The rights to the recording are now owned by a French label and publishing company, GM Musipro, whose specialising in reissuing vintage French records. Within the profile, writer August Brown delves deep into the complicated issues around sampling and licensing that have seen Johns receive no royalties from use of his track. 'He showed me his album cover, and when I found this video talking about how it was sampled by Daft Punk, it was like a lightbulb went off. 'I help Eddie use the computer sometimes, and he showed me some of his music,' Johns' case manager Alyssa Cash told the Los Angeles Times. Johns suffered a stroke ten years ago, which left him unable to work. Johns' story has been uncovered in a new profile by the Los Angeles Times, who tracked him down in LA, where he's been living in a supportive housing facility after struggling with homelessness for over a decade. Indeed Daft Punk’s marketing succeeded because of its highlighted rejection of the most obvious, unromantic mechanisms of commerce.Eddie Johns, whose 1979 track 'More Spell On You' was sampled by Daft Punk for their hit single 'One More Time', has never received royalties from the French duo's track. Perhaps French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu had it right when he said that profits can be derived from “ disinterestedness”. Got lucky?įor an audience that may similarly be suspicious of media saturation – and what it can indicate in terms of “selling out” – this notion of Daft Punk’s interaction being rare, intimate and indifferent to the supposed demands of industry may also have been attractive. And it became a mutually beneficial arrangement, perpetuating Daft Punk’s anti-stardom position while also enabling publications to claim they had an exclusive. The pair’s press engagement has been particularly cultivated to maintain this “media reluctance” narrative. In Daft Punk’s case, it resulted in often uneasy relationships such as the robots’ involvement in global advertising campaigns, and many Daft Punk interviews issued by media outlets that repeatedly assured us that they rarely give interviews. Theirs was a stance fraught with contradiction – and one maybe familiar to many working in arts and culture who find their rejection of consumer culture operating within the same market-driven constraints. Yet despite what they might have claimed, with arena tours and cameos in Disney movies, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo were far from being “anonymous”. In this sense, I believe Daft Punk have become an example of an “ anti-celebrity celebrity”. It is not a compromise.” Anti-celebrity superstars

That combination hides our physicality and also shows our view of the star system. If we have to create an image, it must be an artificial image. “We don’t believe in the star system,” Bangalter stated. Shutterstock/Kraft74įlorian Schneider and Kraftwerk helped shape the sound of modern music Yet alongside this superhero version, Daft Punk also cited the conversion as being their response to fame.īetter to burn out than fade away: Daft Punk announce retirement after nearly 30 years. Specifically, that the explosion of an electronic music sampler in 1999 had transformed them into their robot alter egos. Like the electronic group Kraftwerk before them, these cyborgs further celebrated the electronic, automated characteristics of their music, while at the same time orchestrated a mythology in conjunction with technology’s all-pervasive influence.īangalter even presented an origins story in which he claimed that the duo’s appearance was the result of an accident. What began with Bangalter and de Homem-Christo using various masks to hide their discomfort within photoshoots – obscuring rather than projecting a specific image – was eventually resolved when they reinvented themselves as androids. “If you can stay protected and get noticed then it’s all good”, he told journalist Suzanne Ely in 2006. It was an approach that saw the pair hiding behind their alter-egos but going on to conquer the world of electronic music at the same time.Īs the more vocal of the two, Bangalter has indicated that this method was fundamental to Daft Punk’s self-preservation. Over the past 28 years, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (the men behind the helmets) developed a complex and counterintuitive communication strategy.

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