“I’ve got six hundred and I’m okay with sixty, good songs are too expensive”

You listen to a song and it takes you to the place and time you hear the most. And the composer?

Most take me back to the time I wrote them. And in this compilation material, I am aware of what I think, when and why I do almost everything. That’s the power that songs have. They adopted me at El Centenillo in Jaén last weekend and they said I composed a well-known song there, “I want to hug you so much” but what’s up, I made the music in the Netherlands and the lyrics are in Mexico.

Does this evocative power do you any good when you perform them live?

You somehow automate the work, but that depends on the day and circumstances. There are also songs and songs. Some are more superficial, others are not.

It’s not the first time he’s looked back to think about his production.

But never this way. Anthologies had been made, but I didn’t interfere to tell which songs and which versions were supposed to be. First time. And yes, a selection of the best known, but also the rarest things that even the company didn’t expect to intervene to bring them here. There are songs that even God doesn’t know you wrote, and I have a special love for some of them. That’s why I included them.

For example?

There is one I saved before, which was “Little Song”. What I call miserable songs, nothing happens when you make them. I’m thinking of “Como los monos de Gibraltar”, which gave me so much but still didn’t say them. Or toys like “I love hearing from you,” which are three-minute songs. I wish all the songs I wrote were three minutes long. Because you tighten too much, you concentrate, you let go of the essential. Like “My country is not the same” or “So that they love you so they know they love you”, which I added as the closing of the concert, which I loved very much but did not say like before. more. Or there was no such thing as “I don’t want to be a soldier” because I wrote at a certain moment, it’s like vomiting and it’s the one that caused me the most administrative problems with the censorship.

In any case, he did this reflection of looking back at his work while touring.

But when I’m finally starting a new tour, you focus on what’s cool, what people want to hear, and the cherries that are usually the last thing you post. That’s why you’re turning on the fan here, and I don’t know how many years I haven’t been singing to fifty percent of the crowd. For example, I think “Me’n vaig a peu” with Serrat or “Ramito de violets” with Pablito Milanés.

And what conclusion do you draw from all this repertoire?

Sometimes, as a boutade, I say that I have many songs, close to 600, and 60 songs should be enough. You usually write on it. Earlier, there was an album, 12 songs, and a whole bunch of things that were sometimes valuable and sometimes not. There is nothing in this that I don’t want to happen.

Sixty songs three minutes. One hundred and eighty minutes!

Three hours of repertoire! This is very expensive. Good songs are very expensive. Sometimes you get it right and then people just don’t care what you do with so much effort and love. And others, the less thoughtful song, gives your life an unexpected boost. Ana and I must have done so well in another life for someone to suddenly send you “La Puerta de Alcalá” or “Contaminame” when we were about to finish recording an album. Although in this case they are other people’s songs.

Which of these surprised you and changed your life?

The song that surprised me the most was “Grandpa Victor”, which was different in different scenes. I didn’t even plan to record it. It felt so personal, so sincere… How do I describe this milonga in the album, it’s a guelum! But I told it to a friend who stopped by and started crying one day. It was impossible to understand. “I have a beautiful girl like you,” he told me. Then there are songs that come out very easily and are very well received, like “I want to hug you so much,” not just here, but in Chile, Mexico, Argentina… Or later, when I was evicted by the industry and I felt myself in the sun. well-maintained soy flour corazón” and “I’m just thinking of you”. You can’t measure the extent of what can happen in songs.

So “Grandpa Victor” taught you to undress a little more as a composer?

Everything on the first album in 68/69 belonged to a very close circle. I didn’t think some paxarinos might interest anyone beyond Pajares, but that’s what Juan Cueto said, glocal. The songs are spinning out of control and flying around and you don’t know what the process is or how it turns their heads because it catches too far. This happens with music. You listen to thousands of songs and some stay on your hard drive and some don’t.

How was this evicted by the industry?

That’s how I felt at that moment. He was a dog, didn’t earn anything, didn’t work or just did very special things. He also volunteered a little. Six years without making a sound on television, before and after the transition, he was involved in a lot of political issues, for me to stay in the transforming space. And that was the moment when I started writing “El corazón tended al sol” in a special trance to reshape my image as a musician, a singer and win some bitches.

What kind of?

We were moving house, Ana and I were walking around the family’s apartments a bit, and suddenly I saw a very beautiful house. We had five hundred grand in the bank, we paid in advance, and then I had to start writing the album because otherwise I would never have been able to pay. Sometimes you force yourself to look for ways out. And sometimes you do. The company change was also related to this. They didn’t want me anymore at Polygram. They were fed up with me, always mingling with fregaos who had little to do with music. CBS had Tomás Muñoz, a great president, and when they offered him the opportunity to sign me, he said, “If he wrote ‘I want to hug you so much,’ ‘El grandfather Víctor,’ and ‘Canción para. Pilar,’ he didn’t have to be forgotten. Making the songs.” It is true that you have the necessary materials for the project, but when I changed companies, I still did not have it.

