Narcís Rebollo, representative of pop stars: “My agenda is worthless if I am not the one who calls” | Culture

See you in your office as boss of the Universal record label for Spain and Portugal before you move to the new, and I suppose equally impressive, global boss of the artist services agency Global Talent Service (GTS). The death of musician Liam Payne, 31, has just been announced after falling from the balcony of his hotel in Buenos Aires after a night of excesses. We started the conversation by commenting on the news and Rebollo says that he was on the same day and in the same hotel in Bogotá that Taylor Hawkins, drummer of Foo Fighters, died of an overdose in 2022, hours before the concert that the band had scheduled at the city. “They went to call him for the concert, he didn’t come down, he didn’t come down, they came in and found him dead in the room,” he says. There is silence. The first question is served.

Is Payne another victim of the “sex, drugs, rock and roll”?

I think these things happen in all unions. The issue of mental health, derived from social pressure through networks, where everyone has an opinion, and the expectations that one generates, creates anxiety, addictions and depression. Excesses are not exclusive to the world of music. But when it happens in the environment of a well-known person, the notoriety and dissemination is greater. But the same thing is happening in schools, universities, businesses, the world of fashion, the media. The artist is perhaps freer when it comes to expressing certain habits and activities than in other professions, where everything is more intimate and hidden than what is revealed.

GTS is an agency management. Explain to me what you do as if I were five years old.

Everything can be simplified in the word manager. Our focus is the artist. There is a very part of coachto listen to it and understand it. For me it would be incomprehensible to take someone I don’t know, simply because I heard them. To work with him I need to get inside his head, know his fears, his ambitions, his dreams. What worries us most is their emotional health, because the risk that the artist could break due to pressure is high for everyone: on a personal, artistic level…

And economical?

And economical, of course. But, note that the economic aspect, when a company takes so many artists, can be replaced with another, but we, I, personally, have a responsibility with the emotional health of the artist, apart from the business. One thing is responsibility, another is success and another is business.

What does success mean to you? manager?

That what the artist does is understood globally because today’s world has a capacity for consumption in all countries, without borders. The best way for an artist to grow is to travel, get to know other markets, work with other cultures. But I also know artists with enormous talent whose ambition is not to be global because they are happy in their field and they don’t want to have that pressure.

Do you respect them without pressuring them?

I respect them and support them 100%, although there may be a certain frustration in me of saying, dammit, with how great this artist is, if he had a little more ambition, where could he go. I remember one time, with Paco de Lucía. They were looking for him for a beautiful project with the Philharmonic, and he didn’t care, he didn’t feel like it. I remember telling him: “Paco, when you are so big you have a responsibility to people.” It’s like Picasso, when you are so big, the weight you leave in history is no longer yours alone, it belongs to everyone.

Does talent always make its way?

This happens when something is made not to be liked and sold, but out of the need to express itself, to be fulfilled and to last. That’s talent. That’s the artist. Now that there are very interesting tools and that we are starting with the topic of artificial intelligence, the artist does not have to be threatened. AI is not capable of destroying a concept, generating a new one and exciting. Artificial intelligence does not penetrate your soul.

What do you like most about your job?

What excites me about my job is the challenge of working and growing with an artist. Be part of your life and your success. For me, watching one of my artists sing and the audience engaged, a tear can fall as if I were the one singing.

There will be some that you like more than others.

Obviously, my musical tastes are very separate from my professional tastes. But I will also tell you that I can really like an artist, how he sounds, how he is expressing it, even though I am not a fan nor would I have ever gone to see that artist in concert myself, and still get excited.

What percentage of the music played today will be heard in 25 years?

3%, being optimistic.

¿Solo?

Many millions of songs come out every year. If 3% of all world production survived would be a success. But, we return to the same thing. We could apply that same percentage to the world of books, art, and cinema.

What was your first contact with singers?

My father worked in a bank and my mother was a housewife. I loved music, I did things on the radio, for a penny, I started working in a small company, Divucsa, which brought in very older artists: Luis Aguilé, Betty Missiego, Karina, José Guardiola, who came from a generation that They had been very successful and they weren’t as successful anymore, and one thing led to another.

