Iñaki 'Uoho' Antón: the architect of the Extremoduro sound has many things to tell

Treason.

Break the loyalty that must be had.

Inaki

Antón resorts to the word "betrayal" several times during the long conversation with this newspaper.

It refers to a non-negotiable principle that is the basis on which his ethical code is based.

He talks about betraying oneself.

“That's the idea: you don't have to do anything you don't want to and you should never betray yourself.

Even if it's good financially.

You must not.

It does not matter: fortunately in the fridge we will always have eggs to eat something.

And if there are things that take you down a path where you don't feel good about yourself, I think you shouldn't do it.

Even if it's hard,” he explains.

Uoho (Bilbao, 57 years old) decided to leave Extremoduro in 2019. The decision, not impulsive and ruminated over for years, had much more depth: he did not want to dedicate himself to music anymore.

The foundations of the group's new album were already built, so he didn't owe anyone anything.

He felt overwhelmed by the business direction his band had taken and his relationship with Robe Iniesta (without the two of them, Extremoduro would not be understood) was not going through the best of times.

He communicated this to Iniesta and, a few weeks later, he proposed to make one last tour.

"We deserve it and the people deserve it."

That was the idea.

There was another reason: this way they would close one of the most important pages of Spanish rock with a good memory after some disagreements between the two.

For 11 dates in the spring of 2020 half a million tickets were sold.

It was going to be the biggest and most profitable tour of a Spanish rock band.

But it was not carried out.

The pandemic exploded and it went to September 2020, and then to 2021. The virus still did not give up on those dates and the logical thing was to move on to 2022. Then Iniesta stood up.

He no longer wanted.

He was interested in launching his solo project (under the name of Robe), less cumbersome than Extremoduro, and publishing

that album that he designed together with Uoho and the other musicians as an Extremoduro album.

Iñaki wanted to complete the tour and Robe did not.

There the relationship was definitely broken.

More information

Robe Iniesta: “I don't control what I write.

It's like throwing up and then looking to see what's in there."

In the basement of the house of Uoho (guitarist, composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer) in Sopelana, a charming and green municipality on the Biscayan coast, some 40 guitars are scattered.

You also find a piano, percussion instruments, basses, a drum kit... The musician has spent almost two years without playing them.

"Not even touching them," he emphasizes.

He finished his experience with Extremoduro defeated.

“Very fed up, yes.

And I thought that I would never want to make music again.

Life is other things.

On a musical level, I felt fulfilled and proud of what I had done.

At that time the music seemed

.

I wanted to detach myself from her and enjoy other aspects of life, family, photography, walking the dogs… More prosaic things”, he points out.

After that time purging toxins and the help of her family (her partner, María, and her three children, 31 years old, eight and five) she has regained her enthusiasm for rock.

Hard.

Her new project will be named after her (Uoho) and in it she will sing for the first time in her career.

They will be songs from the two fundamental Spanish rock groups where she has been a member (Platero y Tú and Extremoduro) and from her other, more minority band, Inconscientes.

There will be four albums called

The first will be released on April 26 and will go on tour this year.

But until reaching this exciting moment, she has had to go through unpleasant paths.

The musician in the garden of his home in the company of one of his guitars and his two dogs. Javier Hernández

Iñaki manipulates the recording table in his studio to play the songs he is recording for his new album.

Some will sound familiar to the fan:

or

(from Extremoduro),

or

(Platero and you).

“It has been difficult for me to take the step of singing.

At first I would stand in a corner of the place, as if afraid.

Until a month later, these [the other three musicians from Extremoduro who have joined the project: José Ignacio Cantera on drums, Miguel Colino on bass and Aiert Erkoreka on organ] told me: 'You should still start placing yourself in the center of the local,” he laughs.

His singing sounds like he speaks: rough, serious, in the stubborn line of Rosendo Mercado.

In the basement where we are they have rehearsed and recorded Extremoduro for the last eight years.

It is divided into four compartments: a rehearsal room, a recording booth, a wide entrance full of instruments and another space with a good sound system and a generously sized television screen.

Cables and headphones everywhere.

Also vinyl and compact: Santana, Frank Zappa,

Deep Purple, Beatles, Red Baron, Alarm!

(Manolo Tena's group)... Among the four dozen guitars there is a Gibson Les Paul with part of the wood worn away.

“I won that one from Robe in a bet.

It is the one that he took out in the famous

of

in a television program [referring to

from TVE, in 1990].

He also won one for me.”

A photograph draws attention.

