A Quote by Alice Ripley
I was 14. I went to see a production of 'Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,' and when they got to that final song, 'If We Only Have Love,' it was like the top of my head had blown off.
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I was in Jacques Brel Off-Broadway for many years, so I've always been a singing actress, but the songwriting was a complete surprise. I had never written a song in my life. We were on the road with Jacques Brel doing the national tour, and I picked up a guitar one day and I wrote a song.
Let's talk about that for a moment, about the couple that Yves Saint Laurent and I were. Like all couples we went through "storms," as the Jacques Brel song says. But if there's one area where we never had the slightest disagreement, it was art. Never. Not once. Not about painting, not about opera, not about theater. We were always in complete communion. Of course, that's how all of the collection came into being.
A lot of the old-school artists didn’t even respect what’s being called freestyle now... any emcee coming off the top of the head wasn’t really respected. The sentiment was emcees only did that if they couldn’t write. The coming off the top of the head rhymer had a built-in excuse to not be critiqued as hard
I never had the idea of moving to Paris and becoming something. I liked the idea of living in Paris because it seemed to have so many parts of life I really enjoyed. The people there seemed to prize literature and art, food and drinking, a more hedonistic way of living. My ambition was to be cosmopolitan. I grew up in the suburbs. I went to college in Maine. I had a dream in my head that if you wanted to be the most urbane, living-life-to-the-fullest kind of person, Paris was the place to be.
When I was first introduced to the music of Jacques Brel, I was totally floored. I had never heard anything as intelligent or sexy or angry as his music.
I do love to sing Jacques Brel songs, intensely. I get terribly excited, just by reading a couple of lines in any one of his songs.
The way Jacques Brel writes a story, getting into the character, bringing out all his faults and qualities in the same song.... Not that I could ever write in such an epic way, but it really is a different way to go about writing lyrics...and I find that quite inspiring.
Wherever inspiration comes from, it's like I'll hear a melody and chords, almost a rough structure of the whole thing [song]. I'll just hear it and chase what's in my head. The rest comes from jamming with band, improvising, seeing what comes up as well. I'll come up with it off the top of my head, catch it, sing and hum, and if something is missing, just jam, and that's the [songwriting] process.
I just make up lyrics off the top of my head. A lot of times, there's a phrase I really like, and I kind of build the song around that.
My first course came and I put down my book, and I just happened to put up my hand to scratch my head and discovered that my toupee had been blown by the wind and was folded over backwards on the top of my head!
The very first time I buzzed my head, I was 21 - I'd had short hair since I was 14 - I just remember it was, like, 2 in the morning, and I just was like, 'I really want to do it. I want to see what I look like and what my head shape is.'
I think it's so hypocritical to be so anti-nudity in films, and be so pro-violence. I'd rather see two people making love, than somebody being done in. Or being shot and getting their head blown off.
I love as you come into Paris, you've got the Arch de Triomphe and all that crazy traffic. Then I love the drive from Paris down to Antibes and you veer off east in through the Alps and you come into the south of France on the mountain road as opposed to the freeway.
What I like to see is people like Beyonce. Here is a woman who is bling-a-ding. Not only does she look like that and act like that - I've seen her perform, and I was blown away - but she is at the top of her profession.
When I was 15, I went to see the Stranglers at Bath Pavilion. I saw Jean-Jacques Burnel take off his bass and whack a skinhead over the head with it because he gave a Nazi salute. I thought: 'This is brilliant!'
I had to go into a studio and compose and write and press up 12 songs in 14 hours. When you're recording a song from scratch it takes you 14 hours to do just one song.
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