Florent: The Sonic Engine of The Planets Has a Story to Tell

"Anyway, mine is insignificant compared to other more powerful and dizzying stories. I have not been a character of Stray Dogs nor have I robbed any tobacconist. I could have, I'm not going to say no, but I didn't. In return, I was in a rock band."

Florent Muñoz is still in a rock band, nothing less than Los Planetas, but he wanted to use the past because he talks about a stage of his life where he went from being the sonic engine of the Granada group to being stuck in an engine, in a permanent state of daze. At 54, the guitarist and composer of Los Planetas continues to maintain that aspect that defined one of the iconic images of nineties Spanish indie: thin, plaid shirt, sunglasses, stern gesture. That for the photos (which were taken in Madrid, two days after the talk with him in Granada). When he starts talking, he is close, joking. He has just released his first solo album with a group he has called Florent y Yo. The work is titled the same, it has been produced by Carlos Díaz and no one from Los Planetas intervenes. He is accompanied by the interesting group based in Madrid Melange. And he dares, for the first time, to write and sing.

As soon as we enter a bar in the center of Granada he finds some acquaintances, those responsible for the famous record store Bora Bora. They greet each other, tell some anecdote, laugh. They talk about Alan McGee, the Scot who founded the record label Creation and launched the careers of Oasis, Primal Scream or My Bloody Valentine. McGee has moved to Grenada. Another more seduced by the magnetism of the Andalusian city. "I live about 30 kilometers from here. I got a little tired of the center, I needed something quieter," says Florent. He came by motorbike. He lives with his partner, Alicia Díaz, who has participated in some lyrics of the album (such as the cañí Rumba of my state of alarm), and with their son, Florent, an 11-year-old boy who points out football ways. "It's ugly for his father to say it, but yes, he plays well. He's on a team and there are games every weekend. There we all go. What if you like Los Planetas? Yes, and also Rosalia or Bad Bunny. And I think it's great."

Florent in the first concert of Los Planetas, in the early nineties in the Planta Baja hall in Granada. Image courtesy of the artist

Florent has always been seen in distant planes when the history of The Planets is traced. The vocalist, Jota (Juan Rodríguez), and the explosive personality of the drummer, Eric Jiménez, have not let paint the true personality of the guitarist. Even Banin, guitarist and keyboardist who joined later, adds more media prominence. Florent has a reputation for hermetic and mysteriousness. "It's clear that I'm not Joaquín, the one from Betis," he jokes. "I like to be more observant than talkative. My character is inward, introverted. I am not a person who opens up to the first time, there has to be feeling. But I'm not weird." And he begins to tell his story...

His father was a soldier from Madrid stationed in Ceuta. There he met a Ceuta woman, they married and Florent was born in a hospital on the African shore, near Gibraltar, in Ceuta. When Florent was seven years old, the army moved his father to Granada and they settled in the city of the Alhambra. "The musical love comes to me because of my father. He played piano and guitar in a military band. I remember that they performed at the Carranza Trophy ceremony, in Cádiz. He was not your typical authoritarian and intolerant military man. He was very respectful of my decisions. In fact, both he and my mother were more politically on the left." In the vinyl cabinet, his father accumulated a good collection: classical, soundtracks, jazz, singles by Los Diablos, Los Brincos. The boy was fascinated when his father played the records. With his older cousins he discovers rock: the Rolling Stones, Leonard Cohen, Pink Floyd. "I was enthralled, trapped. At that time finding a good music team and a good discography was to find a new and fascinating world, "he says.

Already in Granada, the first musician he meets is Eric Jiménez, future drummer of Lagartija Nick and Los Planetas. "Eric fell in love and married a neighbor of mine at a very young age," she recalls with a laugh. "We had a friend with an appreciable discography: The Church, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Derribos Arias, Kaka de Luxe, Pegamoides...". His encounter with Jota means to Spanish indie the same as to rock and roll that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had on a Dartford train. The two leaders of The Planets had their first contact with a protagonist chessboard. "We met in a pub in Granada where a group of people were to play chess games. When I saw Jota there, playing chess, I remembered: 'Pussy, this is the guy I find a lot in Electrodomésticos Sánchez in the disc section'. We had also met in an instrument shop, looking at guitars." Florent was studying Law first (a career he finished) and Jota repeated COU. "Jota was a bug. Very bad for studies, and very smart. Of these smart people who study." They began to meet, to talk about the music they were passionate about: Echo & The Bunnymen, Andy's Chest, The Jesus and Mary Chain... At that time, the late eighties, those groups could be described as avant-garde pop-rock compared to classics such as Creedence or The Who. They were the moderns of Granada.

Los Planetas performing in October 2021 at Ifema, Madrid. In the foreground, Jota; in the background, Florent. Aldara ZN (Redferns)

Jota, with more economic capacity, was supplied with novelties. "I was more of a cassette tape, normal middle class," Florent explains. "Jota's father had businesses, he was smart about investing, and he did well. Jota lived well: car, motorcycle... I, if anything, a vespino [laughs]. But he was always a generous guy. Theirs was yours. He had more records than me, but he lent them to me."

