An interview with Pierre Edel

An Italian translation in available here.

French-Russian singer Pierre Edel is one of the most interesting vocalists on nowadays rock 'n'roll music. To discuss the four times he competed in the talent show The Voice and his most relevant recordings, Pierre accepted our proposal for an interview.

We would like to thank Pierre Edel for his kindness and availability.

125esima Strada: Hi Pierre and thanks for the time you are giving us. Let's talk first about your 2017 album which is on SoundCloud. I know it took you many years to write and record it. What's the story behind this album?

Pierre Edel: The album is a collection of stuff that I wrote between 2006 and 2007, over ten years of songwriting and of course I released much more stuff with different bands but these ones are so special to me I don’t even know if I would play them on stage. Of course I did just a couple of times, there’s a live version of 66Sex in Odessa on YouTube and that’s about it.

66Sex and Chemistry of Love were written in 2006, all the other songs were written a bit later and Return to the City of Love was written in 2017 because I was coming back to live in Paris. I wanted to pick some of the songs I hadn't released, or if I did release them they were not recorded properly, maybe I didn’t have the right vocal technique yet to sing these songs. There were two more songs that were supposed to be rerecorded, one of which was called Leaving the City of Love, which is of course the first part to Return to the City of Love, and the other one was called Rock ‘n’ Roll Smells Funny, and I guess I have some recordings of us playing them as a trio with me on the guitar on rehearsal or the only time the songs were played live.


125esima Strada: Is there any song of the album you like better than the others? If so, why?

Pierre Edel: The song I like most is Return to the City of Love, it works, it’s catchy. If I was to release it on a mainstream label I would simplify it a little bit, chop out some of the prog melodies in between the verses, they don’t really make sense but they are just fun to play for me and fun to listen to. It’s a Frank Zappa thing. One of my best friend, my guitarist, said “You write good songs and then you do anything you can to ruin them.” So I would chop out the stuff that is a little bit too much.

125esima Strada: Let's talk also about your collaboration with Sergey Mavrin. How did you get involved and how did you two work together?

Pierre Edel: When I was a little kid living in France I was living with a nanny, I didn’t really see my parents that much, they were divorced when I was born. So I was living with an old Russian lady I loved so much, she was a like grandmother to me, I went to see her recently in Moscow she’s almost 90 years old now. At some point her grandson, who is Russian of course, had to come over also, I was 7 years old and he was 12 or 13. We lived all together for about 5 or 6 years in Paris and London and this guy was into rock ‘n’ roll music, it was the mid-90s, so he would listen to Scorpions, Nirvana, Metallica, Guns N' Roses, all that kind of stuff. And of course he also listened to Russian music and there was this huge band, the biggest heavy metal band in Russia and in the Soviet Union: Aria. The guitarists for this band during some of their peak albums in the late 80s was a guy called Sergey Mavrin and he’s a guitar virtuoso and he wrote some beautiful songs with the first singer Valery Kipelov. Kipelov today has his own band called Kipelov, a great band also.

Growing up at a certain point I knew I wanted to play rock ‘n’ roll music and I would have never become a musician without my nanny’s grandson, we met a few weeks ago when I was in Moscow and we had a good time, he’s now 36, has a wife and two kids.

So in 2013 I thought “I should just send some emails to my favorite musicians” and I started writing emails to Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, Michael Schenker, Herman Rarebell from Scorpions, and others. I wrote an email to Sergey Mavrin and he actually replied, and I said “You know what? Let’s make an album.” And that worked for me several times in my life also with a guy called Christophe Godin in France, I did almost the same. I took one of his instrumental songs, recorded my voice over it, sent it to him and said “Let’s play on stage together.” which lead us to Birmingham in England where he introduced me to Tony Iommi.

It worked and we are still friends. Sergey is a very humble person and a great musician.


125esima Strada: What is absolutely striking in your career is that you competed in four editions of The Voice. How come? How did you decide to do something so weird?

Pierre Edel: In 2013 I was in Moscow and I received an email, it was from a headhunter for these big TV shows. Of course people apply, there were tens of thousands of people applying for each season, but there are also headhunters, people who are paid to look out for talents on the internet. We just had our video Black Dog out on YouTube and one of these headhunters for the production society that produces The Voice of France said “We found this video and you should come over to Paris for the auditions.” I didn’t even know what The Voice was because at that point there had been only two seasons in France.

I flew to Paris (I moved zillions of times from Paris to Moscow and from Moscow to Paris in my life). I did the auditions and it worked and it took almost half a year of my life. Then the same thing happened in Russia. They saw me on The Voice of France because there’s a guy who works for both the production of The Voice of France and The Voice of Russia and he recommended me and they invited me to do The Voice of Russia.

