This year’s Olympics Closing Ceremony was disguised as an indie-rock concert to soothe the millennial soul, with local heroes Phoenix delighting the Stade de France with a nearly 20-minute set of hits. (Cue the Trap memes when they started playing “1901.â€) The quartet also had a little help from their amies. Joining the band at their invitation was a slate of acts including electropop visionaries Air and Kavinsky as well as American rocker Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend. “I don’t think I can celebrate a whole week,†front man Thomas Mars says of the performance. “But I’ll definitely take a day.â€
Phoenix was asked to contribute to the Olympic celebrations with a relatively short lead time. The band was initially going to perform during the Opening Ceremony, but a buzzing issue involving some insects at the world’s most famous art museum grounded the idea, allowing them the opportunity to have a more defining presence on the final night. The significance of the moment isn’t lost on Mars. “We stayed in the empty stadium for a long time when the ceremony ended, and then it was hard to fall asleep,†he reflects. “We always considered ourselves to be outsiders and not a part of the Establishment.â€
What made Phoenix a Closing Ceremony band as opposed to an Opening Ceremony band? Were you not angling to shred off a building with a beheaded Marie Antoinette?
We were considered for the Opening Ceremony at first. We only found out we were doing this three weeks ago. It sounds really crazy. We told the people in charge that if they needed us, we were available. It’s the Olympics — we were into it. They reached out to a lot of musicians, and there were so many unknown factors. They asked us about the Closing Ceremony pretty late. We were almost there in terms of doing the Opening. The only thing they told us about the Closing was, “This is a party for the athletes. This is their prom. The athletes are going to be wild and possibly drunk.†It’s like the release of being so focused on a goal and then the pressure is suddenly shut off. Listen, we’ve played at a lot of low-capacity clubs, some in the hundreds. The energy at the Closing Ceremony mirrored those shows.
What ideas did you have that were specific to the Opening Ceremony?
They thought of putting us on the rooftop of the Louvre for a performance. We recorded our last album, Alpha Zulu, in the Louvre. But there were bees on the roof. People were concerned about the bees. There were a lot of hives to harvest honey. These are the things you don’t know about Paris. There are certain places that contain a whole ecosystem of bees.
There were a lot of hurdles for the people who organized it. French people are extremely relieved that everything went great. There was definitely a climate of fear going into the elections and the Games. But I think people really enjoyed them, and there was a sense of appreciation.
Were you at all surprised to get this call to perform? Given who these ceremonies tend to spotlight, it must have been wonderful to know you’re considered to be a pillar of the French music canon.
Yes, absolutely. We never felt like we belonged to these … it’s a healthy mind-set to have, let’s say, because it prevents you from being disappointed in life. When they told us our segment was going to be between 15 and 20 minutes, we thought, Wow, that’s crazy we’re being given this much airtime. So we thought we had to share this moment with other people.
How did you choose your collaborators? What made you think of Air and Kavinsky?
Air was the first band we thought of. When we started playing music outside of France, like at Top of the Pops, we were their backing band. We wanted to share that with them and perform our song “Playground Love.†Kavinsky has a song called “Nightcall,†which was produced by Daft Punk, and he asked me to sing it at the time. I never do things outside of Phoenix, so I said “no†and didn’t regret it. I thought the song was perfect and didn’t need my voice. It’s such a classic and fits so well in this condensed mix of songs, so I really wanted to incorporate it. For French people, there’s something that happened about ten years ago that proved to be an influence. Someone created a fake poster for a French music festival that never happened. It was like: Daft Punk, us, Air, Kavinsky, Cassius, all of these bands. People thought it was a real show, so there was high demand for it but it never happened. We wanted that poster to come to life.
Was there anyone you were keen to join but didn’t work out because of scheduling? I know people were hoping Daft Punk would reunite.
Yeah, Daft Punk doesn’t exist anymore. That was never an option. People expect them to come back to life, but they’re gone. There were a few bucket-list people that I really admired and wanted to join us, but I’m not sure I want to mention them, because it’s going to disappoint people. They’ll be like, Oh, I wish that would’ve happened. But it turned out to be a great and strange mix of people, which is what we’ve been doing all of these years. We took a group photo and it’s so unusual. Only in this context would these people come together. That’s the main thing we’re all proud of.
By my understanding, you had a good deal of leeway for what you wanted to accomplish. Were there any creative parameters that helped guide your ideas? Leading up to your set, the ceremony definitely had a dystopian and science-fiction feel to it.
The first thing they told us is this ceremony is for the athletes. They’re going to enter the stadium and stand on the outskirts of the running track. They said, “When you strike the first note, the marshals will let them in, and they’ll fill in.†We wanted to start with “Lisztomania†as our opener because that’s the first thing we start our live shows with. It’s funny. A lot of festivals have double stages, so when we start with that song, we see people running to the stage and leaving whoever they were watching because they know “Lisztomania.†So we expect that at festivals, but we didn’t expect the Olympic athletes to run on top of the continents on our stage. The production people really freaked out. It was good chaos, but we were worried. The whole time when we were in rehearsals, the production told us, “Don’t stand on those continent screens — they will collapse under you.†And suddenly we see 400 athletes on the screens. We heard the voices in the stadium calling the athletes to move backward to their original spots.
That’s the power of “Lisztomania.†People are risking their lives to see it live.
There you go. We still got really, really nervous. Closer to the ceremony they were able to reveal a few things they couldn’t reveal before, so they told us about the “dystopian beginning†theme. When we told them our intended set list, they thought it worked well. It was a good counterbalance to what they planned. It’s a more joyful side to the proceedings and less serious. A stadium is often a really sterile place, so the fact that it was such a colorful and warm environment was surprising. We don’t play a lot of stadiums or arenas, but when we do, the backstage is so cold. We have two bodyguards waiting for their shift to be over. It’s empty and sad. This was the opposite. There were 150 flags with people wearing their traditional uniforms waving and cheering for us. So we wanted to do the same for them.
Your crowd-surfing was excellent. Was that a spontaneous decision?
That was somewhat unplanned. They invited me to do that because I crowd-surf at some shows. I assumed they would say “no†to that kind of thing. They said, “You can do that thing in the end; it could be a nice moment.†At first I was worried that maybe there would be too many drunk Olympians. Sometimes, I was told, medals disappear during the Closing Ceremonies. So I was surprised they let me do it. When we started “1901,†all of the American athletes were right in front of us. They were the country responding to “1901†the most. So I gravitated to the Americans, and one athlete offered me his gold medal, which I didn’t take. I’m not the hero here, he’s the hero. And then they lifted me up and I exchanged shirts with someone. I couldn’t find my way back to the stage for a while, but it was great to be with the athletes in the stadium for a few minutes.
Do you consider this to be the biggest performance of your career as a band? How do you eclipse this?
That’s the big question. But the answer is: It’s not happening. You never know what the future holds, but this is for sure the most make-it-or-break-it moment we’ve had as a band. We’ve never had more pressure or people watching us. But it still somehow felt like a club show. We were most nervous that it would be sterile and cold, but the athletes turned this into a joyful moment. I think Paris is sad that the Olympics are gone. I can say I’m sad. They feared the Olympics for a long time and thought it would be mayhem. People will look back at this and realize what a joyful moment it was. There’s always been a bit of an identity crisis in France, and somehow the world coming to us solved this whole issue. There was a lot of healing. There’s something beyond the music for us and French people about this experience. I’ve talked to a few friends in Los Angeles who might make the same mistakes as some Parisians did. “Oh, it’s going to be awful and traffic is going to be so bad, so I’m renting my apartment and leaving.†But look at us. It turned out to be the best of Paris.