This is a story of perseverance with a happy ending around the figure of one of the most respected and beloved musicians on the Spanish scene. The documentary Un día Lobo López traces the genesis of Échate un cantecito, the album that in 1992 launched the career of Kiko Veneno with songs such as Echo de menos, Superhéroes de barrio or En un Mercedes blanco. A success built on the edge of the precipice, after a few years in which the artist born in Figueres and with a long musical career behind him ruminated to definitively leave the world of music, where he was known but from which he had never managed to live. “I bet on making my last album” explains Kiko who, visiting Barcelona to present the documentary, recounts how he put himself in the hands of Santiago Auserón, founder of Radio Futura, for a definitive attempt that can now be seen in theaters and later in Movistar.
When one thinks of Kiko Veneno, one does not imagine a 40-year-old worker for the Seville Provincial Council, married with children, but that was his situation at the end of the eighties. Also a musician, of course, with a career that began more than a decade ago with the mix of rock and flamenco by Los Veneno, and continued through the eighties with his solo work, publishing records such as Seré mecánico por tí (1982) or El handsome people (1989). In those years he also collaborated with artists such as Martirio, in addition to appearing on the program La bola de cristal. A “bad” period, Kiko recalls, “I played very little and I made three or four recordings on TV” but nothing more.
From failure to success, the piece directed by Alejandro González Salgado -which uses the split screen as a narrative tool- allows Kiko’s music to explain the story, turning the documentary into a journey through the recording of Échate un cantecito where narration fades into the background. To achieve this effect, she brought together the musicians who collaborated on the original album, recorded in London under the production of the Englishman Jo Dworniak, who has also worked with Radio Futura and Jarabe de Palo. Juan Ramón, Frank Tontoh, Lolo and Pájaro, the same musicians who participated in the 1992 recording, reinterpret the pieces on the album 30 years later while recalling their origin. “It was very necessary to show the work of the band within the creative process” explains Alejandro, “a led but joint exercise”.
From here, stories are recalled such as the fall of a lemon at the Seville Expo that gave way to the love story of Salta la rana, or the Torecan suppository that Kiko took to combat dizziness. It was under the effects of this drug that she wrote Un día Lobo López, the first song on the album and which gives its name to the documentary. “My songs had to go in one direction and have to mean something serious, tangible” explains the musician, recalling how at that time his bet “was to live from music”.
Along with the original formation, voices such as Raimundo Amador, Santiago Auserón or Ana, his wife and mother of Kiko’s three children, appear in the documentary. Together they thread a positive story of a period that the protagonist remembers with happiness from the moment he began preparing Échate un cantecito, back in 1989. “I had my home studio, I composed songs with a different quality, I felt more confident, I had a job, an income, and that gives you security.” Lesson for future musicians: the importance of having a payroll and a job that helped him “discipline me and make better use of the time I had.”
The story materializes in the recording at the Moody studios in London for a month and a half in 1992, while the Universal Exposition was taking place in Seville, another of the backgrounds of the story. “In London I was happy,” he explains, recalling the peace of mind that having “a production team I had never had, a record company behind me, a great budget, things I had never seen in my life” gave him, a professional way of work on the music that culminated in the joint tour of Kiko and Juan Perro. “At the age of 40 I saw people who had started with me who were already retiring,” she explains. It was about careers focused on a younger audience, a train that he missed, failing to “identify with my generation.” A brake that allowed him “after a while, with patience” to put together a “more consistent and classic” work.
