Luis Alberto Spinetta
Luis Alberto Spinetta (Buenos Aires, January 23, 1950-Ib., February 8, 2012) was an Argentine singer, guitarist, poet, writer and composer, considered one of the most important and respected musicians from Argentina, Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world for the instrumental, lyrical and poetic complexity of their musical works, both in their multiple groups and as a soloist. The Argentine government established January 23 as "National Day of the Musician" in honor of his birth.
In his initial years, Spinetta would form various rock bands in the 60s and 70s that would be extremely influential and important in the evolution of national and Latin American rock, such as Almendra, Pescado Rabioso and Invisible, which would introduce genres like hard rock, blues, and progressive rock in the Argentine music scene. Accredited under the name of the second group, El Flaco would publish his second solo album, Artaud (1973), considered the best album in the history of Argentine national rock and a masterpiece teacher of Latin music. In the 80s and 90s, he would go on to form the equally influential bands Spinetta Jade and Spinetta y los Socios del Desierto, in addition to publishing anthological albums as a soloist, such as Téster de violencia (1988), Don Lucero (1989) and Pelusón of milk (1991), turning more towards sounds of jazz, pop and electronic music. Finally, during the 2000s he would release his latest works as a soloist, and in 2008 he would release his last album, Un mañana, along with the recital Spinetta y las Bandas Eternas in 2009, where he celebrated his forty-year career during a five and a half hour concert in front of 40,000 people at the José Amalfitani Stadium. A year later, it was considered the recital of the decade. He died in 2012 at the age of 62, due to lung cancer caused by his addiction to cigarettes, his ashes were scattered in Río de la Plata, this being the last will of the musician.
In 2005 he won the Konex Platinum Award as the most outstanding male rock soloist of the decade in Argentina, the same award he won in 1985 and 1995, as rock author/composer and male rock singer respectively. His song "Muchacha (ojos de papel)" was considered in 2002 by the Argentine edition of Rolling Stone magazine and MTV as the second best Argentine rock song of all time and the twenty-eighth of Latin American rock. In total, Spinetta released 376 of his own songs during his life. In 1997 Billboard magazine defined him as an "Argentine rock icon", and in 2001 the newspaper Página /12 considered him the most influential artist in the history of Argentine rock, after conducting a survey with local rock celebrities.
Biography
1950-1966: Childhood and adolescence
Luis Alberto Spinetta was born in Buenos Aires on January 23, 1950, the second of three siblings (Ana María, Luis Alberto and Carlos Gustavo). His family had lived since 1940 in the Núñez neighborhood, on the very edge of with the Bajo Belgrano neighborhood, just two blocks from the River neighborhood. His house was located at 2853 Arribeños street, between Congreso and Quesada streets, in the first apartment of a horizontal property building, with a window to the street. that house performed Almendra's first rehearsals, and also rehearsed Pescado Rabioso. He spent his last days at his house at Iberá 5009, in Villa Urquiza, 35 blocks from his birthplace. From his childhood and his neighborhood near the River Plate stadium, he drew a passion for soccer and sympathy by the red band club, which he refers to in "Captain Beto's ring".
His father, Luis Santiago Spinetta, was an amateur tango singer, who came to form a group accompanied by guitarists, and to sing on some radios under the pseudonyms of Luis Martínez Solar or Carlos Omar. To him belong the lyrics and the music of the theme «Hombre de luz», included in his last album Un mañana (2008). With this influence, Luis Alberto began to sing tangos from a very young age, and from the age of 4, his Family, especially his uncles, encouraged him to sing at family gatherings. The tango influence will be noticeable in all the musician's work.
In addition to her father, Spinetta credited her uncles with an important influence on her taste in music. Three of them worked for the Columbia record label and gave him access to a wide variety of musical expressions, at a time when access to records was considerably expensive.
He completed his primary studies at School No. 22 (DE 10) "Remedios de Escalada de San Martín", located at Roosevelt 1510. rock exploded worldwide, thanks to Elvis Presley and -especially in Argentina- Bill Halley, through the film Al compás del reloj, released in Argentina in January 1957, and his visit to the country in 1958. But at the same time, Argentina was experiencing the so-called “folklore boom”, a musical renewal inspired by traditional musical rhythms, which brought folk music to the forefront of popularity.
Spinetta spontaneously began to compose songs from a very young age, before even learning to play an instrument. His father tells that among them, he composed a hymn to Sarmiento.
I had fun imitating singers, copying sounds. That's why music was born in me before words.Luis Alberto Spinetta
When she was still in elementary school, she sang for the first time in public, coincidentally, during a carnival in San Miguel de Tucumán, the city where her uncles and cousins lived. Spinetta has said that this was his debut and that they "threw him on top of a stage, like a sheep", refusing to tell what song he sang. more detailed:
"It was carnival and here the children's corsos were organized in San Martín Street. They had come to Tucumán Luis Alberto, his parents, and Gustavo and Ana, his brothers. The boys disguised us and made us parade and they also disguised them." Spinetta became Tarzan. It was what was in the house of the Saints: a small animal print short and a stick knife. That was all, and he looked like he was the most potent of ape men. "It was a joke, an absurd thing to see. He was tall, very skinny, his ribs were marked and he had blond hair. It was very funny, I remember it clearly," says Susana with a smile. "The locutor, from an armed stage at the door of the gallery, selected some public boys and brought them up. He saw Luis Alberto and invited him. He went up, grabbed the microphone and without any kind of inhibition he began to sing "Pity Pity", by Billy Cafaro... It was an ovation. He sang capella with all confidence. He was a fan of that song and people applauded him a lot. When he began to dedicate himself to music he was horrified when I reminded him of that."
The initial steps with the guitar are in the last years of primary school. His first guitar was lent to him "indefinitely" by José & # 34; Machín & # 34; Gomez, a neighbor and famous personage of the River Plate Club, and his first lessons were given by Dionisio Visoná, a guitarist who had accompanied his father. Those would be his only guitar lessons, since he would soon become a musician autodidact.
I had already developed a whole musical personality without being able to play, imitating with the mouth the sounds of Bill Haley, the voices of Little Richard or Louis Armstrong, and when I started to take those classes it was logical for me to get something folkloric. Then the Chalchaleros were very fashionable. It was the time of the boom of folklore, of "Zamba of my hope" and of the "Sapo cancionero". That's where I realized that a net musical spirit triumphed because I started to draw all kinds of music no matter where it came from. My sister bought a magazine called Noralí, and there appeared "Ki chorororo", the first song I drew with the full chords. When I had the first notions, I developed a mechanism and I was able to draw any music. I was 12 and I was about to start high school.Luis Alberto Spinetta
He entered secondary school in 1963 to graduate in 1967. Spinetta recounted several times that his artistic debut occurred in 1964, in a television contest on the program Escala Musical, on Channel 13. However, His father mentions that that same year he also sang in a children's program called La pandilla One and Two (later he changed the name as Pandilla Uanantú), which was broadcast on Channel 9 between March and May 1964. In any case, for her television appearances during the Escala Musical contest, she performed two songs: the bolero "En una forma total" by Javier Solís and "Sabor a nada" by Palito Ortega, then in full swing of the Clan Club. The singer reached the final and lost to an all-female group called Las Medias Negras, who enjoyed some success in the kind of pop-beat music that Club del Clan and New Wave embodied in the early 1990s. sixty.
At the time of the Clan Club, I was very fan of all that. Until the Beatles appeared.Luis Alberto Spinetta
Like millions of young people around the world, The Beatles produced a complete rupture in Luis Alberto's musical sensibilities. That year, 1964, was precisely the year of Beatlemania and the first thing he did with the money he won in the Musical Scale contest was to buy the album Beatles for Sale, which the Liverpool group launched in London near the end of the year. Spinetta also highlighted the decisive influence it had on him - and the origin of "national rock" in Argentina - the Uruguayan band Los Shakers and its leader in particular Hugo Fattoruso.
In this period he was already regularly composing zambas and rock songs in English and even in Spanish, something quite unusual in Spanish-speaking countries at that time. Two songs that would later be part of his repertoire date from 1965: «Mud maybe» and «Prayer for a sleeping child», the first a «rocked» zamba in Spanish (a «beatle theme», as he used to say), precursor of « national rock» that would explode two years later with Los Gatos, and that would integrate the album Kamikaze (1982). The second song expresses the poetic sensibility that would characterize him and was included in his first album with Almendra.
In 1965 Spinetta became involved almost simultaneously with two English-language rock bands from the neighborhood: Los Larkins and Los Sbirros. Los Larkins was led by Rodolfo García, future Almendra drummer, a boy four years older than "Flaco" who, although a resident of the same neighborhood, went to a public industrial school and worked in a mechanical workshop, differentiating him socially from the other group.. Los Sbirros was a band of students from the school that Luis Alberto attended, and which was led by Edelmiro Molinari, who even then stood out for his mastery of the electric guitar, and which was also made up of Emilio del Guercio and his brother. Angel. Luis started at Los Larkins but the groups got closer.
Spinetta was studying high school at Instituto San Román, a prestigious Catholic school located at Migueletes 2039, near her home. With Del Guercio, they were bank partners, and they established a close friendship, sharing rebelliousness, musical and artistic tastes, and the edition of a precarious magazine that bore the name La Costra Degenerada. They even came to form a duo, called Bundlemen, parallel to Los Larkins and Los Sbirros. They mainly performed songs by The Beatles or ""Shame and scandal in the family", a calypso-reggae classic, but they also performed their own songs, such as "Vergüenza" and a tribute song to Che Guevara (Spinetta thought that Che was a kind of "hyperbeatle") and a musical show that they called Tribute to lysergic acid . His intention was to shock and shake the guidelines of the Catholic and conservative framework that the school imposed on them, often pointing to its rector, Tristán Baena.
Los Larkins were modifying their integration and changing their name, first to Los Masters and then to Los Mods. With this name they recorded in 1966 an acetate with two songs in English: "Faces and Things" and "Free", whose authors were Guido Meda and Apócrifo, the latter the pseudonym chosen by Spinetta to sign those early songs.
Little by little, Los Mods and Los Sbirros merged to form a quintet made up of Spinetta (vocals), Rodolfo García (drums), Emilio del Guercio (bass), Edelmiro Molinari (guitar) and Santiago Chago Novoa (keyboards). It was the end of 1966, Luis Alberto had not yet turned 17 and the foundations for Almendra were laid.
One of the fundamental things that were spoken at that embryonic stage was that we felt a wave of things that were spoken in Spanish, we knew that there were Los Gatos Salvajes, Billy Bond... It came from there that our music was going to be in Spanish. At that stage I had already composed "Plegaria for a sleeping child" or the zamba that I later made in Kamikaze (“Barro perhaps”). Ours was that we wanted to be all at once: Piazzolla, Los Beatles, Los Double Six Paris. We were going to listen to jazz, we liked cutting-edge folklore, at that time came Waldo de los Ríos with electronic sounds and was uncommon, I watched him on television and I was crying because he said, "This is also a vanguard." We listened to Rovira, Mederos, a lot of music that wasn't the Clan Club. Of all those conversations and hours lost, of all those letters with Rodolfo, part of the premise of creating a music with a freedom of full horizon. Almond wasn't a coincidence.Luis Alberto Spinetta
1967-1970: Almond
The group that would form Almendra was ready at the beginning of 1967, but Rodolfo García was called up for military service. This fact delayed the departure of the band for a year, precisely in that crucial year, in which "La balsa" de Los Gatos, an original rock song sung in Spanish composed by Litto Nebbia and Tanguito, became a massive success and marked the beginning of a new musical style that would be known in Argentina as "national rock".
1967, 1968 and 1969 were years of great cultural transformations in Argentina and in the world, placing youth as a differentiated social group: the summer of love that marked the birth of the hippie movement, the murder of Che Guevara in Bolivia, the French May, the Cordobazo. In this context, the tendencies that were already appearing in the adolescent Spinetta germinated -who coincided with other young Argentines embarking on similar searches-, of taking the avant-garde of tango and folklore, to originate a type of rock with a local climate, sung in Spanish. The fact constituted a cultural rupture of enormous proportions, because the aesthetic patterns of that moment did not accept the possibility that rock had an autonomous expression in the Spanish language.
I had those zambas but I did not know how to go through the abyss that existed between the traditional concept of Argentine song and the passion that aroused in my Los Beatles.
I had already done many songs in Spanish, but I was afraid to sing them. We always sang them in the family core. I was afraid they would interpret them as martian things, which were not natural.Luis Alberto Spinetta
In 1968 Spinetta and Del Guercio entered the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Buenos Aires and later studied fine arts at the Manuel Belgrano School. They also joined JAEN, a Peronist group founded by Rodolfo Galimberti in resistance against the military dictatorship that governed at that time and that a few years later would integrate the Montoneros guerrilla organization. The band's activities led them to leave their active militancy, although Del Guercio continued to be linked to left-wing Peronist groups. This commitment political will be visible in the song "Camino difículo", by Del Guercio, which would later be included in Almendra II («Comrade, take my rifle, come and hug your General»)..
In March of 1968, García was discharged and the group began rehearsing daily. Novoa, the keyboard player, simply stopped going to rehearsals and the quintet was finally left as the quartet that would go down in history: Luis Alberto Spinetta (lead vocals and guitar), Rodolfo García (drums and vocals), Emilio del Guercio (bass and vocals) and Edelmiro Molinari (lead guitar and vocals).
In mid-1968 Ricardo Kleiman, producer of the radio program Modart at night, enormously popular among the youth of those years, went to see a rehearsal of the band, where they played the theme "Where are you going Mary Sue?", a song in English by Spinetta himself. Kleiman was pleased and offered to record a single on RCA with Rodolfo Alchourron as artistic director. The album was released in November and went on sale the following year, with "Tema de Pototo" as side A, and "El mundo entre las manos" as side B. The first a song composed by Spinetta with Edelmiro Molinari, and the second an own song.
