Xavier Herrero |
Madrid (EFE).- They were 17 years old and really wanted to see the world “in color”, like that post-Franco Spain of the early 80s. “What do we need to make a record?”, they asked in the only factory they knew , and thus Dro was born, the first great Spanish “indie” label, the one that released from Nacha Pop to Extremoduro.
These days are celebrating 40 years (41 actually) of that milestone with the launch of a box that tries to synthesize the best of its catalogue, with references such as Aviadro Dro, Loquillo, Gabinete Caligari, Duncan Dhu or Marea, and a book with more of 70 testimonies written by the journalist Laura Piñero, “Those accidental years. Dro, the independent record company that changed everything” (Cúpula).
One of the most important voices is that of Servando Carballar, a member of Aviador Dro and co-founder of that company named Discos Radioactivos Organizados and in the style of “do it yourself” that abounded in the United Kingdom, such as Virgin Records, “a step beyond small labels” that already existed in Spain like Tic Tac but that limited themselves to publishing material from everyone who put money on the table.
“It occurred to us to go to Iberofón, the record factory that we saw the most in vinyl, and we stood at the door to ask ‘what do we have to do to release a record?’ When we saw that our first release, ‘Nuclear, sí’ by Aviadro Dro, was being sold in 5 minutes, we assumed that we could do the same with Siniestro Total or Glutamato Ye-Yé”, he told EFE.
With a small office set up on the floor of one of them and a warehouse in another, the company began to function in an almost traditional way. In the absence of designers, they sometimes colored the covers themselves and only sent copies to those stores they knew, waiting for the corresponding return check for sales.
“Best of all, it was the beginning of the Movida, so there were many people doing things in all areas. Madrid was very alive and there was a lot of interest in new bands, as well as journalists who began to pay attention to us”, he recalls about that favorable breeding ground with information professionals who rowed in his favor, such as Diego Manrique and Carlos Tena on television, Julio Ruiz on the radio or José Manuel Costa in the press.
Commercial success of their first releases
For the commercial success of his first releases, see “When do you eat here?” (1982) by Siniestro Total, “Que Dios reparta suerte” (1983) by Gabinete Caligari or the EP “Una tenth of a second” (1984) by Nacha Pop, joined an unexpected “strike” by the commercial radio formula against multinationals for the payment of rights.
“They came to tell them that they didn’t need them and so, for a few months, they began to pay much more attention to us,” recalls Carballar, who values that batch of groups and artists who edited “not so much a highly perfected technique and a lot of imagination and humor in his lyrics”.
The company grew with the incorporation of other sister labels in spirit, “people who liked music and wanted to publish their records and those of their friends, without thinking about business,” says Paco Gamarra, who linked his destiny to de Dro through one of those incorporations, that of GASA.
“But there came a time when what started as a game grew in such a way that a business structure was needed, a bit hippy, but a business structure,” says Gamarra before a company with more than 70 workers.
In 1988, Servando Carballar and Marta Cervera, another of Dro’s co-founders, decided to abandon the project. “We did not know how to balance the spirit of adventure and risk with paying salaries. I no longer felt comfortable in that territory and we went looking for other formulas”, explains the musician.
New projects
Dro moved on. With the acquisition of Producciones Twins a year later, it became the largest independent label in the history of Spain and in 1993 the entire group was acquired by one of the large multinationals, Warner Music, which for some meant betraying its essence.
“It was a necessity. It could have been traumatic, but against all odds it went very well. The success was to buy not only a catalog, but also a team. We stayed in our office and all of us who were doing what we knew how to do were still free. We had plenty of ideas and artists, but we no longer had the burden of worrying about financing”, says Gamarra.
He was one of those who continued in this new structure (he continues today as an adviser) and, in his view, what they called the “Dro gene”, “that courage and attitude in the face of vicissitudes”, asserted itself and many of its professionals ended up in positions of responsibility at the parent company.
Among other reasons, successes such as the signing of Los Rodríguez, “which was not easy, because those at the top did not see it”, but whose first album sold nearly half a million copies. “And thus Warner verified that he was not going to lose money, but to earn it,” he emphasizes.
Dro continued “making hits from below”, with long careers like those of Extremoduro or Fito Cabrales, both with Platero and Tú and with Fito and Fitipaldis, but he opened his way of working to artists who had nothing to do with his way of understanding music. , see Álex Ubago, The Corrs or, above all, an unknown Laura Pausini. “There we turned the marker around,” says Gamarra.