“Loquillo has long been a literary character”

On the 13th, in San Sebastian, he presents ‘Diario de una trugua’, where he edits ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, the Dickens story that ‘defines current reality’

The old Loquillo has been replaced by the new Loquillo. This is indicated by his new album, ‘Diario de una trugua’, a rebirth album forged between the “studio isolation” and the “struggle for artistic survival” during the pandemic. The title has something prophetic or predictive. It is still being published under the shock of Covid-19 and in the midst of a war in Europe that awakens multiple readings in this convinced Europeanist. Loquillo edits ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, Dickens’ story that ‘best defines current reality’. It is also a sign of the powerful symbiosis between rock and literature that he has consolidated in his discography. “Loquillo has been a literary character for a long time,” he says. On the 13th he will perform at the Kursaal in San Sebastian.

– In addition to their albums with poets and ‘Mujeres en pie de guerra’, the BSO of the shocking documentary by filmmaker Susana Koska, ‘Diario de una trugua’ seems to be delving into a new sound and literary research that has been present since ‘Balmoral’ is.

– With ‘El Último Clásico’ (their previous album) my 20th century ended. A flame on the cover announced it. A symbolism typical of Cirlot. ‘Diario de una trugua’ inaugurates a new character, macerated during the pandemic, hardened in the isolation of a studio and the struggle for artistic survival during a tour, ‘La vida por ahead’, where I still toured Spain without vaccinations with poetry as Future loaded gun.

– Do you feel completely free to make or break your professional career?

– My job is the way I have to deepen my personal growth, with its successes and mistakes. The character grows, mutates. Don’t expect a lenient or politically correct artist from me.

– Coronavirus, Russia invades Ukraine. Don’t you feel that our lives since the start of the pandemic have been some sort of permanent truce against something that is undefined, but that we consider harmful?

– We got used to the European Peace, in capital letters, which came about as a result of the end of the Second World War and the Spanish transition after a long dictatorship. Then we saw the fall of the wall, the war in Yugoslavia and the last sign, the burning of Notre Dame, and we didn’t want to see the same ghosts that haunted Europe in the 1930s returned from the dead. Western democracies are in grave danger. They must defend themselves and now more than ever convey the values ​​of the ‘free’ world. Freedom is not free.

– Diaries can be a book of confessions or memories. Is it the case with your drive?

– A diary is a reckoning with yourself. The rest would be pretentious on my part.

– Has an almost unhealthy obsession with word precision. Is the word an underestimated instrument?

– The value of the texts is becoming more important in my work every day. Working with Sabino Méndez, Gabriel Sopeña, Luis Alberto de Cuenca, Carlos Zanón, Igor Paskual, ​​Martínez Mesanza… or singing Brel, Brassens or Cash is monumental to me. I’m here to learn the authors’ work and pass it on to the rest of the public. We fight against the demonization of the word.

– Is the capacity for reflection lost between doctrinal speeches and the tendency to draw reality in black and white, especially in the networks?

– The culture of cancellation has returned, updated and disguised as modernity. Gone is the censorship, the paseoíllo, the witch hunt or the inquisition. I like musicians, writers, filmmakers and makers in general who, although they don’t share their postulates, question the ‘status quo’. It grows in the discrepancy, not in chance.

– Has literature served you to interpret your character?

– Loquillo has long been a literary character. José María Sanz enjoys his adventures and prequels.

– Did ‘The Great Gatsby’ influence you?

– I think Tourneur’s films touch me more. A caged panther, a zombie between two worlds or a past that haunts me. The story of my life.

– He’s on tour, he’s entering a bookstore. Where is he going?

– Biographies, they are perfect on tour.

– Do you have an author for bad hours or loneliness?

– The Greek and Roman Classics and Medieval Literature.

– For the first time a rocker is filming a Dickens story.

– There is no text that defines our present reality better than what Dickens wrote two centuries ago. Sublime. It was a gift of fate to revisit his work during the pandemic. Gabriel Sopeña, who in his day edited the texts of Cash or Brel, has again adapted, this time from a great universal literature.

– He just recorded a new poetry album.

– ‘Europe’, by Julio Martínez Mesanza, is the most contemporary work to date. For me, the dedication to the poetic project from the beginning is an act of faith. Seven projects have been shared with Gabriel Sopeña when we add the live show that sums up the tour in the first year of the pandemic which will leave at the end of this year.

– The ‘chanson’ and European author cinema float on the record. Is it a world that ends for us?

– I am a European artist, not Latino, my influences range from French to Italian rock, British and Spanish pop. Fado, chanson, Nova Canço, polar cinema with Melville at the helm, Nouvelle Vague, Free Cinema, Italian neorealism, Rovira Beleta, Antonioni… Europe, always Europe. The more decadent, the livelier.

– Alain Delon has just requested euthanasia because he says he has lived long enough.

– Alain Delon, a fetish actor in European cinema, has decided to end his best work, his life.

– Does an author feel longing or expectant about the future?

– I am aware that I am going to see the world I grew up in disappear. I have never lived the present as an ideal of life, I walk with one foot into the future, but am aware of what has been lived and already lost.

‘Diario de una trugua’ is an impressive record on which Loquillo unfolds a range of sounds and influences that, without ceasing to be a ‘house brand’, takes him out of his comfort zone. Produced by Josu García, a musician who is as good at production work as a guitarist, the catalog includes choirs, wind instruments, strings and sublime songs such as ‘La libertad’, signed by Sabino Méndez. Today starts the tour, called ‘The King’. «As a child I was the ‘king’ of the house, that’s what Adela, my mother and my aunt Rosita called me. Igor Paskual has honed the character with whom he shared the stage for 20 years,” explains Loquillo.

Source: La Verdad

Wayne

I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.