And these classics arose out of necessity.

I wrote the album believing that people should like it, but there are some very strange songs. It was 1978, and there’s the “Song of Hope” where he says “We change almost nothing with one vote” and which the winners of the elections in Chile now use. But they had very strange songs, “El nino que vola” or “Pablo y Juana”. But he had two bombs, “I’m only thinking of you” and “Heart lying in the sun”.

How did you write them?

I was waiting at a motel in Montilla, Córdoba, to sing to Aguilar de la Frontera when “I’m just thinking of you” was triggered in my head. I received Diario de Córdoba at reception and there was a history of both sexes disabled cohabitation in Cabra and the problems that came up. And a photo with feet: “When they’re done, Maryluz and Antonio walk hand in hand in the garden.” I can go to the hostel right now and describe it for the first time. “I have a heart stretched out in the sun” is very optimistic, but there was a lot of pessimism inside me. It includes a large number of people, a large number of populations. This is how songs work, even if you don’t know how.

But he does not rule over ingredients like the cook. No?

You learn this over the years. I used to sing a lot more songs than I do now. Now I know the goal and generally I know where I want to go when I start them. However, some do not.

There are songs in this work discs live. You recorded several. Apparently he likes live shows, he’s still comfortable on stage.

You have to have a good voice, make people happy, and then you come back twenty years later and they still remember. So most of the peres I spent were to bring great musicians and equipment behind me. The people give it back to you. What’s wrong is you have colleagues who think you can go to any lengths to play.

In any case, she likes it.

Yes, lend me a lot. The subtitle of the tour is “stage is the cure for everything”. Of course it can be treated. It’s a drug and I’ve never been bothered to live. Sometimes you sound bad or you have a bad day, but I’ve never been to a psychiatrist and that’s because I sing. I, who is sometimes almost morbidly shy, have no problem with ten thousand, especially when there are a lot of people, say seven. Stand there and I know how to do it, how to address the public. That’s it, you’re learning to enjoy it, and I’m enjoying it a lot. There are people who don’t like travel or hotels, and yes, that’s what makes you feel most tired in this story. but everything is rewarded.

Then there are a number of versions featuring much younger musicians: Rozalén, Dani Martín, Sidonie, Drexler…

This would make me really happy. Although I have never seen some of them, they are the people I follow because it is impossible for me to come across all of them. They appreciate and favor my work, it’s not a mission. What will I say? When I introduced Rozalén 50 years later, I said nothing but “this is here to stay”. Since then he has been sending me whatsapp every 14th September saying “it all started with you”. These are the things that connect you more to the profession.

For those who came after him, he always acted as the “godfather” of the music scene.

Whenever they asked me and I had the opportunity, I helped. It’s not about “you helped me”. No, I don’t help anyone. I can put them on a pedal so they can stand up, but it doesn’t matter whether you push or not if you don’t have the skill. I remember the opening scene of “Mucho más que dos” in Gijón in ’94. They were Pedro Guerra and Javier Álvarez. And it was devastated when Pedro came out and started playing “Animated Cartoons”. It’s so nice to meet talented people!

These new versions are manufactured by Paco Loco. Do you have any other projects with him?

Paco Loco recorded a new version of “La madre” with Dani Martín. He says he’s going to make a selection of songs for me now, but he says there are too many songs he’ll need help with. It’s okay to have a radically different vision of what my songs are. It could be good. I was very curious to meet him after he produced “Los Locos” for Asturian Fonographic. I haven’t seen him since 1983.

come back with the group AsturiasOn new tour to Niemeyer in March.

Yes, and I was realizing that I hadn’t been singing since 2011, when we did “Vivir para cantarlo” in Niemeyer. With Miguel Bosé, with Miguel Ríos, with Joan Manuel Serrat, with Ana…

And the year will end with a symphonic concert, just like a symphonic concert. Workbut in Madrid.

Have fun at the concerts in Madrid, Wizink, Gijón on December 21. And when I think about how hard it was to move in this kind of concert, and when we did it 22 years ago… We did it in much worse conditions. There were rehearsals but hardly any volume control or anything. Everything was so improvised and the first concert was recorded. But the truth is, a year and a half ago one of the engineers at that job told me he listened to it again and that album was crap. I listened to it, I listened to it, and we got the machine back in motion. And everyone is satisfied.