Charles Aznavour: ‘`I’m a very special character’
Almost 70 years after Edith Piaf made him a global star, Charles
Aznavour tells Jane Shilling why he’ll never feel old
Old hand: Aznavour at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959 Photo: © Rue
des Archives/AGIP
By Jane Shilling
9:00AM GMT 15 Nov 2014
`I can’t see, and I can’t hear,’ says Charles Aznavour. With his
diminutive figure engulfed in a squashy armchair, his face half-hidden
by dark glasses, he seems tetchy and vulnerable. He gave a similar
impression when he arrived on stage at the beginning of his sell-out
concert last June at the Albert Hall. And now I come to think of it,
he began that show ` an amazing tour de force of seductive singing and
nippy dance steps ` with an almost identical line about not being able
to see or hear.
As I sit down he takes off the dark glasses and a metamorphosis takes
place. In an instant he turns from Charles Aznavour, the nonagenarian,
into Charles Aznavour, the legendary entertainer. The dark hair is
white now, but the knobbly features and snapping black eyes are
unmistakably those of his younger self.
At an age when anyone might be expected to take a rest from pushing
the creative frontiers, Aznavour’s schedule is punishing. He has
written more than 1,200 songs, sold more than 100?million records,
appeared in more than 80 films and was voted Time magazine’s
entertainer of the 20th century, edging out Elvis and Bob Dylan. But
here he is in London, publicising his latest CD.
This autumn he tours to the United States, Canada, Moscow, Geneva,
Antwerp ¦ `I’m not touring from one city to another,’ says Aznavour, a
shade apologetically, as though he felt he were slacking. `I do one
city and I go home.’ Home these days is Switzerland, where he lives
with his Swedish-born wife of 47 years, Ulla.
The new album opens with the ballad She, a UK hit in 1974, when it was
the theme song for the television series Seven Faces of Woman, and
again in 1999 when Elvis Costello sang it over the closing credits of
the romcom Notting Hill. It also includes duets with a glittering
line-up of collaborators ` Sting, Liza Minnelli, Celine Dion, Elton
John ` and ends on a high note with Frank Sinatra in Young at Heart,
the only song on the album not written by Aznavour.
`I love duetting with people,’ says Aznavour. `When I work with
someone like Liza Minnelli’ ` with whom he performs the duet Quiet
Love ` `we know each other very well, and between us there is no
surprise anymore. We have the same taste in the songs we sing
together: songs that are much more acting than singing. She does that
beautifully.’ The pair had an affair at the beginning of Minnelli’s
career and, he says affectionately, `She learnt from me. She says that
herself ` or else I would have shut my mouth!’
The running order of the CD ` from the nostalgic Yesterday When I Was
Young via the defiance of a struggling entertainer in It Will Be My
Day, the ferocious You’ve Let Yourself Go, about an unsatisfactory
wife, and the sparklingly amused account of ageing in the final duet
with Sinatra ` gives the compilation the sense of a musical
autobiography.
`When I wrote my first songs,’ Aznavour says in his fluent,
idiosyncratic English, `everyone mistook them and said, `Ah, you are
telling your story.’ It was not true. But after years, I found that
finally ` without knowing it, without trying to ` I had written my
life.’
In retrospect the story of a long life can seem like a narrative fixed
by fate. But the beginnings of Aznavour’s career were chancy in the
extreme. His parents were Armenian: his father, Michael Aznavourian,
grew up in Tbilisi, Georgia; his mother, Knar, came from Izmir. They
married in Turkey, then fled the Armenian genocide, intending to
emigrate to the United States.
Visa problems stranded them in Paris, where Charles was born in 1924 `
a stroke of luck, he reckons: `I’m sure that I wouldn’t have been able
to write in English as well as in French.’ Both parents were
performers: Michael Aznavourian ran a restaurant, La Caucase, but he
was also, his son recalls, `a good singer, singing difficult songs’ `
a tendency that Aznavour would inherit.
Knar Aznavourian was an actress, and although the family struggled
financially (Aznavour makes the gesture of rubbing thumb and fingers
together that signifies `le fric’, or cash) their life was culturally
rich. `I was raised in the understanding of the method of
Stanislavski,’ he recalls, `and knowing everything about the plays of
Chekhov, and poetry ` it’s fantastic to be fluent in different
traditions.’
