JEAN-MICHEL JARRE

I just had one occasion in my life when suddenly my private life was everywhere, and that was an accident and beyond my control.

Technology does not always rhyme with perfection and reliability. Far from it in reality!

All those ethereal string sounds on 'Oxygene IV' come from the VCS3. It was the first European synthesizer, made in England by a guy called Peter Zinoviev. I got one of the first ones.

I wanted to create a bridge between experimental music and pop.

Emotions are the basics of any art form!

Some collaborators might join forces in certain cities or special concerts. I'm excited to share the stage with some prestigious people that I love and respect.

People don't realize enough how important and influentical John Carpenter has been in electronic music. He did his soundtracks by himself, using mostly electronic and analog synthesizers. He's a cult figure with DJs these days for good reasons.

Think about when you listen to a song on the radio. You are not paying for it; it's not illegal to do it, because the rights have been paid for on top, beforehand, by the radio station, by the network. We have to find exactly the same kind of system with the Internet.

In a lifetime, you can say, yes, you have instances of pleasure, of happiness, you like some of your work, but your work is the entire story, and if you are not satisfied with a few moments of a few parts of that story, you would like to be able to adjust that.

People are rejecting the power of the elite, but individuals such as Snowden are doing so in a positive way, trying to change things for the better. He is a very intelligent man and obviously interested in electronic music.

In my opinion, British women are more romantic than French ones.

Music, photography, media, film - it's all going to be free on the Internet. We have to accept it.

Technology is neutral, but it all depends on the way we use it.

Dance fascinates me, and it is perhaps the most enriching audio-visual realm for a musician. Film-making also fascinates me.

When I began making electronic music, the only thing I was thinking about was creating music that I really liked. I didn't think about what effect it would have; I was busy doing it.

I used to play in rock bands. Then I went to the first school of electronic music in the world. It was in Paris headed by one of the most important people involved in electronic music.

From the outside, being an artist seems like a dream life, but there are much darker aspects to it.

When you have a young man, I mean, questioning the power in place for love of his country, not to say 'stop' but to say 'be careful about the abuse of technology,' I think it deserves to be promoted.

Pursuing music eats into your life to the point where there is no space left for anything else. You are lucky if you find a partner who is able to understand that, but even then, they will only understand it for a while, and then things get - you know, difficult.

My first synthesizer was the VCS3. I got it in Bristol in the late Sixties, long before Pink Floyd used them. I had to sell an acoustic guitar and an old reel-to-reel tape recorder to raise the money. You can do fantastic things with modern computers, but you cannot use them in the same intuitive, spontaneous way you can a VCS3.

When I did the first 'Oxygene' in the vinyl days, I had a structure in mind divided in 2 parts fitting the A&B sides of an album.

As a musician, I have always strived for my albums and live performance to render a sound as close as possible to perfection.

I had no precise plan when I started 'Electronica,' but I think it has been a very positive journey for me.

We should never forget that in the smartphone, the smart part is us creators.

This project, 'Electronica,' is about working with people who are a strong source of inspiration to me.