Loudwire recently caught up with Gojira guitarist/vocalist Joe Duplantier to discuss his musical influences growing up and ask him what his favorite French curse word was. A couple of excerpts from the chat can be read below.
Despite growing up in France, Duplantier confessed that he mainly listened to English and American music as a child: “When you’re a kid you don’t give a f— if it’s French or English but the radio would play a lot of the Beatles, Dire Straits and the Rolling Stones, not so much the band Journey. Everyone’s always surprised that I don’t know this band. [Laughs]”
It wasn’t until he was older that Duplantier grew fond of French music: “Then later I discovered some very good French singers, even the older ones,” he explained. “My favorite is Alain Bashung — he died not too long ago but even if you don’t understand the music is incredible.”
However, for those that do speak French, Duplantier said that Bashung’s lyrical abilities were incredible: “He would put words together that would f—ing blow your mind and so that on top of great music and great voice and presence it’s just amazing. This will never be famous outside of France, it’s unfortunate.”
Duplantier also discussed his favorite swear word: “I don’t know what my favorite is, I would need to think about this for a long time, but definitely the one I use the most is ‘putain.’ It technically means prostitute but in France people use that word all the time.”
He continued: “It’s like an old-school word, it just became something else, it’s almost like punctuation now. For example you knock your head you go, ‘Ah, putain!’ It goes very often with merde which means ‘s–t.’ So just imagine when you knock your head you go, ‘Ow prostitute.’ It’s amazing this word is everywhere and people say it all the time and they don’t even realize it.”
Gojira’s Joe Duplantier Discusses Musical Influences
