Francisco Sánchez, Paco de Lucía, died on February 25 in his refuge in Playa del Carmen, on the other side of the Atlantic. His manager, Barry Marshall, was the only one who watched over him in the mortuary room, sitting all night in a steel chair at the foot of the stretcher where the best guitarist flamenco has ever had lay. In the closet of his house there were three shirts, two or three pants and a tracksuit, little luggage because what was important, the music, was inside him and he didn't seem to need anything other than to take it outside for the blessing of those who saw him play, and of all those who have drawn on his legacy inside and outside of flamenco. “They have no idea who has left us,” said Alejandro Sanz when asked about the death of the author of Entre dos aguas, a flamenco legend both in his life and in the legacy he left behind.
Despite the guitarist's musical significance, there are few biographies published to date, a debt that on the tenth anniversary of his death César Suárez and Manuel Escacena have come to fill with El enigma Paco de Lucía (Lumen) and Paco de Lucía, the first illustrated flamenco (Almuzara), two works that cover the life of the maestro based on the testimonies of those closest to him. The musician's two wives, his children and his friends give voice to the life journey of a musician who brought flamenco into the 21st century, adding new sounds to it while taking the guitarist from the margins of the stage to place him in the center, at the same level. of singers like Camarón, with whom he formed the most famous couple in flamenco.
“Beyond Paco de Lucía's technical ability, which is animal, the ability he had to revolutionize flamenco and break those closed patterns stands out. All the guitarists who come after play the guitar in the way of Paco” explains César Suárez to draw the importance of a rebellious musician both in his music and in his gestures. “He took off his jacket, crossed his leg or introduced unreleased instruments like the cajon without abandoning flamenco, which is the most difficult,” an evolution without which the genre would not have achieved the international fame it enjoys today. “He was the first enlightened, the first to apply a rigorous, scientific method to flamenco,” adds Manuel Escacena, who contrasts it with the previous perspective “based on magic, myth and tradition, as an unfathomable mystery within the reach of only those who carry it in their blood.”
Born in the humble neighborhood of Bajadilla in Algeciras, Paco was, for better and worse, the son of a flamenco hustler, Antonio, who took him out of school when he was still a child so that he could practice the guitar for eight to ten hours a day, in a plan drawn up with an iron fist to give all his children a career in flamenco. “If he had not endured his father's severity, it could have resulted in trauma, as he has experienced with other artists,” says Suárez. "On the other hand, he accepts his teachings with devotion and respects him throughout his life." The childhood journey is reminiscent of another genius, Mozart, with the difference that the Austrian's father took his children like child prodigies through the courts of Europe, while Paco's father (his mother, Luzía the Portuguese, gave him the artistic surname) protected them to prevent them from becoming tablao musicians.
“When he brought them to Madrid it coincided with the boom of child prodigies, like Marisol or Joselito. There must have been producers flying over like vultures to catch some and exploit them.” Antonio became his protector - as he also was for years of Camarón -, managing his career and his finances, even when he was already a famous musician, Paco gave his father all the money he earned. . On one occasion he gave her a million pesetas for a performance, and his father gave him 500 to go out at night. “Paco's father locked him up, deprived him of his childhood, but he built him up as an artist. In the recording environment he was known as Hitler, but Paco had a character that supported that rigidity, he did not hate his father, at least not nominally, the subconscious is unknown,” Escacena points out.
The fruit of this lost childhood came when he was only 16 years old, when Paco traveled to the United States to tour with José Greco's company. There he made himself known to the public for whom he played all his life: the flamenco artists, the artists, the best, they were his reference even when he broke the rules and was vilified for it, "first by his father, who told him that That seemed like spiritualism,” Escacena highlights. “The stale flamenco artists told him that this was leaving flamenco,” an accusation that Paco himself responded to in an interview by stating when he said “I'm not breaking the molds, I'm breaking the forms.” “If instead of putting in three chords I could put in 33, why wouldn't I do it?” Escacena asks again. “It is a revolution that he learned in Brazil, the chromaticism, the variety, the plasticity, everything is much richer. That's what Paco did, but he didn't break out of the flamenco molds.”