Cantera, Colino and him with drinks in their hands and some T-shirts that read: “I survived the 2008 Extremoduro tour”.

The other member of the quartet, Robe Iniesta, does not appear.

The guitarist started that tour badly.

“I started going to the psychologist in 2008, after the first concert.

He gave me a

motherfucker from stress and tension.

And then I have gone recursively, when I see that I need it.

During the pandemic I have been doing therapy over the phone because I saw that I needed to be focused.

He had things clear, but he wanted to see me supported.

Therapy is very good, but it is an expensive vice”.

And he continues: “In 2008 it began to smell singe and ten years later it was burned.

I think we became too important.

It would have been more comfortable two steps down.

And maybe it would have been better for all of us, although I can only speak for myself.

I don't like to go into detail because you end up implicating other people.

In a tour, in the recording of an album... there are many people involved apart from the musicians, and each one takes success in a different way, assumes it in a different way, interprets it in a different way, tries to direct it in a different way.

Robe Iniesta and Inaki 'Uoho' Antón on November 1, 2014 at an Extremoduro concert at the Palau Sant Jordi (Barcelona). Xavi Torrent (Redferns via Getty Images)

Iñaki has always been comfortable in the background.

As he says, "I like playing midfielder more than center forward."

His work is basic in the creative process, in the engine room of the recording studio, of the rehearsal room.

He first did it with Platero y Tú (the band he formed with Fito Cabrales in the late 1980s) and then with Extremoduro, where he has been since the mid-1990s.

“He is a fan of gadgets, of technology in music.

He is the one who develops the ideas, organizes them, shapes them… He already did it in Platero and then I think he developed it much more in Extremoduro”, says Fito Cabrales by phone during a break from his tour with Fito & Fitipaldis.

A job away from the spotlight that contrasts with a childhood where he used to position himself in the shop window.

“I liked to attract attention.

At that time of post-adolescence I was very

I don't know why, but I liked to transgress, play balls.

He was always the class representative.

If he did not agree with what a teacher said, he answered him;

he didn't do it badly, but he said: 'Well, not that'.

Her parents were of humble origin, she a housewife and he a metallurgist.

His two brothers, who are 15 and 18 years older than him, soon became independent and he always remembers himself alone at home, a house of about 70 square meters on Calle Autonomia, on "the edge of the center of Bilbao".

His mother, "who was very singing", encouraged him to study music theory.

He entered at the age of six and completed five solfeggio, two harmony, as many choral ensembles and four piano.

A rock musician who studies musical theory and academic practice, something unusual.

Fito Cabrales, Juantxu Olano, Jesús García and Iñaki 'Uoho': Platero and You in 1997.

The guitar had never played it.

On one of her sister's birthdays, when he was 17, a Spanish woman she owned showed up.

“The next morning I went to the living room and I found the guitar, I grabbed it and started playing around.

I was already listening to some rock.

Putting on a record and playing on top of it, I was making sounds.

Since he knew music, he placed his fingers and things came out.

I learned

by Deep Purple;

from AC/DC, Status Quo stuff…” he recounts.

After a few bands, it was time for Platero y Tú.

Cabrales: “I went to a rehearsal one day.

Iñaki already played the guitar very well.

He told me: 'Hey, besides playing the guitar, could you sing?'

And I said, 'Sure.'

We played songs by Rory Gallagher and Leño.

Then he called me on the phone and told me that he was in the band.

That was the most glorious moment of my life.

Iñaki and I have been brothers ever since.

There were days that we did not separate in 24 hours.

Literal".

Platero y Tú played against each other and won.

It was a rock and roll band, with influences from Chuck Berry to AC/DC, and with light-hearted lyrics in an environment that was not at all inclined.

“In those days there were only groups of what they called Rock Radical Vasco, which was basically protestant punk.

They told us: 'Making that music you are not going to eat anything, you have to shit on the mayor or something like that'.

But we wanted to do rock and roll”, says Uoho.

When Platero was experiencing a height of popularity, Iniesta crossed his path in 1991. They fraternized immediately.

José Antonio Gómez, the man who signed the two groups for the Dro label, speaks on the phone: “Iñaki was essential for Extremoduro.

He is the one who orders Robe's creative chaos, the one who gives it shape, the architect of the Extremoduro sound.

Robe, who is very smart,

she realized it right away and went to live in Bilbao, near him.

But Iñaki was not only musically important for Robe.

Also emotional, because he welcomes him and orders his life”.

So Iñaki lived in a 45 square meter apartment with his first wife, Merche, and his newborn daughter.

Everything became closer when he took in Robe, his girlfriend at the time and the couple's dog.

