More than forty years of uninterrupted career endorse Barón Rojo as one of the references of the Spanish rock scene, and especially of heavy metal. They planned to dedicate the year 2020 to say goodbye to his large fans, spread over half the world, but the covid disrupted their plans.
Now they return to the stage, among others with a tremendous concert at the Wizink at the end of last year, but without immediate definitive “good bye” dates, but perhaps local. That is why the concert they are offering today in Barcelona (Razzmatazz room, 8:30 p.m.; the Panzer opening act, at 7:00 p.m.) has a special meaning, in which they will offer a three-hour review of their muscular and intergenerational repertoire (Steel Strings , Children of Cain, The Baron flies over England or, of course, I will Resist).
Farewell or not farewell?
Several situations have been mixed: these two years of parenthesis due to the pandemic have caused all plans to be changed. In 2020 we had planned our farewell tour with a certain priority, which was going to cover all of 2020 and which was going to close with a tremendous concert, in quotes, at the WiZink Center in Madrid at the end of the year. But what happened is that they put us all in parentheses, and the tour was incomplete, and now we have to do the entire American continent and a lot of concerts in Spain. And the new times change your perspective of everything. We are now immersed in a certain tendency that one day this will have to end. I think that the current situation means that the group is still in too much demand to say very loudly that this is a farewell tour.
But when the confinement occurred, the tour had already started...
Yes Yes. Early 2020, and we'd already done a bunch of sites. In this continuation of the tour the content is the same, there are no significant changes to when we started it. The band continues to make the same music and the same songs, and as for the concerts, they usually have two parts: the first, where we venture further and experiment a bit, with mixes of themes, and in the final stretch we give free rein to the great classics so that people stay at ease.
In your case, is saying goodbye synonymous with sadness?
Not quite. For people maybe more, but we always try to put the best of ourselves on live. Until the last concert. It's in our blood.
The group stopped with the pandemic, but how did it affect you?
I led a second life parallel to Barón Rojo, making my own songs, recordings, putting together certain complementary groups to alternate and not always play the same thing. And I have followed that story. That is why I have taken advantage of the period of the pandemic sentimentally, I have deepened a relationship that has made me get married a month ago. We met in 2018 and then we have had a girl who is now eight months old. The pandemic has changed my life.
Congratulations. The fact that Barón Rojo is a generational reference, that praise and recognition rain down on them, does it suppose a plus of responsibility in all senses?
We already have people very convinced; it is the people who have placed us at that point of visibility that we are the reference group within the hard rock scene in Spain for many years. In the end you end up believing it a little, and in the American continent even more because they are very effusive. And you get a little nervous. But we know how important the group has been; in fact, rock in Spain without Barón would have been radically different. I think that the history of rock in Spain is divided into a before and after Barón Rojo.
Do you think they have been a model for other bands?
What I said before does not mean that we are a much imitated group, because here what has abounded is urban rock and instead what we have always tried to do is international rock with capital letters and with all of the law. Barón hasn't created a school in particular, but it was quite a blow because the groups from here practically didn't leave Spain, while all the foreign groups respected us. But there are other styles that have taken the cat to the water much more than us, that's for sure.
The band's entry into the US market is striking, don't you think?
You are right; this has been recent. We hadn't visited the United States until 2017, and now in 2022 we're going to do a much more successful second tour. They are sites with a majority of Spanish-speaking public, that is true.
With the experience of 40 years, could you say if there is any place, city, area, where your rock has taken off especially?
One of the places in our country or our State where we are most appreciated and noticed is in Catalonia, for example, and I am not saying this because you are interviewing me. Ever since we started promoting the first record in 1981, the people at the record company Chapa Discos told us that we had broken down the barriers or obstacles in Catalonia that usually existed with the groups that came from Madrid. And now one of the areas that we visit the most in South America is Colombia, without detracting from anyone. We are a band that has always aroused sympathy.
Precisely the sympathy, or lack of it, was something that was associated with hard rock bands. Is there, was there, any truth to that?
I think it is something that has been tried to be sold like this on everyone at the dawn when this began to emerge; they wanted to identify hard rock with the dark side of musical movements, with lumpen, ragged people, with drugs. And I do not know why. And we, the people who have dedicated ourselves to hard rock, have had to fight to break those taboos and curses that they wanted to place on us, as if we were aggressive, dangerous and violent people, when it is quite the opposite. There is nothing more peaceful and enjoyable than a hard rock concert, it is the most peaceful environment you can find. They are people who burn their energies at the concert in an internal way, without messing with anyone, simply enjoying themselves and the atmosphere that is created among all those who like heavy metal.
If you had to choose a favorite Red Baron theme, where would you go?
Steel Strings, which appears in In a Place in the March, and, of course, Children of Cain.
