Javier Gurruchaga: “I don't consider myself a 'zumbao'. I am a controlled madman

Javier Gurruchaga has taken the rucksack, the micro and boredom and has gone to war, or rather, against war.

, his new song, recently recorded and still unreleased both on record and live, is his personal anti-war plea in the midst of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

“Keep John singing / Imagine / And I always want to feel / Dreamy /.

What are those tanks doing parading? / And what are the armies doing on foot? / Fierce and grotesque / Blood and suffering / Again / What a great stupidity”.

This is how the new song starts, a kind of pissed-off ballad that Gurruchaga himself justifies as follows: “Initially, the song was going to have a pacifist tone in general, a la

by Lennon, but of course, with the war in Ukraine we wanted a more forceful lyrics where it was spoken more clearly and unfortunately more crudely”.

The song wants to be, according to its author, a catharsis and makes reference to anti-war films such as

Kubrick's

Gun.

“It is a double tribute: on the one hand, a song designed for Ukraine and for those who suffer from more than 70 wars around the world, and also, of course, a tribute to John Lennon and his traditional link with the demand for peace” .

More information

Javier Gurruchaga: “I have spent a lot of time alone.

Too"

The leader of the Mondragón Orchestra —45 years already on the road since the group saw the light in San Sebastian— had the song profiled for about a year, but “without finishing off”.

The war in Ukraine accelerated everything.

Gurruchaga recorded the final version of

a few days ago, at the Cézanne studios in Las Rozas (Madrid), paying for the production costs out of his own pocket.

The lyrics are provided by Gabriel Sopeña and Juan Mari Montes, and the music is by Javier Gurruchaga and Javier Monteverde.

It is not the first time that the singer, composer, actor, writer, presenter and

from San Sebastian has made an incursion —excuse the expression— into anti-war territory.

In 1984, the Mondragón Orchestra released the album

—A Gurruchaga with a helmet, bow tie and pistol making the “v” of victory appeared smiling on the cover—as a desideratum of the absolute end of a Cold War that he was still kicking.

The title of the album and of the song that gave it its name (with lyrics by Eduardo Haro Ibars) was not only a voice of alarm, but also a humorous allusion to the famous howl uttered by Groucho Marx in

.

It is a tribute to Ukraine, to those who suffer from the wars around the world and to Lennon and his commitment to peace

Soon, the band will begin to perform it live, as part of the

tour that, after almost two years of hiatus, will now resume throughout Spain and, they hope, through Mexico and Argentina.

Javier Gurruchaga places it at a special moment in his life and that of his band: “This tour is a reunion with myself, I rescue my own stories, the ordinary ones and the extraordinary ones.

It's just that one already thinks about things, about life, about death... yes, it's still the Mondragón Orchestra, but with more convincing scars.

And apart from my extraordinary old lyricists, Eduardo Haro Ibars, Luis Alberto de Cuenca, Manolo Tena or Joaquín Sabina —who wrote more than 30 lyrics for me— the great star of this show is Edgar Allan Poe, that's where the title comes from”.

The singer Javier Gurruchaga, in 2003, with a helmet and military clothing, during the campaign to collect signatures against the war in Iraq, in Puerta del Sol. uly martín

But as apparently man does not live by music alone, Javier Gurruchaga has also recently resumed his acting

on screen.

He has done it with the director Nacho Vigalondo in the chapter

within the second season of the horror series

(original by Chicho Ibáñez Serrador), for Amazon Prime Video and RTVE.

The Mondragón leader will also make a cameo in the next film by Alex de la Iglesia.

It is not just another tour nor does it take place at an easy time for political inaccuracies, the eternal

of the Mondragón.

Gurruchaga is fully aware of this.

Let's remember, to give two slight examples, that the band has a song titled

and another entitled

Will Gurruchaga and his hosts end up being booed one day?

Argued and heated response from the interested party: "At the moment it hasn't happened, but well, we have to take certain... well, there are some songs that we don't do anymore, for example

... and in

Well now I also say 'they prefer them fat', and I need a newscast to say 'fat', well, you understand me.

