September 27, 2004 - 8:24 p.m. I found a wonderful interview with Eugene Chaplin about his work and also a recent documentry he just finished working on about his father Charlie Chaplin. It comes from the following Website: http://mp3.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=1428&pid=music&subject=music+%3A%3A+interview Eugene Chaplin is the 5th child of Oona and Charlie Chaplin. Born in Switzerland in 1953 , he did his schooling in Lausanne. At the age of 19 he becomes a graduate of The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts as a stage manager. He works for Convent Garden in England and for the Geneva Opera House in Switzerland. He works for Mountain Studios (studios belonging to the group Queen) as a recording engineer, working with artists like David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Queen... Eugene launched a TV Station called TV Sud in 1991. A TV broadcasting African programs via satellite. Eugene produced a stage show called "Smile", the life of Charlie Chaplin shown through his music. This was performed in Amsterdam at the RAI Theatre. Eugene has just finished writing and directing a documentary about his father with the title "My Tribute", whose ceremonial world premiere will take place this week at the "Golden Beggar" - International festival of local televisions in Kosice, Slovakia. This gave us the opportunity to pose a few questions. You are the bearer of a famous name, how much has it helped you ? "I guess it helps a little bit. It helps to opens doors, but after that you have to work even harder to prove that you are really good." Why haven`t you followed in the footsteps of your father? "Because when I was at school and doing stage plays, I realized that acting is a very difficult thing, either you have the talent or you don`t, and I haven`t." When did you start to look at music not just as a consumer, but from the technical side? "My real job was as stage manager, and I went to a school for dramatic arts, and to be a stage manager you have to do a little bit of light and a little bit of sound. When I worked at Montreaux casino, there was a brand new studio which had just opened up, and I applied for the job and worked there for eight years as a sound engineer and I was always into music anyhow, and it was fantastic because it was a new studio, all of the big bands would come and use it. They very first clients we had were the Rolling Stones. They did the `Black and Blue` album for nearly six months." Getting yourself into this position cannot have been easy... "I was lucky because I was there at the right time, after that, everything goes with experience, especially at the time, the studios were analog and it wasn`t digital, so when you did editing you were cutting the tape." Well, I wanted to ask you about new technologies, because most of your work was in the 70`s and 80`s... "Yeah, we used 24 track machines, sometimes you`d take two of these for 48 tracks, then you would have to do maths to remember that between one minute and three minutes there was a guitar solo on track three, and then afterwards you`d have to add something from track five, so it was difficult. But in a way it was nice, because the new technology is fantastic in the way that it takes less space, now you can do something very good in your apartment. But electronics stays electronics, I think new technology is OK for the type of music we`re doing now. You really have to be a computer whiz, and because of that, the `artist` side has disappeared a bit. You have a drum track, and then you press a button so the beat stays exactly the same the whole time, that`s OK but we are human, and when someone plays a beat it`s never perfect. The music is important, but the feel is even more important." What about Lenny Kravitz who records on old equipment? "They all go back to that eventually, to my mind it is the best system. It`s like DVD film and 16mm, 16mm has that quality which you just cannot get with digital." In professional software it`s possible to get the feeling from 30`s films. "Everything becomes very perfect but the soul is not there." From a technical standpoint, what was the hardest work? Perhaps David Bowie - famous inovator... "Yes, David Bowie. But that was a fantastic experience because we made `Heroes` and the album after that `Lodger` as well. It was amazing and at the time you don`t realize it. On the `Heroes` album he worked with Brian Eno, who is a pioneer. He does all the guitar solos and backing work. Fantastic personalities because they would come into the studio and not know what they were going to do." Are you still in contact with artists you have worked with? "I`m still in contact with some of them, David I`m still in touch with." The Rolling Stones, for example, are surrounded in mystery as for their work in the studio. It has been claimed that many instruments are played by `rented` musicians. "That may be true, but in my experience they were the musicians. Keith Richards is a fantastic guitar player, and the drummer is fantastic as well, he`s a brilliant jazz player." There is also a huge pressure in the studio. Were you ever witness to some famous individual simply not handling the situation well? "No. At that time, money wasn`t a problem for all of these big groups. They all came for six months, and now that is unheard of. It`s too expensive. At the time Emerson, Lake