Sebastien Paquet
“My grandfather's farm was always 'home' for my mother and I. It was a place that made sense in our world. A place where my grandfather and grandmother made an important contribution to the community. So this sense of working for the community's benefit is something that's very important to me, and my family.”
“How I come to be living in America so far from our family farm and working in the music industry, can probably be traced back to my earliest childhood memories. This was certainly before I was 5 years old. But I recall sitting in my bedroom cutting out images of French singers from magazines and pasting them into my scrapbook. I would then create my own stories for each singer based on their photo. Crazy when you think about that today as I film musical artists and take all of those images to edit a documentary!”
“I am an only child, so you have to find creative ways to arrest your boredom. And so music was always my pathway to happiness. By ten years of age I was totally obsessed with music. The only problem in France, is we're fed exactly the same sort of pop music bullshit all the time. So I grew up in a world of French variety singers with the band tucked away playing in the background. If you listened to anything different, or something that was mostly guitar, then you'd immediately be an outcast.”
“It was my cousin Sam who first introduced me to Nirvana when I was eleven. From that day forth, my whole world shifted and I was changed forevermore. Here I am thirty years later, and I've named my son Cobain because of the tremendous impact Kurt Cobain has had on my adult life.”
“When I first heard Nirvana my mother had just been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. This was also the time my father chose to leave us both. We went from living in a lovely family home to living in a very sketchy part of the city in a terrible apartment block. So my life was broken at this time. That is until Sam introduced me to a world of music that I could escape to.”
“I was going through a hard time in my life and Nirvana's lyrics became important to me. I couldn't speak English at this time, but I could feel the emotions and intentions to their music. I did manage to teach myself English by watching American TV series like 'F.R.I.E.N.D.S.', just so that I could understand the lyrics of Kurt Cobain. I find that nuts, every time I think about F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Nirvana!”
“My mother had subscribed to a cable TV channel in France where they played American TV shows with French subtitles, whereas all of the commercial stations in France simply overdubbed American shows. And so I learned English just by playing these shows over and over again. English soon became normal for me, so much so that I would speak it at school with an American accent. And by this time, I had formed the belief that I was destined to speak English as my first language, and ultimately live in America!”
“The thing about France and their education system, is it's highly bureaucratic with loads of red tape. The whole system is engineered to make students comply and fit the 'French norm'. So being a kid that absolutely lived for alternative foreign music, rocking long hair going down to my waist and who also speaks with an acquired American accent, made me an academic reject and a problem at school. For kids wanting to fit in, this would be their nightmare scenario. But for me being creative with a totally alternative world-view, this was an achievement and something I felt super comfortable with.”
“And so I created a different universe for myself; a world of music, rock and roll and basketball. I had a small group of friends while I was at school, who felt the same way with a number of us all living in the US nowadays. So I have friends here in the States who have travelled a similar pathway to me!”
“My American journey really starts back in 1995, when I used to watch MTV's metal show 'Headbanger's Ball'. My life was to change after KoЯn's single 'Blind' comes on and it absolutely floors me. That one song, 'Blind', changed the course of my life forever.”
“KoЯn's music spoke to me on so many levels, so it was only natural that I would fast become their biggest fan in France! I was totally obsessed with KoЯn. I dressed like them and spent my entire day listening to their music. My appreciation for their music was so intense, I kept thinking 'how can I give back in some way'. There's gotta to be something I can do to help them in return.”
“KoЯn's lyrics literally saved my life. So much of what they were saying through music, I could relate to in my own life. And so I kept thinking they could help more kids like me. Then their third album 'Follow the Leader' explodes in 1998, and I am thinking to myself, I've got to do something now. So I buy a thousand envelopes and stamps, I print out a thousand fanzines and build a website all about KoЯn. At 18 yrs old this seemed like a logical thing to do with my life!. And so this is how the whole monkey business of fan stuff started with me.”
“Later in 2000, KoЯn headlines in France with the 'Sick and Twisted' tour. This was an epic moment not only because it was the first metal concert I was to experience, but I was getting the chance to interview the band. As a KoЯn fan to have that sort of experience was unimaginable. But here I was about to achieve my life's dream. I still can't believe what happened next.”
“After the interview with Munky and Head, they take me to another room to play a new song they had been recording on the tour. They'd just demoed that song and here I was listening to it two years before its release! I couldn't believe that they had just shared their music with me. I still can't believe that moment happened to this day. What 'mega band' does that with a fan?”
“After that concert, I go back to my life in France working on the fan club until a Sony Music executive in Paris calls me. They want to sell more KoЯn records in France, and they ask if the fan club can help. I say sure, but is there a chance of an internship as I really want to get into the music industry? So for the next two and half years, I get up super early every morning and work on the KoЯn fan club before working for Sony all day. And then at night, I am reporting and photographing bands for rock magazines. These were crazy 16 hour + days that all blurred together.”
