Quotes from Jean-Michel Jarre

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.

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.

One of the first things I created was music for the Paris opera's ballet troupe. That was the first time that electronic music was played at the opera. I really like the relationship between the music and the choreography.

Suddenly, we are putting ourselves as the next dinosaurs. It's rather dark; we have narrowed our dreams. It is time to restore our visions. And so it's not a nostalgic idea; it is based with this unconscious need to restore a kind of dynamic for tomorrow.

I thought we had opposite visions of electronic music. Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk had a very robotic, mechanical approach. I had a more impressionist vision - a Ravel/Debussy approach.

I've always been involved in the visual aspect of my work, and moreover, it's very important in days where technology allows us to push the boundaries even more than when I started out.

With the violin, for example, one understands culturally that the sound comes from the instrument that can be seen. With electronic music, it is not the same at all. That's why it seemed so important to me, from the beginning of my career, to invent a grammar, a visual vocabulary adapted to electronic music.

Our senses have changed, even though our emotions have not.

Music is the backbone of my shows.

Emotions are the basics of any art form!

If music is to continue to support the livelihoods of artists, it cannot be taken without the permission of artists.

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

We have lost our vision for the future. Before, we say, 'Nothing will be the same. Cars will fly, and we go to the end of the universe.' We have this kind of naive but exciting idea of the future. Now, the vision has been reduced to ways to select our garbage and how to survive global warming.

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.

People who do music do it because it is all they can do. And that's me, I suppose. I can do nothing else.

The whole 'Electronica' project is about the ambiguous relationship we have with technology: on the one side, we have the world in our pocket; on the other, we are spied on constantly.

For me, electronic music is the classical music of the 21st century.

When I compose an album, I don't think about how to adapt it on stage.

The value of streaming platforms is estimated at a few billion dollars, and creators can only afford a pizza without pepperoni at the end of the year with the revenues. Without musicians, all those platforms wouldn't exist, so we urgently need an appropriate and sustainable business model for musicians for the 21st century.

To me, the original VCS3 synthesizer is like a Stradivarius.

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.

A chic type, a rough type, an odd type - but never a stereotype

Most of the time, when you are in the studio, you are revealing yourself; you're a bit naked. You can express your weaknesses, your awkward way of approaching sound. Sharing these intimate moments is like inviting somebody into your private room.

We all think we are connected to the world now, but we are not talking to our neighbours any more.