Carlos Segarra: “I am a rebellious boomer and I still have a lot to contribute” | Culture

The man waiting sitting in an armchair at the Ateneo de Madrid with an ostentatious cowboy hat, a mariachi shirt and jacket and a profusion of skull rings has just gotten off a train that has brought him from Alicante, where he lives in a town near Benidorm, expressly for this interview. Segarra, who confesses that he has put on his best clothes for the appointment with “his newspaper,” comes with the enthusiasm of a beginner, although he credits more than four decades on stage and the authorship of such popular rock anthems as Mediterranean, Under the moonlight o This is not Hawaii, wow, played by his close colleague Loquillo. He is accompanied by a young girl, his partner’s daughter, who takes care of his schedule. At the end of the talk, he poses for the photographer at the keys of the house’s splendid piano – “what a creature,” he admires – and lets out some gusts at the astonishment of the audience. He seems comfortable giving the grade.

wrote his song Mediterranean being a rockabilly in love with California. How do you eat that?

I composed it in the dead moments of the military. I was a confirmed optimist and I thought I was going to have to do it close to home, in Barcelona, ​​but I had to do it in Ceuta, in Regulares. So, from the barracks I could see the Mediterranean on one side and the Atlantic on the other and what I wanted was to get out of there and return to Barcelona. I liked surfing and California, but it was the closest thing I had.

¿Y Under the moonlight?

Haha, that’s even better. I composed it in my imagination, standing guard in front of a hostess club called Club La Sirena and where some nights there would be good times between the pimps, the girls and the military police. My songs were a way to laugh at myself. When I left the military I continued playing, but those songs slept the dream because I thought no one was going to like them and, suddenly, I played them as filler years later and they rocked it.

How do you know if a song of yours is good?

One of the beautiful things about this job is that you never know when a song is going to hit. If I knew it, I would make 20 on each album. Each generation has some references and common places. Suddenly, a group of Spaniards took the lists by storm, I guess because we connected. I took number one from Bruce Springsteen, no one can take that away from me.

In your country there was still no conscientious objection? To avoid doing military service, I say.

Well, maybe there was, but I didn’t think about it. I made great friends in the military. He played in the band, of course: the cajon. There we had a cornet, drum and bagpipes, which is a much more complex instrument, 99% of those who played were Valencian. When I finished, they came to see me at concerts, managers and everyone. Many people boasted to their girlfriends that they had heard me sing. Mediterranean in the barracks. The thing is that I played by ear since I was a child because, although I come from a family of musicians, I got the hang of the music teacher at school and I didn’t continue, among other things because then you realize that the recorder doesn’t attract, let’s say, the female gender.

So you play and compose by ear?

Yes, let’s say I know how to read music, but knowing how to read doesn’t make you a poet. But it was good for me: at least you have a basis to work with other musicians and guide inspiration: for the virgin to appear to you, you have to be with paper and pencil. At first I didn’t like composing. When I started playing and we put together Los Rebeldes we did covers of Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Cochran. I was embarrassed to compose, the songs I liked were already written. And Spanish is not easy to compose, it is less percussive than English. But little by little you get the taste for it.

And now how much do you like it?

Well, look, now that so many years have passed, and that I go to work in Mexico a lot, when I hear Mexican groups doing versions of a song of mine, that’s when I see how good it can be when you take it out of its context. That makes me value what I have written more than if I play it, and it encourages me to continue composing. Composing the songs of strident people We had a great time and it shows a lot. The album is very alive and people tell me that it looks like it is 30 years old, and not 60.

And how many do you feel you have inside?

I don’t think I was over 14. You know what happens, I’m lucky enough to make a living doing what I like most. I have the ability to put myself in the shoes of that 13 or 14 year old Carlos Segarra who asked Reyes for a guitar. I am privileged. I’m in good health, I’m in good voice. People tell me that I sing better than ever. And I am very lucky to have an audience that has been changing and, on each album, there is a new song that hits. The first rows are full of kids who know their letters better than me.

But they keep asking Mediterranean. Aren’t you tired of singing it?