Were you moved by those old rockers, even if they didn’t make rock?

No, in the sense that they felt sorry for me. On the contrary, they were very strong and persevering. They continued working with great vitality and assuming their moment at each stage, knowing that no one is essential. I learned a lot about ego management and how to approach the future. When you have been the God of the universe, you have to know that, in 20 years, you can be that person that no one knows.

Then it came Operation Triumph and the sale of his company, Vale Music, to Universal. What a ball.

I have been lucky in that I have never asked for a job, I have never sent a resume, nor have I asked for a salary increase. From one place they called me from the next. I believe that when you are coherent, responsible, and not a harmful or conflict-generating person, people ultimately love you and call you. Maybe you’d have to be a bigger bastard.

There have also been cases of reports of abuse by artists towards their record companies.

These abuses are committed by individuals, not companies. In my case, I have never experienced or suffered them and, if on any occasion there has been a claim, all the contractual information has been given. Nobody wants to have a dissatisfied artist who questions the work and professionalism of their team. It is a relationship based on trust, work and transparency.

What do you have to have to endure this?

Common sense, responsibility, discipline and passion. You have to love what you do because you are going to have to dedicate many more hours than you should without important return. We are in a generation in which young people care more about what they are going to earn than what they are going to do and that is a drama. I have never cared about what I am going to earn because I know that if I do it, and I do it well, it will bring results, but I don’t do it thinking about that. I come from a family that needed to pay the bills, I have not had a life of comfort and convenience, but I have had work.

Now you could live without working, why do you continue?

Obviously, everything is going well for me, I don’t complain about that part. I work because I like it. And I know thousands of examples. Work is my passion, not because I like money, but work.

How do you feel about posing on red carpets with your wife, Eugenia? Martínez de Irujo?

I have never liked public exposure. The first year of Operation Triumph I was sworn and the second I didn’t want to be sworn for that very reason. But, at the same time, I have always worked with people who carried that exposure. In the case of my wife, I have been lucky that the media boom that she may have had in her adolescence, I have not experienced. Now, when we go somewhere they take us out, so we go to two or three things and it seems like we go from party to party all day. We have a relationship in adulthood, and it is another way of functioning and experiencing things. She also has many artistic interests, with painting, jewelry, and tableware. We have a very good balance, we love what we do and coexistence is very healthy and very normal.

How much is your agenda worth?

My agenda is worthless if I don’t use it. The important thing is not to have a contact, but to have them and have them answer the phone. In the end the agenda is the personal relationship you have with people.

Is he a mythomaniac?

Zero. I have never asked anyone for an autograph or a photo in my life. What I am is a fetishist. I accumulate things and memories of great musicians in various warehouses, but not out of mythomania, but to preserve the memory with the idea of ​​a music museum project. I pity whoever had to order it.

With the power you have, do they give you the ball a lot?

Yes, and I notice it. But I have the advantage and the luck that I don’t care. When you have lived with very famous artists, even with my wife, you have a radar and training by which you notice if they come for the person or the character.

And what is your policy with sycophants?

I am zero classist, in the sense that I do not discriminate or separate, but I do limit time and conversation. Sometimes, they are not so much balls, but rather they have an unjustified admiration for the work you do, then there is the interested ball, the sycophantic ball, there are many categories.

Your wife is an aristocrat, but, for you, what is aristocracy?

For me, aristocrats are the ones who make things change, those who generate trends, which you may or may not like, when you break the mold you say: bad. And these people, normally, do not have a hypertrophied ego, because their focus does not allow them to be on that.

That is, the greatest have the smallest ego.

Or they are the ones who have worked the hardest to keep it at bay, under control, because, in the end, if you are Sir Paul McCartney, a music legend, of course you have an ego, but you have to manage it very well to not get stagnant and follow your path. artistic evolution.

Define these artists in three words, who are or have been from your catalog: Rosalía.

Vision, talent, empowerment.

bisbal

Family, discipline, loyalty.

Alejandro Sanz.

Influence, art, legend.

the father.

Light, future, universal.