The lyrics of 'So clown', one of Extremoduro's classics, in his studio.

Javier Hernandez

Together they recorded

(1995) and

(1996), the work that launched Extremoduro.

Iniesta left the seams of his open creations, the patterns without basting.

She picked up the acoustic guitar, played and there was a world in front of her to do things.

It was all open.

It could end up being a wild song, or a tender tune.

The angle was not acute, it was open.

And there came Uoho to order it.

“Iñaki sees the songs from above.

He has an enviable vision of music.

He knows where to put an arrangement, where to put a violin, where to stop or speed up.

With Robe they have always worked like this.

They complement each other, they make a great team”, says José Ignacio Cantera, Extremoduro's drummer since the mid-nineties and since then always with Uoho, also in Inconscientes and now in the new adventure.

“These were very creative years.

Every rehearsal and every recording was an occasion to go blind.

We were very loose.

They were psychotropic records”, describes Uoho.

Iñaki then bought a house in Múgica, Bizkaia.

There he took in Fito Cabrales when he had drug problems.

“I will be eternally grateful to him”, says the leader of Fito & Fitipaldis, who adds: “Before being a musician or producer, Iñaki is a good friend.

For me it is the most important thing”.

Robe, Fito and Iñaki lived through a time of creativity and intense friendship: their houses were only four kilometers apart, they met to ride their bicycles and spent hours at La Casa de Iñaki, a studio built in the guitarist's home in Múgica where they they recorded the works of Extremoduro and the first of Fito & Fitipaldis.

Patero y Tú became unfeasible with Fito's solo career and with Iñaki in Extremoduro.

The quartet disappeared in 2001.

The door that leads to the rehearsal room, where the musician has put the logo of the bar (Umore Ona, in the old town of Bilbao until it was closed, in 2015) where he and Fito Cabrales used to spend their hours.

Javier Hernandez

The albums were happening and Extremoduro became a transatlantic with many interests, in addition to the creative ones.

This is how Iñaki describes it: “Which company is bigger: Live Nation [the giant concert promoter that organized the frustrated tour of 500,000 tickets] or Extremoduro?

We were n't losers

or

we were a company, with power.

On this occasion [the Extremoduro farewell tour] it seemed to me that, in some aspects, the Live Nation company was being more reasonable than the Extremoduro company”.

The guitarist speaks with a harsh tone, caused by the tobacco he smokes compulsively (“I have to give it up, it's the only vice I have left”, he says), but at the same time he transmits sweetness.

It is as if you caught Fernando Fernán Gómez on a tender day.

A noble guy who continually lightens his speech with phrases like: “but, well, they are opinions, all respectable” or “what are you going to do, you have to admit people as they are”.

"It's plain, rough and honest," says Gomez.

His eldest daughter, Irantzu, adds: "Perfectionist, obsessive and loving."

Then she calls the journalist and adds: "He is also a very good father."

The guitarist usually gets up at eight in the morning and the first thing he does is feed the 14 hens he has on a small piece of land in the garden of his house.

Then he collects the eggs and goes for a full circle around town with two dogs he picked up off the street.

About five kilometers.

Around 10 he goes down to the studio, to rehearse and prepare his new songs.

In the evening, he another lap with the dogs.

His partner, María, a Malaga native who performed choirs on Extremoduro's latest albums, has asked him to shave for the photos.

"It's just that she had several weeks' beard," he says.

Uoho at the recording table in his studio. Javier Hernández

“Iñaki has put a lot of value on it.

He put himself in the hands of a singing teacher and now he can defend the songs very well, ”says Cantera.

Cabrales adds: “I have listened to his new songs and I like them.

It makes perfect sense that he sings them because they are also his”.

After the concerts with the songs by Extremoduro and Platero, Uoho will record new material and he will always sing.

“And then to see where life takes us.

To any place where we don't betray ourselves”, he points out.

“Robe and I have been friends for 30 years and have been family.

My family was hers and hers was mine.

But in life things are lost.

He sees me differently from me, that's what he told me one day.

Well, I have one less relative.

In the pandemic I lost two other relatives [an uncle and an aunt].

The path of life is full of losses and finds.

That's it… It's elementary philosophy”, she expresses with a halo of sadness and then adds:“ What matters is that we did very cool things.

And that is already over.

The rest is straw."

The next day Fito says: “I see them both, Robe and Iñaki, very excited and happy with their musical projects.

That's enough for me."

Perhaps he will be inspired by the story of his two friends to write one of his songs on the next Fito & Fitipaldis album.