An exclusive interview with the French rock band “Last Train”, whose exclusivity is given by the fact that this is their first interview they have given to a Serbian media outlet. Parts of this interview were used for an article that had its print edition publication on February 19, 2020.
The band profiled itself through various stages of musical influences, in order to eventually develop and define a completely new and unusual sound of European/French rock.
During the tour that promoted their then new album “The Big Picture”, they performed on February 8, 2020 at the “Svetozar Marković” gymnasium in the city of Jagodina, Serbia. Our fellow citizens had the opportunity to hear a modern, vanguard sound of French rock. There were a lot of people in the hall of the gymnasium, and the audience reception was excellent.
Their fans are very important to them. They like to share good energy and experiences with them. The rules of the music scene affected them, but they managed to adapt and maintain their vanguard status. They are not giving up on their fans, and they are now adjusting the rules of the music world to themselves, their needs and their way of functioning.
In the meantime, they released two more albums: “Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” (2024) and “III” (2025). They also shot the short film “How Did We Get There?” (2022) which can be viewed for free on their official website.
The interview with the band “Last Train” is published in its entirety, in an integral version, retroactively.
alxspirit: Can you tell us something more about the band and about the formation of the band, and the general idea?
Last Train: The band started as a school-band. We met when we were 12-13 years old, and right when we met, we started to play together. Just like some people go to football, we just played together, and we did that for some years. We discovered that we really like touring, so, Jean-Noël started to book some tours in France, and right after we got our driver’s licenses, we went to different countries like Germany, UK, etc. It’s basically a real-life band. We enjoy doing gigs a lot. We did a lot of gigs, around 250 shows. And yes, we met when we were 13, but now we are 25, all of us, so it’s been quite a while, but it’s really cool.
alxspirit: What are your major musical influences as a band?
Last Train: We love a lot of music. We listen to a lot of music. When we were young, I guess that one band that really changed our way to think about music and to make music (I’m thinking about all life) – it was a British band from Manchester – “Led Zeppelin”, of course. When we discovered them, it was like a big change in our life. Right now it’s a bit different because we’re older, so we’re not listening to those classic bands. We, of course, love them, but we listen to a lot of classical music. We listen to hip-hop, we can listen to electronic music, and a lot of other stuff. I think that’s very interesting because we play rock music, but we have a lot of influences that are not about rock. We like to do some research and to discover new bands, every time and every time again, it’s really important for us, in a way that there was a time we were stuck in the same bands, but that period is over, and I’m pretty glad that everybody is just bringing some new stuff. We’re sharing a lot of stuff altogether, so I guess it’s a richer situation for us as musicians, and as composers too, because we are influenced by a lot of different stuff, not only Rock and Roll music.
alxspirit: You are a relatively young, yet very affirmed band, pretty prospective band. So, we want to ask you – In the world of “instant-culture” and “candy-music”, how do you maintain your professional and vanguard status, and develop yourselves?
Last Train: That’s a very interesting question. Maybe it’s a fact that we just gave a lot of shows before we released our first album in 2017, we did a lot of shows, we did like 300 shows in France mostly, but so in Europe, so I guess that people know us. We have some fan-base that really follow us, thanks to live music. So, we’re not in that “instant” stuff, like you said. We’re more like getting some people with us, video by video, song by song. Tonight was our first time in Serbia, but we know that if we want a real crowd of people we have to come back again and again, and not only once. Beside the tour, we created our own label company, and our own booking agency. We do the management, and we co-manage the band. Since the beginning, it’s really important to us to control everything, even the photos, the strategy, everything. We control everything, and it’s a lot of work for us, beside the tour, beside the studio time. It’s not artistic work – it’s business work, but we like it, because like this, we can do whatever we want and we can come through, because we had the experience to work with another label and other people around us. It was not the best experience we had, so we are glad to be a real independent band. I think the people know and understand that. We read all the comments on Facebook and Instagram. We read what the people say. We can see and feel the people, and we can maybe say that it’s a big family.
alxspirit: What are your plans for the future?
Last Train: We just released “The Big Picture” in last September, so now we are touring a lot, and we’re trying new things, like coming here in Serbia and other eastern-Europe countries. Yeah, we’re gonna tour a lot, we have many projects. For now, for two years it will be about touring. Summer is coming soon with a lot of festivals. We always have a different time-frame for what we want to do. Now, it’s eastern-Europe, after that it will be France again, Germany, Asia… We love to tour in Asia. We were in different times in Japan, in China, in South Korea. For Last Train, touring is the main goal.
alxspirit: Can you tell us something about your impressions from this night’s event?
Last Train: It’s the very first time that we play here in Serbia, so it means a lot to us, because we like to tour all around the world, but it was our very first time tonight here, so we were surprised, I guess, with so many people. We would like to thank our promoter Vladimir. He’s really nice and he did a great job, I guess, and yes, it was a great evening, people were pretty receptive.
Last Train: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Deezer, Spotify, Apple, X.
Official web-page: www.lasttrain.fr
Photo credit: Rémi Gettliffe.
Notes: Parts of the interview were used for the article that was first published in the press on February 19, 2020. This interview was given by Jean-Noël Scherrer (vocals and guitar), Julien Peultier (guitar), and Antoine Baschung (drums). They all gave their answers as a band.
Date: February 8/9, 2020.
For keeping in touch with us visit/follow our Facebook page in English.
For more photos and video material visit/follow our Instagram account.
For more information about the upcoming articles visit/follow our X account.
alxspirit 