob doesn’t like to draw attention to himself