And then - believe it or not - exactly the same thing happened with The Voice of Ukraine. Actually many people from The Voice of Russia went to The Voice of Ukraine. It has become quite typical; you also have people who made The Voice of Turkey and then The Voice of Russia or The Voice of Ukraine. I guess there will be more and more people doing at least two editions of The Voice, but as far as I know four editions is unique. But the thing is the more seasons you get, the more people you get and the less incredible it becomes to participate in that show. If you think about it when we only had a couple of seasons, and they show about 60 singers in every season, you would have in a single country about 100 or 150 people who would have been shown on TV, so it was quite unique. Now that we have almost ten season you have over 1.500 people and you don’t have zillions of singers in a single country; so at some point it becomes irrelevant and it doesn’t add anything to your curriculum. But four editions is something that you do because you have to top it.

125esima Strada: On your YouTube channel there's also a cover of The Sky is Crying by Elmore James, what's the role of blues music in your musical background?

Pierre Edel: The guy who taught me the guitar when I was 13 was a big blues fan, he had an electric guitar. When I saw that electric guitar, it was a Yahama Pacifica, that was the moment I knew my life was going to change. He also had an acoustic guitar, a Seagull, but it took me a while to get interested in that, maybe a few months, because I was into the electric guitar at first which is weird because usually people start with an acoustic guitar and then move to the electric.

At some point I was really into Richie Sambora and I wanted to have a twelve-string guitar to be able to play Wanted Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi. It was all about the blues because all the solos I would learn, Steve Lukather, Richie Sambora, Stevie Ray Vaughan, that all lead me to the roots, or some of the roots because I don’t consider rock 'n' roll to have only black blues roots. So I wanted to study that and I started to listen to Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, all the kings like Albert King, Freddie King, B.B. King, and Hendrix obviously.

At the same time I really studied the history of music, because when I was a kid I was studying classical music, and I came to understand that black musicians and blues gave a lot to rock 'n' roll but it’s all with white European instruments: the cymbals, the double bass, the piano, the guitar. It’s an amazing marriage between the blues feeling and the classical instruments and also English, Irish and Scottish classical and traditional music which you can find even when you listen to the Beatles. And technology of course, like the electric guitars. So it’s just a mix of so many things that came together in the sixties and gave birth to this beautiful music that is rock 'n' roll.


125esima Strada: Another surprising thing you did is a medley of three songs by Lady Gaga with Michael Sobin. Lady Gaga seems to be so far from your style, so how was this conceived?

Pierre Edel: It is quite far but actually if you check it out we have many videos and tracks in different styles: dubstep, hip hop, ... And this is something I’ve always done. Music is fun and it’s fun to try something else, it doesn’t mean I would completely get into that but I came across so many different genres and styles throughout the 90s and early 2000s. Of course stuff like Limp Bizkit and Red Hot Chili Peppers, and this crossovers between electronic music and rock and so on. I wouldn’t really listen to it, I would just have fun with it.

Michael Sobin is an amazing guitarist, if you check out his channel, he’s a real virtuoso. We met in 2012 because there was a band called Witchcraft in Russia and they were looking for a male singer, he was playing in that band. We did four tracks in that crossover style as the Lady Gaga video: we did Michael Jackson, there’s also a cover of Cry Me a River by Justin Timberlake and The Weeknd’s Can't Feel my Face.

At some point we were asked by a talent show in Russia to come over and present this Justin Timberlake track, so we did it but they didn’t like the fact I had already been a part of The Voice because they had some administration and administrative dilemma with the guys from The Voice.

Sobin is a very good friend of mine and we also wrote a couple of original tracks together, there’s a track called Cannonball which is a quite amusing track, a crossover between dubstep, trap and rap.


125esima Strada: You come from two countries that have a very strong history of hard rock and metal music. Aria and Chorny Kofe for Russia and Trust, H-Bomb and Demon Eyes for France are just the first examples that come to my mind. So, how come you decided to sing in English instead of French or Russian?

Pierre Edel: I really think that rock 'n' roll is supposed to be sung in English. If you sing in Russian it will only work in Russia, if it works; if you sing in French it won’t work anywhere because the French don’t care about metal or rock music. There are little niches, you would always find a couple of thousand people who are into voodoo magic, a couple of thousand people who are on some kind of strange diet, you can find a couple of thousand people who want to have their tongue split. You can always find these minorities. But rock 'n' roll is not at all a trend in France and has never been. You’ll always find one or two artists who made it like Trust, but they made it in the 80s, so it’s a total different story.

I know three guys from Trust: two of the guitarists and the drummer. I’ve been on stage with them and they are really cool people but they are dinosaurs basically. No one cares for rock 'n' roll in France, there are no new rock bands. Metal is a little different, I don’t really care for metal; I used to be a metalhead when I was 16, but I don’t like the whole mythology, I don’t like the leather and spikes, it’s a little cheesy and lacks this sense of humor and the aesthetics you find in hard rock with bands like Deep Purple or Whitesnake. It’s kind of heavy metalish in some points but it’s still hard rock.

Metal lacks the sexiness, I like the sexiness of rock blues. Look at Iron Maiden and their fans, I look at the long hair and the clothes and it smells of perspiration to me. So, you’d find metalheads in France, but not old school rockers unless they are 50 years old, or 150 years old.