In August, the magazine Pinap produced one of the first chronicles referring to Spinetta:
Almendra is called the set that will surely become the sensation of the next Porteña spring. The group's cap, José Luis (sic), according to some of the understandings, is destined to be a species of prolific Argentine Lennon.
That same year, the RCA Víctor record company used various songs by Spinetta for other artists of the company to record. In this way "Tema de Pototo" is also recorded by Leonardo Favio under the title "To know how loneliness is", obtaining a resounding success throughout Latin America. The duo Bárbara y Dick also recorded a single, which would be released the following year, with two songs by Spinetta, "Hoy ya no se puede" and "Tristeza por todos partes", the latter co-authored with Rodolfo García. Finally, Los In they record "Where are you going Mary Sue?", the song by Spinetta and Del Guercio that Kleiman heard when he heard Almendra for the first time, being included in the album Nuestra juventud, released that same year.
Almendra's debut took place at the Matoko's nightclub in Mar del Plata, in January 1969. The local newspaper El Trabajo reported the following:
The set sounds really good. The boys are called Carlos Emilio, Rodolfo, Teddy and Luis Alberto. Some have chivita and all long, long hair. About twenty years and they don't like to sing in English, even if they like to sing in English. "The time is over to repeat what others do or to make translations and ready. We have to sing to ours, to the real," they say.
In March, after the summer season ended, they were first invited to play at the Ancón Festival, in Peru, where they made two presentations, and on March 24 they made their first public performance in Buenos Aires, at the Instituto Say Tella. Two weeks later they appeared at the Teatro del Globo in Buenos Aires, premiering several songs by Spinetta that would make up the first LP, such as "Fermín", "Figuración" and "Ana no sleepe", and some from the second, such as "Today all the ice in the city" and "Campos verdes". The recital was recorded casually and at home by Amadeo Álvarez, singer of Los In and a friend of the band, and was edited and released as an album in 2004 by the newspaper Página/12, constituting a remarkable historical document, and in which Spinetta themes can be heard that do not exist in other versions such as "Family Tragedy".
Spinetta began to propose an unclassifiable style of music, without preconceptions, in which poetry also played a determining role. "Spinetta proves that the poetic act in rock is inseparable from sound", says Fernando García in the issue that La Mano magazine devoted entirely to the musician in 2006.
The group released two other singles ("Today the city is all ice/Campos verdes" and "Gabinetes espaciales/Final") and made two video clips ("Campos verdes" and "El mundo entre las manos"), considered one of the the first video clips made in Argentina. On Sunday June 6 at the Teatro Coliseo, in the series of recitals organized by the magazine Pinap, they premiered "Girl (ojos de papel)". The theme expressed Spinetta's feelings for his first great love, Cristina Bustamante, and would become one of the most important songs in the Latin American popular songbook.
In mid-1969 the entire group was interviewed on the program of Argentina's leading political journalist, Bernardo Neustadt. Neustadt strongly criticized Almendra's appearance and music in particular and the new "national rock" that arose, treating his young guests as "ignorant" and "mediocre". Faced with the grievances, Spinetta got up and withdrew from the program.
Also in 1969 Spinetta participated in the magazine Lo inadvertido, a psychedelic semi-clandestine publication that adhered to the hippie culture, elaborated and drawn by hand under the effects of LSD in which Marta Minujín also participated, Skay Beilinson, Daniel Beilinson and Miguel Abuelo. Spinetta made a kind of note that he signs as Luis, just plain, written by hand inside a large face drawn with outlines, which begins by saying:
It's absurd that I try to talk to you about music because I'm Luis and I'm the music. Why talk about music? If you must be music and we must all be music.Luis, It's unnoticed.
1969-1970: Historical album and separation
(Libro_Almendra).jpg)
In mid-1969 and throughout the second semester, Almendra dedicated herself to recording her first full-length album, Almendra I, a historic album repeatedly considered the best Argentine rock album and even one of the best in the world. Released on January 15, 1970, the cover is a drawing by Spinetta himself depicting a kind of crying clown, with a toy arrow in his head. The record company tried to discard the illustration, intentionally losing it, but Luis Alberto redrew it, demanding that the cover be made according to his instructions.Cartoonist Miguel Rep considers it one of the ten best covers he has seen in his life.
The album is made up of nine songs, all of them of an unusual level and all of them highlights from the Argentine songbook. Seven themes belong to Spinetta: "Girl (paper eyes)", "Figuration", "Ana does not sleep", "Fermín", "Prayer for a sleeping child", "To these sad men" and "Laura goes". Among them, "Muchacha (ojos de papel)" stands out, considered by many to be the best song in the history of Argentine rock. In the song "Laura va", the participation on bandoneon Rodolfo Mederos, a tango musician of the Piazzolan line, stands out, in a very unusual case of exchange between tango and rock at that time. The album reflects a variety of musical roots, from tango and folklore, to Sgt. Pepper's by The Beatles, creatively combined without preconceived schemes and with a poetic complexity that seemed incompatible with mass diffusion, although tango had already been characterized by a solid link with poetry.
Media criticism was mixed. At that moment, Spinetta's reluctant attitude towards the big media began.
The guys were overwhelmed that I accentuated badly, "plegariá" type and other paved like that and much of the resistance I have towards the press was born at that time when I realized that several massive magazines like People or Seven Days They made notes and misrepresented the answers.Luis Alberto Spinetta
On the 40th anniversary of the release of the album, Del Guercio reflected on its meaning:
Today those themes are classic but, at that time, they were considered avant-garde. Over time I realized that most of them are endowed with the song tradition of our country. They're Argentine songs. The real vanguard revolutionizes what it inherits. Almendra, he was heir to the best Argentine music and combined his elements without any prejudice.Emilio del Guercio
The album was a success and established the band. However, the artistic and personal differences between its members were very important, and after the preparation of a rock opera failed, the group broke up in September 1970.
Almendra's last artistic act was to produce a double album known as Almendra II, which contains well-known songs by Spinetta, such as the manalesco "Rutas argentinas", "The Elephants" (reaction to the cruelty of the film Mondo Cane), and "Parvas", a theme highlighted by Spinetta for its psychedelic profile and the influence of Millet's paintings. includes five songs by Edelmiro Molinari, among them his classic "Mestizo", three songs by Emilio del Guercio and two songs composed jointly between Spinetta and Del Guercio.
It was an album of aesthetic rupture that reflected the heterogeneity that the band had acquired and the different projections that its members had undertaken that year. For Spinetta it was about reaching the "paroxysm", "that our music would disintegrate". The magazine Rolling Stone would place it in 2007 in position #40 among the hundred best albums in the history of rock Argentine national.
The reasons for the separation of Almendra are complex and each member varies in the analysis. Each one had evolved a lot musically and started to have different projects. Almendra had also been promoted by RCA as a marketing operation, colliding with the values of young musicians. Almendra also did not belong to the group of "downtown" rockers, with a tougher, drug-related lifestyle. and crossed by interests and power struggles; the inclusion of him played a role in the breakup as well.
Among the reasons that Spinetta used to mention for the separation are the failed opera and "the burst" to which he was led by an environment from which he would later seek to separate. For Luis Alberto, Almendra's inability to seriously assume his own musical evolution played a very important role, which manifested itself in the abandonment of the rehearsal discipline that characterized the band in its beginnings and that led them to not being able to premiere an opera. rock already composed by Spinetta. It was going to be called Lord of the Cans and its plot was a magical-symbolic representation of the Argentine rock movement itself that was emerging. His characters were Litto Nebbia, Moris, Tanguito, Javier Martínez, Roque Narvaja and Miguel Abuelo. Spinetta played the Water Wizard, an alien being who becomes a beggar looking for himself. The opera should have premiered in the mid-1970s, but the band only managed to complete rehearsals for the first of the two acts. There are no recorded records of the opera, but several themes were later performed by Spinetta, such as "Obertura" (in Almendra II), "Canción para los días de la vida" (A 18&# 39; del sol), “She too” (Kamikaze), “Song of the water magician”, “Walk”, “Stories of intelligence” and “Old prophets of the eternal », these last four performed in the presentation recital of Kamikaze.
1971: Spinettalandia
After the separation from Almendra, Spinetta lives a stage of aesthetic definition and life that he himself considers his "darkest stage" and "chaotic". His relationship with Cristina Bustamante had broken, of which he was deeply in love and became heavily involved with a group of musicians and people from the artistic environment, with high drug use, especially LSD, which would be very costly emotionally. In that group, Pappo stood out, with whom Spinetta established a relationship of great admiration and affection, which would end at that time with strong mutual resentment, which lessened over the years.
Pappo expressed a "heavy" of assuming rock and life, based on blues, that he was opposed to the commercial path that Almendra's success and fame offered Spinetta, promoted by the RCA record company. Spinetta radically rejected the commercial path and fully entered Pappo's circle and the Mandioca label. In the second half of 1970 Pappo and Spinetta came to form a blues trio with the name of Agresivos, in which Luis Alberto played bass and to which Héctor "Pomo" Lorenzo, on drums. Miguel Cantilo remembers the performance of that "ultra-rocker trio" at a festival organized by Father Carlos Mujica in the shanty town of Retiro:
I will never forget a festival organized by Father Mujica, in which it was also Pappo, Spinetta and Narvaja. We play a roof of a villa house. All those in the public were Bolivians traditionally dressed who celebrated a country date in Bolivia and danced the music we did. Pappo, Spinetta and Pomo in threesome zapaban rock & roll of the most square and rotten and all Bolivians looked with their caps to the ceiling. Those are images not to forget. Above when we finished playing, Father Mujica came out and said by the microphone - The united people will never be defeated!Miguel Cantilo
In fact, Pappo recorded his first solo song at that time, "Nunca lo sabrán" (Pidemos peras a la manioca), accompanied by Spinetta and Pomo, who are not listed in the credits. One of the songs that Agresivos rehearsed was "Castillo de piedra", months later the three would record in Spinettalandia y sus amigos. In December 1970, Spinetta, Pappo and Pomo joined Black Amaya on bass to play on the first album by Billy Bond y La Pesada del Rock and Roll, a song by Luis Alberto, "El parque".
Spinetta also tried to form a band with Edelmiro Molinari, Pomo Lorenzo and Carlos Cutaia under the name of Tórax, who did not record any albums although they did perform some recitals in the Ezeiza pools.
At that moment Spinetta decided to record his first solo album: Spinettalandia y sus amigos. He did it precisely with Pappo and Pomo Lorenzo, also adding Miguel Abuelo on some songs. The album expresses that moment of aesthetic and life choice that Pappo was proposing to him, a dilemma that is the axis of the song "Castillo de piedra", which Pappo gives him as a gift to include in the album. The album, as well as being a psychedelic experiment on random music -something that Spinetta already wanted to do with Almendra- under the effects of LSD, was also a punishment for the commercial option with which the RCA record company pressured him, which intimidated him to fulfill the third album committed to the contract signed for Almendra. Spinetta then decided to make an "anti-disco", "that they couldn't sell it to anyone", as he himself defined it.
The recording was made in thirty consecutive hours of studio during February 1971, with a large number of guests in the studio, not caring to keep quiet, with the lyrics being written at the same time.
I wanted to do a ritual: perform music in almost tribal state.Luis Alberto Spinetta
On the album the presence of Pappo and Pomo is decisive. Pappo contributes two songs, «Castillo de piedra» and «Era de tontos») and Pomo composed «Descalza camina» with Spinetta. Miguel Abuelo also participates playing the flute in "Give me, give me bread" and "You dont even realize". Among the songs composed by Spinetta stands out "The search for the star".
RCA released the album in March 1971, but the company did not respect the cover design or the original title and titled it successively Almendra, Luis Alberto Spinetta and The search for the star, which led to a lawsuit by the former Almendra that the record company lost, due to which it was withdrawn from the market. Only in 1995 would the album be published by the Sony company as it was originally conceived.
After recording the album Spinetta gave his prized acoustic guitar to Pappo, seeking to convey to him that he was looking for another artistic and lifestyle, that was not that of the music business and fame, but also not that of " sex, drugs and rock and roll" and negativity:
For me it was a way to show "Pappo" that there were not only guitars with the volume to the handle. That just as he had inculcated me some of that hardness of heavy rock, and the hand, co-op and all, on the other hand I tried to prove to him that there was a source of tenderness that he could not ignore. It was like saying, "Look, take, don't ever learn from this, not to betray me in your life, to give me your faith, even if we never touched together, even if we never saw each other...Luis Alberto Spinetta
Spinetta would later find out that Pappo sold the guitar he had given her. On March 10, 1971, he went with two girls on a trip to an undetermined destination that included Brazil, the United States and Europe for seven months.
1972-1973: Rabid Fish
When Spinetta returned from Europe, at the end of 1971, "Muchacha (ojos de papel)" it had become a commercial hit, largely because an advertisement for the textile company Estexa used it as a band. Luis Alberto, on the other hand, sought to get rid of the guidelines and limitations that the record business could impose on him, especially being elevated to an idol status. In a report granted to the magazine Pelo in September 1971, he defined about the trade/art dilemma that haunted him before he left:
I'm not selling my group anymore... We agree that rock is love and peace. Then we cannot agree that it is love to go through the funnel of pure trade for the enrichment of some companies. Let us not fool ourselves: for someone there can be a race towards prestige but also another one towards music; not a race, but a step, a quiet step. I now want to meet musicians and promote things for music itself.Luis Alberto Spinetta
That projection led him to form Pescado Rabioso, following the format of Pappo's Blues, which would establish itself among the most outstanding bands of Argentine popular music and had three formations. Initially it was a trio, made up of Spinetta on guitar and lead vocals, Black Amaya on drums and Osvaldo Bocón Frascino on bass. When they were recording the first album, Carlos Cutaia on Hammond organ was added to the group. In October 1972, Bocón Frascino withdrew from the band and was replaced by David Lebón, who would establish a close friendship with Spinetta, coming to live together for a year.