and Palmer would come with all their instruments, which meant twelve guitars, 24 amps, the drummer had drums from here to there. It was something else." Have you ever had the ambition to make your music as a performer? "As a performer no, I don`t really play any one instrument well enough. But I produce, and with a friend we have a big band and we make a lot of film music and stuff." Many of the groups you have worked with live very textbook Bohemian lifestyles, were you ever drawn to this? "I can be if I have to, I am from the Woodstock generation. That`s when you sit down and don`t move." What`s going on now in in Mountain Studios, are the members of Queen working on their own projects? "The last thing they have done is a musical in the west end of London called `We Will Rock You`. Which is all the music of Queen, performed by singers and dancers. Brian May, I think, is producing. I don`t know what Roger Taylor and John Deacon are doing, they make appearences. Queen had their anniversary, they had a big concert at Buckingham Palace with different artists and loads of people. The concert started off with Brian May playing `God Save the Queen`." Do you see a big difference between studio work and, for example, work in the opera? "Yes. I`m a great believer that the bigger the orchestra, the fewer microphones you need. An orchestra balances itself, the horns will go louder when they need to, and so on. What you need is three or four microphones overhead and it`s enough for the best sound. The moment you try to put a microphone at each instrument, you never win. So for opera and so on, just the basic material and ususally that works out the best." Can you introduce your musical `Smile`? My father wrote a lot of music for his films. He was one of the first people who wrote music for his own films. He understood the importance of music with the picture. In the old days when something funny was happening on the screen, you would hear this silly music. My father realized that romantic music in a funny situation could bring out the humor more. So he composed music and it was a nightmare for the conductor, because the conductor works 1 2 3 4 to the beat, and he made music for the picture, so all these variations fit the picture on the screen. The interesting thing is that he wrote full pieces of music, but on film you only hear one minute or thirty seconds of it. You hear thirty seconds of a tango, but he had actually written a full piece. Most of the music is well-known, but nobody knows that he wrote it. So the idea was to present his music, and at the same time, tell about his life. It`s not a musical where Chaplin comes on and sings `I`m a Poor Boy from London` or something like that, it`s his music with narration." What are your memories of your father? "What can I say, he is my father, he was a father to us. Sometimes he was very happy, sometimes he was mad. It`s funny to say that he was a very normal person." Your TV Sud specialized in African programming, why this concept? "It`s a TV which existed, and only lasted one month. I felt very strongly that Europe had a very funny way of looking at Africa. A European thinks of lions and giraffes and elephants and peole living in little huts, and when Europeans film Africa, that is what they show, they don`t show normal life at all. There are big towns like everywhere else, they have their own TV, their own soap operas, commercials, news. Most of the things are European ideas, but the African way, and some of them are very funny. You have political issues where they get very mad at each other and have to be seperated, it`s all real. You have one man in Abuja saying this is the traffic report and almost getting hit by a car, and the driver saying `my brakes didn`t work`." Is it an interesting job from the commercial aspect, this kind of television? "You have to remember that in France and Europe there are a lot of Africans, and no television for them. You have satilite TV from Asia, Indian TV in England, but nothing for the Africans. We were aiming for this community. It was an idea we pushed forward, and thanks to Berlusconi, we got a satilite channel for one month. So we swamped the channel with TV programs, but it was very difficult to put together and to make it continue, unfortunately." What awaits you after the premiere of the documentary? "At Christmas it`s going to be the 25th anniversary of my father`s death. I just thought why not do a documentary about him. Everyone else is doing it, so why not someone from his family? The first part is presented by my daughter who is twenty and never met him, but it`s about the `young` vision. The second part is me presenting about my father, and just setting things straight because everyone analyzes my father and says: `he was very nice` or `he was very difficult` or `he liked the women`. At the end of the day, he met my mother, and he lived with her for over thirty years, he was happily married." By the way, how do you feel as a film-maker? "I was pleased because this documentary had three weeks to be made. You will see that things could have been better, but it`s nice because it`s light and to me it is important because I show my father as he should be shown. I`d like people to see him as a normal person who worked very hard, had a family, was a father, and enjoyed life. We tend to forget that." Igor PETRUSKA previous - next