Luis Alberto Spinetta

Luis Alberto Spinetta, "el Flaco", is one of the most important musicians Latin America has produced, and for many the greatest of rock in Spanish.

He was not only a singer or an extraordinary guitarist: he was a poet who chose the song as his form, and who lifted Argentine rock from its first stammerings until it became a serious, deep, literary art.

His work spans more than four decades and several legendary bands —Almendra, Pescado Rabioso, Invisible, Spinetta Jade— and an immense solo career, and in all of them he left the same mark: melodies of a rare beauty and lyrics that were, literally, poetry.

He died in 2012, and since then his stature has not stopped growing.

A masterpiece at fifteen

This fact is hard to believe, but it is documented: Spinetta composed "Barro tal vez", one of the most beautiful and most revered songs in all of Argentine rock, in 1965, when he was fifteen.

Fifteen. At an age when almost nobody has written anything worth keeping, el Flaco had already composed a song of a poetic maturity that musicians with decades of craft behind them never reach.

And he did not record it until 1982, seventeen years later, on his solo album "Kamikaze". They recorded it at night, in a garden, and if you listen closely you can hear the crickets in the background all the way through the song.

That fact says everything about him: he was not someone who learned to be a poet over the years. He was born one.

The journalist Fernando García put it better than anyone: as if Luis had known absolutely everything far too soon.

The man who made Argentine rock an art

With his band Almendra, Spinetta recorded "Muchacha (ojos de papel)" in 1969, released in January 1970. With that one song he changed the course of his country's music.

Until then Argentine rock was only just being born, feeling its way, imitating. "Muchacha" —that delicate, almost whispered ballad, with lyrics of a poetic tenderness nobody had put into a rock song in Spanish— set the bar sky-high in a single stroke.

From then on, Spinetta never stopped reinventing himself: he went heavier and more psychedelic with Pescado Rabioso, more cosmic and jazz-minded with Invisible, always searching, never staying where the audience found him comfortable.

His peak, for almost everyone, is "Artaud", from October 1973, which in the 2007 Rolling Stone Argentina and MTV poll —voted on by a panel of a hundred and eighty musicians, producers and journalists— came first among the hundred best records of Argentine national rock.

There you find "Cantata de puentes amarillos", "Todas las hojas son del viento", "Bajan", "Cementerio Club": songs that are suites, journeys, poems set to music.

Two points about that record, because both are usually told wrong.

The first: it came out credited to Pescado Rabioso even though the band had already broken up, and it is practically a solo record. The reason was contractual: Pescado Rabioso owed the label one more album.

The second, more important: it is not a record "inspired" by the French poet Antonin Artaud. It is a reply. Spinetta explained it as an answer to the suffering that reading Artaud's work produces: where Artaud put nihilism, he put love and inner peace.

Even the sleeve refused to fit: it was octagonal, the work of Juan Gatti, and record shops did not know how to display it.

The incorruptible poet

And there is what defines him, beyond the talent: Spinetta was incorruptible.

In a world that rewards the formula and the hit, he always refused to make easy music in order to sell more. He published "Guitarra negra" (1978), the only book he ever published: seventy poems dedicated to his parents and his children. The Argentine press saw him off calling him the incorruptible poet of rock.

And there is one gesture of his that is worth that whole idea, and that is almost never told properly.

Spinetta stopped playing "Muchacha (ojos de papel)" for years. It is often said that it was out of weariness, out of discomfort at being reduced to a single hit. That was not the reason he gave.

The reason was that he disowned his own song for being sexist. He said that the man in the lyrics wants the woman to stay there and not move, and that that is a sexist thing. In 1987 he went so far as to write a text deconstructing his own anthem, titled "Muchacha ojos de papel: desintegración abstracta de la defoliación".

Making a feminist self-criticism of your most beloved song, in 1987, and holding to it for years, is a form of integrity that almost nobody has.

In time he played it again, including a mocking version he called "Muchacho (ojos de cartón)".

The eternal bands

In 2009 he gave a concert that went down in history: "Spinetta y las Bandas Eternas", on 4 December, at the Vélez Sarsfield stadium.