I wanted to make a more violent group, even more violent music than Almendra's second album... With Pescado I tried to break Almond's tenderness and sensitive axis... There was an essentially citizen music, tanguera, with reflections of bossa-nova, with jazz airs and influence of Piazzolla, and now I rebelled against that by creating riffs... I think it was a punk middle stage.Luis Alberto Spinetta
The very name of the band, imagined by Spinetta before returning to the country, expressed that "punk moment", characterized by rage, which also corresponded to the social situation in Argentina and especially in youth. But at the same time it sought to convey the paradox that a fish with a phobia of water meant (rabies is also called hydrophobia). Similar to what happened with Almendra, the band left two considerably different albums, recorded just four months apart: Desatormentándonos (1972) and the double album Pescado 2 (1973), showing the vertiginous maturation of his style that Spinetta had been experiencing in the last two years.
Distormenting Us, released in September 1972, is an album of blues, psychedelia and heavy rock, at a time when heavy rock was just beginning worldwide. The original album has five excellent songs, among which "Something floats in the lagoon (El monstruo de la laguna)" stands out, considered the 61st best song of Argentine rock; The album left out a hit by the band that would become a classic of Argentine popular music, "Me gusta ese tajo", a blues that would face direct and indirect censorship for years, due to its sexual content, and that, once the Democracy at the end of 1983, it was incorporated as the sixth and last theme of Desatormentándonos, in the reissues of the album in 1985 and 1990.
Specialists tend to consider the album a masterpiece that has been postponed due to the fact that it is found alongside two other great masterpieces: Pescado 2 and Artaud.
In September 1972 the band performs a recital at the Teatro Olimpia in Buenos Aires, which would be partially filmed to include two songs («Post crucifixión» and «Wake up babe») in the film Rock until it sets el sol (1973) by Aníbal Uset, as well as a fictionalized scene in which a parapolice group guns down David Lebón. In the film, Spinetta appears with a police siren on her back, alluding to police repression in the last stage of the Lanusse dictatorship.
In February 1973 the quartet released a double album, Pescado 2 -recorded between November of the previous year and the end of January-, considered by Rolling Stone magazine as the 19th best album in the history of Argentine rock. The title of the album corresponds to the two albums that make it up: Pescado the first and 2 (Dos) the second. The album brings a new sound to Latin rock, while Spinetta's lyrics openly adopt the poetic-philosophical content that would become characteristic of his work, in this case influenced mainly by Rimbaud.
The album came with a 52-page booklet, handwritten and full of drawings and some photos of the musicians as children, where the lyrics were transcribed and each theme was explained. Spinetta had thought of the album as a musical continuity that had to be listened to without interruptions to turn the records or change them. The incorporation of the compact disc in the 1990s allowed the work to be heard as a whole, as it had been imagined.
Among the eighteen songs, "Credulidad" and "Cristálida" stand out, the latter a symphonic suite of almost nine minutes, together with a chamber orchestra conducted by Cutaia, who closes the album with Spinetta saying "No I have more God".
Seeing with perspective what was Rabid Fish, I think a reverse procedure was given that of Almendra. If Almendra's first album was sweet and the second was aggressive, in Pescado it happened that at the height of the second album I tried from almond the sound. Then, in Invisible, I think I came to the realization of a point of balance between both worlds.Luis Alberto Spinetta
After Pescado 2 the differences in the group were accentuated to the point of breaking up. Amaya, Lebón and Cutaia wanted to stay in blues rock, while Spinetta sought to free himself from ties to deepen the fusions and musical and lyrical complexities on which he had already been working.
In this way the band disintegrated without any express act and Spinetta began a solo experience, although keeping for himself the name of Rabid Fish. For his part, when David Lebón separated, he recorded his first solo album in which he included the song "Tema para Luis", expressing everything it meant to him and ending with the phrase "this is the end of an explanation of love".
1973: Artaud and a soloist Spinetta
Pescado Rabioso broke up in mid-1973 at the Planeta theater. Its members did not accept or understand the musical vision that Luis Alberto was developing and simply stopped responding to his call until he was left alone. Spinetta then continued in solitude, with the projects he had been developing for Pescado Rabioso: «Pescado Rabioso was me». This is how Artaud emerged, one of the greatest works of Latin American music.
He started to profile for another place, a more arranged hand type what was later Invisible. Finally he wrote a subject and I did not understand it; he was reading much to Artaud, Rimbaud. First Cutaia went, then David and then me. The skinny man stayed alone, sitting in a chair of the Planet Room, felt abandoned because he wanted to continue playing with Pescado, and told me he was never going to touch me again. As he stayed alone and was still pending to record one more album with Microphon, he recorded Artaud with the themes I had for Rabid Fish; when I heard Artaud I wanted to kill myself.Black Amaya
The album Artaud from 1973, although it is credited to Pescado Rabioso, is actually a solo album by Spinetta, which he recorded with some guests, including his brother Gustavo who played drums, and his former teammates from Almendra, Emilio del Guercio and Rodolfo García. The insistence on using the name Pescado Rabioso to present the album had legal reasons, but it was also substantially due to Spinetta's concern to prevent the personalization of his work from placing him in an idol situation, a concern that he will maintain as a central feature of his album. his artistic personality throughout his life.
The album is composed at a crucial moment in South American history, of high political violence, in which civil-military dictatorships began to be installed, coordinated among themselves through the Condor Plan and supported by the United States, which would completely annul the validity of human rights for two decades. Argentina in particular had managed to get the dictatorship calling itself the Argentine Revolution to call free elections that year, for the first time in almost two decades. The popular vote had given victory in March and by a wide margin to Peronism, a movement with which Spinetta sympathized. But the democratic government would not be able to consolidate itself, affected by violent confrontations that would lead to its overthrow at the beginning of 1976 and the installation of a bloody dictatorship that would remain in power until the end of 1983 and that would commit genocide and lead the country to war., the Falklands War.
On the other hand, this historical moment coincides with a decisive moment in Spinetta's personal life, in which he meets Patricia Salazar, with whom he will form a stable couple for almost twenty-five years and with whom he will form a family with four common children. The lyrics of the song "Por" by Artaud were written jointly by both of them.
At this historical-cultural and personal crossroads Artaud appears, inspired precisely by the suffering and painful emotions that the life and work of the French playwright Antonin Artaud produced in Spinetta. The musician identified himself with the harshness of surrealism, Artaud and rock, but at the same time he related the moment Argentina and South America were experiencing, with the madness of Artaud and the nihilism of rock -expressed in drugs and "unreckoned promiscuity". meaning»-, and he felt it was incompatible with his own vision of rock -expressed in the Manifesto that Spinetta publishes simultaneously with the album- and the meaning of life.
But first of all I want to make you clear that I gave that album to Artaud, but at no time did I take his works as a starting point. The album was a response – perhaps insignificant – to the suffering that causes you to read his works. The idea of the album was to expose the possibility of an antidote against what Artaud thought. Whoever has read it cannot escape from a quota of despair. For him the answer of man is madness; for Lennon is love. I believe more in the encounter of perfection and happiness through the suppression of pain than through madness and suffering. I think only if we care about healing the soul we will avoid social distortions and fascist behaviors, unfair and totalitarian doctrines, absurd policies and deplorable wars. The only way to raise the weight is with love. Rock musicians are guys who are very disoriented. We've been very involved in our neurological system and have learned very little from recent history. But there's something clear: we can't play Artaud. That would mean not having understood Moris, not having understood Litto Nebbia, not having fished one. If I hadn't learned to get out of that and locate in my country, you wouldn't be with me right now: Spinetta would be just a name on a tinted, cobbled with poop, in the immensity of some graveyard.Luis Alberto Spinetta
The original album cover stands out for its irregular design, breaking the traditional square that contained vinyl records. The work was presented in two recitals that Spinetta gave alone at the Teatro Astral, in October of that same year. In those recitals he released his Manifesto entitled Rock: hard music, suicide by society, paraphrasing -exactly- one of Artaud's books (Van Gogh, suicide by society ) that inspired the album. In his Manifesto Spinetta defines what a rock artist should be for him, absolutely free and freed from all conditioning, especially that established by the "rock business" and "professionalism".
The song "Cantata de puentes amarillos" was included in the 16th position among the hundred best in the history of Argentine rock, in the survey carried out by the site rock.com.ar. The songs "Bajan", "Por", "Todas las hojas son del viento", and "Cementerio Club", have also been featured among the musician's ten best.
1974-1976: Invisible and fatherhood
By the end of 1973 Spinetta launched a new band, Invisible, along with Carlos Alberto "Machi" Rufino on bass and Héctor "Pomo" Lawrence on drums. The band gained immediate mass recognition. With this group he would release three albums until its dissolution in 1976, two of which have been included in the list of the 100 best Argentine rock albums prepared by Rolling Stone Magazine.
At the beginning of 1974 the first single called Estado de coma came out, which contained the songs "Elementales leches" ("what is and is not used will strike us down") and "State of coma". The first is a remarkable song, for many among Spinetta's best, which would be banned during the dictatorship installed from 1976.
A few months later the band released their first album: Invisible, with a piece by M.C. Escher as cover. The total duration exceeded the physical duration of the vinyl LPs, due to which a simple called La llave del Mandala was added to it, which contained two more songs, "La llave del mandala" and "What concerns us is that grandmother, the conscience that regulates the world". Spinetta already shows in this album the poetic-musical influence that works related to the inner search and existential paradoxes would have for him, as would happen here with Jung, Escher and pre-Columbian indigenous cultures, focused on complex musical structures and open lyrics. The album is considered by Rolling Stone magazine as number 65 among the 100 best Argentine rock.
The band's second album was Bleeding Peach, a conceptual work, inspired by the traditional Chinese book The Secret of the Golden Flower (Tai Yi Jin Hua Zong Zhi), a Taoist work on meditation Attributed to Lü Dongbin (VIII century), spread in the West thanks to the German translation by Richard Wilhelm in 1929, with contributions from psychoanalyst Carl Jung. The thematic and musical complexity did not prevent one of Spinetta's emblematic songs from emerging from this album, such as "Durazno sanrando", from which the album takes its title. At the beginning of 1976 Spinetta would dedicate one of his concerts to the "marginalized and alienated of the world", a reality and social condition that was a constant in his work:
This concert is dedicated to all the marginalized and alienated in the world, because it is increasingly more and more verified than, in the future, they will be the ones who will govern the human race.Luis Alberto Spinetta, Canal 11, 2 January 1976.
In the middle of 1976 the band radically transformed, incorporating a new member, Tomás Gubitsch, and developing a new sound based on fusion, especially with tango and jazz. These transformations led to the already existing tensions within the band leading to their separation at the beginning of the following year.
Coincidentally, 1976 was a dramatic year for Argentina, due to the fact that on March 24 there was a coup d'état through which a civil-military dictatorship was installed that carried out a repression of a genocidal nature, whose most violent features were it was the disappearance of tens of thousands of people and the appropriation of babies.
Spinetta initially celebrated the term of the presidency of María Estela Martínez de Perón as an event per se despite having been through of a coup and the installation of a military junta. However, that first positive look at that regime change quickly turned in rejection and horror when he began to realize the repressive policy and the disappearance of people.
- Question: How did the coup of '76 have an impact on you at that time?
Spinetta: I must confess that at first I was happy... I could no longer hear Isabelita and López Rega screaming. (Note of ed: López Rega had resigned a year ago, after a trade union mobilization). I felt we were in a dreadful obscurantism. But of course I was only happy for a few months. That dissipated very quickly when my friends started disappearing.Luis Alberto Spinetta
In this framework, Tomás Gubitsch joined the band, on guitar. Gubitsch was a brilliant guitarist barely 18 years old, trained in jazz, who had just played avant-garde tango with Rodolfo Mederos and who had to go into exile in Europe the following year, persecuted by the dictatorship.
With this change, Spinetta returned to the formation of two guitars, bass and drums, like Almendra, and to a fusion sound with tango and jazz, which came to be called tango rock, which was also related to musical experiences avant-garde such as those carried out at that time by Astor Piazzolla (Gubitsch would join Piazzolla's Octet the following year), and musicians such as Daniel Binelli, Jorge Pinchevsky, Dino Saluzzi. Within rock, Sui Generis had composed the song "Tango en secunda" and Litto Nebbia also experimented with tango sounds.
I think we were all a little saturated with more traditional and elemental rock.Luis Alberto Spinetta
Invisible's new sound was recorded on their third and last album: El jardín de los presentes. The album would become one of the most outstanding Argentine rock, number 28 on the list of The Best Hundred Argentine Rock Albums by Rolling Stone magazine, which before this also included four other albums by Spinetta (Artaud, Almendra I, Pescado 2 and Kamikaze). list of the 100 best songs of Argentine rock (#52 for Rolling Stone magazine and #66 for the rock.com.ar site survey).
No doubt. The garden of the present marks one of the highest creative points in the long-standing musical career of the composer and guitarist Luis Alberto Spinetta. Melodic elegance, overflowing melancholy, the fineness of musical arrangements and ultimately, the inexplicable and immense beauty expressed in this album, can only leave us mute and amazed. Spinetta's sensitivity here is revealed as in any of his albums and his maturity as a singer, songwriter, poet and instrumentist reach a simply surprising level.Héctor Aravena
Although from a musical point of view, Gubitsch's entry was decisive in reaching the very high artistic level and popularity that the band achieved in its last year, from a personal point of view, the presence of a fourth member It ended up being the trigger for the breakup of the group.