In 1991 they started with Los Planetas. "We have learned by composing our own music. We have not made versions or copied. From minute zero we intended to create our own. That was the bet. That cool vision of music is what made us go hand in hand," Florent assumes. It is 30 years already as a reference of Spanish alternative rock and 10 long albums, the last Canciones del agua, in 2022.

"Without Jota and Florent, La Bien Querida would not have existed. His sound marked me and motivated me to start composing my own songs, "says Ana Fernández, La Bien Querida, which is just one example of the expansive influence of Granada in later generations and until today.

And as a trademark, Florent's guitar sound, that thick psychedelic liturgy in some songs that gets lighter when the group decides to become more accessible. "I make the songs with their structure and their melody. All that's left is for someone to sing them and write the lyrics. And that's where Jota comes in," he explains about his way of working.

David López is a musician, directs the record label Limbo Starr and was responsible for taking Los Planetas in his stage at RCA (his first albums): "Florent is a unique guitarist. It is not easy to be recognizable among so many, more starting from basic assumptions and far from virtuosity. " "His musical style has marked an era in Spanish music," says Antonio Arias, leader of Lagartija Nick.

The Planets have been a reference band for everyone who moved between 20 and 30 years in the nineties. A few weeks ago, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez (who was 22 years old when the group released their first album in 1994, Super 8), used Twitter to congratulate the people of Granada: "Today marks the 25th anniversary of this work of art that marked an era. Thank you very much to Los Planetas for accompanying me in so many moments throughout my life." Florent comments on the anecdote with amusement and with some pride. He misses a: "Not bad, is it?" Sanchez refers in the tweet to the unanimously recognized as the group's best album, A Week in the Engine of a Bus, from1998.

Another image of the musician from Granada, on the 4th in Madrid. Claudio Alvarez

That album was a before and after for Florent. And not only musically: the statement at the beginning of this article refers to this era. "I was at the top of my career when I tried heroin for the first time, when I was 19. It was like a kind of ceremony. There were the Velvet Underground and Spacemen 3, groups that we loved and that talked in their songs about hard drugs. And the literature of William Burroughs. It was summer, which is the time where things happen: love, travel... It was like a deep knowledge of what life is. Many of your approaches, of doubts, suddenly dissipate, disappear and you see everything clarifying. All the music you listen to has a meaning, and it's like in three dimensions. It is a powerful journey thanks to an ancient drug. But, of course, you are not aware that everything good he is giving you is going to turn into something very bad. And you get hooked." The guitarist neglected for some time his occupations in the band and it was feared that he would drop out of the project. It was just as the process of creating A Week in the Engine of a Bus was beginning. Jota wrote for him songs that are now classics from the group's repertoire, such as Desaparecer, Línea 1 (in reference to the Granada bus that arrived at the polygon, where drugs were trafficked) or Segundo premio. They are lyrics that oscillate between anger at not having their partner and the desire for him to return.

"I wanted to get out of that pernicious routine because I was playing what I had: the group and my own life. Not only was there the possibility that I would be kicked out of The Planets, but that I would die on any corner," he explains. The manager of Los Planetas at that time, Paco López (of Attraction), hosted the guitarist in his house for three months. And, there, in a family atmosphere and listening to Miles Davis, Florent cleaned up and arrived in time to join the making of the album. "I will always thank Paco. He had the courage and generosity to welcome and care for me. And Jota too. Their direct and indirect help forced me out of that chaos. I just got into it and was able to get out. Now I can count it. If you come out of that experience alive, it makes you stronger," he reflects.

The Planets and all the ceremonial that surrounds them are still going on and nobody disputes their influence and their ambition to evolve, either approaching flamenco or facing the political situation, as in their last work. "In the life of Los Planetas there have been many lights and few shadows, and most of the conflicts have always been provoked from outside, by managers or record labels," he says. On his resilient relationship with Jota, he says: "There has always been respect and affection. Jota is still my best friend. And we meet in music, that's our terrain."

The Planets are today middle-aged types, mostly parents, with much lived and with parallel artistic concerns. Forks are tolerated and appreciated. Jota is involved in a project where he puts music to the cinema of Iván Zulueta, Banin participates in groups like Los Pilotos (with Florent), Eric Jiménez plays with Lagartija Nick and writes books about his hectic life, and Florent has just published his first solo album. "Someone told me that during the pandemic the singer of Brian Jonestown Massacre wrote one song a day. I decided to do the same. My idea was to work with Los Planetas, but when we met Jota told me that he had 10 new songs and that he would like them to be on the album Los Planetas (The songs of water). So I took my songs home and worked on them until I finished the record."

Florent sings for the first time (in a melancholically enigmatic voice) and elaborates the lyrics. "I realized the power of songwriting. I had never experienced that feeling: playing with the double meaning, the messages ...", he says. The texts speak of searching, escaping and resisting. "They are lyrics that are about finding a grip in the middle of a shipwreck. Things may be very wrong, but there is always a solution. And if there is no solution I have to invent it. It looks like it's going to be a total sinking, but you say, 'I don't want to sink, I'm going to get help, grit my teeth and get out of here.'" Without intending to, Florent has just summarized his story.