Time passes for everyone, also for Ariel Eduardo Rotenberg Gutkin, better known as Ariel Rot, who incredibly is already 62 years old although when we talk to him it doesn’t look like it. From his urban refuge near the center of Madrid, he can be seen happily through the screen as he attends La Vanguardia to talk about the reissue of Hablando solo (Warner), the album he recorded with the Attractions of his admired Elvis Costello . With this work, Ariel began his solo career in 1998, the last chapter of a book that remains open between collaborations and retrospectives that serve as an excuse to reunite the formation of 25 years ago and return to the stage, as that of the Apolo 2 room next April 20 (8 p.m.).
How did the reissue of Hablando solo go through your mind?
I’m in the age of reissues already [laughs], I could live on my birthdays from here until I retire. It was a casual thing, it came out while I was sharing with the musicians on the tour some footage I did at that time. Suddenly one of them said, “it’s been exactly 25 years since this” and I thought something should be done. Conceptually it makes perfect sense for it to be Hablando solo. It’s the record that started everything I am right now, where I first tackled a solo career in a consistent and solid way.
How did you experience the release of the album?
It was one small step for humanity, one giant step for me [laughs]. It meant learning another trade, being the spokesperson and acquiring full commitment to what you are presenting and defending it. It was something completely new for me, the vocal part, being in the center of the stage, leading the timing of a concert, composing only my songs, a new experience that I lived with great joy, with euphoria and also with fear and dizzy I was lucky to be speaking alone but in good company.
Performing with the same band from 1998 must have influenced the music.
Working with this training has given me a certain freshness and at the same time a very powerful background. It had been a long time since he played with a band, doing concerts with the pianist Federico Lechner, or alone. But an electrical project just for me, I haven’t done it in many years. The feeling of playing with them again was a harmony in terms of codes, five years traveling together gave us many anecdotes, many invented languages ​​that we recovered again, also a lot to learn together and get to know each other a lot. Everything that’s happening is an event, I’m quite euphoric to get back some friends I haven’t seen in a while and now we’re back in an intimate situation. These bonds we make on the roads and in the venues are strong and pure, you can’t disguise it.
The new tour will take place in small stages.
This is a repertoire for fans, for coffee makers, a kind of reunion that I will have with them, those who used to come but always miss their youth. Although there are some classics in the repertoire, more from the RodrÃguez era than Tequila, there are all the songs that are emblematic for my fans.
A few months ago, the documentary Tequila, sexo, drogas y rock’n’roll was released. How do you remember your time with the band?
Tequila was a neighborhood group, we played in big schools, in small festivals in the seventies. I had come from playing at my house without an amplifier, almost always with a Spanish guitar, I had never had a band, or a rehearsal room, and suddenly I had all these new toys to be able to develop my musical fantasies. I remember it as a time when my head exploded because I had a band, then a contract, concerts all over Spain, fans, interviews, girls and drugs.
In Argentina, birthplace of rock in Spanish, urban music is now winning.
Rock had a very long reign, with several lives, it was the language of the youth for decades, which is somewhat unbelievable for a genre. It was about time there was a relief for rock, a new language for the young. Argentina continues to be an extraordinary musical hotbed, and it is true that Duki fills the Vélez stadium, but Fito Páez has also just filled it twice. It seems to me that there is a very healthy music scene in Argentina, where these new sounds and these new attitudes coexist with respect, knowing where they come from and why they got where they did.
Can you see yourself experimenting with electronics?
I’m not trying to force anything anymore, if I ever find someone to work with who controls these instruments – which I don’t know completely – I’ll probably have a great time and we’ll do something. I’m not going to start, after having spent a lifetime learning to play the guitar well, the piano, trying to learn to sing better and better, trying to start knowing how to program a drum beat. I don’t close myself off because I like any kind of music, I proved it in Un paÃs para escucharlo by playing with everyone. As long as I can do it in a natural way and contribute something, I’m happy.
It has been seven years since his last study work. Do you have new material?
Seven years already… a long time. On the one hand, statistically, with the passage of time, less is composed. On the other hand, I had a contractual agenda and a creative agenda that I couldn’t abandon, it was a kind of pressure or combat that never stopped, that’s how it worked. But a few years ago it stopped being like that, I no longer have that pressure and that probably took away a lot of my concentration. I worked very, very hard to maintain that rigor, and now I have relaxed and freed myself in a certain way. I trust that I still have a work saved to come out at some point, but I admit that I am not making enough effort to be able to get it out.