Invisible broke up in early 1977 when they were at the height of their popularity. Before that, he gives two historic recitals, in August and December, at the Luna Park stadium, to present the album El jardín de los presentes, with Rodolfo Mederos on bandoneon, as a guest. Between them, they brought together 25,000 people, a surprising turnout for the time, which only the Sui Generis duo (Charly García and Nito Mestre) had been able to achieve at their farewell the previous year, in the same place.
After Invisible, Spinetta resummoned "Pomo" Lorenzo and "Machi" Rufino to record together two songs ("Cuando vuelve del cielo" and "Días de silencio") on the solo album Mondo di cromo from 1983. On the mega Spinetta and the Eternal Bands recital of 2009, Invisible met again to perform five songs.
Individually, Spinetta would form Spinetta Jade in 1980 with Pomo Lorenzo on drums. With Machi Rufino, El Flaco maintained a long musical relationship and friendship, which led him to participate in several of his solo records, thus becoming one of the musicians who accompanied Spinetta the most. Rufino recounts that years later he asked Luis what he thought of Invisible and that he replied:
Look at Machi, for my Invisible is a jewel that I keep in a gold chest.Luis Alberto Spinetta
The separation of Invisible coincides with the birth of the first of Spinetta's four children, Dante. The pregnancy of her partner Patricia had decided the couple to get married on September 16, 1976, while on December 9 the birth took place.
No, not Church. We got married civil on September 16, 1976. She was already six months pregnant with Dante (she laughs), and the wedding was a way of securing the origin... or I don't know what. They're rituals in front of the law. Let's say it was a standarization to make us compatible with the city's standards.Luis Alberto Spinetta.
Spinetta's condition as a father and his relationship with his children will have a profound influence on his life and work. In 1978 Catarina would be born, in 1980 Valentino and in 1991, Vera. He himself would say, reflecting on that stage that was opening in his life:
Those are the changes that lead you to... already with three children, so divine, already Luis (became) a master who composed music without expectations of success or of any kind of factor of those, in the sense of doing a work that truly left me according to me and the rest, forget it.Luis Alberto Spinetta
1977: A 18' del sol and the Spinetta Band
A few months after the separation of Invisible, Spinetta surprised by composing a new studio album, A 18' del sol , the first in which he assumes himself as a soloist and adopts his name to spread it.
The album arose mainly from the influence that having started working with Diego Rapoport had on Spinetta, through the mediation of former Alma y Vida Gustavo Moretto. Rapoport opens the doors to the musical possibilities that jazz-pop offered at that time, especially that expressed by John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra.
To play A 18' del sol Spinetta organized a band with Rapoport himself on keyboards, Machi Rufino on bass (continuing the Invisible relationship) and Osvaldo Adrián López on drums. He also had the participation of his brother Gustavo and Marcelo Vidal in the song & # 34; Viento del azur & # 34;. Thus began what Spinetta called his "jazz project", and the band with which Spinetta played in those final years of the 1970s, known as "Banda Spinetta";.
At 18' del sol include songs like "Song for the days of life", a theme taken from the unpublished opera from Almendras time and which has been considered by the site rock.com.ar as the #68 among the 100 best songs of Argentine rock-, "All life has music today" and instrumental songs like "Telgopor" and "Eighteen minutes from the sun".
The album was not well received by fans (still linked to the sound of Pescado Rabioso and Invisible) nor by critics, but with the passing of the years and the review of Spinetta's extensive work, A 18& #39; del sol began to be considered one of the great albums of "El Flaco". For Spinetta "that was the best recording I did in my life".
From this moment on, the "Banda Spinetta" It was expanded by the call for new musicians to deepen this period of Spinetta's orientation to jazz, such as Leo Sujatovich (keyboards), Gustavo Bazterrica (guitar), Rinaldo Rafanelli (bass), Bernardo Baraj (sax), Gustavo Moretto (trumpet), Ricardo Sanz (bass), Eduardo Zvetelman (keyboards) and Luis Ceravolo (drums).
Spinetta has linked this jazz period to the birth of his son, Dante.
My son's tenderness allowed me to sing again to a flower... There was no such thing in my previous songs: lyrism for lyrism itself."Luis Alberto Spinetta
Songs such as "Covadonga", "Las alas del grillo", the extensive suite of more than twenty minutes "Tríptico del eterno verdor", "Grey star", "El turquito", "Bahiana split", "Tanino", "Los espacios amados", among others. With its varied formations the "Banda Spinetta" He came to design an album that was to be titled Los espacios amados, which was never recorded. Live recordings of those recitals are preserved anyway.
In 1979 the last remnant of the "Banda Spinetta" In the form of Experiencia Demente, an ephemeral group that came to play in Mar del Plata in January 1979, made up of Spinetta and Gustavo Bazterrica (ex La Máquina de Hacer Pájaros), Luis Ceravolo on drums and Rinaldo Rafanelli (ex Sui Generis and Polifemo) in low. The recital included material that would later be included in Spinetta Jade. Luis's sounds were already mutating elsewhere and the instrumental was becoming extinct in favor of a more song format that he would develop in Jade, still with a sound close to jazz rock.
Also during this period, Spinetta edited his first and only book Black Guitar, published in 1978 by Ediciones Tres Tiempos. The cover is a ghostly photo of Spinetta's face inverted on a black background. The book is organized into seven untitled parts and an eighth part entitled "Differential dregs from the soul of poetic letters", each one with a series of poems. Like all Spinette's poetry, it is surreal, but at the same time shows an existential concern. It has had several reissues and has always been a highly sought after work. Dedicated "To my parents and my children", it begins with a "warning":
As no one is aware of the "control" of the manuscripts, and even if there is such awareness, it would not intervene in my work, but as a symbolic reference to the bidding of the subject, I propose that every word be forgotten as it is read.L.A.S.
Spinetta had established a very friendly relationship with tennis player Guillermo Vilas, whom she had designated as godfather to her son Dante. In 1979, Vilas connected him with the American recording industry and led him to sign a worldwide publishing contract with the Columbia (CBS) label to record in the United States with top-level American musicians. From that American experience resulted his only album in English called Only love can sustain, his most controversial work and the only one in which he was not its artistic producer, which was far from satisfying him, but which enrolled in the "jazz project" that he had been carrying out since 1977.
The album includes own songs and those of others and acknowledges the musical imprint of pop-jazz by Gino Vannelli, who even participates in the song "Omens of love". It also includes a poem by Vilas set to music by Spinetta ("Children of the bells").
Very unhappy with the result, Spinetta terminated the contract. The whole process also produced emotional distancing with Guillermo Vilas, and from that moment they stopped being friends.
I was very scratched with the final result, but well... if it exists. Spinettaland and his friends, the disco of chaos, as a counterpart exists the other "black disk", the American, which is hyperorganized. It's two extremes.Luis Alberto Spinetta
But the trip to the United States also allowed Spinetta to get in touch with Edelmiro Molinari to decide on Almendra's return.
1980: The return of Almendra
The idea of reuniting Almendra had never stopped haunting the members. In fact, every time Edelmiro Molinari returned to Argentina (he was based in the United States), the four of them would get together to eat a barbecue and have some zappas. On those occasions Almendra's meeting invariably arose, but for one reason or another they ended up leaving it aside.
There were times when we got together to have dinner to talk about it, and we just downloaded it. We said, "It doesn't make sense, we're going to do it all the time and we're gonna get a fuck out."Rodolfo García
Finally they decided to reunite Almendra in order to do only two recitals at the Obras Sanitarias Stadium. But the success of the call led them to give six recitals on December 7, 8 and 9, 1979 that brought together 31,000 people, an unexpected call for a band that had been separated for a decade, and especially during the last military dictatorship, in which repression had reached the extreme of genocide, where rock music and young people were automatically suspect.
Secret documents declassified in democracy show the concern and espionage of the dictatorship against Almendra's youth convocation and he tried to prevent these recitals from taking place.
(Almendra) performs the musical genre called national rock and its members boast of its drug addiction, which is even insinuated in the lyrics of some songs that they interpret, as well as sexual unbridledness and rebelliousness to our traditional life system.Radiogram 12782/803 of the Ministry of the Interior to governors (4 December 1979)
After Obras they played in Rosario, Córdoba, Mendoza, and La Plata (where there was strong police repression with almost 200 detainees), Rosario and Punta del Este (Uruguay), to close with a recital of " farewell" in the Mar del Plata World Cup stadium before 7,000 people, but the massive success led them to maintain the formation. Almendra's return opened the doors to increasingly massive rock concerts during the dictatorship, which would break out after the Malvinas War in 1982.
In March 1980 they released the double album of the recital in Obras, and at the end of that year they began recording a studio album in the United States that would go on sale in December under the name El valle inside. The members of Almendra in general have said that the album did not have the result and the impact they expected. However, the album shows the growth and musical maturity that they had had in a decade. The album also has very good songs, such as "El fantasma de la buena suerte", one of Spinetta's favorites, "Amidama", "Miguelito, my spirit has departed on time" and "Good day, sunny day", in addition to two good songs by Emilio del Guercio: "Las cosas para hacer" and "Cielo fuerte (amor guaraní)".
The album was presented on a 32-city tour, the first major tour by an Argentine band, which began at Obras on December 6 and 7 and ended on February 15, 1981 at the Cordoba festival in the city of Skirt. After that the band broke up, again affected by personal problems, especially between Spinetta and Molinari.
1980-1981: Spinetta Jade (I)
In 1980, in parallel to the Almendra meeting, he formed Spinetta Jade. The band sought to express Spinetta's evolution in the jazz rock style, but moving away from the instrumental predominance of Banda Spinetta, incorporating more pop songs and elements.. Juan del Barrio, Leo Sujatovich and Mono Fontana followed one another on one of the keyboards. Lito Vitale and Diego Rapoport followed one another on the other keyboard, until the band stopped having two keyboards. On bass they followed one another Pedro Aznar, Beto Satragni, Frank Ojstersek, César Franov and Paul Dourge. Lito Epumer also joins the last formation on guitar.
In September 1980, Spinetta and Charly García performed a historic joint recital at the Obras Sanitarias Stadium, with their respective bands Spinetta Jade and Seru Giran.
In October Spinetta Jade releases her first album, Alma de diamante. The album was composed under the poetic inspiration of the work of the anthropologist Carlos Castaneda, related to shamanism and has two songs, "Dale gracias" ("Remember that a warrior never stops his march") and & # 34; With the shadow of your ally (the ally) & # 34; ("in the desert you see the truth"), which refer to the work of the author of The Teachings of Don Juan. The album also includes the song "Alma de diamante", one of the most famous songs of the band and from the Spinette songbook itself and "The Wild Goddess", a name that he would give years later, to the recording studio that he would install in his home, after facing the big record companies.
Spinetta Jade's second album was Children Who Write in the Sky (1981). The band had changed in line-up and sound: Leo Sujatovich entered on keyboards to replace Juan del Barrio and Frank Ojstersek on bass instead of Beto Satragni, while the sound and lyrics were more oriented towards pop, although the careful atmospheres and the use of two keyboards and synthesizers continue. At the beginning of 1982 Spinetta responded in this way to the "utilitarian press" who criticized his lyrics for being "unreal in the face of the reality of the world":
... and I tell all that: Mongo and réquetemongo! A letter like "Sex" speaks of something very real, or a bitty critique like the one in "The Leading Man". There has to be a possibility of imagining.Luis Alberto Spinetta
1982: Falklands War and Kamikaze
On April 2, 1982, the ruling dictatorship made the decision to militarily recover the Malvinas Islands, militarily occupied by Great Britain in 1833, at a time when the militancy for the recovery of democracy began to acquire massive proportions. The event had a huge and complex impact in Argentina, with contradictory edges. On the one hand, it led to the Malvinas War (which lasted until June 14), with its aftermath of dead and mutilated young people, improvisation, and defeat. On the other hand, it completely dismantled the alliances and the cultural location of Argentina on the world map, moving it away from the United States and Europe, and bringing it closer to Latin America and the countries of the South, at the same time leading to the collapse of the dictatorship and opening the way to the recovery of democracy. In this context, the "national rock" Argentina, long repressed and suspected, had an explosion of popularity and massive dissemination by the media.
Spinetta expresses himself forcefully and appears in the foreground during the Malvinas War: he releases a solo album, Kamikaze -which he had recorded before April 2nd-, gives a recital with Spinetta Jade at the Premier Theater with the participation of Pappo and participates in the Festival of Latin American Solidarity held in Obras Sanitarias in front of 60,000 people. His position was categorically against war and the death of people:
I do not conceive the possibility that men will be killed, neither by immolation, nor for the benefit of war, nor by playing Russian dice or roulette, nor in the street, nor in accidents.Luis Alberto Spinetta
But at the same time, with its allegory on Japanese kamikazes and the themes "Thunder Eagle" I and II, dedicated to the indigenous leader Túpac Amaru II, expressed the complexity of the moment and the need not to degrade and dishonor the sacrifice of the defeated, for the benefit of the powerful of the world.
Spinetta synthesized this position with a message on the inner envelope of the album:
We live by qualifying among the categories of our ignorance. That is why I deeply admire the decision of those young Kamikazes, outside the abomination of war.Luis Alberto Spinetta (internal Kamikaze)
1983-1984: Spinetta Jade (II)
Since 1982 Spinetta Jade had been preparing the music and rehearsing to release a new album. However, due to the fact that the recording was delayed, Spinetta decided to make a solo album. The disaster of the Malvinas War had caused the dictatorship to collapse and massive demonstrations of human rights and trade unions had forced the dictatorship to call free elections for October of that year.
