Exclusive Interview: French Author and Musician Enrique Seknadje

Enrique Seknadje is a French author, musician and educator who has both published a book about David Bowie and has covered several Bowie songs, including the entirety of the Diamond Dogs album. Unfortunately I do not read or speak French, so I wanted to find out more about his book by asking him. One of the beautiful things about this blog is that it opens a door to have these types of conversations. In this interview we discuss his book, the Ziggy Stardust phenomenon, his cover of Diamond Dogs, what Bowie’s album means to him, working with Bowie pianist Mike Garson and much more.

All week, I’ve been featuring songs from Enrique’s cover of Diamond Dogs. I’ll leave those up for a while then edit this post to include links to access them in the future. In the meantime, please enjoy the interview…
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John Maggiore: Let’s start from the beginning—tell us a little about yourself.

Enrique Seknadje: I teach Cinema History and Aesthetics at a Parisian university. I have a passion for audiovisual arts, particularly the 7th Art. I also have a passion for music. When I was very young at the end of the 70s, I played bass and then guitar in a rock band that was between punk and new wave. I stopped playing music for a very long time. In 2000, I started singing, probably a legacy from my father, who sang very well even if it was in a completely different register. Around 2005, while I was experiencing very serious family problems, I had a sort of impulse to compose and write. It was a very strong need for personal expression. Writing songs and performing them was like therapy. This allowed me to make my first album in 2010 – Les Bleus de l’âme (The Blues of the Soul as The Bruises of The Soul). I am getting ready to release my fifth album this year.

JM: So what was the Ziggy Stardust phenomenon? How is it that Ziggy still captures our interest and imagination more than 50 years after “the kids had killed the man”?

ES: I used the term “phenomenon” as a bit of a play on words. First, to explain that something quite broad happened with the creation of the character of Ziggy Stardust: a relatively composite figure, music with varied influences, a complex universe of words and verbal images, a visual dimension relating to theater, mime, and cinema (for photos, clips, concerts), and work carried out with other artists (Mott The Hoople, Lou Reed, Iggy and The Stooges). Then, to underline the idea of ​​a being outside common human and superhuman, a somewhat monstrous character (circus freak).

This term “phenomenon” allows me to encompass what brought Bowie to Ziggy—what predates this character but which prepared and enabled its creation—and what prolongs it, mainly Aladdin Sane. But I also think musically of the Pin Ups record, which I really like. For me, the sound of *Pin Ups* is fundamentally glam. And there are some leftovers in Diamond Dogs (for example, “Rebel Rebel”). Let’s remember that the concept and the song “1984” began to be worked on with Ken Scott. I also wanted to talk about the role of Bowie’s collaborators at the time: from Angie to Tony Defries and the Mainman team, including Mick Ronson, the photographers, and costume designers. Ziggy Stardust is the creation of an artist but is also overdetermined and the product of collective work.

JM: Did Bowie create Ziggy as a character of contrasts? Angel and demon? Full of life and suicidal? Flying high but like Icarus getting too close to the sun? What do you think Bowie was aiming for there?

ES: Yes, I think there is something really complex, positively contradictory, almost oxymoronic about him. That’s what’s fascinating.

Ziggy is excessive, which is a boon for his creator who could play a role and therefore achieve a form of disinhibition, who could be what he was not completely, what he was only in part; and which is a boon for the listener (spectator) who could and can experience strong emotions by proxy.

He represents different tendencies, aspects of character that can coexist in any human being but which in everyday life are not necessarily accepted, pose problems, and cause repression. Drive and Reason, masculinity and femininity, violence and love, selfishness and altruism, desire to withdraw into oneself and eccentricity.

Aladdin Sane is in this sense a beautiful clinical representation of what Ziggy Stardust (and Bowie) is—a divided, fractured being. We did indeed talk about schizophrenia, identity disorders, “spaltung” (a German term meaning “splitting”). It seems to me that Bowie has said, somewhat pretentiously, that if Freud had known him, he would have peed his pants. This was not without reason because Ziggy/Aladdin are representations, concentrations of human traits that are sometimes borderline extraordinary, even pathological.

The fictional character and the stage on which he evolves are the theater where forces, realities that relate to metaphysics, coexist and clash: Life and Death, Good and Evil, Beautiful and Ugly.

JM: Do you think Bowie could have kept going with Ziggy, or did he kill off the character at the right time?

ES: It’s hard to know how things would have turned out if he had done otherwise. But it seems both logical, coherent, and wonderfully opportunistic. The reasons may be multiple. Bowie probably felt that glam was going to run out of steam and that it had not been the music that had allowed him to break through in the United States. I believe he became aware of the serious problems he had with manager Tony Defries and therefore sought a break. Time has shown that he didn’t hold still at every level. But also that he could not stand success. He sought it avidly and at the same time wanted to flee it, even if it meant putting himself in danger, sabotaging himself (this is how I interpret, for example, the failures that followed Let’s Dance).

What is a godsend, what is incredible, is that Bowie could stage his ongoing transformations, his change of direction and skin, by using what he had imagined to be the fate of his character (sacrifice, suicide, disappearance).

JM: What are some of the other essays in the book?

