Pino Sagliocco: "Did you know that Amy Winehouse could break at any moment"

Music promoter Pino Sagliocco.

Pino Sagliocco (Carinaro, Italy, 1959) is one of the last remaining rock star promoters in Spain.

Current

in our country of the most powerful multinational in the sector, Live Nation, he was also one of the pioneers in organizing major international tours that came here from the eighties.

He attends us by videoconference from a hotel room in Madrid, wearing a black T-shirt with a colorful message in silver

: David Bowie.

He is there preparing the exhibition

, which will be held from February 22 to 26 at SAM-Salón de Arte Moderno, at the Carlos de Amberes Foundation in Madrid.

It is a collection of portraits of seven artists who died at the age of 27: the musicians Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse plus the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, by the plastic artist from Castellón Maseda .

The promoter explains the genesis of this idea.

“I met Maseda when they were making a documentary about Ángel Nieto, they came to record at my house in Ibiza and I found it incredible to see how he painted Ángel.

He took out his soul, I saw Angel alive in his portrait.

Then one day I thought that I would have liked him to do a painting of Jimi Hendrix.

That derived, explains the promoter, in extending it to other deceased figures at the age of 27.

“It's incredible that people with such a short life span have had such an everlasting legacy, and I've had the privilege of working with some of them as well,” he says.

Amy Winehouse, pictured by Maseda.Maseda

Did you deal with Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain?

Nirvana was treated by an associate of mine and I never had contact with them.

With Amy yes, a porcelain soul, that you knew could break at any moment, as it finally did.

She had the fragility of the greats, as happened to Camarón.

They were so strong and powerful when they went on stage, but, at the same time, as vulnerable as people... Perhaps they did not have an environment that took better care of them, but they were like that and that is part of their greatness.

Amy Winehouse touched my soul from the first time I met her, when I took her to Rock In Rio in Madrid and Lisbon, in 2008. She transferred you.

I introduced her to Jesús Quintero and he kept telling me that he had never forgotten that meeting.

How has the job of promoter changed in these years?

When I started, relationships with artists were more personal.

I had the privilege and honor of working with Michael Jackson but also of being friends with him and being in his house.

When Freddie Mercury left Queen after their 1986 tour, he came with us and we did

with Montserrat Caballé.

She spent a year with me living in Ibiza.

Frank Zappa was on vacation at my house.

George Michael stayed for a week.

The Depeche Mode were very close to me, the Rolling Stones... There was always a very personal relationship, we were all like the same tribe, a clan.

Everything moved country by country and now everything is more corporate and global.

There are more and more complaints about the prices of concert tickets and about the stratification of the public Is live music on its way to becoming an exclusive experience for the rich?

I think it is the opposite.

It happens like in restaurants, some are very expensive and it is impossible to get a table, and there are more accessible ones and they also fill up.

Now there is more public than ever that goes to concerts, what happens is that there is also a sector that does not want to have to queue or stay in a traffic jam.

When you go to see Real Madrid, not everyone gets into the south goal: there are those who can have a parking space, go to the stands, the box or the VIP area if you pay for it.

And this is not from now, already in ancient Rome, in the circus there were resales and people who paid more to have a better location.

The VIP offer has served to bring more audiences to the concerts, people who wouldn't go if you didn't offer them this more comfortable option.

Sometimes the prices are exorbitant, but it does not happen in all the concerts,

but in the four that fill.

Many more do not sell out, and they are usually quite accessible.

Jimi Hendrix, portrayed by Maseda.Maseda

There was also a strong controversy in the US with

It is that there is no break.

There would be if the artist had gone too far in something, but in this case, if you don't, if you don't control this, the pirates will.

There are many people who have bought tickets on an unofficial site, gone to the gate and couldn't get in because the ticket wasn't even valid.

This is, unfortunately, a very difficult market to control, which is why it is up to the artist to offer that guarantee.

How much would you say the caches have risen since musicians no longer live from record sales?

I am going to tell you something that is going to seem absurd to you.

Coldplay have had to restructure the first part of their tour because they were so generous with their show that they were losing money.