In this context, Mondo di cromo was recorded between February and March 1983, his fifth solo album. It is an intimate album, recorded at Estudios Del Cielito, based on several demos that Spinetta had recorded at his house with a new Roland TR-808 rhythm machine that Charly García lent him. Somehow it was "a getaway from Jade", where she faced exhausting relationship problems with her representative. Time is fast - and Sujatovich, who brought the novelty of a Prophet 5 synthesizer. and "El bálsamo") was joined by Machi Rufino, thus bringing together the initial line-up of Invisible. Pianist Gustavo Pires and bassist Hugo Villareal also participated in other songs. Spinetta had no intention of officially releasing the album, but his representative arranged for the release anyway, precipitating the break between the two. With a renewed sound and musical aesthetic, the album expresses Spinetta's concern for the future, at one point in which Argentina recovered democracy, while depositing its optimism in young people. It is one of the albums "covered" by Spinetta, which has not prevented it from being highly valued among its followers. Among the most outstanding songs on the album are "Don't te ajejas tanto de mí", "Será que la canción reached the sun", "When I return from heaven" and "I want to see a train".
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Finally in July, Spinetta Jade with a new line-up (Spinetta, Pomo, Sujatovich and César Franov on bass), began recording their third album, Bajo Belgrano, which would be considered one of the 100 best albums in the history of Argentine rock. The album was released on December 3 together with Mondo di cromo, barely a week before the democratic government headed by President Raúl Alfonsín took office, putting an end to the horror of the seven years of the last dictatorship.
The album fully reflects that moment, in its cover, its lyrics and its music. It bears the name of its neighborhood as its title and has a cover that on the front symbolizes the dawn that the new democratic stage implied, while the back cover expresses the violence and terror of the dictatorship, symbolized in the eradication of the town of Bajo Belgrano in 1978, and also, as he himself pointed out in the massive recital held the following January, Bajo Belgrano "o por ahí", was associated with the most gloomy of the clandestine detention centers, the ESMA, to just a few blocks from his house.
The album includes the song "Maribel fell asleep", included in position no. then it would become a symbol of the drama of the disappeared. The album also includes the song "Resumen porteño", another of Spinetta's songs included among the best in the history of Argentine rock. >Bajo Belgrano Spinetta leaves behind the jazz sound that he had tackled in 1976 to produce a decidedly pop work that is renewed for the new times. It is a much more direct work, with clear allusions to the historical and political moment.
On September 7, 1984, he participated in the first recital in Argentina of the prominent Brazilian musician Ivan Lins, together with Pedro Aznar and León Gieco. On that occasion, Spinetta sang the song "Saliendo de mí", by Lins, while he sang "Maribel fell asleep", before they both sang "Muchacha (ojos de paper)". The recital was recorded in an album called Encuentro, released that same year.
At the end of 1983, during a recital broadcast on television on the program Badía y Cia, hosted by Juan Alberto Badía, he reiterated the dedication he had made years before, adding to "the repressed& #34;, and refers to the hope that opens the end of the dictatorship:
Dedicate this little encounter especially to the mad, the alienated and the repressed of the world. I think everyone, or almost everyone would say, I think we have a chance to be a shining flower again, even though we may have been bullied with really outrageous attitudes.Luis Alberto Spinetta.
On January 26, 1984, Spinetta gathered a crowd at one of the free concerts organized by the new democratic government of the City of Buenos Aires in Barrancas de Belgrano, precisely his neighborhood. And there in his neighborhood, Spinetta played several of the songs from Bajo Belgrano . The recital has been remembered as "the best postcard of that democratic spring".
At the end of 1984 the fourth and last album was released, Mother in Light Years by Spinetta Jade. The band ventures into electro synth pop, which would mark the beginning of an "electronic stage" that Spinetta would explode until the end of the 80s. Fontana (keyboards) and Lito Epumer (guitar). It is an artisan work, of high virtuosity and artistic sense. and "Can't you see that we are no longer little?":
Mother in light years It's a record I love; it's so much the distance between any other album and that, that some fan of mine can come to say I'm crazy.Luis Alberto Spinetta
After this last job, El Flaco dissolved the group due to differences with the other members.
1985-1986: Works with Charly and Fito
In 1985 and 1986 Spinetta undertook two joint projects with two of the greatest historical exponents of Argentine rock, along with him: Charly García and Fito Páez. The project with Charly was cut short, but from it emerged one of the great classic songs of national rock, "Rezo por vos". From the project with Fito came the album La la la, considered by Rolling Stone magazine as #61 among the one hundred best albums in the history of Argentine rock. In 1984 the three musicians had already met virtually on the song "Total Interference", a song composed by Spinetta and Charly García, which the latter included on his album Piano bar with a band in the one that Fito Páez stood out on the keyboards.
The new musical democracy brought hope to the young people who massively discovered rock made in Argentina.
The Spinetta/García project took place during 1985 and had the objective of recording a joint album that would be titled How to get girls. But the coexistence produced strong discussions and personal differences between the two that led them to become enemies and leave the album truncated. The only finished product of the Spinetta/García project was the song "Rezo por vos", a song that would become a classic of Argentine rock and would be included by Spinetta in Privé (1986) and by Charly García in Part of the religion (1987).
Both Spinetta and Charly García made statements about the estrangement caused by that fight, in which García even threw an ashtray at Spinetta, in the context of an accidental fire that destroyed Charly's apartment caused by a short circuit in the video recorder when he was recording a television show in which they both sang "Rezo por vos". But both always highlighted the mutual admiration they felt for each other.
During the time we worked together, I felt very needy. I tried to be when he needed me, but then I felt rejected and that hurt me so much... As if he was the only one in the role of admirer, while I did not find a way to make him understand that I can also pee with his songs... Sui Generis's music never liked me... but from "Tango in second" (from the third album Institutions) and of the proposal of The Machine to Make Birds and Serú Girán, I was approaching and today I think it is a true monster of the song here and everywhere... "Poor love, call him" (chanting Privé) is the great love I feel for him.Luis Alberto Spinetta
I want to make it clear there's no bad news at all. Luis is my idol, he's still my idol. What happened is that we were two very idol idols, and then I got weird being with him.Charly García
Given the failure of the project started with Charly García and the impossibility of completing another one with Pedro Aznar (a humorous song composed and performed by the three of them entitled «Peluca telefónica» was included in Going from bed to living room), Spinetta decided to record a solo album, the fifth of his career (sixth if Artaud is counted), with part of the material created for the frustrated album with Charly. He recorded it between November and December 1985, released it in February 1986 and titled it Privé . It is an album that deepens the techno sound that he had already been showing since Mondo di cromo, with very high-tempo songs and totally dispensing with a drummer, who he replaced with a Yamaha RX-11 drum machine. programmed by himself. Includes the song "Rezo por vos" that they had done with Charly that year and songs like "No seas fanática" -a critique of the fanaticism of his followers- and "La pelicana y el androide". Among the invited musicians are León Gieco, Fito Páez, Andrés Calamaro, Mono Fontana, Ulises Butrón and a female choir made up of Fabiana Cantilo and Isabel de Sebastian.
In those days Spinetta explained in a report how the option of working as a soloist or in a group played into him:
The lonely things are to find a kind of shelter, of balm, among all that surrounds me and the dissociation that caused me about Jade. For the moment, my solo performance is a wild symbol; I use it when I want. It gives me spiritual tranquility but if it's a lot I'm bored. That's why I need a group. Maybe people want to see me alone, but I don't.Luis Alberto SpinettaHair1986)
Political, technological-musical and generational changes prompted in Spinetta the need to renew itself and connect with new audiences. In a report made in February 1986 he said:
Spinetta no longer wants his children to dance more with "Demolishing hotels" than with his. Then it arises why can't I make a disc that's a rock ball? And it comes up Privé. A record for your kids too. A disc to pass a little of the melancholy that Jade gave to the eclecticism of a future that is beginning.
- A disc for the inside and out at the same time...
- A record, man. If I keep making records, and by the twenties I go, it's because I also love and I need that success of playing in front of the people and applauding me. It's a confession, almost. But I have been so idealized that I have to say that I like it to be a box office and I enjoy the material benefit of what I produce, together with all those who collaborate with what I do. I am an omnicophagus, neurotic, incorrigible psychotropic and I feel a butcher of music.Luis Alberto Spinetta
The project that did materialize was La la la (1986), a double album with Fito Páez, boycotted by the recording industry and which has been considered by Rolling Stone and the MTV network, as #61 of the hundred best albums in the history of Argentine rock. The album includes a dark version of the famous tango "Gricel" by Mores and Contursi, ten of their own songs such as "Todos estas años de gente", "Un niño nace" and "Asylum in your heart" and a joint theme "There is another song", which the record company "forgot" to include on the CD.
The experience was very satisfying for Spinetta, who considered La la la to be one of the best albums he had participated in. But just two months after finishing the recording, in November 1986, and when they were in the process of disseminating the album, Fito Páez suffered the tragedy that his grandmother and his great-aunt (whom he considered "his mothers" #34;, because hers had died when she was only a few months old) were massacred by a serial killer in her home in Rosario, together with the woman who did the housework, who was also pregnant. Spinetta received the blow with much blame and attributed the tragedy to the violent content of many of the songs included on the album, especially its song "Tengo un mono" and the instrumental "Woycek" of Fito.
At the time I thought that The one had provoked what happened next... All our erotic and violent purpose was ridiculed in the face of violence for which it is very difficult to be prepared.Luis Alberto Spinetta
The following works by Páez and Spinetta, respectively, City of Poor Hearts ("in this puta ciudad") and Tester of violence, would seek to express each one in their own way, the pain, horror and violence suffered by Fito.
Years later, during a tribute show to Spinetta held at the National Library, Fito Páez would speak at length about what that album meant to him:
It was very curious to be recording an album with someone who had also been a fan, someone who was owed the grace to have approached the music. Luckily what happened to this album, specifically, is that it was an album that emerged from the experience, it was not an album of “we’re going to make a album.” It wasn't an idea of one day for another but we became friends first and made a threesome with my friend Eduardo Martí. We watched a lot of movies, talked, smoked, drank, laughed and played music. We met and raised our... in that case were his children, who were some kind of sober whores of mine too. Then there, in the experience of the family and the tan, the album arose. That's why I want this album so much, beyond the undeniable strangeness and originality it possesses. I want it because it arises in non-typical circumstances for the industry and still today remains a very strange gem, very unclassifiable. Luckily. And I think maybe I can talk a little bit about the inclassification of Luis Alberto Spinetta and how terribly political that is, in the best sense of the word... Luis Alberto is an inventor in a way that doesn't look like anything. Nothing literally. This radicality has a historical framework that is the history of Argentina.Fito Páez
1987-1993: award-winning albums and introspection
In February 1987 Spinetta gave a free recital at the Buenos Aires Velodrome attended by ten thousand people and soon after he made his debut as an actor participating in the short film Balada para un Kaiser Carabela by Fernando Spiner, filmed in Villa Gesell during the month of May, also composing the music for the film.
In this period Spinetta forms a new accompanying band made up of Mono Fontana (keyboards), Machi Rufino (bass), Guillermo Arrom (guitar) and Jota Morelli (drums).
The murder of "the mothers" of Fito Páez, the enactment by the government of impunity laws for those who committed crimes against humanity during the dictatorship and the carapintadas military uprisings that began in January 1988, greatly influenced the spirit and Spinetta's work. Already in March 1988, Luis Alberto openly demonstrated against the coup military, changing the lyrics of "Don't be a fan" in a recital, to sing "don't be a soldier, don't be Rico." At the same time, Sting had come to Buenos Aires and brought the Madres de Plaza de Mayo up on stage, something that no Argentine rock band had ever done. Spinetta recounts the moral lesson he received and the awareness that Sting's gesture awoke in him. Shortly before, he had explained the meaning of the title he had in mind for his next album, Violence Tester (1988):
He's gonna call. Tester of violenceThe title came from my friendship with Fito. I concluded that, to a greater or lesser extent, we are all a teaster of violence. We are the territory on which violence is manifested and at the same time we are the mediator of that violence.Luis Alberto Spinetta
The album was voted the best of the year in the Encuesta Anual del Suplemento Sí of the Clarín newspaper. Influenced by the ideas of Michel Foucault, especially those exposed in the chapter " The body of the damned" From Divisar y puntar, Spinetta makes the body the center of this concept album, inverting in a certain sense the centrality that he had given to the soul in previous works. The song "La bengala" stands out on the album. lost", about the murder with a flare on the soccer field of fan Roberto Basile, considered the best song of the decade and one of the best in the Argentine songbook of all time. It also includes "El mono tremendo", chosen as the best song of the year, which has the peculiarity of having been composed and sung by Pechugo, an ironic name for the group formed by the sons of Spinetta and Dylan Martí, among whom were Dante Spinetta and Emmanuel Horvilleur when they were eleven and thirteen years; both consider that it was their first song together and that it prompted the creation of the duo Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas.
In 1989 Spinetta publicly supported the presidential candidacy of Eduardo Angeloz of the Radical Civic Union and actively participated in the electoral campaign playing with his band throughout the country. After the elections and with Carlos Menem president, he dedicated himself to the second semester to record a new album now in his own studio installed on Iberá street, called Cintacalma.
The result was the November release of Don Lucero or Don lucero, a record featuring the drawing of cover made by Spinetta and that unlike the previous one was not to think, but to feel. In the band Javier Malosetti replaced Machi Rufino as bassist and Didi Gutman joined in some songs on keyboards, remaining Gille Arrom and Jota Morelli; Horacio "Chofi" Faruolo, as "midi man".
The album has two distinct sides, one that was known as the soft side and the other called the hard side, with more radical melodies and harmonies and lyrics. more hermetic. The album was selected as Best Album in the Suplemento Sí Annual Survey, as was the song "Fina ropa blanca". On the other hand, the song "Es la medianoche" was used to make the first solo video clip, directed by Dylan Martí.
Simultaneously, the Berlin Wall fell, the Cold War ended after four decades, and a new historical stage began, known by the names of globalization and neoliberalism.