ES: I did not want to write a classic and complete biography of Bowie (that has already been done a lot, it seemed too tiring and not necessarily interesting for me), but rather to express ideas and feelings that I had about his career, about his behavior and his approach on some of his creations. I didn’t want to make a simple hagiography but also have a critical approach. I chose the essay form and wrote several. The main one concerns Ziggy (and Aladdin), but I also wrote about my overall vision of Bowie’s career, which I divided for the occasion into two main periods: the 70s and the decades that followed: “Concentration and dispersion of the artist David Bowie.” About some themes addressed by the artist, notably through song lyrics: “Thematic analysis of the Bowian universe” (Change, Cinema/Television, Space, Hope, Madness, Man/Superman, Monster, Death, Sex, Time). About the multiple references in his work to works external (contemporary or previous) to arts, artists, personalities serving as benchmarks, constituting influences, examples: “Bowie, a reference artist.” About what I thought of Bowie’s provocative statements regarding “politics”: “Documented views on Bowie’s pro-fascist statements in 1975 and 1976.”

JM: Turning to Diamond Dogs — what inspired you to cover the entire album?

ES: Honestly, I have a hard time remembering what the main trigger was. There was something impulsive, unconscious. It’s one of my favorite albums, but I could have chosen another one like Aladdin Sane. Its very dark side probably corresponds to one of the most characteristic aspects of my personality. It’s possible that what helped me was that I had a songbook of this album which offered the real piano lines, whereas many songbooks actually only reproduce the melodic line of the voice (giving the guitar chords). It gave me a good foundation. The rest comes from my very attentive listening to the different instruments and arrangements. I recorded and programmed the music on a QY 100 sequencer in the early 2000s. It was a lot of work. I did two or three concerts using this music reproduced and reworked like a playback singing live. A few years later, when the 40th anniversary of the release of the record approached (2014), I had the idea of ​​resuming this work but in the studio this time with a few musicians in the flesh in addition to my programming and definitely recording the vocals.

JM: What do you think of this album and its specificity in Bowie’s discography?

ES: I think Diamond Dogs is one of Bowie’s most personal albums. He gave a lot of himself. This is what gives the record its timeless strength. It’s a little chaotic, very mysterious, while Ziggy Stardust is very effective but more formatted, more rock.

Both albums evoke dystopian universes, but perhaps Diamond Dogs benefits from this assumed influence that is Orwell’s extraordinary novel 1984 and all the imagination that it carries. Moreover, musically, sonically, it has this particularity that it goes beyond rock, transcends it. It announces punk and post-rock.

JM: What did Carlos Alomar say about your cover of “Rebel Rebel”?

ES: I sent him my cover of “Rebel Rebel.” He replied: “Hello Enrique. Wow… I’ve never heard “Rebel Rebel” played with a minor. You have certainly made it your own version.”

I didn’t even realize it. I don’t have great musical or technical knowledge; I operate by feeling. But it must correspond well to my melancholic temperament. Anyway, it turns out I removed the rock spirit from the music. I replaced the guitar with strings. Perhaps there is some logic.

JM: You also worked with Mike Garson — tell us about that collaboration.

ES: I had the idea and the opportunity by contacting Mike Garson and his agent to ask him to play on two tracks from my first album Les Bleus de l’âme, which dates from 2010: “À mon père” and “J’ai bien peur.” He listened to the arranged pieces, already well constructed, and accepted. Me and my sound engineer thought about offering to replace most of the instruments with his piano. So not a simple accompaniment with a solo here or there. We gave him some carte blanche. He did an extraordinary job of sensitivity. He brought an extremely personal touch while respecting the essence of the compositions. We kept his piano line, removed almost everything else, and I re-sang the pieces to fit his playing.

JM: Ziggy Stardust and Diamond Dogs are among Bowie’s best-known works, but you also covered the lesser-known “Silly Boy Blue”—what inspired you to pluck that one out of obscurity?

ES: Honestly, I don’t remember why and how I chose this song. It’s true that I really like its melody and its feeling. But I really like some of Bowie’s other early songs. I could have chosen “When I Live My Dream,” “London Boys”…

What I think was a very good idea was to have worked with a sound engineer who did not know the piece. I didn’t make him listen to it. I brought the lyrics with the voice melody and the spirit of the song, the basic chords. He played several instruments drawing from what he heard and what inspired him. I am very proud of the result.

JM: I think of that as one of Bowie’s earliest spiritual songs. But he worked spiritual aspects into many of his songs going forward—can you discern a spiritual philosophy of David Bowie from his music?

ES: This is a question that should require complex and hypothetical answers. To put it quickly, what has always really interested me about Bowie is his intellectual and spiritual depth. His uncompartmentalized mysticism. His creativity, which was sometimes limitless and constantly in motion, seeking to surpass himself as much as daring introspection. But also the fact that he did not generally and ultimately, in my opinion, dissociate the mind from the body. I loved his love of life as energy beyond any fixed and limited religious belief. I am obviously thinking here, as you can imagine, of the response he gave to Russell Harty in 1973 concerning God.

JM: Do you have thoughts on Bowie’s later works?

ES: I consider 70s Bowie to be almost perfect (I count Scary Monsters among them). It was partly with him and the albums he made at that time that the personality and tastes of the teenager I was and became were forged. From Let’s Dance onwards, even if this album is still very beautiful, I started to be disappointed and distance myself. Never Let Me Down and Tonight are, from my point of view, disasters, and the author himself admitted his bankruptcy. However, I have followed Bowie’s career and production throughout the years somewhat as if I accompanied the one who had been my symbolic father in failures and successes. A few albums had, however, a strong impact on me in the post-seventies period: Outside, Heathen, The Next Day, and Black Star.

JM: I ask this of everyone—what’s your favorite Bowie album and song?

ES: Everyone must tell you in interviews that it is almost impossible to select which would be the best album or the best song. But I would say Aladdin Sane. It was with this album that I discovered Bowie and that I discovered rock. And for the song, I would say “Win”. Simple but extremely sensual. Young Americans is one of my favorite Bowie albums.

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I want to thank Enrique for participating in this interview, for his great music and his contribution to the international bod of Bowie literature!