Classical composer, rapper, performance artist, producer, muse, entertainer and artiste. Chilly ‘Gonzo’ Gonzales reveals what it is to be a music artist in 2024. A conversation that now has me re-writing my book about longevity. “I couldn’t have been a polite concert pianist. It just wasn’t in my DNA”. We are the beneficiaries of his polymathy.

EPISODE 64: Chilly Gonzales opens the kimono

When I heard the Chilly Gonzales song Neoclassical Massacre, I immediately got in touch with his management and label to get Gonzo on the Art of Longevity. Not only are his views on AI and background music incisive, but Gonzo has some strong opinions about the music industry and the modern culture in which it operates. 

The ever-evolving tension between creativity and commerce has been a career-long exploration for Gonzo. It makes him the perfect guest for The Art of Longevity. Indeed, his own career has been a perfect metaphorical rollercoaster of ups and downs. After a few years on the scene as an alternative/performance artist (which he very much is right now) he had surprise success with a quiet piano instrumental album Solo Piano (2004). Only to follow up with a full-on 70s influenced pop album, launching a brief and unspectacular phase as a major label pop artist. 

“That first Solo Piano surprise success was a foundational moment in encouraging me to continue to take risks. When and if I wanna go back there it will be a very beautiful thing, so long as I am doing it for the right reasons, there is something fluffy and safe about it for me.”

As for the pop record Soft Power, it became his “misunderstood masterpiece”, illustrating that you can always make failures part of your narrative after the fact. 

“It became an opportunity for me to make it a retrospective part of my mythology - injecting a bit of drama to my career”. 

Fluffy and safe isn’t a typical Chilly Gonzales career choice. Indeed, on the new self-titled album, he returns to his alternative origins, rapping on most tracks. And without doubt, he is a scholar of Rap - not only on a musical level, but on a cultural level. Rap seems more influential on his career than his impeccable classical training. No other musician I can think of blends the two in such an inimitable way. As such, on new album Gonzo, the songs come across as both avant garde and yet hugely entertaining at the same time. 

With the track ‘F*ck Wagner’, he takes on Cancel Culture. On ‘Surfing The Crowd’, he parodies his own career and the tensions between persuasion and confession; the persuasion of the music industry and all those requests to play the fame game, versus the confessional, conflicting messages at work inside the mind of the artist. With ‘Open The Kimono’, he threatens to expose all of these contradictions for all to see, with hilarious results. All these tracks are marvellously entertaining. 

“The best works of art will always function on a superficial level that brings you in - everybody is on the same page now - we are all trying to succeed by having a catchy song that can live on 20 second snippets on TikTok but artists who are doing it at the highest levels are still managing to sneak in a deeper artistic meaning or holding up a mirror to society. “Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan or Melanie Martinez…you can tell their goal is for their music to exist on both levels…that’s something that Rap gifted culture”. 

My personal favourite still is ‘Neoclassical Massacre’. With the enormous popularity of ‘lean back’ playlists such as Spotify’s Peaceful Piano, gifted composers just like Gonzales began writing piano pieces made for such playlists. And yet all those composers are inadvertently feeding the algorithmic core of ‘focus music’, made “for someone in their kitchen trying to finish their thesis” as he puts it. The practice is hilariously skewered throughout the song: 

“I hate it when my ears are not surprised
That’s when you know the composition’s compromised
The piano has been monetised
All those fingers trying to hit the sweet spot
They’ve been Spotified”.

It does bring us to the conversation about AI generated music and whether artists will eventually be replaced, starting with functional music made to please the algorithm. Long story short, Gonzo is not in the least worried.  

“What is more neutered and devoid of specificity than AI music? AI doesn’t suffer. Humans suffer which makes them capable of being artists. I think there will be a culling of artists, and the only ones left standing will be the true originals who cannot be replicated.”

When it comes to learning curves, Gonzo has been on so many he could teach The Art of Longevity at music school. In fact, he sort of did do that. He launched his own music school, ‘The Gonzervatory’, an eight-day all-expenses-paid residential music performance workshop in Paris. That was just before the pandemic. 

“It’s a cliche by now, but you do learn more from things that don’t work. You are inclined to gloss over what made something successful because your ego takes over. When it doesn’t work you have to wake up to reality. It’s discomfort but artists are not supposed to be comfortable”. 

For every big dipper in his roller coaster career, Gonzales seems to bounce back - as if each ‘failure’ powers a fresh artistic cycle that powers the roller coaster to another career high. If Liza Minelli really did say that “a career in show business is a series of comebacks”, then Chilly seems to live by the mantra. But each and every career phase reflects what he wants to do, not what his audience or industry stakeholders might want. 

“After Soft Power I put out Ivory Tower (which was my most successful non-instrumental record and even gave me my biggest song, "Night Moves”. [The failure of] Soft Power enabled that to happen”. I doubled down on the idea that I would become more and more myself. Not to spend my hard-earned precious mental energy and time convincing gatekeepers on why I want to do things”. 

It seems incredible that he has figured out how to navigate the music industry in this way, when so many artists feel like they have to make songs that please gatekeepers, or that will attract the attention of the algorithm. Or a record that can repeat a previous success and keep the gravy train going. In the end though, that is where artists get lost and where madness lies. 

But what about coping with the celebrity aspect of being a successful modern music artist? As someone who has placed persona and performance so central to his music career, Gonzales has nonetheless remained an enigma. Little is really known about what’s really under the kimono. But this only adds to his allure. 

“You have to maintain a mystery but at the same time give people access to you. I don’t want to reveal mundane details about my personal life but I do want to give people access to my thoughts and opinions. Leave a breadcrumb trail for those who want to pour over every detail but also be elusive at the same time. I feel like I’m in enemy territory when I’m forced into any mainstream situation - breakfast radio or a television show. But when on those platforms you can still speak to the people who will hear the dog whistles”. 

As this episode goes live, I’m near to completing the book on The Art of Longevity, but the conversation gave me the distinct impression that Gonzales could write the book far better than I can. He has covered every angle to longevity; a hit song (Night Moves), a classic album (Solo Piano), record label battlescars (Soft Power), cult status and - most importantly self-mythology, the act of an artist keeping their dignity while throwing their hat into the ring:

“I fell in love with comedy, I fell in love with extreme performance, I fell in love with Rap music. All of those things inform who I am. I couldn’t have been a polite concert pianist. It just wasn’t in my DNA”. 

Without ever being a household name, the fact that he has legend is in little doubt. For evidence, check out a fantastic and surreal moment in the Paralympic opening ceremony in which, as President Macron exits the stage, Gonzo enters, dressed in a splendid Louis-Gabriel Nouchi cape. He cracks his knuckles in Bugs Bunny style before taking his place at the piano stool. And then plays so beautifully. 

You would have to be deluded to have predicted a moment like that a few years ago, but delusion, it turns out, is a key weapon in the Chilly Gonzales creative arsenal. 

“You have to have a certain amount of delusion - to be deluded enough to believe that what you have to say deserves a platform. “You have to imagine that every song you’ve made is worth being a hit”. 

As I said, when it comes to lessons for longevity, he could write the book.