In 1990 he released his first live album as a soloist, called Exactas because it was recorded during the recital held at the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of the UBA on August 30 and 31. of that year. The band that accompanied Spinetta was made up of Mono Fontana and Claudio Cardone on keyboards, Guillermo Arrom on guitar, Javier Malosetti on bass and Marcelo Novati on drums.
Shortly after, on October 8, 1990, Spinetta played at the public festival Mi Buenos Aires Rock I organized by the Municipality of the City of Buenos Aires, in front of 100,000 people on 9 de Julio, along with Charly García, Fabiana Cantilo and La Portuaria, opening his presentation with an anthological version of Imagine by John Lennon, massively chanted by the public.
For the third time in four years, Spinetta composed the best album of the year, Pelusón of milk (1991) and the best song, «Seguir vivir sin tu amor», which became the biggest radio hit of Spinetta's entire artistic career and has been ranked #33 among the 100 best in the history of Argentine rock.
This album took a long time, because I did everything alone. There are some interventions by my band musicians, but I did almost everything. Pelusón it looks like Spinetta de entrecasa. [...] There are acoustic songs, melodies are fresh, it has a good selection of material. [...] Like to be understood.Luis Alberto Spinetta
This is an introspective and family album, recorded at home while the whole family awaited the birth of their fourth daughter, Vera. The title Pelusón of milk is a metaphor for the baby. The song "La montaña", related to the disappeared, was also recorded as a video clip. The musicians who occasionally collaborate on some songs on the album are Juan Carlos "Mono" Fontana, Claudio Cardone, Guillermo Arrom and Javier Malosetti. The song "Panacea" has lyrics by Roberto Mouro.
In July 1992 Spinetta and Fito Páez, together with Gustavo Cerati and Zeta Bossio -who at that time were members of Soda Stereo- performed together a historic version of «Seguir viviendo sin tu amor» at the festival Rock contra el AIDS before a crowd gathered on Avenida 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires.
In 1993 he released the album Fuego gris, with the seventeen songs that make up the film of the same name shown the following year, a surreal work without dialogues, conceived as a &# 34;drama-rock" by its director Pablo César, which narrates the inner search of an adolescent lost in the sewers of Buenos Aires, with images oriented by the music and poetry of Spinetta. In an album of equal quality, considered by one of its analysts as & #34;Spinetta's latest masterpiece", stand out songs like "Escape to the soul", "Precious blue lady", "Stopped in the bilge&# 34;, "Wicker fingers" and "Penumbra", the latter two composed respectively in 1973 and during his adolescence. Occasionally he is accompanied by Claudio Cardone, Machi Rufino and Jota Morelli.
At that time, Mono Fontana decided to leave the band due to the impossibility of overcoming his phobia of flying in airplanes.
1994-1999: Desert Partners
The year 1994 was the year of the AMIA attack and the Tequila Effect, the first of a series of international crises that would take place during the process known as globalization, which began in 1989 with the victory of the United States in the Cold War. For Argentina, fully embarked on the "structural reforms" promoted by President Carlos Menem, was a pivotal year for the change that was leaving behind the type of considerably homogeneous and egalitarian society that had been established for several decades, and that had, among other distinctive characteristics, a large middle class and low rates of marginality, unemployment and crime, which differentiated the country from the Latin American average. Impacted by the "Tequila Effect", in a few months mass unemployment appeared, after more than half a century without knowing the phenomenon, crime rate almost non-existent until that moment, street closures appeared and routes, the protest towns and the piquetero movement. In the course of that decade, the famous Argentine middle class would disappear and a fractured society would appear, with a huge precarious and marginalized sector.
In this "desert" context, those who would be his "desert partners" appear in the following years: Daniel Wirtz and Marcelo Torres. The expression is the work of Spinetta, who tells them both after rehearsing for a month:
This is a desert, let's settle...Luis Alberto Spinetta
Spinetta was also going through a moment of crisis and change, both musically and personally. Musically, he had lost Mono Fontana and his keyboards -due to the phobia he felt when traveling by plane-, which deeply marked Spinetta's music since 1987. Personally, after a few years of taking refuge in family intimacy, the twenty-year couple with Patricia Salazar they were coming to an end, which would be formalized with the divorce at the end of 1995, and he was beginning a love relationship with the model Carolina Peleritti that would last until 1999.
In that "desert" Spinetta decided to "return to the beginning", forming a power trio with Daniel Tuerto Wirtz (drums) and Marcelo Torres (bass), which he named Spinetta y los Socios del Desierto. Spinetta's music in this period returns to its rock roots, without abandoning the melodic and lyrical subtleties developed in previous years. The songbook will be made up of frontal, hard, rough and powerful rocks, "furibundo" at times, which Spinetta himself described as a "symphonic sawmill". Many times with direct lyrics that reflect his radical rejection of the values and behaviors that characterized the 1990s: consumerism, selfishness, mercantilism, wars, show business, fame, corruption, environmental destruction, social exclusion... But above all things, Los Socios del Desierto performed visceral music, in which Spinetta put the body as a singer and as a guitarist.
Los Socios was Spinetta's band that remained together the longest (six years) and with which he recorded the greatest number of unpublished songs (58 songs). Rehearsals began in April 1994, and the debut was produced on November 18 at the Buenos Aires Velodrome. In 1995 they made a national mini-tour, played in Santiago de Chile and gave a recital at the Buenos Aires Opera Theater, which was considered the Best Show of the Year, according to polls. "The critics fell at their feet and the fans were ecstatic before a proposal that reminded them of moments from Pescado Rabioso and Invisible".
In the second half of the year they recorded a double album at La Diosa Salvaje studio. Despite his career and the successes of the public, the record companies refused to release the album, arguing that there was no "market" for that music and that the money he was asking for was excessive. Simultaneously, Spinetta had another clash with the Establishment , when he was persecuted by entertainment magazines, at a time when he was beginning to date Carolina Peleritti and in one of those "hunts" 3. 4; he appeared with a sign around his neck that read "Reading garbage harms your health; read books", thus forcing photographers to publish that message.
In 1996 Los Socios performed two open recitals in Buenos Aires, with tens of thousands of attendees: on March 9 in Palermo (Figueroa Alcorta and Dorrego) and on September 22 in Parque Chacabuco, for the closing of the II Youth Biennial.
The year 1997 began with another massive recital held on January 4 in the Plaza de las Naciones Unidas in Buenos Aires, where one hundred thousand people gathered.
On April 30, after two years of fighting with record companies, Spinetta y los Socios del Desierto were finally able to release their first album, a double album, titled simply Spinetta y los Socios del Desierto, with themes and a frontal style that expressed discontent with the profound social changes that were taking place in the 1990s. The first edition of the album sold out in a week, being chosen as the best Rock Record of the Year, and what had been in the decade. Despite this, the album was discontinued by the label, making it one of Spinetta's lesser-known works, even though the album has been considered one of the pinnacles of his work. Among the outstanding songs on the album are themes of social criticism, such as "Checks", "Garden of People", "Nasty People" and "Cuenta en el sol" ('this world of madmen and fascists& #34;), and songs of love in which he expresses doubts and fears, such as «Jazmín» and «Mi sueño de hoy» ("A dream of light like a sunrise, when will it go to oblivion?"). That year, the program Bla Bla Bla on MTV, during the preparation of his recital unplugged , gave him one of the few interviews granted in that decade, in which Spinetta exposes his contempt for show business and the commodification of art and life; As a final synthesis of the interview, MTV publishes a phrase from the musician:
We won't be able to do a single show in Latin America if I keep talking like that.Luis Alberto Spinetta, 1997
Several music critics highlighted Spinetta's absence from the Latin American market, precisely at a time when "Latin rock" by the hand of Argentine and Mexican bands such as Soda Stereo, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, Café Tacvba, Caifanes and Dante Spinetta's own duo, Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas. In 1998, a Caribbean journalist asked him the reasons for his absence in Latin America and the musician explained that there was a decision by the main record labels in this regard:
For a prejudice with which I disagree, the international producers of important seals referred to my material as "Spinetta is very incredible, but its form of expression is very Argentine, very intellectual, it does not go with the Mexican market", for example. Which is ridiculous...Luis Alberto Spinetta
On July 11, Los Socios performed at the Monumental Stadium in Chile and on July 30, Spinetta expressed his solidarity with the teachers in struggle, visiting the White Tent they had set up in front of the Congress, where he sang "Los libros of good memory" and "Barro quizal", briefly but significantly changing the lyrics (“I am already becoming a song, maestro quizáz”) and expressed solidarity with the ultimate goal of " a fair education".
On October 29, 1997 MTV Unplugged broadcast the recital performed by Spinetta synthesizing a work of almost 30 years, accompanied by Socios del Desierto, Mono Fontana, Rodolfo García, Nico Cota, Rodolfo García and Carlos Franzetti, the latter conducting the Miami String Orchestra, in two moving symphonic versions of "Laura va" and "Jasmine". Spinetta's unplugged had the peculiarity of not including the Argentine musician's classic hits and lasting an hour and a half, instead of the hour of the standard program. Part of the concert was recorded on a CD titled Estrelicia (MTV Unplugged), in which Spinetta included thirteen of the eighteen songs from the extended broadcast of the recital and a closing theme, "Garopaba", composed together with Dylan Martí who also joined the band in the interpretation and that the channel had excluded. The six previously unreleased songs were "Your name above my name", "Tú véneras a reunir mi días", "Fuji", "Tía Amanda", "Garopaba" and "La miel en tu ventana", the latter composed in 1969.
On December 10 of that same year, he participated in MaestRock 1997, a rock festival in solidarity with teachers in struggle held in front of the White Tent, where he sang "Era de uranio", &# 34;The mountain", "Your name above my name", "Yellow flower" and "Laura goes".
In 1998 Los Socios recorded the live album San Cristóforo, the hardest rock album Spinetta made in his career, a sort of revenge on Unplugged recorded the year before, defined with a caveat: "acoustic lovers, abstain!" Contains five new tracks and heavy covers of classic songs, among which stands out that of "Ana does not sleep".
In 1999 the band recorded their fourth album, Los ojos. In the middle of the year his sentimental relationship with Carolina Peleritti ended and at the end of that year, coinciding with the end of the two presidencies of Carlos Menem, Spinetta decided to end the experience of the Socios del Desierto, who made their last performance at the stadium Chateau Carreras de Córdoba, on November 26, 1999.
2000-2009: Soloist in the 21st Century
Silver Sorgo (2001) marked Spinetta's return to the studio, after years of silence and several compilations. It contains 12 songs that he began composing in 1998 (Cinema from behind) . This material was presented live, at the end of the year, and recorded live for the album Argentina Sorgo Films Presents: Spinetta Obras (2002).
On August 26, 2002, he performed his first concert at the Colón Theater in Buenos Aires, accompanied by Claudio Cardone, Javier Malosetti and Mono Fontana, as a closing of the V International Music Festival of Buenos Aires. He performed 19 songs that cover his entire musical life up to that moment.
With Para los árboles (2003), Spinetta once again uses the preponderance of keyboards and instrumental passages as a resource and, in turn, flirts with electronics, to pay homage to the beauties of music. Nature beyond the human gaze.
In 2004 he toured Spain, which he repeated in 2006. Likewise, he made his first and only visit to Colombia, giving two concerts in Bogotá, the last one at the Rock al Parque festival in front of approximately 150,000 people. At the end of 2004 he released Camalotus , a four-track EP, which was featured in a mini-recital on FM Rock & amp; Pop (Argentinian radio). It is made up of three unpublished creations ―«Crisantemo» (from the film Flores de septiembre), «Buenos Aires alma de piedra» and «Nelly, don't lie to me»– and a remix of “Agua de la misery”, the first track from the 2003 album Para los árboles, by Rafael Aracaute. At the beginning of 2005, a special edition of the same EP came out that came with a DVD with the video clips "Correr frente a ti", "El enemigo" and "Tonta luz", directed by Eduardo Martí.
In July 2004 Nerina Nicotra replaced Malosetti on bass, and in May 2005 Sergio Verdinelli joined, to start a progressive replacement for drummer Daniel Wirtz ―who was affected by cancer that would cause his death at beginning of 2008―, thus being formed the last Spinetta band, together with himself and Claudio Cardone on keyboards.
In 2006, he edited Pan, in which the keyboards, performed by Claudio Cardone, stand out especially. The band was completed by Nerina Nicotra and Sergio Verdinelli. On March 4, 2005, he was invited to give a recital at the Casa Rosada, in which he appeared with a light blue and white electric guitar. On that occasion he chose to start the recital the zamba & # 34; Nueva luna (mundo arjo) & # 34;, composed in 1983, the year in which democracy was reconquered and which was never recorded. Spinetta defined the song as "Argentina for me":
Let's go with a zamba, "New Moon (world garlic)", Argentina for me. This topic represents our country. The letter says, "I'm afraid the sun will fall." The sun, come down, take care of the whole place. This is our garden and we must defend it. That's all I know.Luis Alberto Spinetta, Casa Rosada, 2005.
On October 19, 2006, he gave his second recital at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, which he dedicated to the nine young people and the teacher from Colegio Ecos who died eleven days before in a traffic accident. Spinetta performed a symphonic version of thirteen songs, accompanied by the Academic Orchestra conducted by Carlos Calleja: "Bosnia", "A Starosta, the idiot", "Tonta luz", "Bleeding peach", "She too", "Maribel fell asleep", "Captain Beto"s ring", "Ekathé& #34;, "Yellow Flower", "Love Song for Olga", "Thunder Eagle", "Talking" and "Promise me paradise" of his son Dante. No record was released from this concert.
In 2008, he released his latest album Un mañana. The plate was recorded together with his last band and included the participation of guitarists Sartén Asaresi, Baltasar Comotto and Nicolás Ibarburu.