“Shooting bands from the photo pit was ok, but the real action was up on stage and that's where I needed to be. Wanting to tour with KoЯn and live in America was my ultimate life dream. So I did everything I could to surround them with my energy and creativity. Later in 2004, I finally packed my bag with more CDs than clothes and finally left France forever to live in America.”
“I did what so many people have done before. I arrived in LA with no job and only one phone number in my pocket. After a while, somebody from The Firm Inc (KoЯn's management) called me back saying that Jonathan Davis wanted me to work for KoЯn. The band was between cycles with a lot of things changing, including a new record label, so they wanted a new photographer, cinematographer and webmaster. And that's how my life came to be connected to the guys in KoЯn, who I genuinely count as my brothers.”
“My life with KoЯn has been like living some surreal dream where you wish for something and then it comes true! But making that wish was never going to be easy. To live my dream meant that I had to leave my disabled mother, along with my ageing grandfather and grandmother. The three most important people in my world happily celebrated my liberation from France and my new journey to Los Angeles. I guess my approach to work and the people I care for still reflects something of my grandfather's family honor.”
“Much of my determination comes from my mother, who is truly an inspiration to everyone she knows. Mom was in her late twenties when she was diagnosed with MS, and after my father left her, she remained on her own determined to control her disease. Her focus was on keeping her job for as long as she could, just to keep the bills paid. Her life is a constant world of doctors visits each week in order to stay in control of her disease.”
“A few years ago she flew all the way to Los Angeles and hiked up to the Hollywood Sign with me. Having my mom with me, looking out over Los Angeles will forever be one of the most important highlights of my life. Especially considering that her doctors had predicted decades earlier that she would assuredly be wheelchair-bound. But here I was with the person who inspired me most to live my dream and to reach for the impossible. To have such an incredibly powerful woman in my life has made up for all those shitty moments that happened during my childhood.”
“I started my journey with a French band of brothers, in my cousin Sam and best mates Nicolas and Guillaume. My world then merged with the guys from KoЯn, who adopted me as their 'youngest' member of their brotherhood. And if that wasn't great enough luck, I was to then meet another super strong woman with the same powerful qualities as my mother”.
“I first met my partner Alison on tour with KoЯn at 'Hellfest' in France, of all places. Alison also works in the film industry and just so happened to be at the KoЯn concert with a friend. When we first met, she naturally thought I lived in France and was a local cinematographer working for the band's management. Then she found out that I was actually working with the band in the US and only lived a mile and half from her. I felt the 'circle of life' once more, taking me to France with KoЯn to meet my life partner in the US.”
“A year and half later, we start dating and then five years later, Ali became the mother of our child. Ali is a commercial director in the world of advertising, so our worlds intersect through our love of music and film. If you had told me ten years ago, I would be moving to the US and working for the band that I grew up idolizing and via that band, was to meet somebody I would fall in love with, I would not have believed you!”
“But here I am now, working creatively side by side with somebody that I love and respect. Somebody that's such a strong female role model. Someone that shares the same determined qualities with my mom back in France. Ali is a strong woman who fights for female representation, diversity and equality. A modern day feminist, I would say.”
“One of the projects that we worked on together was a documentary for Dr Martens about feminism in punk. This was the perfect project for the marriage of our skills as filmmakers. Ali ran all of the interviews and I did the cinematography, and then she led me down the path of the edit using her directorial eye. Our collaboration on this project is the perfect metaphor for our lives together.”
“We see our house as a living place and a workplace as well. So we do everything from home. Ali has her office and I have mine, and every day all day, we keep going back and forth between mine and hers and vice versa. And we collaborate on stuff all the time. She's involved in everything that I do, even if she's not credited, and the same goes the other way around. I am now her editor for most of her commercial work. I never thought I would ever be editing work for Netflix, American Express and the latest beauty products and shampoos etc. But where we really come together is when we do music videos or music centric projects. She's the director and I'm the eye behind the lens - and also the two very tired eyes in front of the editing screen!”
“My life has been full of these 'full circle moments' where my present life and past life keep merging. The more I look at my life, the more of these moments I can see. The very first band I ever worked for as a photographer/videographer and webmaster was for the French metal band Mass Hysteria. They had opened for KoЯn for their 2000 Tour, just when I first met the guys from KoЯn. So there's a good history to all of this.”
“Only a couple of years ago, Mass Hysteria were wanting to promote their tenth album and were looking for a new creative direction. After all of these years, the whole band decides to fly to Los Angeles so I can direct and shoot their new music video. I thought that was a beautiful thing, that the French band I love and started my career with would make such a big investment in me.”
“As part of the full circle moment, I asked my partner Ali to co-direct this special project with me. We even had our one year old son, Cobain, cast for it as well, which just made the whole journey even sweeter for me. And that's been my life and career - one full circle moment after another!”