Loquillo’s life has been spent between poetry and rock for years, 30 to be more exact. Double life, two characters that feed off each other in the same figure, a reference in Barcelona popular culture since José María Sanz began playing at the age of 16 in the Tabú cabaret on the Rambla, “among American marines and ladies of life.” What began as an escape from the Troglodytes in 1994 with the publication of La vida por siempre, has become six albums that will continue this year with an album dedicated to the Luis María Mesanza National Poetry Prize. Poems set to music that are now gathered in the compilation Transgresiones (Warner), a title that defines Loquillo’s intention when entering a space where no one expected him and, as he states, many have never loved him. He is now preparing for a tour that will take him to the Liceu for the first time on May 17 as part of the Mil·lenni festival.
Why a compilation?
To showcase 30 years of work, it started as an alternative project and has become a career. I feel very proud of never having received help from the Ministry of Culture, the Autor Foundation or the Cervantes Institute, which would be logical, that they would promote culture in the Spanish language, that they would pay attention to these projects and those of other colleagues who have made those acts of faith in favor of Hispanic poetry.
I haven’t toured with this project in years.
The last time was in 2011, in the midst of the 21% VAT increase. Then I decided to go out in the middle of COVID, I was looking for a way to reclaim the profession and live music at the worst possible time. Without vaccines, with the total nullity of the Ministry of Culture and the autonomous communities and the only solidarity of private promoters and some mayors who dared to offer a small musical program in the middle of all that.
Is the problem that culture is confused with entertainment?
The two things can coexist, it is important that the private developer is well taken care of because he risks his money, and I tell you this because I am one. It is important that it has a tool such as the artist’s statute or the patronage law, not approved although claimed for 25 years in Spain, something that does happen in other countries. These promoters can coexist with the public sector, which must favor spaces and take care of the quarry. What is happening in Barcelona? We are going to close live music venues for the month. So many festivals are subsidized, a little of that money would have helped certain venues not have closed. If not, where do the kids go to play now? There is a comparative grievance there.
Is your project still transgressive?
I am aware that I take risks even though I have just made three Wizinks in a row, but an artist who does not take risks is not an artist. The other day I heard Guillem Gisbert, singer of the Manels, say that he was aware that what he was doing [leaving the Manels to pursue a solo career] was going to have a cost to his audience, but he assumes it. That is courage, that is an artist, he who is bold endures. Those who do not dare, those who think they are going to lose what they have, generally stay by the wayside.
Are the rocker Loquillo and the one who sings poems complementary?
I need that character to build the other. I left the tour in October because I was physically and emotionally exhausted, I couldn’t handle the character anymore. The first tour I did with this format was in ’95 with Sopeña, and it had more to do with the classic singer-songwriter. The second one was with a jazz band and the third big tour was with Luis Alberto’s album, in which rock was merged for the first time with the past from which I came, with the jazz band or with the bands. Spanish singer-songwriters. But this is something else, this is the first time that a rock band is going to take the repertoire, because it is the same band that I lead, with Igor Pascual, Josu García or Laurent Castagnet. It will be the first time that the two worlds will meet.
Maybe one of the two Loquillos disappears
No, because they feed off each other, for me the difficult thing is not to go from the character of an auditorium or a theater to rock, but the other way around. Going from externalizing to containing is an actor’s exercise, it is more complicated and requires a process, a few months.
How did you start setting poems to music?
It’s like a puzzle, I maintain a tremendous friendship with Quico Pi de la Serra, one of the great authors excluded from Catalan music. I am also a fan of Ovidi Montllor and I liked Paco Ibáñez’s versions of Brassens. Then I had the idea of ??taking that to rock, Quico called Paco and asked him, Paco said I should do whatever I wanted, and I found myself doing Brassens’ version of Bad Reputation.
Then came Johnny Cash’s The Man in Black
Since then I have collected rosaries, I say it very proudly. It was a very important song for a whole generation of priests and ecclesiastics who took the habits because they made that song a kind of anthem. To this day they still give me rosaries, when I travel I always carry one of the ones they gave me. Sometimes those who were once kids and who are now church officials come and tell you “look what I’m wearing,” and The Man in Black plays. It’s amazing where a song can take you.
And Life Ahead arrives in 1994
It was the third act and the finale of Troglodytes. After five years of touring, totally exhausted and destroyed by drugs, I needed to escape from there. On the album Hombres I met Gabriel Sopeña, who came from the world of author songs and had made proposals with rock and roll, and we began to talk about the madness of putting music to poetry and recovering the tradition of the troubadours, but in a rock key. I was tired of the rock world, of Peterpanism, of the Guns N’ Roses wannabes, so I jumped into the pool.
It was a success, gold record
100,000 copies have already been sold, I provided the voice, Gabriel Sopeña searched for the poems. Afterwards I tried to recover the Trogloditas but it was impossible, so in ’98 I continued with Con Elegancia, I was the first European artist to record an unreleased song by Jacques Brel. If Serrat or Sabina did it, what would it have been? But I did it and they asked themselves, What is this guy doing here? To the point that there was a tribute to Brel in Barcelona and they didn’t call me. Why didn’t anyone pay any attention to us? There are people who believe that something belongs to them, but I don’t care, the only thing I would like about this alternative challenge is for the new generations to reinterpret in their own way those fundamental poets of our history. I will never believe that this belongs to me.
