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Benjamin Clementine: 'I sang on the Paris metro like I was playing in a stadium' | Music | The Guardian
eople cant take their eyes o Benjamin Clementine. On stage its because hes thundering
out melodies on a piano, singing intensely with his eyes closed. Ostage its because hes
strikingly tall, with a shock of hair combed skywards and cheekbones that have been
described as planar, chiselled and simply impossible. Today, the looks silently cast his way
may have more to do with the fact that were huddled around the corner of a table in Edmonton
Green library, and in conversation at a borderline unacceptable volume.
You see that man? he asks, gesturing towards an elderly man wearing a at cap and shuing
towards one of the ction bookshelves across the room. Ive known him since I was very little.
He used to come every day. He doesnt really talk to anyone, but I remember him very well.
Were in north London, where his oft-retold, slightly mythologised story begins. On paper, it
reads like a novel: a young man leaves home, deserting a strained relationship with his parents.
He stops o at a friends at and decides to drop everything, catching the next ight to Paris.
There he sleeps rough and in hostels for a couple of years, earning money busking on
underground trains and at parties. Suddenly, he appears barefoot and unknown, singing
breathlessly about loneliness on Jools Holland in October 2013, and is signed to Virgin/EMI.
It wasnt quite as lmic as that. Aged 19, Clementine says he left London with 60 to his name,
and that was only enough for the ticket to Paris. Not the bus to Gatwick airport. I had to beg
the bus driver to let me on, by telling him that my parents lived in France and that they were ill.
His parents, in fact, have stayed in London but Clementine grows quiet when I ask about them
and simply says that he keeps in touch with his eldest brother. Of his rst night in Paris, he only
remembers lights a lot of lights. I felt like Id taken acid or something as he wandered the
city on his own. It took about three years for him to progress from busking to playing bars and
parties, then releasing EPs on a Parisian indie label. In 2014 Clementine joined EMI.
What does he make of constantly retelling a story thats turned into autobiographical Chinese
whispers? It is boring and frustrating because I want to talk about my songs. His voice drops
slightly: Sometimes it feels like my story overshadows my music.
Weve been talking for the better part of an hour, and for the rst time Clementine sounds
despondent. He says hes extremely grateful for the media attention hes picked up over the past
two years, but nds the obsession with his background mystifying. Luckily, as shown on his
Mercury prize-nominated debut album At Least for Now, he has the musical chops to support
the weight of his life story.
With this sort of career, you need determination. Youve got to sacrice a lot of things: family,
friends not that I had any and he now he chuckles but you sacrice everything. I dedicate
all my time to music. And Im glad that its paying o in some ways. Its not the easiest journey
to make, from self-taught musician and self-described loner to a critical darling selling out gigs
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/nov/18/benjamin-clementine-i-sang-on-the-paris-metro-like-i-was-playing-in-a-stadium
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Benjamin Clementine: 'I sang on the Paris metro like I was playing in a stadium' | Music | The Guardian
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Mercury prize 2015
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