“Through the window it could be heard perfectly, among the jazz of the walkman, The Noel Soto singing Samba Night in Puerto España; and Coy uploaded the volume. ” The appointment belongs to best seller The spherical letter by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, one of those illustrious fans of the songs of Noel Soto, troop not too large but faithful, chosen and enthusiastic. They have allowed Noel Soto to extend his career practically until this past January 30, in which his death was announced, with 78 years, in Madrid and for respiratory failure. A city whose bars essentially watched weapons, always at the service of blues, rock, country and the purest and most melancholic ballad like that beautiful song that bristled the skin of the tanned marine Manuel Coy. “He has left very lucid and with a smile,” said his widow, Begoña Ayala, to this newspaper.
Noel Soto accidentally was born in Nador (Morocco), son of father Galician and Andalusian mother, but always lived in Madrid and considered Madrid. He studied at the Ramiro de Maeztu and enrolled in the Faculty of Sciences, to prematurely abort his academic future overwhelmed with linear drawing, mathematics and statistics and launch up to the pharandulero’s pool after falling to Dylan’s songs, Beatles or the Kinks. The old Polydor will edit her first album trying to channel her career towards the quieter, social and brave music of the singer -songwriters, so booming at the time. From that arduous balance between the author song and rock with a hearth, the album will emerge 3,3,5,7, who will follow Alfa and Omegaa rock opera, which although it will have the privilege of being considered as the first compound in our country and the boldness of the artist sabotaging the commercial expectations that predicted their first singles It will not interest the general public.
This, however, will get hooked again with your next album, Noel’s ark, where he will affect himself as one of those rare pioneers determined to connect such antagonistic universes with rock and good song texts, treated with the meticulousness and poetic care of urban singer -songwriters, a path that at that time barely frequented in our country The ill -fated Hilario Camacho, but who will successfully cultivate authors such as Joaquín Sabina. You love me wellhis next album, already inaugurating the eighties, recorded with the same team of musicians and instrumentalists of the famous Roncanrol backfire by Miguel Ríos, he will constitute his peak and one of the most beautiful albums of Spanish music with songs as memorable as Deborah o at the ballad More than a thousand kilometers that will open the way by sounding persistently in the radio stations just when the Madrid movement, which Soto will always declare his animosity, already imposed his rupturist law of colors, unbelief and algarabía.
From then on, Noel Soto will cut its ties with the industry, will compose for others (Luz Casal, Sabina) and above all it will be stubborn to recover its most roquera facet climbing all the scenarios willing to receive an unbearable and stubborn rocker inveterate and nostalgic to which occasionally escapes some endearing and sweet ballad with which he will maintain the typical love-odium relationship. Jobs like Waiting for the mana, The King of Blues or the most recent Noel Soto & Cía They belong to this time when I would wear a cover with leather suck and dark glasses behind those who, in spite of everything, who knew him well, knew that an extremely sensitive and romantic heart was hidden.