When Daft Punk used Random Access Memories to give Nile Rodgers a new lease of life and reintroduce Giorgio Moroder to his natural constituency, one influential disco legend was left wondering whether his invitation might have got lost in the post, especially since he is also French. Still, Marc Cerrone may be about to have his day in the sun.
New compilation The Best Of Cerrone Productions collects his finest solo tracks alongside stuff from his old band Kongas and work for films such as sexploitation thriller Brigade Mondaine. Whereas Moroder pushed production boundaries and Rodgers enjoyed big pop success, Cerrone’s style was aimed firmly at the dancefloor, with a hint of kitsch. “Giorgio’s more electro, Nile is more funk than me,” Cerrone explains from Paris. “I’m somewhere in the middle. It’s the French touch.”
Cerrone’s music has inspired nu-disco scions such as Lindstrøm and Todd Terje, as well as LCD Soundsystem and Goldfrapp, whose album Supernature was named after his most famous single. There are traces, too, of Kongas’s Africanism in Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk, while the string-adorned Love In C Minor practially defined the slick Studio 54 sound.
Cerrone spent 22 years in the US, tempted away from France when copies of Love In C Minor were accidentally shipped to New York in 1976 and the DJs went mad for it. “I knocked on Atlantic Records’ door and a guy told me: ‘Ahmet Ertegün wants to see you,’” he says. “I signed the contract right away.” Love In C Minor sold 3m copies, so Cerrone set up camp, pumping out immaculate disco smashes including Je Suis Music, Look For Love and the Billboard Dance chart No 1 Supernature, all packaged in sleeves that portrayed Cerrone as a louche playboy figure with cars, girls and martinis on tap. The fantasy couldn’t last forever: the hits dried up around 1979 when he started using his own vocals – a lesson for Calvin Harris, there – and when 1980’s Cerrone VI failed to get a US release, he retreated. Cerrone continued to make albums throughout the 80s, but to lessening returns. In 1992, he staged a relatively successful Broadway show called Dreamtime, but the cost of moving the hi-tech production to another theatre meant that its run was short-lived.
Now Cerrone finds himself in a more welcoming time, where disco is revered rather than dismissed as corny. Whether he’ll be able emulate Moroder, whose forthcoming new album features Kylie and Britney, remains to be seen. But Cerrone is planning both a live and a DJ tour, sensing a second chance. “I feel EDM is coming to an end and we need something else,” he says. “It’s like a freeway is opening up in front of me.”
The Best Of Cerrone Productions is out on 12 Jan on Because Music
Source: www.theguardian.com