Mick Harvey this week brings two different shows to the Fremantle Arts Centre: Wednesday, November 23 will see Harvey and Lucky Oceans go head to head at The Sonic Sessions with an evening of music and conversation; then on Thursday 24, he presents his Intoxicated Man show, interpreting his translated songs of infamous French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. SHANE PINNEGAR discussed both shows with the multi-instrumentalist.
It’s a bit of a bonanza for Mick Harvey fans, whose Gainsbourg shows are rarely performed live. His back pages as a member of Nick Cave’s Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds, as well as a long history producing and performing with P J Harvey will surely make the Lucky Oceans-curated Sonic Sessions a fascinating evening.
Considering his workload, it seems he’d have no regrets about leaving the hectic touring life of The Bad Seeds, which he walked away from in 2009 in frustration at the band’s direction, and with his relationship with Cave strained after almost 35 years working together.
“Certainly not about [the touring] – [but] that comes and goes, it’s not always a hectic schedule,” says Harvey. “I seem to have inadvertently ended up adopting the hectic touring schedule of P J Harvey’s traveling circus… I suppose the main difference being that I’m not really involved in the management of that, [like with] all the organisation of the Bad Seeds stuff too. It’s a bit different – it’s a much more relaxed feel with the P J Harvey thing. I don’t know, it’s a very nice group of people to be working with. There’s a lot less tension and strange relations and things like that, which I appreciate enormously.”
Even a casual fan would have to agree that The Bad Seeds have always looked like they run on a certain level of angst and tension.
“It’s a bit edgy,” confirms Harvey. “It can be quite edgy. I don’t know it will be like that now – it will probably be quite different now, with circumstances as they are. There’s probably some other aspects to it there now. I’ve got no idea how that would be actually…”
Over those thirty five or so years, Harvey and Cave went from being schoolmates and choirboys, to punk rockers, through drug hell and on to being revered and respected songwriters and performers. Is it surprising to look back and see that transition play out?
“It is surprising to see the whole trajectory of the thing,” Harvey agrees thoughtfully. “My engagement with it is quite unusual too. Nick and I started out in the band together, [but] I was never the main collaborator – I was just always in the band. We weren’t even particularly close friends at first. It evolved into all sorts of things – unexpected things.”
Having led something of a wild life, especially through the band’s Berlin days, are there any areas of life that Harvey would prefer not to be grilled about in front of an audience?
“No, I don’t mind talking about anything really,” he says dismissively, “except maybe my love life. I think that one’s own domestic situation is something that’s sacrosanct.. Any other things in any way that play into what I’ve done publicly, I don’t mind talking about anything… what people’s condition was, what people were going through, because it is all relevant in a funny way, especially when some of those things – especially some of the excess and drug use and all that stuff – is quite public. You can’t exactly then turn around and say, ‘now I don’t want to talk about it.’ You should be able to talk about it.
“It’s odd too, because someone like Polly [Jean Harvey] doesn’t – she’s really very private. She doesn’t tend to do interviews. She doesn’t like people talking about her. She’s not interested in that. She doesn’t think it’s relevant to what she’s doing artistically. They just have the art. They just have the music. That’s what’s important. Nothing else is relevant to it. That’s a reasonable position too, as long as it’s clear.”
Harvey published his first volume of translated Gainsbourg songs – Intoxicated Man – in 1995, and has followed with another two volumes, and a fourth to be released this month. Gainsbourg, hugely popular in France, never took off in English speaking countries, apart from a ‘novelty’ hit with Je T’aime. What fascinated Harvey so much about that body of work to devote such a chunk of his own solo career to it?
“I just think listening through,” he says intriguingly, “the quality and variety of the music that’s there was of a level that fascinated me: why wasn’t it better known, basically? I realised that it was a bit impenetrable because of the language for a lot of people because you’re just not understanding – even the basic meanings of the songs are a bit lost for most people. Whilst it’s impossible to perfectly translate these things and capture all of the nuanced aspects of Serge’s lyric writing, and all of the puns and clever word plays and so forth, I think it’s a great insight into what the songs really are to have them translated – it opens them up for people a lot.
“I never thought of Je T’aime as being a novelty song, [but] I guess a lot of people did perceive it that way. There, in itself, is another great irony because even Je T’aime, whilst on the surface being this sexy, erotic song playing to the crowd and ramping up the clichéd view of the French, in the midst of it all the lyrical content is actually a typical Serge thing, where it all flips on its head right from the beginning. ‘I love you – nor do I.’ It’s all about the emptiness of physical love ultimately.
“The thing with Gainsbourg is there’s almost always other levels that he’s playing with. It’s not just one simplistic idea that’s presented and that’s it – there’s almost always a twist in there somewhere.”
