“I’m left with those young corpses,” says Fernando García, author of “Saints and Sinners,” an e-book that can be read for free on any phone, tablet, or computer.
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At the last recital of Chet Baker There were seventeen people. He had been living in Amsterdam for several years. That night, he played in a club in Rotterdam and took the train home because he couldn't remember where he'd parked his car. Nico, the exotic German model who joined The Velvet Underground, however, wasn't riding a train, no, but a bicycle, when death struck. It was a sunny day in Ibiza; she had gone out to buy some weed. Her son waved to her from the window. "The autopsy revealed a cerebral hemorrhage that led to the cardiac arrest that caused the fatal fall."
It is the details, the smallest, the most imperceptible, that explain the world. There are nine worlds in total that Fernando García takes apart and puts back together in his new book: Saints and Sinners: Discontinuous Portraits of Music Legends. Edited by BajaLibros, ebook format, the zigzag runs through nine figures, nine stars: Chet Baker, Nico, Brian Jones, Tanguito, Syd Barrett, Luca Prodan, Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain y Amy Winehouse"This book is not a gallery of heroes or a museum of illustrious corpses," reads the prologue. "They are portraits," the author now clarifies.
The phone rings and Fernando García He stretches; he stretches his arms; he yawns. It's ten in the morning, the sun is shining. He answers with a curt, austere, frugal "hello." He packs books and notebooks in his backpack, puts on his headphones, and gets ready to leave. A large group of students is waiting for him at Di Tella University. He has an undergraduate subject: Journalistic Writing and Editing. And a postgraduate seminar: Popular Avant-gardes. Meanwhile, on the way, he chats with Infobae Culture about this unforgettable constellation of what he himself defines as “shooting stars.”
"They were very defined profiles, a bit romantic and a bit tragic. The list tried to be balanced in terms of era and genre, but it's a bit random. I don't know why it's not included." Jimi Hendrix"For example," says the 58-year-old journalist, as he walks to the bus stop. He worked for two decades in Clarín, now write in La Nación and published books such as 100 times Redondos, 100 times Stones in Argentina y Crime and Avant-garde, but also like El Di Tella: An intimate history of a cultural phenomenon y I'm in love with my car: A father, a son, four wheels.
“She had it all: beauty and intelligence. And that's what makes the story sadder,” reads the profile of NicoThe texts narrate that darkness, the one left by the absence of the spotlight, when it goes out, when it's removed, or when it burns. Diving in that area, says García, is "in contrast to certain biographies: a little battered, but backlit by the moon. The artistic aura isn't always about that." Nor is it a way of admiring the past, he says: "When I listen Deep Purple "I don't feel like I'm doing an exercise in nostalgia. I'm listening in the moment."
"Amy Winehouse "She's a fairly recent artist with whom I didn't have the same commitment as a fan, but she was inescapable: she represents that mystery, that of a voice that appears out of nowhere and disappears, just like that, suddenly. Especially at a time when no one was singing like that, recovering a very analog form. It went beyond retro. I come from a school, the nineties. We were very modernist in the old sense of the word: never looking back. We weren't celebrating fifty years of anything; that whole culture appeared later," he maintains.
“It was always like neophilia: what's new? What's happening now? But I'm not into that anymore. In any case, I have some degree of sentimental commitment for having listened to them,” he says, adding that it seemed “much more real and honest to talk about what I spent many hours listening to and that were part of my life, especially in the case of Luca prodan; too Tango, who obviously predates my generation, but I've always valued him immensely artistically. Not just because of that shitty movie, or the legend, but because every note of his is worth ten other albums."
From the voice of Kurt Cobain write on Saints and sinners who was “an alternative to the corporate discourse of the industry and the aesthetics of pop music itself.” Now he asserts that “he's the artist who represents that inherent contradiction in rock: being in the spotlight and not being in the spotlight, having a somewhat displaced place in pop culture.” “And well, that's it, it's over, done with: the battle was lost and he was the last soldier,” he concludes. “It was always very contradictory to be in the record label system, the tours, and all that, and at the same time realize it. These are artists who are uncomfortable.”
"Luca prodan He went further in the punk attitude than any of our mimetic punks, and at the same time he went beyond that category, it was too small for him. Luca Prodan was an artist", he writes in the text dedicated to the Sumo leader. "They go beyond the category of being the instrument they play," he says now. "They are all artists because they work on that, but I consider them as such when they exceed the allotted space. Not all painters are necessarily artists: they may be technically impeccable, but there is something about them that disrupts common sense, everyday life."
Brian Jones, he writes, “is the Che of the Stones: eternally young as a result of a violent death.” “They are artists with a limited output, unlike others who have thirty albums. The aesthetic or spiritual shock these artists can cause in me has nothing to do with a sustained career, an artistic coherence. Tanguito, with the strumming of 'Natural', is enough for me. They also have fleetingness as a common element. Chet Baker “It is consecrated and then it is all decadence,” he says.
"They are shooting stars that burst into a system," he continues. "What did Syd BarrettIt was on an album and a half, a couple of singles, but it served to get to these shows of Roger Waters What is happening now that they are nothing: the greatest hypocrisy of political correctness. I prefer to stay with those young corpses. I know it's a bit cruel, because I'm writing." Today, García continues, "one can talk about rebellion in the past tense. What is happening today is going to be stigmatized and punished: if you go to a newspaper from '68 you will read about Bryan Jones as if he were practically a criminal.”
With the barely perceptible clatter of the bus in the background - it must be arriving at Di Tella by now - the journalist quotes Miguel Grandfather"Everything that binds is a killer." "It's one of the great maxims, but go and carry it out," he says. "Perhaps I have a somewhat melancholic tendency, I don't rule it out, but those programs are difficult to execute: they end life itself. I often pass by Luca's house, I rarely stop. There's a plaque there. It's hard for me. I don't like seeing rock music so awarded; I can't get used to it. Perhaps because I'm from a generation where rock, I'm not saying it was an act of resistance, but it wasn't fully digested; you had to go and find it."
“The truth is, I can't get used to it,” he insists. That's why honesty is key in writing: “A rock text has to be written in rock, in its own language. And not shy away from the excesses or the causes of tragic endings. They're not balance sheets. One is dedicating oneself to telling a life story, not to thinking that if Luca had taken care of himself he could have lived longer. Like those who tell you that… Maradona He left us without ten more years of football because of how he lived, instead with Messi Maybe we'll have one more World Cup. What the fuck do I care? I don't give a damn! There won't be anything like Maradona. I'm sorry."
Source: INFOBAE