At just over 20 years old and with several albums released, including Fuente y caudal, Paco began touring around the world, filling stages such as Carnegie Hall with Berry Marshall, manager of Tina Turner, Paul McCartney and Elton John, to crowned in his homeland with performances such as the one at the Palau de la Música in 1970 or, years later, at the Teatro Real in Madrid. “He has the sensitivity to take advantage of the fact that Las Grecas are triumphing, Manolo Sanlúcar releases Caballo negro and Serranito is also playing. The tablaos are boiling but he is the one who transcends that border of flamenco and becomes pop,” Suárez highlights.
In those 70s Paco de Lucía opened flamenco to jazz, classical and even bossa nova with recordings such as Friday night in San Francisco with John McLaughlin and Al di Meola, or the legendary interpretation of the Aranjuez Concerto by Joaquín Rodrigo. What he did not achieve, even with all the success in the world, was to break his introspective and elusive character, sunk in an enigmatic gaze that “could strike you down, it hid a very tormented world,” as reflected in a multitude of photographs. “He was sickly shy, added to that was a complex of not having culture because he left school very early, of not knowing how to read or write music, of not having read.” To combat this weakness he began to read guided by his first wife, Casilda Varela, who was the one who began to recommend books with which to build a culture. “It was unheard of to see a flamenco quoting Ortega y Gasset, or conversing in English with Ravi Shankar.”
“Paco was an ambivalent guy, almost cyclothymic, he never had a defined profile, he defined himself as apathetic and yet he recorded 60 flamenco albums,” says Manuel Escacena, who does not hesitate to define him above all as a generous and humble person. “When they asked him what he felt about being number 1, he responded “fear, I would like to be number two because at least I would have someone to chase, but being number one I only fight against myself,” a fight that led him to torment himself. if things didn't work out in the studio. “He was a sick perfectionist, but when he finished he would go out with his friends and he was the horniest in the world.”
Although Paco de Lucía managed to stop the guitarist from being “the squire of singing, the banderillero” as César Suárez defines him, his name remains inextricably linked to that of the singer José Monge, Camarón, with whom he formed the quintessential flamenco duet. “Camarón was wild freedom, without measure and without control, something that Paco marveled at,” says Escacena. On the contrary, “Paco was the rational, Cartesian and sensible order that Camarón lacked. He was cultured, he had a head although he was also very artistic while Camarón was wild, they looked for each other because they longed for that part that each of them was missing. “When he heard Camarón sing, Paco said that the Messiah had appeared to him,” says Suárez, a connection materialized in more than 10 albums that lasted until the death of the great singer in 1992.
As in any couple, there were no shortage of moments of rupture, such as the controversy over copyright that clouded the last months of Camarón's life, or the singer's decision to break up with Paco's father and protector of both before recording “La legend of time”, a separation that did not dilute the friendship but ultimately prevented the guitarist from participating in one of the most revolutionary albums in flamenco. However, the one who suffered the most in these cases was Camarón, “he did nothing notable until he returned to record again with Paco de Lucía,” says Escacena. “His family tutored Camarón, protected him, took him to live in his house, Paco Lucía's father even managed his money, organized his career, introduced him to record companies, made him a figure” . Would Camarón have arrived at the same place alone? “Maybe, but it turns out that he arrived hand in hand with whoever arrived.”
“Flamenco before Paco de Lucía was a fat man, with a little hat on, sitting on a chair with a wooden table and a glass of wine,” Escacena draws. “Paco gave dignity to flamenco, which was begging and complaining by system,” this image transcended and he refused to perform at parties and tablaos, as well as refusing to collaborate with Julio Iglesias or the Rolling Stones, whom he described as stupid and stupid. “Instead they called him Chick Corea, Wynton Marsalis or Al di Meola and he said yes, because they were musicians with whom he was going to play face to face, not a simple decoration, that was unworthy for him”, the difference for a musician that, as Manolo Sanlúcar said, “it enchants those who do not know and drives those who know crazy.”
