“Miraval has always been an inspiring sanctuary for me and my friends. I wanted it to be that again for musicians and other creators. » The author of these remarks, collected by the American weekly of the music industry Billboard as of October 2022, is not a musician or sound engineer. But a Hollywood star owner, since 2011, of the wine estate with some 7 million bottles of rosé: Brad Pitt. Because if the places, in Correns, in the Var, are famous, it is also for their history – major – in the musical production of the second part of the XXe century.
In the same way as the legendary studio of the Château d’Hérouville, which, in the heart of Val-d’Oise, had given birth from the beginning of the 1970s to masterpieces by David Bowie, Elton John or T. Rex, this heavenly corner of the Var has in fact housed one of the most legendary French musical production laboratories. But, after having seen the parade of Pink Floyd, The Cure, AC/DC, Sade, Sting, Indochine or Alain Bashung, the recording studio founded in the mid-1970s by pianist Jacques Loussier (1934-2019) and the sound engineer Patrice Quef (1944-2021) had not survived the record crisis of the 2000s and the advent of the home studio.
The “Brangelina”
This summer, Miraval came back to life with great fanfare. Dominating the 900-hectare property, 1,000 square meters of buildings installed above the estate’s cellar are thus dedicated to the registration and well-being of the artists. At their disposal: three audio and video editing units, two large live performance rooms, a console resembling the cockpit of a spaceship, residential suites, a living room, a kitchen, an outdoor saltwater swimming pool…
Taking in the humidity, his equipment forgotten under tarpaulins, the live-room original – a room of almost 300 square meters where the musicians recorded – had lain dormant for almost two decades, like a Sleeping Beauty waiting for her prince. It’s hard to dream of a better cast than the actor of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), by David Fincher, whose hero is born old and dies a newborn, to decide to spectacularly wake up and rejuvenate the Miraval studio. Before the divorce, in 2016, of Brad Pitt and actress Angelina Jolie, the former studio of the estate bought by the couple served their children as a playroom or music room. Rumor has it that one of Brad Pitt’s friends, the very music lover Clint Eastwood, would have made him aware of the historical dimension of the place. In Billboard, the actor claimed that it had always been a question for him of « retype the studio (…) There is no question of relaunching this place without making it something special”. All that remained was to find the right partner.
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