It’s hard to listen to the return of Waterloo and not have a good time humming “Wa-Wa-Wa-Wa-Waterloo, finally facing my Waterloo…”.
Many things happened in 1982, the Falklands war, the Naranjito World Cup, and also the dissolution of Abba, one of the historic bands of international pop. Waterloo is one of those songs that has the superpower to resist the passage of time, the ones that lift spirits and awaken memories. Perhaps this is the secret of the success of tribute bands, a booming and widespread phenomenon in many continents. There are many halls that program this type of proposals, and there are even festivals dedicated exclusively to this type of cover bands and companies that are dedicated to promoting this type of shows. In Madrid, this summer the cycle of concerts Tributos: lo mejo r de… was a resounding success; and now in Barcelona the Cúpula Las Arenas theater stands as the largest stage with seats that hosts these recitals, although halls such as Luz de Gas or Apolo also regularly program tribute groups. For the night of December 31 at Cúpula Las Arenas, the performance of Abba The New Experience is scheduled, with a musical and stage show that revives the music and style of the Swedish group.
Since their victory at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974, Abba’s music continues to work. This is corroborated by the furor with which the announcement of their return in 2021 with a new album and a virtual show was received, and proposals such as this tribute band, made up of eight musicians and which has even performed at the Swedish embassy in Madrid
“Abba’s compositions are original and good, they go far beyond the hits – highlights the band’s drummer, Jonathan Argüelles-. They have a very interesting musical universe. We started more than eight years ago and after the pandemic we have grown a lot. As we entered auditoriums and theaters, some promoters and representatives offered us the option to do big things and we took a step forward. It may sound like a cliché, but Abba’s audience spans several generations. Back in the day the group had an audience that today has become older, but since the musical and the film came out, young people have also taken an interest in their music. And the comeback, in addition to keeping its repertoire current, has the value of being in a very current and futuristic format”.
In addition to the tribute to the Swedish band, the special program for these Christmas parties at Cúpula Las Arenas Barcelona includes shows that bring us closer to David Bowie Sinatra), Queen (or Elvis Presley (with Greg Miller, one of the best impersonators of Elvis all over the world, and the only one who got to meet the king of rock).
The fever for Elvis is not abating, as evidenced by the more than 30 concerts in Europe of The Elvis Concert, a show in which musicians and personalities related to Elvis participate, together with Dwight Icenhower, one of the best Elvis impersonators of recent years (winner five consecutive World Championship Elvis Tribute Artist in Memphis).
The Beatles also continue to inspire. The members of the Abbey Road band know this well, and with The Beatles Show they have created a two-hour show that mixes technology and the best of the Liverpool band’s discography. Abbey Road is one of the best Beatles tributes in the world, and they even use the instruments that John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr used.
It may be that today, when looking for originality and the production of something that blesses the algorithm, the word imitate is associated with negative connotations, but it has not always been this way. Throughout history, the imitation of certain artistic models has been essential for the evolution of creativity: in the Renaissance, imitatio as a pedagogical exercise and the rhetoric of Quintilian were the norm.
Imitate is not a verb that bothers Adrià Pujadas at all, who plays Brian May in Queen forever: “I think the greatest flattery is imitation, we try to imitate the music we like the most and we do it being very respectful of the songs and the staging”.
Queen forever will be ten years old this 2024, a year in which they will be on tour throughout Spain and in which they are already closing performances in Germany and the Netherlands. Pujadas, who has always been a fan of Queen (as a teenager he started making guitars like Brian May’s), celebrates being able to devote himself exclusively to the band, although as they are all from Mallorca and have family, from sometimes it’s difficult to be away from home every weekend, but, as he emphasizes with a smile, “first and foremost, rock and roll”.
The audience of this band that admires the music performed by Freddie Mercury is timeless, from children to 85-year-olds: “The film Bohemian Rhapsody has made us grow, our audience has become younger and we are accessing bigger venues ”, affirms Pujadas.
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It may be that these types of bands have to do with nostalgia and the date of birth, but it is an indisputable fact that almost all the big stars of the music scene have someone who sings them. The international figures and those of Spanish pop rock have their cover groups. There are about twenty of Héroes del Silencio, and Mecano, Los Secretos or La Oreja de Van Gogh also have their clones, and singer-songwriters such as Raphael, Nino Bravo or Camilo Sesto have found a firm voice in Mancheque Sergio Romero to interpret their themes. Another tribute band to keep in mind is La Penultima Sabinera, a group from Lugo that performs all over Galicia playing Joaquín Sabina’s repertoire. With Carlos García-Boente as singer, and considered by critics to be the best tribute to Sabina, this group from Lugo has shared the stage on several occasions with the members of Sabina’s original band, both with Pancho Varona and the Benditos Malditos . As Sabina sings: “No hay nostalgia peor que añorar lo que nunca jamás succedió”, and what these tribute bands achieve, precisely, is that this something happens. Perhaps this is the secret of his success.
