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When Fito Páez composed Maelström for his album The conquest of space, he did not imagine the viral storm that would hit the planet a few months later. On March 13, the day of his 57th birthday, the Argentine musician was going to present the new album in Rosario, his hometown. But the covid-19 pandemic forced that concert and the rest of the international tour to be postponed.
“I am very happy to be able to make a great landing in Spain as I have been dreaming for so many years. And now it was going to be the moment, but whatever time is going to be delayed because the important thing is to preserve lives, ”says Páez on Zoom from his home in Buenos Aires. Relaxed and in a good mood, he wears a white sweatshirt that reads "No signal" and says that isolation has given him time to compose music, finish the script for his new film and begin his autobiography.
Question. In The Conquest of Space , the idea of music as liberating or transforming everyday horrors stands out. Has it become even more important in this pandemic?
Reply. Music is an expressive language that has passed through thousands and thousands of years in different ways and has accompanied the lives of humans, it occupies a central place in our sentimental education. It is part of something ancient to get together some nights and for the shaman to come and propose a pagan, lustful party, which has later been transformed into shows, where people go to embrace, sing, and share. Who can say that this has no fundamental value? It is, at least for me, and I hope to be able to transmit that pleasure that it generates in me.
Q. What is it like to play by streaming , without that direct contact with the public?
R. These streaming things , at least with the piano alone, in my house, have been very strange. I did it and in some moments I had a good time, in others I did not. The music is with the other. One needs the other's ear, spirit, and energy. As much as you know that they are watching or listening to you in countless houses in the world, playing via streaming is a very Martian situation, anti-musical I would say, because the lonely moments are when you compose and write.
P. Has this unprecedented situation served as a trigger for songs or writings?
A. I am a lucky man. I have a house with hot water, I can eat two or three times a day, I have my drinks when I'm a little crazy and the reality is that much of my work is alone. I never had a sabbatical and luckily having this time helped finish a movie script; then I did a kind of virtual press tour; I am writing the first part of my autobiography, until I am 30 years old, and I am producing a lot of music, because every day I sit at the piano for half an hour or 40 minutes. I've already put together about 20 pieces, which surely can end up in an album.
Q. How different from the nomadic process of The Conquest of Space , which began in Brazil and ended in Los Angeles.
R. I always made records on tours, in hotels, on airplanes, in the middle of other activities. And I wrote movies like that too. This is the first time in a lot of years that I have had time to compose quietly. The only thing that bothers me about all this is not being able to play live and have a beer with my friends on the corner, not much else.
Love is the only thing that interests me. The signifiers, the perversions, the links, their healing forms, the different stages
Q. Did you discover music that surprised you during the quarantine?
R. I did not listen to much music, although to write I wear my Haydns, my Bachs, very short so that they accompany me, always music without batteries. Now that I am paying attention to writing and making music, it forces me to move away to escape possible influences and to relax I have seen more movies or a series. But before the pandemic, I was shocked to hear Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso, with a band called ATR, who inflame trap with a savagery and a number of ideas that are the vanguard of what I have heard about trap in all languages. I have enjoyed that a lot even with my daughter, Margarita, who is a huge fan.
Margarita, 15, is the result of the musician's relationship with Romina Ricci, and is five years younger than Martín, the son of Páez, and the actress Cecilia Roth. A couple of months ago, the rocker shared a viral dance challenge with them on the networks, and today, although he assures that for his children he is “a ghost”, he boasts of having discovered Charly García, Luis Alberto Spinetta and Caetano Veloso, among others. "I also get involved a lot with what they get hooked on," he says.
I consider myself a musician who could be a spectator in the front row of a moment of excellence in Argentina
Páez began to be popular with his music in Argentina in the eighties. Since then he has written three books, filmed three films, recorded 24 studio albums and four live albums, including El amor post del amor (1992), the best-selling Argentine rock with more than a million copies.
Abe Laboriel Jr. (drummer for Paul McCartney), Juanes, Ca7riel, Lali Espósito and Hernán Coronel, among others, participated in his latest album. With the latter he half signs the most danceable song, Hey, you, which shoots its rhymes against sexist violence. “It is an issue already installed in society since [the feminist movement] Ni Una menos started. We have always been great fighters for freedom, "he says. Coronel, leader of the cumbia band Mala Fama, polished what Páez wrote until it became "what you hear there, which raises the dead from the cemetery." “I went crazy, I thanked him and told him that of course we were going to sign together. I confirmed again that Hernán is one of the great Argentine artists of the moment ”, he says.
Q. Is there an album by another artist that you would have liked to do?
R. Very many. From Litto Nebbia, Charly García and Spinetta, all of them. I consider myself a musician who could be a front row spectator of a moment of excellence in Argentina and I was also able to connect at times with heroes of the past, such as Roberto Goyeneche. Both Spinetta and Charly and Litto allowed me to enter their rehearsal rooms and passed on their knowledge to me. Of course, I have a work and I know where I am located in the genetic fabric of Argentine music, but I was fortunate to have been received in those places where the wisdom of contemporary popular music was.
Q. Why do you think Argentine rock is not so well known in Spain?
R. I think it must be a sum of factors. The musicians who have lived there, such as Ariel Rot, Moris and Andrés Calamaro, have been successful. Possibly the music of Charly, Luis, mine, Gustavo [Cerati] are also a little more complex, not so realistic and Spain also has its language, not only linked to popular music. I get the impression that different aesthetics have been developed, although they have always received me like a king and I love [Joaquín] Sabina and Serrat. I was trained with Joan Manuel, I mention it in a song - "as a Catalan used to say, I was trying to grow and not settle down" - and Joaquín has been an extraordinary colleague and friend. Joaquín knows how to penetrate the human heart. With simple musical ways, but his pen has impressive power and he has an extraordinary charisma.
Q. The album closes with Everything is forgotten, a song to love. How have you marked it throughout your life?
R. Love is the only thing that interests me. If you give me to choose a topic to chat, I would choose love. The signifiers, the perversions, the bonds, their healing forms, the different stages of love, with your children, with your girlfriend, with your mother, with your aunt, with your brother, that is what I like the most about being alive. That is why I say that love is the perfect word.