The extraordinary life of Mike Kennedy, voice of Los Bravos and genuine rebel to this day

Mike Kennedy knows that he will no longer sing in public.

Perhaps that is why he retaliates by singing some melody with his current limited voice (but still scratching it) while he tells his extraordinary story to EL PAÍS from the room of a residence in Vitoria.

He especially likes to hum a song,

Louisiana,

from his solo period (specifically from 1970) and composed by Fernando Arbex.

Mike Kennedy was the first Spanish rock star in the most canonical sense: for his overwhelming success as the singer of Los Bravos, including adolescent madness;

for a carefree way of living;

for his contumacious rebellion, and for his inevitable decline.

“He was a force of nature.

He sang as well as Gene Pitney or Del Shannon, with the same range, but with more volume in his voice.

There was no one in these parts who had such a peculiar voice,” Miguel Ríos, a generation colleague, states for this report.

But Kennedy was not only that.

A German landed in Spain in the sixties with a bizarre character, enormous hypochondria and an almost anarchist attitude unprecedented in a scary and Prussian country with Franco in power.

“I have always been my worst enemy.

“I trust you to be tough with me,” Kennedy says goodbye to the interviewer.

But to get to that moment there are many adventures left to tell.

In quite a few images from his golden era, Mike Kennedy poses with cool tinted glasses.

Today he goes without them, and you can see his beautiful sky blue eyes, which will fill with tears at some point during the talk, while he remembers his life.

In the room we are accompanied by Begoña Arteaga, her guardian angel for the last 15 years, a woman from Vitoria who has tried to bring order to the chaotic life of an ungovernable man.

“If it wasn't for Begoña he would be dead,” acknowledges the singer, who will turn 80 in April and who at the moment is not expected to live outside a place where permanent care is offered.

The classic lineup of Los Bravos in a promotional image from the sixties.

From left to right: Manolo Fernández (died 1968), Pablo Sanllehí, Mike Kennedy, Tony Martínez (died 1990) and Miguel Vicens (died 2022).

Michael Volker Kogel (his real name) did not have a good relationship with his parents.

His mother was slender, sophisticated, an actress with an expansive character that her son undoubtedly inherited.

His father, who worked in an acting cabaret, barely lived with the family.

“My mother was very beautiful and she wanted to live life.

She had the man she wanted.

In the emotional and caring sense, it can be said that I did not have parents,” Kennedy says with some sadness.

His mother committed suicide at the age of 65.

“I grew up with my grandmother, who was everything to me.

He was a Jehovah's Witness and he instilled that in me.

Although then the fervor passed.”

It lasted a few years, because for Los Bravos' first trip to the United States, in the mid-sixties, Mike refused to fly: at that time the American authorities forced visitors to be vaccinated and he said that he was a Jehovah's Witness "and could not".

Then they convinced him.

From a dark Berlin in the forties, where he was born, he went on to live in Cologne with his mother and stepfather.

There he was working as an apprentice brewmaster and performing at night in clubs.

“I learned to sing because I was a big fan of Elvis Presley.

He imitated him vocally, in his gestures and even in how he combed his hair.

I loved Pat Boone, Eddie Cochran and Ricky Nelson too,” he explains.

He learned English (and very well) by listening to the Berlin American Forces Network, the station for American soldiers stationed in Germany.

His life was transformed when he met some Spanish musicians from Mallorca in a club in Cologne, for whom they had organized a tour of Germany, Los Runaways.

As the Spanish singer had to return to Spain with his vocal cords destroyed after eight-hour days, Kennedy took over as vocalist.

This is how Mike and the Runaways were born, and after the German experience they returned to Mallorca.

“It was a liberation to come to Spain.

My intention was not to succeed, but to lie on the beach and enjoy the sun,” he says.

Already in Spain, Los Sonor, an established group, signed Mike and part of the Runaways.

This is where Manolo Díaz, composer, talent scout and years later president of multinationals like CBS and Emi, comes into play: “Los Sonor told me to go see their new singer, who was very good, but he was completely crazy and was a kleptomaniac and anarchist.

As soon as he got on stage at a club in Madrid, Mike put the microphone up his ass and farted hugely.

We are talking about the mid-sixties in Spain.

That was very punk.

But then he started singing and it was awesome.

I recommended to Los Sonor to continue with him and put up with him, because his voice and his way of singing were among the best in world pop-rock.

I told them: 'You can't miss this, it's going to make you millionaires.'

Postcard distributed among the Mike Kennedy fan club in the early seventies.

Díaz contacted Alain Milhaud, a Frenchman living in Barcelona who internationalized the Spanish pop of the sixties with his productions.

A third leg was missing: Tomás Martín Blanco, creator of

El Gran Musical

(Ser chain).

The plan was already in motion: Díaz composing, Milhaud as producer and

manager

(with contacts in the United Kingdom and the United States) and Martín Blanco to spread the songs on the airwaves.