I never experienced respect for life this way, and I never cared so much about music and lyrics (...)Luis Alberto Spinetta
That same year he played for the first and only time in Mexico, at the Anthropology Live Music Club Polanco, in the Federal District.
2009-2010: Last years
Moved by the fatal traffic accident involving the children of Colegio Ecos, around 2006, in his last public appearances he tried to bring messages of awareness to society about the responsibility of citizens when driving.
On October 23, 2009, he appeared as a guest for Charly García's comeback recital (a recital that would later be renamed "Underwater", since it was raining for most of the recital). There he played with Charly the legendary song I pray for you, composed by both of them for the Spinetta / García project.
On December 4, 2009, he closed the decade with Spinetta y las Bandas Eternas, a gigantic recital at the Vélez Sarsfield stadium in the City of Buenos Aires lasting more than five hours, in which he reviewed his entire career accompanied by each of the bands he led, as well as having guests such as Fito Páez, Charly García, Ricardo Mollo, Juanse and Gustavo Cerati.
Beto Satragni, on December 29 wrote the following open letter about the meaning and emotions generated by the concert:
We have perhaps lived one of the most impressive concerts of Argentine rock. I'm very moved to participate. Luis' ability to work in the previous essays, essays that began at two o'clock in the afternoon and ended at ten o'clock, with a Spinetta singing many of his themes in the original tuning, something imposing, almost superhuman, and a recital with many, I believe almost 50 themes, themes of one of the greatest composers of South America and the world would dare say. A Spinetta that reminded everyone of his recital and invited other musicians to share it with him. A constant emotion that made us cry to many of us who have closely followed their eternal bands... Great Luigi! Admiralism brother, Sos very great, I appreciate having passed near you. Now... you embedded yourself in my life with your music and friendship forever. He loves you and thanks you forever, Brother Beto.
A few months later, Beto Satragni and Diego Rapoport died. On December 4, 2010, one year after the historic concert, the recording of Spinetta and the Eternal Bands went on sale, which includes almost the entire concert, both on audio and on DVD., plus a book of photographs and a DVD with images of the rehearsals for the event.
In 2010, he composed an acoustic song for the album Canciones de cuna of the Casa de la Cultura de la Calle, with lyrics by Luciano Nieto. The album would later be released in February 2011.
On December 11, 2010, he participated in the historic El Abrazo 2010 Festival held in Santiago de Chile and which brought together several of the most important exponents of Chilean and Argentine rock history.
On February 2, 2011, he appeared at the Cosquín Rock festival with a new lineup in his band (reforming a quintet), which would be the last: Claudio Cardone on keyboards and Sergio Verdinelli on drums, and Baltasar Comotto on guitar and bassist Matías Méndez joined permanently, replacing Nerina Nicotra, who left the group permanently to dedicate herself to her motherhood. This formation had been presented previously, but in this recital it became definitive.
In 2012 he recorded the song Laura va with Amelita Baltar, for the singer's album El nuevo rumbo. Amelita recounts the following: The day I called Spinetta (Luis Alberto), I thought he was having an attack, it was 6 or 7 years ago. They gave me his cell phone, I called him and said: "With Luis Alberto Spinetta, please?" "Yes, it's me, who's speaking?" “Amelita Baltar”... “Oh yes, what's up? Who!”… I don't know who he was yelling at: “Amelita Baltar calls me, Amelita Baltar calls me! But goddess, greater goddess. And I tell him: "Don't be so happy that I'm calling you for a big boob." "I already tell you yes, ask me what you want because you already have the yes". So it was. She didn't even want me to go to the bus to look for him, "but I'm on my bike, on my knees the day I have to record"... There was so much affection and love. And she recorded “Laura va”.
Death
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On Friday, December 23, 2011, the entertainment newspaper Muy, despite the reservation that Spinetta's relatives had requested, published the front page headline "The skinny Spinetta is very serious", reporting that he suffered from abdominal cancer in an advanced state. Pushed by the publication of Very, the next day, Spinetta, through his son Dante's Twitter account, published the following text, reporting that he had lung cancer and questioning "the vultures on duty":
The Dante
dantespinetta
Letter from my Dad Luis Alberto
My name is Luis Alberto Spinetta. I'm 61 and I'm a musician. Since July I know I have lung cancer. I am very careful for a loving family, for the friends of the soul, and for the best doctors we have in the country. In the face of the flood of inaccurate information, I want to publicly clarify the conditions of my state of health. I find myself very well, in full treatment for a definitive healing. I want to thank everyone for the good news that I have received, and ask them not to pamper, and do not take into account the news that the vultures have generated in turn. I have no social network, no Twitter, no Facebook, etc., so everything they read about it is false. I belong to Consciousness, and I remind you that now in the holidays, if you are going to drive you should not drink. Thank you. I love you so much. Happy holidays. Luis.
The media's treatment of Spinetta's disease gave rise to a strong public debate on journalistic ethics and the violation of the right to privacy.
After an emergency operation for diverticula in the stomach, he remained hospitalized during January 2012. The weakening resulting from the intervention, combined with the physical wear and tear caused by the cancer treatment, led to his death on February 8.
According to sources in the family's inner circle, Spinetta died at home, surrounded by his four children who posted on Twitter on February 15:
This is the place, those who want to bring a flower and say goodbye to our dad, can do it next to the Paseo de la Memoria, here on the Costanera... Peace.
The message was accompanied by a photo of the place and bears the signature of the four children, who together threw his ashes into the Río de la Plata, very close to where he was born.
Spinetta was a compulsive smoker from a very young age and the association of smoking and lung cancer that caused his death was also the subject of public debate.
Months later Javier Malosetti, ex-bassist and friend of "el flaco", shared a photo of a sheet showing the last poetry that Luis Alberto wrote:
I was born, as a cocoon is born, as we all are born
next to the love of mine, who gave me the sense and the care
I grew up day by day, as we have all done and sheltered from home
I was beginning to understand, for moments playing
I saw the perfect things, and the world, infinite
Now I understand that the infinite has not changed
it is present when we look to heaven that we love it.Luis Alberto Spinetta
Friends: first posthumous
In November 2015, he released a posthumous studio album called Los Amigo, which consists of recordings that were recorded in March 2011 together with his friends Daniel Ferrón and Rodolfo García on bass and Battery. Prior to its release, this was joined by keyboards and orchestration by Mono Fontana and Claudio Cardone along with the Kashmir Orchestra. This is the last studio recording made by Spinetta.
The album was a success and ranked first in sales in Argentina.
Don't Look Back Anymore: Second Posthumous Album
On January 23, 2020, in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Spinetta's birth, the second posthumous album called Ya no mires atrás was published, which has 7 songs recorded by Luis during 2008 and 2009.
After ten years, the musician's family found the entire material on a flash drive and decided to finish producing it. The cover art is a drawing made digitally by Luis himself at the same time and the musicians who recorded were Claudio Cardone, Nerina Nicotra, Sergio Verdinelli, Mono Fontana and Alejandro Franov.
Unpublished work
Her children, Catarina and Dante, have made it known that Spinetta had an extensive unpublished work at the time of her death, and that it is her wish to publish slowly:
I found even drawings in napkins in the middle of other things that weren't to keep. I had to do a very deep cleaning. (Catarina Spinetta)
There's a lot of data, a lot of live things that are amazing. Recordings on tape, in digital, of different eras. Not only music, there is also poetic material, many drawings. We want to go out, gradually, something of all that is part of your big file. (Dante Spinetta)
Tributes and rereadings
After Spinetta's death, a movement began to reassess and recover Spinetta's work through exhibitions, tributes, and musical and audiovisual works.
In 2012, the National Library organized an exhibition entitled The books of good memory, exhibiting unpublished graphic material by Spinetta and with the performance of musicians who shared Spinette's work. In 2014, the tribute show "Spinetta, your flight at last" at the Néstor Kirchner Cultural Center and in 2015 another at Tecnópolis, entitled "Spinetta and the language of heaven".
In 2014 a triple album entitled Raíz Spinetta Versiones Folklóricas was released, which brings together 54 songs by Spinetta performed in folkloric rhythms. The project was created by the musician Néstor Díaz and was performed by prominent singers and musicians, such as Teresa Parodi ("Prayer for a sleeping child"), Juan Carlos Baglietto ("En una lejana playa del animus& #34;), Sandra Mihanovich ("Bleeding Peach"), Suna Rocha ("And Your Skin Appears"), Jorge Cumbo ("She Too"), León Gieco ("All the leaves are from the wind"), Liliana Herrero ("Bagualerita"), Bruno Arias ("Bajan"), Rubén Goldín (" All those years of people"), Mavi Díaz ("Laura va"). The project also includes the participation of musicians who were part of Spinette's bands, such as Lito Vitale ("Jade"), Machi Rufino ("Enero del última día"), Leo Sujatovich (& #34;Vida Siempre"), Rodolfo Mederos ("Para Valen"), Guillermo Arrom ("Siempre en la pared"), Juan del Barrio ("Give him thanks& #34;) and Grace Cosceri ("Asylum in Your Heart").
In 2015 the Konex Foundation awarded him the Konex Award of Honor as an outstanding personality of Argentine Popular Music.
On September 29, 2019, the National Geographic channel premiered the third chapter of the series “BIOS. Lives that marked yours”, a documentary based on the life and work of the artist.
In 2019 two biological species are dedicated to his memory: Sarcofahrtiopsis spinetta (Diptera) and Aluis spinettai (Bryozoa).
On January 23, 2020, the Google search engine dedicated a Doodle on the home page to mark the 70th birthday of his birth.
In 2022 the album "Spinettango" which brings together 11 works by Spinetta reinterpreted into tango by the Los Altiyeros group formed by Damian Torres quintet and Santiago Muñiz singer, the project was produced by Hernan "Don Camel" Sforzini and features special guests such as Litto Nebbia in ("Muchacha" (paper eyes), Melingo in ("Cementerio Club"), Mimi Maura in ("Durazno Bleeding&# 34;), the legendary Uruguayan murga Falta y Resto in ("Bajan"). The album also includes a version of ("Gricel"), that tango that Spinetta and Fito Paez performed in the album La La La.
Music and poetry
For Spinetta, music and poetry were closely linked and made up the two facets of his personality. In his solo stage, he achieved a distinctive and unmistakable sound that his followers say is "poetry made song". His choice of timbres, effects, chords and melodies was always characterized by this unique seal that he made, among other factors, that he is called "The poet of Rock".
His creative process started from the music and then went to the lyrics. «I first grab the guitar... It's a happiness to have a song that still doesn't say anything». His work is influenced by writers, philosophers, thinkers, psychologists, musicians and plastic artists such as Rimbaud, Van Gogh, Artaud, Dalí, Escher, Lü Dongbin, Jung, Freud, Nietzsche, Foucault, Jean-François Millet, Yoko Ono, Deleuze, Sartre, Castaneda, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Carl Sagan, John Lennon and Ludwig van Beethoven, as well as cultures of the peoples of the West and the East.
For him, music was always there before, but each tune hid a letter that had to be found.
One has to discover the text that is hidden in that melodic line, it has to be able to reach. It's those words and not others.Luis Alberto Spinetta
In the interview between Gloria Guerrero and Pedro Aznar, carried out at the Luis Alberto Spinetta Exhibition (2012), the journalist recalls LAS's refusal to explain their lyrics:
Gloria Guerrero: Luis never liked to explain the letters, you remember that of "the old grapes of a love in the plaster" What does Luis mean? "I'm never going to explain to you" (Louis answered), it got bad.Pedro Aznar: (imiting Spinetta's voice) I have a verdant in the closet!
On the other hand, Spinetta had a poetic facet stripped of music. He himself has said that there are "notebooks and notebooks full of poetry" written by him.
Spinetta also carried a tacit enmity with other musical genres, among his oldest statements is the phrase "Punk would not have to be here", referring to Argentine bands from the 80s, such as Los Violadores and others. In the documentary Spinetta, the video , when asked if there was social protest in his music, he stated:
Using a Panamanian language has no swing... there the songs are based on words and not on music... if when you have to say "I want the gorillas to let me live", you have to compose a march, black... that has no rock, no tango, no rumba, no fun.
Regarding other genres of popular music, such as cumbia, he referred when he was consulted, in an interview for Canal (á) (2002), about the results of a survey that ranked him as the most influential musician in Argentina:
Being the most influential musician means nothing... is very relative. Nobody can bother you to say that, I think, too, well, show me... When there are people who suddenly had a concept like "Almendriano" and started with it and now it does... (Spinetta performs with her hands a guitar gesture and emits onomatopeya chicuIt's a cumbia... I don't know, a lot you shouldn't listen to me, it loosed up a little bit of its burying, it got stuck and started doing other things that don't have the same caliber and don't think remotely like the one who influenced it, in this case I. The truth is that it is not noticeable that it has been the most influential... it would not bother me to be the least influential, because it is things to do the pill and the man is already more calm.
Guitarist
As an instrumentalist Spinetta stood out as a guitarist. In 2012 he was considered by the Argentine edition of Rolling Stone magazine as the fourth best guitarist in the history of Argentine rock. Spinetta himself defined his style as "tangueroso", mainly in solos", and his son Dante described it as follows:
He always heard Hendrix, but he had influences that went beyond guitarists: Bill Evans, Miles Davis. Perhaps those influences of more jazzy harmonies mixed with the Beatles and their tango, their Buenos Aires, generated that very own sound it has. His guitar was like his lyrics, too. My old man was a self-taught out of series: he did not know what he was playing in terms of chords or scores (something he inherited from his father, Luis Santiago, guitarist and tango singer). That's why your guitar playing is unique in the world.
He never hit a guitar. When he was bored, he changed them or sold them: he went in search of perfection and had the eye of the eagle to choose the ideal instrument. I thought the notes are energy; and the combination of the notes, alchemy. And he was one of the great magicians.
