Eighty seconds this morning on the book of interviews he publishes, subtly questioned by Maud Berthomier, and in which he looks back on his life in music, from very early childhood, 1963, until the year 2022.
The book seeks, and finds, the point of articulation between intimate history and collective history. Michka Assayas shares her family memories, opens her archives, shows us, for example, her childhood drawings inventing groups that did not exist. Here is also the march towards the first concerts which surprisingly resembles that of the first demonstrations. Over the years, a whole era comes to life, university, intellectual, journalistic whose major bifurcations correspond to records, pieces, musical encounters. If there are lines of force, nothing is linear because the life of a rock critic is no more so than life itself.
Each era corresponds to a playlist. By putting together these lists of songs, by definition subjective, we say that “playlist” is actually a perfect synonym for “autobiography”. Very good trip, an intimate history of music, co-published by GM and France Inter: fascinating from the first to the last page.