The list of poets that appears on the album is enormous, with Octavio Paz, Gil de Biedma, Montalban, Bernardo Atxaga, Pedro Salinas and Pavese
There are two parts, in the first it is Sopeña who decides the poems, and a second part in which I decide. I am the one who decides to make an album dedicated to the work of Luis Alberto de Cuenca, I decide to make Europa by Mesanza and the one who decided to make the soundtrack for Mujeres en Pie de Guerra. My head is already spinning, and since Brel, nothing is impossible.
And puts Dickens to music
A Tale of Two Cities is the best entry in the history of literature. It was an idea that came to me during Covid, I took refuge in Dickens, first because of those Bruguera comics. You see that and you say, I can’t believe it, we are living that. Dickens was an outburst, but then we put Zanon, who is the last great chronicler of the city of Barcelona along with Casabella, Sabino Méndez, Ramón de España and Javier Agulló, who is one of the great chroniclers of Barcelona in the 70s and 80. Zanon had to be there, also because he was the renewal and a poet who grows in rock language, like Luis Alberto de Cuenca.
What have you learned by versioning poems?
Above all, it has helped me to discover theater and coincide with a part of me that I have in my DNA and because I am from Barcelona. Not only is it the rock and roll of Los Sirex, Los Salvajes and Los Cheyenes, there is the trace of the chanson that existed in Barcelona with singers like Serrat or Ovidi, and that marked part of the song. The French influence has also been decisive in my life. What would I be without Johnny Halliday? One has to know oneself and over the years that puzzle ends up being done.
He will do it at the Liceu
Filling the Liceu is a dream, when I was 16 I played at the Tabú cabaret, among American marines and ladies of life. We did our chocolate dealings, because we were kids, and we saw how the anarchists threw tomatoes at the bourgeoisie, still Franco’s bourgeoisie, who entered the theater. Now I’m going to play, it’s a path.
Have you been to the Liceu a lot?
I’ve only seen Johnny Hallyday and Bunbury, I guess because of class. I have seen opera in other places, at the Teatro Real, but there is something there that didn’t leave me at the time.
Had they suggested you go to the theater on La Rambla before?
Several times doing rock, but I had to do this. It is not being orthodox, but ethics and aesthetics are very important, you cannot bring a rock show to a place like the Palau de la Música. I played at the Palau with Life ahead and it was one of the great moments of my life, feeling the parquet where the greats had been. It’s a matter of being lucky enough to be able to enjoy playing in a theater in my city.
Do you have other scenarios left to tread?
I’m missing the Grec and the Plaza Monumental in Barcelona, ??inaugurating it so that it can be dedicated to the culture of our city. It cannot be that a space like the Monumental is dying of laughter. I have several things that no one can say, such as the record audience in Barcelona, ??125,000 paying people at the PSUC parties, in Sot del Migdia. Sorry, I did it and not Coldplay. But in 47 years of my career I have not played at the Grec, they have always taken it away from me, in the same way that no one has given me an Ondas.
What is your relationship with Barcelona like?
I am a son of Barcelona in the 70s, all the people from Madrid came here, but in the 80s the city was Madrid. Barcelona had lost everything, we left because the record companies closed and went to Madrid. Later, with the Olympics, Barcelona regained leadership, there have always been some kind of transmission lines. I haven’t lived here for 15 years, but from what they tell me, when a city is not renewed, ideas are not renewed, it stays old. By expelling young people, old ideas remain, transgression ceases to exist. Young people don’t have access to anything and the ideas they follow are the old ones.
Maybe the problem affects the entire continent
There is a lot of that, Europe is getting old and we see its decline, you don’t have to be very smart to realize it. The loss of cities is due to the non-renewal of generations, who have nowhere to start or plan a life. In our case we were coming out of a dictatorship, in the same way that in the 60s the generation that made all the change came from a second world war. Suddenly a generation of actors emerges, all the English hungry young men, the nouvelle vague or neorealism, with a hunger for art, to create. I remember that generation because I was young in the 70s when I started at Tabú, on Las Ramblas.
What was that environment like?
The Venus Dome was more important than the Bocaccio, that must be said once and for all. Ok with the gauche divine, where the transgression really took place was in the Venus Dome, there everything happened at the end of ’78 on the Ramblas, from Rubianes to Loles León, Pavlovsky… Ocaña was the freest place I have ever seen. seen in my life, apart from the Rock-ola that came later. I don’t understand why that place is not claimed as the temple of transition in Barcelona in the 70s. Bocaccio was the gauche divine, but what was the gauche divine? The well-off children of the Catalan bourgeoisie who spent their summers in Palamós.
Popular culture has been forgotten
Why do you talk to a Pissarello and he doesn’t know that Gardel was someone very great in Barcelona? Let no one know who Raquel Meller, José Guardiola, the Dynamic Duo, the Sírex, the Savages, the Cheyennes, the Lone Star are. In the 80s there was a subculture in Barcelona that still remains of rockers, teddy boys, punks and mods with Último Resorte, Los Rebeldes, los Negativos or Brighton 64. Any other city puts it into value. Why do we always have to eat the sambenito of Barcelona as the city of Nova Cançó and rumba? I’m 63 years old, okay, everyone should be given the importance they deserve. All of that music, pop, rock and roll, hardcore or punk rock, has been despised, and increasingly so. It is an endemic problem, it is even carried in the DNA. When they ask me, I say that I am a citizen of the world, I was born in Barcelona and that is why I am a citizen of the world, I carry it very clearly here [and points to the shield of the city that he has tattooed on his right forearm]. Barcelona was the capital of the world until someone decided that it was the capital of Catalonia, but I was lucky enough to experience that Barcelona that changed the world.