Many of his songs, such as "Post-crucifixion" or "Suspension", have epic riffs. But my old man was an excellent rhythmic guitarist. The rhythmic guitars he did while singing are incredibly hard to play. That's why I think, many times, the best vileros are the ones who make a beautiful song. And that's where my old man beats everyone.Dante Spinetta
In Almendra's time, Spinetta had developed as a rhythm guitarist; some of his songs, among them, "To these sad men" and "Ana does not sleep" were already equipped with modulations that constantly changed tonality. Already by 1972 he would end up taking the role of lead guitarist in Pescado Rabioso inspired by the ability of Pappo, with whom he would have played on his first solo album, despite the fact that he has always considered himself a "clumsy guitarist".; because he did not consider himself very technical. At the end of the 70's, he would be influenced by the music of jazz fusion guitarist John McLaughlin, which would lead him to change his style when doing solos and to compose songs with more complex harmonies and chords with more alterations, marking his influence by Jazz music in the rest of his discography. The Chorus effect would accompany his rhythm guitar sound from the publication of Children Who Write in the Sky (1981) onwards.
Teams
Guitars
- Epiphone Emperor Swingster Hollowbody
- Gibson BB King Lucille
- Gibson SG
- Gibson: ES-345
- Gibson Les Paul Custom
- Gretsch G6122
- Fender Telecaster
- Fender Telecaster Deluxe
- Fender Stratocaster
- Fender Jazzmaster
- Hagström F-300
- Fender Telecaster
- Fernandes R8 Stratocaster
- Pensa Stratocaster Custom
- Steinberger GL2
- Roland G-505
- Yamaha Pacifica
- Yamaha APX700N
Amplifiers
- Combo Bogner Shiva 2x12
- Bogner Shiva
Artistic conception
Spinetta sought to develop his work without falling into "showbiz", the search for success and "false idolatry" promoted by the media.
I would never sell my music to Knorr Switzerland to do propaganda, or Quilmes, or anything. I don't want to sell anything to people or my music. Am I gonna sell them a Coke? I love Coca Cola, but Coca-Cola is to drink, not for me to publish it.Luis Alberto Spinetta, 2001
Aspects of your personality
One of Spinetta's great passions was cooking, which worked in her life as a balancing mechanism, a counterbalance to her artistic activity:
Question: What do you do when you do nothing?
Spinetta: I make bread, make pizza, prepare a Thai or Mexican meal... I love cooking, great detachment. The intellect is applied to such a different place... Cooking contrabalances the anguish that will soon get into something arduous, because it receives a voice from the inside. And then there's no more to throw on a paper, to sit poetry, isolated phrases?... We have to make bread and we have to do songs. Because if I lived all the time making poetry, music, I'd eat.Luis Alberto Spinetta
Spinetta was passionate about soccer and a fan of the River Plate team and in some of his songs, such as "El anillo del Capitán Beto" or "The Lost Sparkler," he conveyed that passion. He enjoyed football -and sports in general- as an art that could only be surpassed by himself playing on stage:
(Football) is a major art. The crowd murmur, the court, the people, the ball, the players, all that is only overcome for me by a scenario. Good football, well played football, is a joy and represents a way of expressing itself, the harmony of the body, the way to face space. I am very respectful of the players who are there earning the bread in a court, that's why I get some attitudes wrong, for example when people insult them. I remember that during the ’78 World Cup a spectator next to me insulted Luque. And poor Luque was there killing himself with a dead brother, his arm and his nose broken. I felt an outrage that made me want to cry, an outrage at the bottom of my being.
Question: What is the goal of the musician?
May people enjoy a theme like a goal within the soul, that comes to it. Although I think that football because no one can get home and say, “Old, what a sprout!, they made us a goal about the time.”Luis Alberto Spinetta
One of his notable characteristics was always keeping a low profile. At concerts he used to take his time to give messages or talk to his audience, and he always stood out for his simplicity and humility with which he showed himself to people.
Public question in a show: (...) speaking of peace (...) Would you put Boca's shirt on?
Spinetta: Look if it were for the peace of the world I sacrifice the Fender whatever it is... And I swear I'll get Boca's. De River or Boca. -Someone from the public responds negatively to what Spinetta responds: You don't see! They'd have to play a football game with the inverted T-shirts so they understand that the color is a nonsense that separates us!Luis Alberto Spinetta
Her dialogue and writing were also influenced by her love of reading, reviewing the work of writers, thinkers, and philosophers such as Artaud, Freud, Nietzsche, and Castaneda.
Spinetta was also passionate about automobiles, especially those of advanced design, something that, according to Martropía, generated contradictions with his philosophy of life against consumerism and environmental destruction. During the recital that he performed for MTV Unplugged, at the end of the song & # 34; You will come to join my days & # 34; and introduce the band, he refers to himself by saying "Luigi Villoresi", an Italian former Formula 1 driver who died that same year.
Aside from that, he was a fan of Doctor Tangalanga, of whom he was also a close friend and, in times when he was not a public figure, he dedicated himself to distributing recordings among his musician friends and from there the enormous chain of clandestine cassettes in the 1980s.
Rating albums and songs
Albums
In 2007 Rolling Stone magazine and MTV conducted a survey among musicians and specialized journalists, in order to determine the best hundred Argentine rock albums. Nine albums made by Spinetta were included on the list, including the best:
| N° | Album | Banda | Year | Position |
| 1 | Artaud | Solista (like Rabid Fish) | 1973 | #1 |
| 2 | Almond I | Almond | 1969 | #6 |
| 3 | Fish 2 | Rabid fish | 1973 | #19 |
| 4 | Kamikaze | Soloist | 1982 | #24 |
| 5 | The garden of the present | Invisible | 1976 | #28 |
| 6 | Almond II | Almond | 1970 | #40 |
| 7 | La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la, la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la | Next to Fito Páez | 1986 | #61 |
| 8 | Invisible | Invisible | 1974 | #65 |
| 9 | Under Belgrano | Spinetta Jade | 1983 | #69 |
After the list was drawn up, Spinetta won the Gardel de Oro Award in 2009 for his album Un mañana.
Songs
To value Argentine rock songs, two large polls have been carried out, one conducted by Rolling Stone magazine and MTV and the other by the site rock.com.ar. Both lists include ten songs by Spinetta, of which five correspond to Rolling Stone magazine (among them the second best) and seven to the site rock.com.ar (including the second best). Only two songs are repeated on both lists, "Muchacha (paper eyes)" and "El anillo del Capitán Beto".
| N° | Song | Album | Year | Banda | Rolling Stone | rock.com.ar |
| 1 | «Woman (paper eye)» | Almond I | 1969 | Almond | #2 | #2 |
| 2 | «Cantata of yellow bridges» | Artaud | 1973 | Solista (like Rabid Fish) | #16 | |
| 3 | « Continue to live without your love» | Pelusón of milk | 1991 | Soloist | #33 | |
| 4 | "The ring of Captain Beto" | The garden of the present | 1976 | Invisible | #52 | #66 |
| 5 | «Argentine Ruins» | Almond II | 1970 | Almond | #52 | |
| 6 | «I like that tajo» | Simple. | 1973 | Rabid fish | #57 | |
| 7 | «The Monster of the Lagoon» | Disrupting | 1972 | Rabid fish | #61 | |
| 8 | « Song for the Days of Life» | 18' from the sun | 1977 | Soloist | #68 | |
| 9 | «Resumen porteño» | Under Belgrano | 1983 | Spinetta Jade | #70 | |
| 10 | «Maribel fell asleep» | Under Belgrano | 1983 | Spinetta Jade | #79 |
Among Spinetta's themes, different evaluations have also been made to highlight the best ones.
- The magazine Rolling Stone (ed. Argentina), on the occasion of the death of the musician, he was honored by selecting those that at the discretion of his journalists were the five best songs: (1) "Bajan," (2) "I pray for you," (3) "I like that tajo," (4) "The Tremendous Monkey," (5) "Durazno bleeding."
- The TELAM agency identified those that in its opinion constitute 10 essential songs of the musician: (1) "Bajan," (2) "Place for a sleeping child," (3) "Song for the Days of Life," (4) "By," (5) "Download walks," 6) "Laura va," 7) "Figure," 8) "Durazno bleeding," 9) "It doesn't mean," 10) "Cantata of yellow bridges."
- Diary of Mendoza, he measured the eight most applauded themes among forty played in a recital tribute to Spinetta in 2013: (1) "Keep living without your love," (2) "Don't get away from me so much," (3) "Maribel fell asleep," (4) "Bajan," (5) "Post-crucifixion," 6) "Ana doesn't sleep," 7) Captain Beto's ring, 8) "The lost flare."
- The News Argentinas agency produced a list of eight best songs by Spinetta: (1) "Muchacha (Ojos de papel)", (2) "Bajan," (3) Captain Beto's ring, (4) "Keep living without your love," (5) "Durazno bleeding," 6) "Ana doesn't sleep," 7) "Fine white clothes," 8) "All the leaves are from the wind."
- The Info News agency developed a list that called "their 10 elementary records": (1) "Keep living without your love," (2) "Potototo theme," (3) "Harm of diamond," (4) "Bajan," (5) Captain Beto's ring, 6) "The Books of Good Memory," 7) "Credulity," 8) "Muchacha (Ojos de papel)", 9) "Cementerio Club", 10) "Durazno bleeding."
- The Mexican magazine Sin Embargo produced in 2013 a list of ten essential songs: (1) "Bajan," (2) "Cantata of yellow bridges", (3) "In chains to the soul," (4) "Pleamar of eagles," (5) "The Books of Good Memory," 6) "Harm of diamond," 7) "Thank you," 8) "Barro maybe," 9) "Potototo theme," 10) "To these sad men."
- In 2019, the National Geographic channel launched a documentary film by Luis Alberto Spinetta, in the framework of the BIOS cycle, which revealed unpublished facts in the musician's life.
Work
Discography
Solo Studio Albums
- Spinettaland and his friends (1971)
- Artaud (1973) (credited to Rabid Fish)
- 18' from the sun (1977) (with Banda Spinetta)
- Only Love Can Sustain (1980)
- Kamikaze (1982)
- Mondo di cromo (1983)
- Privé (1986)
- La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la, la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la (1986) (with Fito Páez)
- Tester of violence (1988)
- Don Lucero (1989)
- Peluson of milk (1991)
- Grey fire (1993)
- Silver Sorgo (2001)
- For trees (2003)
- Camalotus (2004)
- Pan (2006)
- One morning (2008)
- The Friend (2015) (recorded in 2011)
- Don't look back (2020) (recorded between 2008 and 2009)
Live Albums
- Exacts (1990)
- MTV Unplugged (1997)
- Argentina Sorgo Films presents: Spinetta Works (2002)
- Spinetta and the Eternal Banking (2010)
- Presentation ARTAUD - 1973 - Astral Theatre (2020)
- Presentation ARTAUD, Vol. 2 - 1973 - Astral Theatre (2021)
Timeline
With their Eternal Bands
Includes Almendra, Pescado Rabioso, Invisible, Spinetta Jade, Banda Spinetta y Los Socios del Desierto and Spinetta Los Amigo, as well as the 2009 Spinetta y las Bandas Eterna Concert.
Soloist
In addition to studio albums, it includes the live albums Exactas, Argentina Sorgo Films and Spinetta y las Bandas Eternas.
Note: Musician list does not include session musicians from the recording of "Only Love Can Sustain"
Filmography
| Year | Title | Type | Information |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1973 | Rock until the sun goes down | Documentary | Address: Aníbal Uset |
| 1983 | Buenos Aires Rock | Documentary | Address: Héctor Olivera, Carlos Orgambide, Renata Schussheim |
| 1986 | Spinetta, the Video | Documentary | Address: Pablo Perel |
| 1987 | Balada for a Kaiser Carabela | Short film | Address: Fernando Spiner / Unique appearance of Spinetta as an actor |
| 1993 | Grey fire | Go ahead. | Address: Pablo Cesar / Soundtrack of the film composed by Spinetta |
| 1993 | The act in question | Go ahead. | Address: Alejandro Agresti / Execution of musical pieces by Spinetta |
| 1998 | San Cristóforo | Live DVD | |
| 2005 | Camalotus | DVD videoclips | Included in the special edition of the homonym album |
| 2008 | One morning | DVD videoclips | Included in the special edition of the homonym album |
| 2009 | Mercedes Sosa, Sing an Intimate Journey | Documentary | Address: Rodrigo H. Vila |
| 2010 | Morning, day | Documentary | Address: Sergio Constantino, Eduardo Pinto |
| 2010 | Spinetta and the Eternal Banking | Live DVD | |
| 2012 | Rabid fish, incurable utopia | Documentary | Address: Lidia Milani |
| 2019 | Bios Spinetta: Biography of Luis Alberto Spinetta | Documentary | Address: Sebastián Ortega, Leo López, Javier Berruti |
Books and writings
- Spinetta, Luis Alberto. Black guitar1978
- Prologue to The History of Rock in Argentina by Marcelo Fernández Bitar, 1987
- Prologue to Bulevar García by Eduardo Milewicz, Tilt, 1988
- Prologue to The day John Lennon came to Argentina of Juan Alberto Badía, South American, 1990
- Spinetta, Luis Alberto. The primordial sound (musical technique), 1991
- Prologue to Things to hear of Raúl Tarufetti, Planet, 1994.
- Ten, Juan Carlos "Martropy: Conversations with Spinetta". Aguilar, 2006. ISBN: 9789870403968
General references
- Calamaro, Andrés (15 October 2013). «Andrés Calamaro and his unforgettable moments with Luis Alberto Spinetta». Rolling Stone. Argentina. Archived from the original on 16 May 2017. Consultation on May 15, 2017.
- Coccaro, Gabriel (March 2012). "Luis Alberto Spinetta: tomorrow is better." Hamartia (Argentina) 1 (3): 28-35.
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