It’s more or less the same in Russia. You’ll find more people who are into hard rock in Russia, but it’s irrelevant.

I like to sing in the US, to sing in Great Britain, to sing in New Zealand. Who would listen to me if I was singing in French or Russian?

You could say Rammstein sing in German. Yes, cool. That’s the only band who sing in a different language. Maybe you’ll find one or two more, but Scorpions are German and they sing in English, biggest metal band in France, Gojira, sing in English.

Second, to me English is the language of rock 'n' roll. I love French, I wrote lots of songs in French and I have a SoundCloud with twenty French songs, I read a lot of poetry, I wrote a book in French. I love my native language but rock 'n' roll is meant to be sung in English. If you can’t sing in English, you do your best in your country in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, but will only be interesting to people in that particular country.

125esima Strada: Who are the musicians or bands that influenced you most during your whole career?

Pierre Edel: Number one league would be Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale. I remember when I was 15 and I was in art school: I went to a park with a friend of mine and he had a little turntable and we played a vinyl by Deep Purple in which of course you have David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes and that was a very strong and emotional moment to me. First of all because it’s so unusual to have two singers in the same band, and it’s also unusual that the two of them would become huge rock stars. Glenn Hughes must have been the only one who had been lead singer for Deep Purple and Black Sabbath and he made some back vocals for Whitesnake. I love his voice, I love his way of everything, his way of moving, his talking, his clothes, his manners. I love his bass playing also.

Best album to me is Burning Japan, 1994. There’s Burn of course, then The Liar and third track is Muscle And Blood which is to me one of the best rock 'n' roll songs of all time. And then You Keep On Moving which he wrote with David Coverdale when he was with Deep Purple of which I made my own version on YouTube. This Time Around which he wrote with John Lord, I have a version of that too on YouTube. It is the finest of the finest of the music that was produced.

Of course I am also a fan of his solo career, his ballads are beautiful, such as Why Don’t You Stay and Lay My Body Down.

And then on the other hand you have David Coverdale and Whitesnake. I’m a huge fan of Whitesnake, I have a Whitesnake tattoo on my forearm, listening to Whitesnake is just one of the most inspiring things for rock musicians. I also like the Steve Vai era, Slip of the Tongue was heavily criticized, but I think it was great, all the songs were written by Adrian Vandenberg except Fool For Your Loving which was a rerecording of a great classic. I love Steve Vai who was one of my greatest influence as a guitarist, one of the greatest albums of all times to me is Sex and Religion by Steve Vai on which you have Devin Townsend singing, T.M. Stevens as bass player and Vinnie Colaiuta on drums.

I’m also a huge fan of Winger, Scorpions, Def Leppard, Frank Zappa, and the list goes on.


125esima Strada: And who are your favorites of today's music scene?

Pierre Edel: I guess the most modern band I would listen to would be Nirvana. Just kidding. I’ve had moments in my life when I was really into a band called Pain of Salvation. I wouldn’t say it’s today’s music scene really but it’s post 2000. And there’s a British band called Threshold, astonishing songwriting, they have a song called Pilot and the Sky of Dreams and I would say this is what Pink Floyd would have made if they were twenty into the 2000s.

Pagan’s Mind is a nice metal band, I said I don’t like the metal lifestyle, but sure I like some of metal music especially if it’s melodic. I have a Manowar tattoo.

That would be all. I don’t really listen to modern music that much.


125esima Strada: What do you think of new technologies, such as Spotify or YouTube, that allow musicians to spread their music all over the world? Are they good or bad for the music industry in your opinion?

Pierre Edel: I’m very lazy with social media and I don’t use them as much as I could and should. I like to be part of this generation that has a smartphone in its hand. I remember the 90s when I used to write letters when I was in some countries and some of my relatives were in other countries. I wasn’t bored at all and I think it was a good thing not having all these devices when I was a kid because it helped me concentrate on piano lessons, languages, sports, reading, drawing, writing. I find it harder to concentrate now than when I was a kid.

It’s a philosophical question and a political question because to say the something is good or bad is a political view of it. I listen to interviews to Steve Lukather, Steven Tyler, Steve Vai, and they always answer this question in a different manner. And the question is “If they were born the 90s or early 2000s would they be recognized for their talent?” I doubt it.

Because the worst thing about Spotify, YouTube and social media is that there’s too much garbage on it: anyone can become a musician, a photographer, a journalist, anything. At some point it becomes ridiculous because you don’t go outside and meet real people in a sports club or a music store. I remember the early 2000s when I found my first bass player in a paper magazine; I bought a magazine in a music store, I was looking for a bass player and I found there one. It was an add with no Spotify or Youtube link, it was 2003, not even a picture. But of course you lose time with that system.

So it’s a hard question to answer. There are good things and bad things about it. But the worst thing about it is that there’s absolutely no quality filter on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify. There’s a huge pile of garbage. If you are into modern music and are looking for some quality artists, to find one you have to go through a hundred shitty artists and people who call themselves artists. That’s how I feel about it.