Red pants, black t-shirt, scarf tied around the neck and hat.
They throw a towel at him.
It is the end of the last song of the concert,
La constant,
included in his 2017 album,
Expectaciones.
“Thank you very much, Atlanta.
An immense pleasure to sing for you, to sing with you rock in Spanish”.
He then introduces his band, Los Santos Inocentes, leaving for last: “... and Enrique Bunbury.
See you forever."
He raises his right arm, palm outstretched, offers the audience a kiss, and runs off to the side of the stage as the band plays the final coda.
The last time Bunbury will be seen in concert?
He did not know it at the time, but days later everything points to the fact.
More information
Heroes of Silence: the glory and the traumatic end of a groundbreaking group
It was last May 10 at the Coca-Cola Roxy theater in Atlanta (Georgia).
The next concert was supposed to be on May 15 in Chicago, but it was not held.
In return, the singer from Zaragoza (54 years old) issued a statement: “My problems with my throat and breathing increased and came back sharply last night, and what I thought would be controlled is completely out of my hands and desires.
With all the pain in my heart I have to anticipate what I already saw imminent.
It is impossible for me to do more concerts”.
This was the last tour of his career due to his throat problems.
The vocalist believed that his health could withstand the tour of the United States and the one he had scheduled for Spain that was going to take place in the summer and would end on September 22 in Valencia, but it will no longer take place.
See you always cowboy!!!!
🥺🥺🥺🥺 https://t.co/DJifemGUlw
– I am Michel García (@chocomichel) May 16, 2022
For all intents and purposes, the one in New York on May 6 and the one in Atlanta are the last two recitals by the former leader of Héroes del Silencio.
In both concerts his voice did not break.
"Bunbury's voice remains firm in New York, the first of the concerts of his farewell tour," headlined this newspaper about his show at the Kings Theater in Brooklyn before 3,300 people, most of them Latinos.
Public of similar profile said goodbye to him in Atlanta, where he reviewed his solo career with a memory of Heroes del Silencio through three songs:
The stranded mermaid, Undo the world
and
Damn goblin,
which he performed in penultimate place.
The concert opened with
The terms of my surrender,
from the album
Possible
(2020), and pieces revered by his followers such as
May you have a little luck, The foreigner, Lady Blue
or
The club of the impossible.
The problems in the personal voice of the singer are not new.
Since the times of Heroes del Silencio he had to cancel a concert, especially in the nineties.
This is what Antonio Cardiel writes in the most complete book about the quartet,
Heroes of legend
(Penguin Random House, 2021), referring to a tour in the nineties: “Enrique's voice gave him another scare.
It was a recurring problem, only he knows how many times something similar happened to him throughout his career in Heroes of Silence, or it continues to happen to him today.
Probably much more often than he transcends.”
This is how the singer defined his difficulty in a statement last February: "The reality is that my throat closes and irritates, and my airways make the slightest exercise and the execution of my work difficult."
Bunbury's retirement from the stage doesn't mean he won't be making more music.
He will continue "composing songs, recording albums and writing poetry."
His latest recording was released recently, on April 26: the song
Waiting for a signal,
the star theme of Alexis Morante's film
El Universo de Óliver
.
The constant
will go down in history as his last song live from him.
The lyrics say: "Just because I don't give details and live like a king, I know how to recognize my Jade palace."
That temple of meditation and rest to which he is now heading in Bunbury itself.
