Time passes for everyone, including Ariel Eduardo Rotenberg Gutkin, better known as Ariel Rot, who is incredibly 62 years old, although he doesn't seem so when talking to him. From his urban refuge near the center of Madrid, he is seen happy on the screen while he attends La Vanguardia to talk about the reissue of Hablando solo (Warner), the album he recorded with the Attractions of his admired Elvis Costello. With this work, Ariel began his solo career in 1998, the last chapter of a book that remains open between collaborations and looks back that serve as an excuse to reunite the formation of 25 years ago and return to the stages, such as the one in the room 2 Apollo on April 20 (20 hours).
How did the reissue of Hablando solo come to mind?
I'm at a reissue age now (laughs), I could live on my anniversaries here until I retire. It was something casual, it came out while I was sharing some filming I did at that time with the musicians on the tour. Suddenly one of them said, 'just 25 years ago of that' and I thought that something should be done. I mentioned it to Warner, to David Bonilla, who is the one who keeps the archive and has everything, we had been thinking about looking for a record to make a reissue for a long time, and conceptually it makes all the sense that Hablando solo is. It is the album with which he started everything that I am right now, where for the first time I faced a solo career in a constant and solid way.
The archives is where all the unreleased material that accompanies the album comes from
David has a lot of things in store, and it was quite a special album, first of all because of the recording in Las Landes with the Attractions, a friend came to spend a few days there, because it was a wonderful place. There are photos of the sessions, Fito Páez visited us, a lot of events that gave this album a powerful importance beyond the musical.
How did you experience the release of the album?
It was a tiny step for humanity, a giant step for me (laughs). It meant learning another trade, being the spokesperson and acquiring full commitment to what you are presenting and defending it. It was something totally new for me, the vocal part, being in the center of the stage, keeping the timing of a concert, composing only my songs, a new experience that I lived with great joy, euphoria and also fear and vertigo. I was lucky to be talking alone but in good company.
Performing with the same band should influence the music
Working with this group has given me a certain freshness and at the same time a very powerful background. He had not played with a band for a long time, doing concerts with the pianist Federico Lechner, or alone, also doing the tour of Tequila or working with Kiko Veneno. But an electrical project solely mine had not done so for many years. The feeling of playing with them again was one of harmony in terms of codes, five years traveling together gives us many anecdotes, many invented languages that we recovered again, also a lot to learn together and get to know each other a lot. Everything that is happening is an event, and I am quite euphoric to recover some friends that I had not seen for a long time and now we are once again in a situation of intimacy. These links that we establish on the roads and the premises are strong and pure, you cannot disguise yourself.
The new tour will take place in small stages
This is a repertoire for fans, for coffee growers, a kind of reunion that I'm going to have with them, those who were already coming but always missing their youth. I hope the fan will open, but I understand that this is not a project for very large sites. Although there are some classics in the repertoire, more from the Rodríguez era than from Tequila, there are all the songs that are emblematic for my fans. It's going to be an exciting and fun ceremony.
Have the songs on the album aged well?
I played with something in favor and that is that I caught the Attractions, a band whose records do not age badly. They took a lot of commitment, we had a great harmony, we elaborated together the arrangements of the songs playing the four of them live. It was the last album they recorded together. I was surprised to listen to the album again, because of how it sounds and because I have always continued to play many of those songs, they are part of my repertoire.
A few months ago the documentary Tequila, sex, drugs and rock'n'roll was released. How do you remember your time with the band?
In Tequila there were several times, almost all of them very happy except those at the end. Tequila was a neighborhood group, we played in colleges, in small festivals in the seventies where I even sang, when Alejo had not yet joined the band. It was an incredible and totally initiatory time. I came from playing at my house without an amplifier, almost always with a Spanish guitar, I had never had a band, nor a rehearsal room, and suddenly I had all these new toys to develop my musical fantasies. All of this is present in Tequila's first album, which has a very misshapen frame. Then we closed it down and managed to have something a little more conceptual, simple, but at first we even had hints of symphonic rock that we had been listening to previously. I remember it as a time when my head exploded because I had a band, then a contract, concerts all over Spain, fans, interviews, also girls and drugs.
But nothing lasts forever
Things continued to rise until at one point they began to see symptoms that the environment was changing outside and inside, as we explained in the documentary without any filter. What was a playful flirtation with drugs became an addiction, heroin marked the sign of the times and things became cloudy. On the other hand, we began to have disagreements between Alejo and I regarding the musical and what we wanted to project. I wanted to try other things, keep changing, investigating, Alejo was more conservative, he wanted to do rock'n'roll. I wanted to be more modern, I had the right, I was 23 years old, the Movida and the New Wave were exploding, and I tried to bring all those changes to Tequila, but it didn't work because my lyrics didn't fit for Alejo to sing them. Things got cloudy and I made the decision to quit, and that's when the group broke up. It was a hard moment, but closing a stage and opening another when you are 24 years old is a good thing, it has a fascinating and attractive part. I was in need of something to happen all my life.
It has always been changing, trying new projects
Then the Rodríguez family arrived, where there was also a period of brutal romance and idyll, until a moment came when it began to falter and the situation became quite untenable. We were at a moment at a level of transcendence and popularity, even inspiration, very good; but there was such a bad climate within the group at that time that I think we all wanted to stop seeing each other for a while.
More recently he has performed with Kiko Veneno
A wonderful tour, Kiko is a very captivating character, full of very personal references and universes, very broad and poetic, very funny with a lot of poetry and a lot of music. We transformed both his repertoire and mine to find a common sound. We play my songs with flamenco guitar mixed with electric, his songs and I take them to a less syncopated rhythm, more down to earth. We had a great time, you couldn't ask for more.
In Argentina, the cradle of rock in Spanish, urban music is now triumphing
Rock had its very long reign, with several lives, it was the language of youth for decades, something incredible for a genre. It was time for a relay, a new language for young people. Argentina continues to be an extraordinary musical quarry, and it is true that Duki fills the Vélez stadium, but Fito Páez has also just filled it twice. It seems to me that there is a very healthy musical scene in Argentina, where these new sounds and these new attitudes with respect, knowing where they come from and why they got to where they got. They know who the heroes and founders of this music are, which already began to be strong in the 60s in Argentina.
Do you see yourself trying electronics?
At this point I'm not here to force anything, if I ever find someone to work with who handles these instruments -which I'm totally unaware of- I'm probably going to have a great time and we'll do something. I'm not going to start after spending a lifetime learning to play the guitar, the piano, trying to learn to sing better and better, trying to begin to know how to program a drum rhythm. I would have to be born again to get self-sufficient in such a story. I don't close myself off because I like any music, I have played with Feredico Lechner who comes from jazz, and we have managed to find a point of union to play my songs. Everything is music and I demonstrated it in A country to listen to playing with the whole world. As long as I can do my thing in a natural way and contribute something, I'm delighted.
It's been seven years since your last studio job, do you have new material?
Seven years already… a long time. On the one hand, statistically with the passage of time it is composed less. On the other hand, I had a contractual agenda and a creative agenda that I couldn't abandon, it was a kind of pressure or fight that never stopped, that's how it worked. But a few years ago it stopped being like that, I don't have that pressure anymore and that probably took a lot of concentration from me, and a lot of concentration, work and discipline are required to get a new record off the ground. I worked long and hard to maintain that rigor, and now I've relaxed and liberated myself in a way. I trust that I still have a work saved so that it will come out at some point, but I recognize that I am not making enough effort to be able to do it.