Los Bravos had been born, “the most successful and international Spanish band of all time,” says Salvador Domínguez, author of the book

Welcome Mr. Rock,

the history of pop-rock in Spanish.

Black Is Black

was composed by the staff of writers from the Decca record company in London.

It was recorded in the English capital under the strict rules of the musicians' union there.

All instruments that were recorded in the United Kingdom had to be played by English professionals.

The five Braves traveled to London, but only Mike, the singer, worked.

The legend that Jimmy Page, founder of Led Zeppelin, played on

Black Is Black

is unclear.

It is more true that John Bonham, Led Zeppelin's impetuous drummer, participated in

Bring A Little Lovin

, another international hit by Los Bravos.

“I didn't like

Black Is Black,

and I still don't like it.

It seemed to me like an easy melody and lyrics that don't say much," Kennedy says today, clinging to self-sabotage.

The song was number one in Spain and Canada, two in England and four in the United States.

All between 1966/67.

Manolo García was 13 years old and was far from forming El Último de la Fila.

“That

Black Is Black

entered the English and American charts was a source of pride for Spanish teenagers at the time.

It was like: 'Host, a Spanish band succeeding in the United States.

“What an amazing thing,” García explains over the phone.

And he adds: “Los Bravos, Los Brincos, Los Mustang… They colonized a culturally barren country with music.

They were times of dictatorship, very gray and the culture was nonsense.

They brought fresh air… Young people of that time were eager to breathe.

It was a breath of modernity.

And it was also convenient for the dictatorship to open its hand, even if it was reluctantly.”

Cover of 'Black Is Black'.

Mike Kennedy is second from the left.

Kennedy gave the group a cosmopolitan air: he sang in fluent English and had an uninhibited character that the Spanish lacked.

He approached topics in Spanish with the peculiar accent of a foreigner.

These songs, in addition, offered subtle messages that the censorship did not capture (or let them pass): the songs that Manolo Díaz composed for them put youth, fun, and a certain air of freedom in the foreground.

The life of Los Bravos was short-lived, just over two years during their time of success (1966-1968), but extremely intense.

They filmed two films of wide popular acceptance

(Boys with the Girls,

1967, and

Give me a little love...!,

1968) and they worked with star eccentricities.

Presentations in the cinemas of Madrid's Gran Vía (then Avenida de José Antonio) where they arrived in horse carriages, landings in helicopters for performances in bullrings, Kennedy bursting onto the stage on a motorcycle... It was not a group with a single success .

Each song they published had a huge impact, whether it was in English or in Kennedy's Spanish:

Black Is Black

,

Bring A Little Lovin

,

La moto,

The boys with the girls

...

Beat

songs

or vigorous soul-rock, always pushed by Kennedy's aggressive and powerful voice.

It hurt them financially (especially when hard times came) for not being the composers, since they did not collect royalties, which would undoubtedly have gotten them out of trouble.

Manolo García emphasizes the importance of the films: “There was a lot of innocence and naivety in Spain, so young people got involved in everything that was partying, partying, rock and roll, banging, flirting, drinking, smoking... And that was in The Braves movies.

“It was opening oneself to the hedonistic pleasures of life that the military regime repressed.”

Kennedy assumes that his difficult character largely caused the breakup of Los Bravos.

For a long time, the singer took a doctor who was on the group's payroll and did not leave him.

He explains: “I was and am a lost hypochondriac.

It all started before a concert in Istanbul, in 1967. I wanted to try the hashish there, and I mixed it with alcohol and amphetamines.

We took amphetamines as snacks.

To hold on, because we played eight hours straight.

So, with that cocktail, I went to perform and I felt terrible.

I had arrhythmias, I thought my heart was stopping, I had to lean on the wall with one hand... That became an obsession and sometimes it still happens to me.

It's like having ants crawling all over my body.

So I always took the doctor to calm me down.

But I never had a problem with hard drugs.

Only hashish, amphetamines and cigars.

I saw some

tripi,

but I never took it.

I was scared".

Miguel Ríos provides some information: “When he left Los Bravos I met him for a few years on the bowling circuit during his solo career.

I was amazed by his stamina to sing and then go out and sing as if nothing had happened, not even an out of tune.

It's possible that Mike was shy and needed to drink to combat stage fright.

And singing well he has thrown himself into the gap for a long time.”

Mike Kennedy in a promotional image from the seventies.

Another event marked the end of Los Bravos.

In April 1968, Manolo Fernández, the keyboardist, had a car accident in which his wife died.

A month later, Fernández, without getting over it, wrote a farewell note, built an altar in his house with photos of his deceased wife and shot himself with a shotgun.

At that time, suicide was a dark topic about which there was no debate.

This tragedy, the bad relationship of the rest of the group with Mike Kennedy and Alain Milhaud's promise of a successful solo career for the vocalist ended the best period of Los Bravos, which continued to skyrocket in popularity with other singers.

Kennedy published good works in the seventies, but they never reached the level of success that his songs with the group did.

He continued to ignore the rules, a matter that did not help either.

“I refused to sing some songs that Milhaud gave me.

I should have paid more attention to him, but I always had a difficult character.

I hurt myself.

Even now it happens to me.

I have regretted it many times, but I always fall into the same trap.

I should have been more demanding of myself, but I have been a conceited narcissist,” he lambasts himself.

Manolo Díaz recognizes: “Mike had no business sense or discipline to promote his career.

Milhaud and I took advantage of his enormous status as a performer, but we didn't know how to help him establish himself.

He continued to be an anarchist.”

As a record label manager, Díaz has worked with dozens of performers, from Julio Iglesias to Bunbury: “Of all those I have known, Mike was the most detached from the music business, the one who cared the least.

He liked success, but he did nothing to achieve it.

On the contrary, everything he did was to make it more difficult for himself.

But his voice and his way of singing... There was never anyone in Spain who could compete with him in pop-rock.

Not even today.”

The editor of Popular 1

magazine ,

Bertha Yebra, who has known Kennedy for 50 years, comments by phone: “Together with Nino Bravo he has been the best voice that Spanish music has had.

At the time of his greatest popularity and when he earned money he would give you whatever you asked for.

And he would go into a restaurant and invite everyone to eat.

He was a crazy, extravagant star.”

In the eighties the golden stage of Spanish pop arrived and erased the musicians of the sixties.

Kennedy continued living adventures: he acted in Latin America (“in El Salvador the guerrilla almost kidnapped me,” he reports);

He participated in various stages in unsuccessful reforms of Los Bravos;

he lived in Barcelona, ​​Mallorca, Valencia, Madrid;

He was part of nostalgic tours with other musicians from the sixties… “I have come to have a lot of money, but as it came it was gone,” he confesses.

For the last 15 years Kennedy has lived in Vitoria, alone, in a fourth floor without elevator, an apartment of about 40 square meters.

“I was happy there,” he admits.

He took bike rides and went to performances in small venues, sometimes singing in

playback

and for a handful of euros.

All managed by Begoña Arteaga, 70 years old, his caregiver during the last few years and until today.

“I liked Raphael and Mike Kennedy.

I joined Mike's fan club when he was a young girl.

Together with my husband we followed him a lot and were more or less in contact.

And 15 years ago I suggested to Mike that he come to Vitoria.”

Since then, Begoña has been almost the singer's only support.

She has cooked for him and taken care of his affairs, finding him recitals here and there.

She is also managing the singer's current situation with social issues, since Keneddy does not have a partner or children.

His only relative is a brother on his mother's side who lives in Germany and with whom he does not see, but speaks occasionally on the phone.

Last October Kennedy suffered a fall in his home in Vitoria and Begoña found him lying on the floor.

He had been lying down for 24 hours, with injuries.

This mishap was added to other health problems.

Since then he has not left hospitals, until reaching the residence where he currently lives.

He is slowly improving, but needs help walking.

His last concert was in 2016, in Madrid, in a show called

Pioneros Madrileños del Pop,

and where he shared the stage with members of Los Pekenikes, Los Brincos, Los Pasos or Micky.

Mike Kennedy and Begoña Arteaga in 2020.Begoña Arteaga

Kennedy has no assets: no house, no cars, no other types of material assets.

His financial situation is far from good.

He was not the author of the greatest hits of Los Bravos and he does not charge for it.

Yes as an interpreter.

When Quentin Tarantino included

Bring A Little Lovin

in

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

(2019), Mike, the performer of that song, received “some money.”

Manolo García is taking steps so that the associations of Spanish interpreters and authors take charge of his situation.

“It seems outrageous to me that these people are left stranded.

Any musician who has been part of groups that have brought joy and life to the country should have a pension, whether he has contributed or not.

Just for the sake of giving life and joy.

Obviously you are not going to buy them a yacht, but you will want them to have a decent ending.

It is done in France and in many European countries.

And with public money, we pay a lot of taxes.

“Mike Kennedy deserves, for the love of God, a pension of at least 1,500 euros,” says García.

In recent times, Kennedy exchanged audios with Concha Velasco.

“She was a great friend.

She encouraged me when I started to be sick.

And she told me that one day we would get married.

“She was a joker,” he points out.

He tries to sing a song, but he can't: “Damn, what's wrong with my voice.

Of course, I'm in bed all day... I talk to myself and then I want to sing and my voice doesn't come out.”

Amid so much disappointment in recent times, Mike Kennedy has had a joy: he was finally able to see Los Bravos in a New Year's Eve special on TVE.

They dated several times in the sixties, but he never saw the shows.

“This year they put on a performance [in

Cachitos]

and I finally saw it.

The shame is that I had to watch it from bed.

Too late…".

Upon leaving the residence, his doctor humorously reports that a few days after the singer entered, they wrote in his file: “Be careful, warrior.”

That's how Mike Kennedy has been all his life.

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