Forget all that talk about robots taking our jobs. At the age of 75, disco pioneer Giorgio Moroder has more work than he ever could have imagined, all thanks to a pair of famous French robots.
Actually, back in 2012, the Italian-born Moroder was more or less retired—working on his golf swing, dabbling in a few creative projects—when Daft Punk invited him to their Paris studio to talk into a mic about his life. That spoken-word recording was incorporated into "Giorgio on Moroder," a standout track from the duo's electro-funk smash Random Access Memories. Since the album's 2013 release—for which Moroder received a Grammy, his fourth—the producer/songwriter has been in high demand: He's DJ'd at Ibiza, remixed Coldplay, and is finishing up work on the soundtrack for a new Tron videogame. Lady Gaga and Lana Del Rey both want to work with him.
Moroder's renewed fame also netted him a major-label deal, which bears fruit with his first solo album in 30 years. Déjà Vu, out today, features EDM collaborations with a predominantly female cast of pop singers, including Britney Spears (on a Vocoderized cover of Suzanne Vega’s "Tom's Diner"), Kylie Minogue, Sia, Kelis, and Charli XCX. In a way, it's a return to the formula that made him famous the first time around, when he partnered with the late Donna Summer on groundbreaking 1970s disco hits like the orgasmic "Love To Love You Baby" and the synth-fluential "I Feel Love." But these days, given the ease of swapping audio files electronically, Moroder has never even met most of his new collaborators.
"I sent Sia tracks, and two or three weeks later, she got me the tapes done, with a melody, the lyrics, the backgrounds," he says. "Then I mixed it. I kind of like it because it's a lot of pressure taken away from me."
Guess that means global outsourcing isn’t so bad, either. Here's what you need to know about the new and improved Giorgio Moroder on Giorgio Moroder.
"My influence today? 'I Feel Love' [is influential]," he says. "Maybe the sexy thing of Donna, 'Love To Love You Baby.' Though I didn't hear any real sexy songs in the last 20, 30 years. A lot of rap has sexy lyrics, but a sexy song with a female, I don't know one."
"I did not feel the disco backlash that much. I remember talking to [Chic's] Nigel Rodgers, who was really almost depressed, because suddenly disco was not doing well," Moroder says. "But in '79 I did my first movie [soundtrack], Midnight Express, then Flashdance, so I did not notice as much as a lot of other disco producers." [Fun fact: He also worked on the Top Gun soundtrack.]
"My first Oscar [for Midnight Express] was important to me. It was my first movie," Moroder says. "I never thought I would ever do a movie—if that had been the case, I would have watched some more movies! But [director] Al Parker asked, and I said, 'I don't have any experience.' So he said, 'There's one scene at the beginning where the kid runs away. Do something in the style of 'I Feel Love.'"
"The movies today, especially the big ones, they have so much music, it's almost overwhelming," he says. "When I did Scarface, that movie was about three hours, and I guess we had about 30 to 40 minutes of music. A two-hour movie now has probably 60 to 80 minutes of music. Sometimes I think, Why? Why would they play music here? It's almost disturbing. But I guess that's what the audience wants."
"I don’t dance, but I have my wife. She dances for me. She loves to dance. I never really danced, even when I was busy with dance music," he says. "I went from time to time to discotheques, but just to listen to some music. Sometimes I would take tapes of new songs. The DJ would play them, and I would know if it was a song that could work or not."
"When I DJ in the clubs, a lot of people show on the cell what they want to hear. They have the phones and they type in 'I Feel Love'—or 'I love you,'" he says. "So it's interesting sometimes, especially in the clubs where there are a lot of gays, who love me. And I get the heart [symbol] and things like that."
"I would tell my younger self, 'Do pretty much what you did. Work hard, believe in you. Not every song is going to be a hit," Moroder says. "But if you're lucky, one out of 10 is a hit.'"
"One big mistake I made was I sold my publishing rights," he says. "Publishing rights are like a pension plan—nobody can take it away. Why'd I do it? They offered me so much money. You think, I can do so many things now with that money. And I did so many things. But in the end, it was not a good idea."
"My idols are two guys: Charles Aznavour, the French singer, who's 91, and Tony Bennett, who’s 88 and still sings," Moroder says. "I'm doing it as long as I can; what I don't think I'm going to be doing for a long time is DJing. Because it’s so strenuous: the flights, the jetlag, you perform at 3 o'clock at night."
"Some people recognize me not for my face but for my voice [since the Daft Punk track]. Not long ago, I was sitting in a restaurant, and a guy came to me and said, 'Are you Giorgio Moroder?,'" he says. "I said, 'How did you know?' He said, 'Oh, I was sitting there, and I heard you talking.' This happens so often now. Maybe a movie director should get me in a movie and I can talk. Just talk.'"
