José Luis Picón I Málaga, (EFE) because in the 50s only “Elvis’s rock and roll and the sweetest” was known in our country.
“The antics of Johnny Kidd and The Pirates, Gene Vincent or Eddy Cochran were not known. I got to know all those people through the Beatles records”, Carlos Segarra said in an interview with EFE, who this Monday will offer a concert in Malaga as part of the Atardeceres Larios cycle.
He adds that, at that time, “one did not become rockabilly, because then that word was not even known”, but he and his entire fifth, through versions made by the Beatles or the Rolling Stones of songs by Chuck Berry or Little Richard, they found out that “there was music from the 50s that had not been known here”.
Carlos Segarra began playing at the age of 15, first at his school for his classmates, then at rallies in his neighborhood in the incipient democracy, and then in music bars where a sign warned: “No entry for minors under 18 years of age.” “I was 16 and I was going to play for 30-year-olds,” he recalls.
rare animals
He acknowledges that, “of course”, they looked at him as a freak for dressing as he did “in those days, when everyone wore long hair and people were more hippy”.
“Those who were ten years older than us had fought against the dictatorship: they had shaken the tree and we collected the fruits,” says the Barcelona singer, who also recalls how difficult it was to find rock clothes in those years.
“We made the clothes ourselves. We would go to shops on the Ramblas where they sold clothes for gypsy singers. We would see Cuban bailaor heels or fringed rumbas shirts, they would serve us and we would dress them up, like denim jackets, all dressed up”.
At that time he met, in the same gang of friends, Loquillo, who “was more of a rock and roll ideologue”, and in addition to setting up a band then, they began to compose songs together and continued to do so afterwards.
“It was the year 1977 or 1978, it coincided with the punk music boom that came from London and let’s say that the rockers of Barcelona were very punk and the punks were very rockers. The music didn’t have much to do with it, but the attitude was the same. The rockabilly music of the 50s was the punk of that time.
After those beginnings in Barcelona, they arrived in Madrid at the height of the Movida, “which is a melting pot of different cultures” and which continues to “love them wonderfully”, without affecting their Barcelona origins. “All those clichés remain for football,” he settles.
It reveals that some of the great successes of Los Rebeldes were unexpected. “’Bajo la luz de la luna’ or ‘Mediterraneo’ I composed them while doing my military service in Ceuta, where I left in 1984. We made three albums and I didn’t record them because I thought only I liked them, and curiously they became hits ”.
artificial intelligence
Regarding the current music platforms, he regrets that “they don’t give much” and that is why “there are countries that are making laws so that they pay a little more to the record company, the producer, the publisher and the artists, the people who release songs so that the public knows them.
“The support will continue to change, and the important thing is the songs, an artist that composes and plays them, and an audience that wants to listen to them. It must be borne in mind that not all musicians are composers and not all composers go on stage. If there is no way for work to be rewarded, there will be a lot of people in the future who don’t make a living just composing”, he explained.
And to this are added other technological advances. “Now, with artificial intelligence, any day we see the Beatles reborn again. Well, maybe we musicians paint little from here to not too much”.
Los Rebeldes are now releasing “El honor y la gloria”, their 40th anniversary album, a summary of the band’s career that they recorded live in 2020 at the Joy Eslava venue in Madrid. “After three weeks the pandemic began and everything had to stop, and it will come out in September.”
At their Larios Sunsets concert in Malaga they will review their successes. “There are people who only have four or five well-known songs, but we have problems making a repertoire with so many number ones. We are excited that people are going to sing 90 percent of the repertoire, if not all of it”. EFE