I am making concessions, and it is because to this plague that is the covid, another radical and intolerant one —equally justified in some aspects, but not always— is added, which is that of inquisitorial censorship.

We are going back to the 13th or 14th century.

Authors are being reviewed, Casanova, banned, the Marquis de Sade, banned, picaresque is a sin, Glenn Ford's slap in the face of Rita Hayworth in

can no longer be seen... we have become reactionary in modern times.

And a sociopolitical problem like this cannot be solved in half an hour by saying fat, fat, fat or fat, it is much more complex”.

The plague of covid has been joined by the plague of inquisitorial censorship.

We have become modern reactionary

These

were interrupted by the pandemic.

With her came cancellations and

of the civilian population.

Including a Javier Gurruchaga who, during a long interview held some time ago at his home in the Chueca neighborhood in Madrid, spoke of the consequences of the confinement and the pandemic in general: “These last two years have been a cut tremendous.

Suddenly we have experienced what we saw in bad Japanese science fiction movies.

An invisible enemy.

And everyone locked up at home with all kinds of fears.

And that creates enormous stress for you.

Very strong.

you hallucinate

And people have died and are dying.

And it has been played with, because politics has been made with the disease, in such a way that people have become much more unbelieving.

It's very demeaning and very terrifying.

All the monsters have come out."

There are people who say things like: "Well, all this covid helped me to think and reset myself."

“Well, not me!” Gurruchaga complains, “I just wanted to get there the next day and not get infected.

It was terrible.

My first vocation as a child was to entertain, encourage people,

and such and such, you know.

Being locked in a cage is horrible for everyone, but if you have that vocation on top of that... it's a nightmare.

Of course: this theme of the mask was useful to me: I did many monologues with myself.

I was walking down the street improvising monologues... and friends of mine told me that they have also started talking to themselves.

We are talking to ourselves more than ever.”

"And what did you say to yourself?"

—Well, with my slightly ventriloquist ability to imitate voices, I used to do monologues with the voice of my father and my mother.

He was talking to them.

My mother told me, for example: “Nooo, Jaaaavi, don't do that, Jaaaavi”.

And my father: "Come on, man, stop fooling around!"

It was as if they were really talking to me.

She gave me advice and he gave me the anger.

And he suddenly told me: "But I'm talking to myself."

It is that we have many selves.

I was reminded a lot of Lon Chaney, you know, horror movie star, the man with a thousand faces and 400 different voices [Gurruchaga starts imitating Chaney in the movie

by Todd Browning].

And that he was the son of deaf and dumb.

Well, so nothing, the fact is that I was talking alone on the street.

Which isn't that weird either.

You know that now people spend all day talking to themselves on their mobile.

I'm not a 'zumbao'.

If it was, I wouldn't have lasted so long.

I am a controlled madman.

"And apart from your father and mother?"

—Well, he gave me opinions about myself, about my particular Jeckyll & Hyde.

Oh, and another curious thing happened to me!

I began to reproduce the voice of Popotxo [Pedro

Ayestaran, unrepeatable character, extraordinary stage artifact of the Mondragón Orchestra in the form of a short, bald man and a close friend of Gurruchaga, and who died in October 2020 in San Sebastián at the age of 69] .

—And in the end, what was the use of that experience of interior monologues?

—Well, look, doing that kind of ventriloquism with my loved ones was a bit of a remedy to the fact that we were all alone.

Because we are all alone.

—Maybe that should be the title of this interview.

“Whether you have a family or not, we came alone, we often live alone, and we will die alone.

—There have always been and there are people who consider that Javier Gurruchaga is like Machín's maracas.

Is he?

"Hmmm... I hit the ground and rationalize pretty well I think."

I don't consider myself a

at all .

If it had been a

, I wouldn't have lasted so long.

I am a controlled madman.

Javier Gurruchaga and Popotxo in a concert by the Mondragón Orchestra. Claudio Álvarez

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