All prices have skyrocketed: electricity, sound, transport, hotels, restaurants... It's not that caches have gone up because artists are greedy, because, in proportion, they earned much more money before with records .

Think that there are many musicians who have not worked for a long time and who are billionaires thanks to copyrights.

Nowadays, maintaining an entire infrastructure and a live equipment has many costs.

And, in the end, if you see what they have offered you, you will see that it is not that expensive.

The concept of a concert is also changing, isn't it?

With Rosalía's

tour

I think Rosalía has done something revolutionary, because she speaks the language of young people, and the demonstration is in the success she has had.

There were people who complained that she hadn't taken the musicians with her, but in reality, what she did was give her best, give herself one hundred percent, without having anything on stage other than her strength, his voice and his concept of making you live his experience.

None of her fans have been disappointed.

She has taken a step forward.

Not only has she evolved, but she is going to create a school.

It is something to applaud and admire, not to criticize, in my opinion.

Kurt Cobain, portrayed by Maseda.Maseda

He has worked with many of the biggest stars in the pop firmament.

How do you see Rosalía within that constellation?

In the first place, she has done something historic because she has managed to give flamenco visibility at an international level that she did not have before in this way.

Joaquín Cortés, Paco de Lucía or Camarón were important in the world, but for a niche audience.

Rosalía has put him at the level of the great pop and rock stars on the five continents, and all this in a very short time.

She is very clear about what she wants, and she always knows where she is going.

What she did the other day at the Louis Vuitton show in Paris putting on Camarón de la Isla. She has a drive, a drive, a personality and a self-confidence that only the greatest possess.

After organizing many concert tours, you began to do big concerts at the end of the eighties, which was a time of explosion in Spain, and even of decentralization.

I remember that Madonna's first Spanish tour and Prince's first, in 1990, coincided in the same week and they went through Vigo, A Coruña, Marbella, Valencia... Now it seems difficult for them to go to cities other than Barcelona or Madrid.

Look, Prince's concert in A Coruña and Madonna's in Vigo were on the same night, and both were sold out.

In 1991 Whitney Houston also performed in A Coruña and it was broadcast on television throughout Europe, and in 1992 we brought Frank Sinatra.

It was a unique time, but what happens is that you cannot bring a great concert to one of these cities if you do not have institutional support because it is not profitable, it would be unfeasible.

Opportunities arise when the town halls have a push, but now they no longer bet so much on big musical events.

It was also the era of massive solidarity concerts: Live Aid, the tribute to Nelson Mandela at Wembley, the Amnesty International tours... You, however, tried to do another tribute to Mandela in Barcelona in 2001 (called Frock &

I did a concert for Amnesty International in Chile in 1991, when Pinochet was still there, and it went very well.

The

It was the biggest failure of my life, but also the concert I remember most fondly.

It filled me with sadness at the time, because I think Mandela deserved a much bigger tribute.

Today, if you ask the people who say that he has gone, you would count two hundred thousand people, but the reality is that there were only three thousand.

I do miss these types of events a lot, I am always available to fight to do things of this type.

During the pandemic I have advocated creating a Music Academy, because the sector should come together more and have a common voice so that we can be heard much more.

Music is one of the engines that has changed societies, it is the most common language we have, and I believe that it is more alive than ever.

The myth of the 27, according to Maseda

Marco Gómez Maseda (Castellón, 45 years old) is a visual artist whose portraits are inspired by

.

show

as a tribute to “some artists whose charge, their energy, their art, was so captivating and so colossal that it conveys those sensations of freedom, of youthful power.

What Pino and I think is that young people are missing out on this, music is drifting towards something more artificial.

That marked me in a way that can be seen in the paintings”. 

When it comes to focusing his work, he claims to have been inspired by both the music and the history of each one of them.

“In the end, the stigmas of life are always transmitted a lot in people's faces and eyes.

In the photos you also saw his arrogance.

Kurt Cobain, for example, stays cool even when you perceive that he's annoyed.

He even covered his eyes with glasses to soften the image he conveyed a bit.

They all share tormented, hard and very powerful lives, so it was easy to unify them around the emotions they express”, concludes Maseda. 

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