It began at twenty to ten at night and ended at half past three in the morning: almost six hours, fifty songs, more than thirty musicians, more than forty thousand people. He played alongside the members of every band he had had across his life, going back over four decades of work.

It was, without anyone knowing it then, a farewell.

In December 2011 he announced his illness by letter, to stop the rumours. He died on 8 February 2012, of lung cancer, at sixty-two.

The whole of Argentina stopped to mourn him.

What to remember

Luis Alberto Spinetta is the proof that rock in Spanish could stand as high as the best poetry, and that an artist can spend a whole lifetime without ever betraying himself.

If you put on "Muchacha (ojos de papel)", "Barro tal vez", "Cantata de puentes amarillos" or "Seguir viviendo sin tu amor", you are going to hear a man who sang the way someone writes verses, with melodies that seem to come from another world and words that go on turning in your head for years.

He was the father of Argentine rock, yes, but he was more than that: he was living proof that popular music can be art of the most serious kind without ceasing to be beautiful and singable.

El Flaco was born a poet, lived incorruptible, and left behind a songbook that never stops growing.

As Juan Carlos Diez, who interviewed him over many years, wrote: Luis is always being born.

Sources

Luis Alberto Spinetta (Buenos Aires, 23 January 1950 – 8 February 2012), singer, composer, guitarist and poet, considered one of the founding and most influential figures of Argentine rock and of rock in Spanish. He led Almendra, Pescado Rabioso, Invisible and Spinetta Jade, in addition to an extensive solo career. He composed "Barro tal vez" in 1965, at the age of fifteen, and recorded it in 1982 on his solo album "Kamikaze", taped at night in the open air, which is why crickets can be heard in the background. With Almendra he recorded "Muchacha (ojos de papel)" between April and September 1969 at the TNT studios in Buenos Aires; the album was released on 15 January 1970 and the single on 20 January 1970. "Artaud" was released on 6 October 1973 under the name Pescado Rabioso, even though the band had already broken up, because of a contractual obligation to deliver a third album to Microfón/Talent; it contains nine songs, among them "Cantata de puentes amarillos", "Todas las hojas son del viento", "Bajan" and "Cementerio Club", and its octagonal sleeve is the work of Juan Gatti. Spinetta described the record as an answer to the suffering produced by reading the work of Antonin Artaud, setting love and inner peace against his nihilism, and not as an endorsement of it. In the poll "The 100 best records of Argentine national rock" by Rolling Stone Argentina and MTV (2007), voted on by a panel of 180 people, "Artaud" came first. He published a single book, "Guitarra negra" (1978, Tres Tiempos), with seventy poems in eight sections. He stopped performing "Muchacha (ojos de papel)" for years, and the reason he gave was that he disowned the song for being sexist —he pointed out that the protagonist wants her to stay still—; in 1987 he wrote a deconstruction titled "Muchacha ojos de papel: desintegración abstracta de la defoliación". He later played it again, including a parodic version as "Muchacho (ojos de cartón)" in 1992 and at the 2009 concert. "Spinetta y las Bandas Eternas" was held on 4 December 2009 at the José Amalfitani stadium of Vélez Sarsfield: it began at 21:40 and ended at 3:30, with fifty songs, more than thirty musicians and more than 40,000 in attendance. He announced his illness by letter in December 2011 and died of lung cancer at 62. The phrase "as if Luis had known absolutely everything far too soon" is by the journalist Fernando García, in the special "Luis Alberto Spinetta: 100 great songs" by La Nación and Rolling Stone, in the entry devoted to "Muchacha (ojos de papel)". The phrase "Luis is always being born" is by Juan Carlos Diez, author of "Martropía. Conversaciones con Spinetta" (2006). The epithet "the incorruptible poet of rock" comes from the coverage in the Argentine press after his death, among others from a headline in El Cronista of 9 February 2012, and is not recorded as a nickname in common use during his lifetime. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Rolling Stone Argentina, La Nación, Perfil, El Cronista and other press coverage.