At nine, Aznavour and his elder sister, Aida, had already begun
training as dancers. He got his first part as a young actor in a
dramatisation of Erich Kästner’s classic, Emil and the Detectives. At
10 he left school (again the `fric’ gesture) and began appearing in
revue as a singer. One day the director asked if he could dance. `I
said yes. He said, `Can you dance with the girls?’ So I put on a tutu.
I was not ashamed. It was my work. For years I tried to find a picture
of myself in my tutu, and when I finally found it, I was so happy.’
By 15, he was singing in the nightclubs of Montparnasse. At 20, he
formed a partnership with the pianist Pierre Roche, and started to
write songs. `I didn’t think it would be very difficult to write one
chorus and two verses.’ His colleagues laughed, `But I came back with
a song for [the singer-songwriter] Georges Ulmer.’ The lyric was J’ai
bu ` a slangy, maudlin love song ` and it was a hit. `We won the prize
for best record of the year. We started very early to win prizes. More
prizes than money.’
That changed in 1946, when the 22-year-old Aznavour was spotted by
Edith Piaf, who invited him to tour with her in the US. `She never
gave me any advice,’ says Aznavour with a sly twinkle. `She gave
advice only to the men she loved. But I knew she loved my way of
writing, and that gave me confidence. And she was very funny ` not
like she is shown in the movies.’
Even after this early success, Aznavour notoriously remarked of
himself: `My shortcomings are my voice, my height, my gestures, my
lack of culture and education, my frankness and my lack of
personality.’ What prompted this brutal self-analysis?
`I wanted to know who I was. Before presenting yourself to the public,
you have to know who you are. Your faults and your abilities ` and
often you should keep the faults, which can be very spectacular, and
avoid some of the good things. Even now, I’m in search of who I am.’
Guest star: Charles Aznavour appeared on `The Muppet Show’ in 1976
The artist and film-maker Jean Cocteau said, `Before Aznavour, despair
was unpopular.’ The tradition of French chanson is notoriously
melancholic, but Aznavour brought gritty street drama to his lyrics
and his performance. `When I write a song, it is as if I write a scene
for a movie,’ he says. `The writing is very precise. If I find one
word difficult, I don’t sleep for nights until I find the right one.’
>From the beginning, he courted controversy: `It started with Après
L’amour,’ a celebration of post-coital bliss, which was banned by
French radio. These days, he says, the lyrics seem so mild that `they
could have been written by Little Lord Fauntleroy!’ What Makes a Man
followed in 1972, a song about the life of a gay man, which his
entourage implored him not to release. But, `I wanted to write what
nobody else was writing. I’m very open, very risky, not afraid of
breaking my career because of one song. I don’t let the public force
me to do what they want me to do. I force them to listen to what I
have done. That’s the only way to progress, and to make the public
progress.’
Ideas, he says, come no more slowly at 90 than they did when he was
young: `I never had many. It was always very difficult.’ To find
inspiration he watches the news, talks to people: `They tell me their
problems, which can be helpful.’ This morning he finished a new song,
about a blind person falling in love. `It’s called De l’ombre à la
lumière ` from the shadow to the light.’
Apart from that, he has a couple of books on the go ` `I write two or
three at the same time: when I am stuck with one I switch to the
other. It’s very convenient.’ And although he reckons his acting
career is over, you never know: `I met Jean-Pierre Mocky recently, who
made my first movie [Les Dragueurs, in 1960], and he said, `I did your
first movie. Will you do your last one with me, too?’ And I said,
Yes!’
The great chansonniers with whom he began his career are almost all
gone now, but `I am very close to the young generation. I am open to
all kinds of music. There are only two kinds, the good and the bad, so
it’s not difficult.’ He has worked with the Belgian singer-songwriter
Stromae, the rapper Kery James and the EBBA award-winning singer Zaz.
`I’m always open to the young generation because when I started it was
so difficult. I’ll never forget that.’
Eighty years after he started his career, skipping about in a tutu, he
brushes away suggestions of retirement: `I’m in retirement right now.
That’s what keeps me young.’ So if he should, in the words of his duet
with Sinatra on Young at Heart, `survive to 105′, what would he be
doing?
`Travel,’ he says. `Travelling is much more important than performing.
To meet other people, to see other cultures ` I’m a curious man.
Curious because I want to learn, and curious because I’m a very
special character.’
The new greatest hits album, Aznavour Sings in English, and a 60-disc
box set of his recordings, are out now