Fino Oyonarte: "I'm concerned about the culture of the hit, through which groups go straight from their room to a festival"

Fino Oyonarte (Almería, 58 years old) arrives at the appointment at the Café de los Austrias in Madrid with a collection of poems by Raymond Carver in his hand that he takes out at the end of the meeting to evoke his parents.

This discreet but hyperactive man is possibly the most transversal figure in the Spanish music industry: he was part of the legendary Glutamato Ye-yé, he is a member of Los Enemigos, of which he is still a bassist, he produced some of the most important indie

homeland (from Los Planetas to Lagartija Nick) and he himself has been part of various projects with an alternative flavor (Clovis, Los Eterno).

However, he had not dared to put words to his emotions until in 2018 something made him see that, despite what his career indicated, life is finite and that letters could work as therapy.

Now he has just released

, a luminous but deep album in which he completely loses his fear of showing his shame.

Ask.

When you think of the number of years it took you to dare to express yourself like that, don't you hallucinate?

Answer.

Yes. I have been a very extroverted person with a very intense inner life and I have expressed myself in other ways for a long time.

I didn't know that I could also tell stories with my lyrics and by doing so I have come to know myself a little more and accept myself as I am.

Q.

How did that door open?

A.

Well, I had a coronary incident and spent a few months in a kind of therapy that was offered to me at the hospital: they taught you relaxation and meditations to take the iron out of what happened and provided you with tools to lead your life.

Then I realized that I had been very lucky and that I could have gone to the other neighborhood, as happens to many people in a situation of this type.

I really wanted to live and the first thing I set out to do was make a record: something of my own and personal that would allow me to investigate that inner desire that I had been putting off for a long time.

Now that I have lost my fear, I have continued exploring that path.

Q.

Affection for your recently deceased parents is very important in this job. How come they never objected to your being a rocker?

R.

My mother painted, she had a great creative interest, she loved to do artistic things.

When my parents were able to save a little, they bought a piano for my sisters, who in the end dedicated themselves to teaching at a conservatory.

Music was always very present in my house in Almería.

I wanted to study solfeggio, although since I was the badass of the family in the end I didn't do it.

But I started foresters!

I even made a herbalist collecting flowers in all the gardens of Madrid!

[laughs]

Q.

And what pushed you to go to Madrid?

R.

By a chance of life I met Iñaki from Glutamato Ye-yé, we met in a

farmhouse in San José where I went a lot.

It was a very few crowded night, like ten people, including Joe Strummer, who was shooting

.

At dawn Iñaki told me: "Do you want to come to Madrid?"

That day changed my life.

Q.

What happened then?

R.

I settled in with another friend, Lalo Cortés, who would end up being manager of Los Enemigos, and I went to the Glutamato rehearsal room, where they introduced me to Poch.

After a few months they called me to play the bass and they put me directly in those mythical concerts in San Isidro on the Paseo de Camoes in which Morrissey also played.

He combined the group and the studies with having drinks at the King Creole, where he worked with Rossy de Palma.

In fact, I was there the day Almodóvar came looking for her.

Q.

Did you also feel that animosity for La Movida that the members of Glutamato had?

R.

I was interested in what they did and that strange aesthetic they had [Iñaki Fernández combed his hair and mustache imitating Hitler] and that it was pure rebellion: it is not that they were in favor of far-right ideas, but everything otherwise.

It was utter irony.

Fino Oyonarte, during the interview with EL PAÍS.Claudio Álvarez

Q.

And do you think that today there would be room for that kind of irony?

R.

Right now perhaps the groups impose more self-censorship.

There is more fear of the politically incorrect.

Q.

Have you felt that fear?

R.

There have been many stages.

With Los Enemigos we always touch on social issues.

Later, the first songs of my solo work arose from a journal that I started after my health problem and in which I began to write more personal things.

That's when I realized that I had been covering something that I needed to tell.

Q.

You share with Josele Santiago that weight of being the two members of Los Enemigos with the most charisma.

Does his opinion on his songs influence you?

R.

It is important, but it is not a matter of competing or anything like that.

Quite the opposite.

I may have started writing later, which does not mean that it has less value.

And he is one of the great authors of songs in Spanish.

For me he is a reference, as was Berrio or as Jorge Ilegales is.

Q.

You arrived with the Movida, you lived through the birth of

and with Los Enemigos you have put in thousands of hours on the road.

How has the industry changed?

A.

Now there are more technical facilities, both in the recording studio and live.

With social networks, everything is very different: you don't have to go through that process that we went through in the 80s and 90s that led us to tour Spain and create a scene.

But I think that the difficulties of before had their magic and were coupled with a very specific form of expression.

If you went, for example, to the Agapo and you only had four speakers, you sounded bad, but that energy was terrifying.

I don't want to say that it was better, just that it was like that at the time.

Now I try to keep an eye on what's new, but it's hard for me to find things that excite me and it shows on this album where there are echoes of Nick Drake, Beatles or John Cale.

Q.

When you see Rihanna at the Super Bowl, does it sound like music to you?

A.

Well, it's a form of entertainment and people demand it, but to explain what music is to me I'll give you two examples.

The first: when Elliot Smith died in 2000, I cried as if he were a relative.

I felt a real mourning because I was not going to be able to listen to any more of his new songs.

The other: after the pandemic, when I saw José González at the Botánico, what I felt made me realize the incalculable value that music has for me.

Fino Oyonarte, first from the left, at a Los Enemigos concert in Barcelona in 2022.Ana Tascon (EL PAÍS)

Q.

And is there a genre that you just don't go through?

R.

I have never managed to connect with the trap.

Nor with reggaeton.

But who knows.

Maybe tomorrow I'll take a six-month trip through Latin America and I'll come back fascinated… When I lived in New York with Cristina [Plaza] I used to go to Smalls a lot, where all the jazz people went, although it's also true that I had listened to a lot of jazz from child.

Q.

You have said that when you were little your brother listened to Leonard Cohen while you listened to Leño...

R.

Yes, and it took many years for those songs that I heard then to materialize in another song on this record,

a fiction about heartbreak in which my current partner sings.

Q.

Together they rode Clovis.

How is your relationship now when it comes to composing?

A.

I consult all the lyrics and her opinion is fundamental to me, but Cristina [Plaza] now has her own project, Daga Voladora, which I think is exceptional.

What happens is that she does it by vocation and there are certain easements in this industry that do not interest her at all.

Q.

Just as there are programs to help athletes have a life after sports, should there be programs so that musicians don't live so much at night?

R.

The night is associated with partying, drugs and all that, but it has a very interesting part.

Most of the good band stories have been created there.

I met Josele at night and I met Iñaki at night.

Since I came here until I was almost 40, the night was very important to create a concert circuit.

What does worry me is the hit-and-run culture that is taking place thanks to technology and allowing bands to jump straight from their rooms to festivals.

I am not against festivals, but I think they do not favor the creation of a circuit of concert halls, theaters, all those places where a base is established and true culture is generated.

Q.

What other things make you very angry about the current industry?

R.

Well, for example, that a public television promotes a production company thanks to which the artists go from nothing to have the highest cachets in this country because they have had a visibility that they will never give us to people who have been in business for 30 years. this.

Q.

And what would you say is the best idea you have had to revive the music industry?

R.

A determination that for me has meant freedom and rebellion is self-publishing.

I don't want to have any boss.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber