At Gay Mercader's house, the great promoter

2022-12-28T05:09:32.169Z

He has just been awarded the 2022 Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts. A friend of Keith Richards, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith or Sting, Gay Mercader is a live music legend. A pioneer in Spain in holding international concerts, his life is like a movie: he grew up in Paris in May 1968, participated in parties in Italy with his uncle, the director Vittorio de Sica, and dared to bring The Rolling Stones to the Francoist Spain. He receives us in his hidden farmhouse in the mountains of Girona

Deep down, it is paradoxical: the man who has organized the most and best concerts in Spain lives surrounded by silence on top of a mountain.

To get to his house, you have to get lost in the lush countryside of the Girona mountains, about 100 kilometers from Barcelona.

The car meanders down winding roads that seem to lead nowhere as it winds through green groves and rustic farms.

When one is already lost forever, a sandy path appears with a sign that indicates: "Zone with video surveillance".

The area is like a forest, in the heart of which ends up peeking out a huge house located in the upper part of a large estate.

There, another sign hangs over the entrance gate and warns: “Forget the dog.

Beware of the owner.

Stop”.

The owner is Gay Mercader, one of the winners this year of the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts 2022 and one of the most important concert promoters in Spain, who brought The Rolling Stones to the Iberian Peninsula for the first time, Michael Jackson, Metallica, Pink Floyd, Neil Young, Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Iggy Pop, Bob Marley, The Cure, Eric Clapton, The Police and AC/DC, among many other musicians, some of the who have been his friends for decades, such as Keith Richards, Iggy Pop, Sting or Patti Smith herself.

Arriving at the farmhouse, Mercader, dressed in black, comes out to greet them and greets them with a handshake.

Only the birds are heard.

The farm consists of 50 hectares: 5 are pasture and the other 45 are mountain.

“I bought the top of the mountain so I wouldn't have neighbors,” he confesses with a smile and pointing to another distant peak that is also part of his land.

Everything in this idyllic spot is perfectly manicured and populated: there are tall trees, shiny lawns, a swimming pool, a pond with ducks and turtles, a riding arena with horses, a chicken coop, and peacocks.

“My wife and I love animals,” says the 73-year-old veteran promoter.

His wife, Yuliya Tarasova, of Ukrainian origin, provides more information about it: they also have 5 dogs, 20 wild cats scattered around the bush and another 2 pets.

Posters of some concerts of The Rolling Stones assembled in Spain by Gay Mercader.Anna Huix

Like the old rockers, Gay Mercader is a true music legend in Spain.

Breaking his own rules, he has agreed to show him his shelter and sit down to talk about his life and his work.

At his age, he should be retired, but, as music critic Diego A. Manrique writes in the foreword to the book

Tour Posters.
Gay Merchant.
1971/2017

—a luxurious limited edition billet that selects 562 posters from the more than 3,300 concerts promoted by him—, “a person like that does not retire, especially when a passion beats”.

Mercader still really likes music, but he also continues to be the best at what he does.

Nobody like him in Spain knows the live music business, so changing since he staged his first concert in 1971 at the Pachá venue in Sitges for a Norwegian group called Titanic.

“Now this business has become very boring.

It has no interest to me.

Before we changed things and you knew it was important”, says a promoter who has not stopped being one.

He remains on top of everything and acts as a

fellow

promoter for concerts that puts on

friendly artists

who request their services for a “matter of trust”.

Among them are AC/DC, The Cure, Iggy Pop or Sting.

Sign at the entrance of the Mercader estate that warns of the danger of the owner.Anna Huix

Gay Mercader is really called Luis Jorge Mercader Aguilar.

His life until he became the great pioneer of promotion in Spain could be the script of a movie.

One of those films in which the protagonist is a child whose story is already marked from birth with unusual elements.

A cousin of his paternal grandfather, Ramón Mercader, was the agent of the Stalinist NKVD who assassinated Leon Trotski in Mexico in 1940.

A fact that was hardly talked about in his house.

Coming from a family of the haute bourgeoisie, this eldest son of four siblings was born in Barcelona, but grew up in Paris, where they rubbed shoulders with the best birthplace of France during the Fifth Republic.

“My father took us to the Louvre.

At that time there were no queues.

We went to very elitist schools.

In fact,

the only sport we practiced was fencing and one of our schools had a branch in the Alps to go skiing”.

His father, Luis, who worked regularly with England, owned a reinsurance company that made a good portfolio of clients with the English from the French capital.

"With my father I learned the value of words," he confesses.

However, the young boy from Barcelona was kicked out of all the schools and, when he wasn't, he made a fool of himself to escape to the Champs-Élysées to see arthouse films.

“In the schools he attended there was a very posh environment and competitiveness was measured by the books read.

At the age of 15, we had already read Kafka or Nietzsche.

My friends, at the age of 18, their parents bought them Triumph motorcycles to move around the city and we went to private parties in castles.

May 1968 caught him in Paris.

“I escaped to the Odeón theater, which was busy.

It was a general mental jolt.

It left my brain fried.

With the

rock and roll,

drugs and May 68, I realized that I was no longer fit for bourgeois life”, he emphasizes.

“The Stones took their bags with them in 1976. I am friends with many musicians because they were not legends before,” says Gay Mercader.Anna Huix

That young bohemian decided to do something crazy: go to India on foot.

His family avoided him.

Just as Mercader's Paris was not just another Paris, neither was his family environment.

His aunt, the actress María Mercader, married the Italian film director Vittorio de Sica, “Uncle Vittorio”, winner of four Oscars and creator of

The Bicycle Thief.

His father got his aunt to convince him to leave Paris for Milan.

“Uncle Vittorio appeared in a Mercedes with his driver and took me to Italy.

In his house in Rome, I participated in many parties.

Uncle Vittorio loved art and they hung paintings by Miró, Bacon or Botticelli.

My aunt explained to me that she was with Sophia Loren, Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Charles Chaplin… ”.

That experience, she says, led her to want that life: “The last straw was when my cousin Christian [son of Vittorio de Sica] explained to me that Ringo Starr had given him his cap as a gift.

There I understood that my world was much more boring.

Gay Mercader (center) is pictured with Keith Richards (left) on a summer vacation together.Anna Huix

He decided to find a life in Barcelona, where he learned about the world of amphetamines and acids.

Not wanting to be part of his father's insurance company, he worked nights in Sitges.

He was a doorman at the Pachá nightclub.

“He shared a room with Piti Urgell, a partner in the future Pachá empire.

They gave me money and paid for my trip to buy records in London for the disco.

And I already became someone irrecoverable: I only thought about

rock and roll ”.

Thanks to his good English, he took advantage of trips to London to meet all kinds of British agents.

“It was there by the face,” he says, slapping his cheek.

“They asked me: 'Where are you from?'

And I answered that from Barcelona.

They all scoffed.

They said: 'Like Manuel!'

It was the character of a popular seventies sitcom,

Fawlty Hotel,

starring John Cleese, member of the Monty Python.

He was a Spanish waiter with a low level of English called Manuel and he said he was from Barcelona.

I, then, endured the downpour and then talked about business.

When they saw that I was not offended, they took me seriously.

Rock and roll has always wanted to cover territories and Spain was one to conquer.

I became the guy who opened the door for them.”

Gay Mercader's great feat was to integrate Spain into the international rock circuit.

While it is true that during the Franco regime there had been concerts by international bands such as The Beatles, it was not until this daring promoter appeared on the scene that rock stars began to take Spain into account.

In 1973 he founded Gay & Company with businessman Oriol Regàs.

“In all of Europe we were four

peel yourselves

There was no industry.

We were like showmen traveling in wagons, putting on the show from town to town.

There was nothing glamorous about it."

Souvenir photographs at the music promoter's house.

Anna Huix

Under the high ceilings of his house, more than glamor is breathed

rock and roll.

The television remains on at low volume: a concert by The Rolling Stones is playing.

Mercader now loves watching televised concerts, though not as much as his

brothers ' food.

from El Celler de Can Roca, where the promoter took Patti Smith one night to sing between the stoves.

She's like the fourth adoptive brother of the Catalan haute cuisine clan, and today Marc, her driver —Gay doesn't have a driver's license— brought her some tasting menus for lunch.

A large board of photos hangs in his spacious living room.

There you can see images of the promoter's six ex-partners and all kinds of personalities that he likes: The Rolling Stones, Bryan Ferry, Serrat, Tricicle, Javier Bardem, Andreu Buenafuente, Berto Romero, Faemino y Cansado, Felipe González, Pasqual Maragall ( to whom he is related) and his partners and best friends Luis Rubira and Paco Martínez.

Hundreds of vinyl records coexist with concert posters put together by him while gifts made by Buenafuente and some large framed photographs dedicated by some of his friends stand out on the walls: one with Patti Smith, another with Iggy Pop, another with Loquillo —of which he was manager, like from Tequila— and more than one with Keith Richards, with whom he has gone on vacation and usually calls him whenever he comes to Spain.

“I met Keith the first time he brought The Rolling Stones in 1976. I was at the hotel bar and saw him appear with Anita Pallenberg.

She asked me for coke and said: 'Come with us.'

At the foot of the elevator, I gave it to them and told them: 'I'm not needed anymore'.

That surprised them, they did not expect it.

They were used to everyone taking an opportunity like this to stay with them.

That same night I found Mick and Ronnie at the door of the hotel with two girls and they wouldn't let them go up to the rooms because they didn't have the family book.

I paid 1,000 pesetas to the receptionist and the problem was solved”.

Images from a Gay Mercader album.

Anna Huix

Some Tintin figurines rest on a dresser in the bedroom, the same place where a portrait made of him by his friend Miquel Barceló hangs.

The Tintin figures represent his childhood, as he says, but they also seem like the symbol of this adventurer who knew that staging those rock concerts in the seventies was like conquering the Moon.

“The Stones would take their bags to the hotel at that time.

I am friends with many musicians because then they were not legends, they were just musicians, ”he recalls.

And he points out, as a warning: “Franco Spain only had the grays ready to poke us out of concerts or put obstacles in our way, like when I couldn't hold the Bob Marley concert in Madrid because the civil governor forbade it for subversive,

or when in 1976 they censored part of the set of The Rolling Stones that included a giant inflatable penis that spit confetti”.

Mercader accumulates many anecdotes.

He is silent more than he tells and, even so, he has to give and take: “I brought Elton John when he sold 3% of the world's records.

I took him for a walk down the Ramblas, platforms, glitter… and little by little with those heels I thought he was going to kill himself”.

With Iggy Pop he connected first because he was "authentic."

“On the first tour, we stayed two nights locked in a hotel room on Rambla de Cataluña.