At all. The last time I saw the Rollings, in Benidorm, they did a good show. The guys started playing blues and people just asked them Satisfaction. Let’s see, I pay a ticket to see the Rolling and you sing to me Satisfaction as God is Christ. So, if I ask an idol of mine to sing my song, I perfectly understand that people want to hear the song. Mediterranean of Rebels, who am I to deny them.

That song sounds like a summer beer ad before they existed. Have they asked you for it for advertising?

Yes, but very well chosen. The last one was for the Mediterranean Corridor, which, as you will understand, living in Alicante, well, it’s my turn, and then a brand of horchata. Let’s say that Mediterranean She has had many boyfriends, but I have not left her with the first one that happened.

He is the author of Ugly, strong and formal and other topics for Loquillo. Don’t you get jealous when one of your topics is a hit for another?

Not at all, I compose for more people, and that’s also what I live for. And with Loquillo, we have known each other since we were 17 years old, and we appreciate each other very much. Let’s say I make you a custom suit, I’m your tailor.

That’s what Manuel Alejandro said about his songs for Raphael.

I love Manuel Alejandro, he is a great composer. I have also grown up with him I am thatwith Jorge Negrete’s rancheras. Now I realize that some of my lyrics rock and rollthey could be couplets or boleros. The bolero is the blues Hispanic, because you, in a bolero, never talk about how well things are going for you after 40 years of marriage. Spanish has that, its own codes and sound. Our achilipú could be the oh yeah.

Announces tour of Spain and America. At 64, is one ready for those trots? Don’t you get tired?

No, your honor, I would do it again (laughs). I can still bounce around for two hours with a six kilo guitar in my arms.

My knees hurt thinking about it.

And me, but scabies gladly doesn’t itch. I started with the fact that they didn’t let me enter the places where I played, because I was only 16 years old. I have played for 300,000 people at the La Mercé parties, then, I was famous and everyone ate me out of the hand. Now I fill smaller rooms. But I have the job. That school is not paid for.

And what’s left of ‘sex, drugs, rock and roll’. Did they throw panties on stage?

Ha ha ha. No. That with the sax, the redhead, the handsome guy, other musicians came to me and asked me how I played like that.

But I do leave the recorder for the guitar to flirt more.

Yes, daughter, but I’m very into brides, not a hummingbird. I live very happy with my partner and his daughters, who are not fillasbut if hairpinsand that they will be my universal heirs. Having two girls in their twenties at home opens your mind a lot. One is dj of techno. I like rap for its lyrics. What suits me the least is reggaeton. Let’s say I like reagge, but without rhyme.

Are you still as rebellious as when you founded Los Rebeldes?

Each one is each one. When I see young people saying that Franco had his good things, it makes my hair crawl, because that has the great danger that someone who doesn’t know history can repeat it. It makes me angry that there are people who, due to an excess of hedonism, consumerism and selfishness, do not give time to enjoy or value what they have, because what is earned is not the same as what is given. It sounds like I’m speaking like my grandfather, who complained that I had too much stuff. I imagine it is the law of life. But I want to believe that all is not lost, because if not it is to jump out the window.

How many times have they called you boomer as a synonym for old?

And worse things. I also tell you that when I was 14 years old, it seemed to me that someone my age now had to be thrown off a ravine.

Now there are also those who want to bury us.

I will be a boomerbut I am angry, I am rebellious and I still have a lot to contribute. The boomers We still paint a lot and what we have left. There is a logical thing, which is that young people feel bad about your advice, but no one is born taught, to play you learn by playing and to live you live by living. When we started doing rock and roll, people 10 years older didn’t like us because they had moved the tree and we collected the nuts. It’s about having nuts for everyone.

Who are the ‘shrill people’ on the album?

During the pandemic we thought we were going to come out together, and look, from one day to the next the Russian invades Ukraine, the Israeli army massacres the Palestinian people, the American is a clown, he thinks he is the master of the free world, he looks like a guy straight out of a John Belusi movie. All of those are strident. Milei is strident, the war is strident, the ICE are strident. What can I contribute? The stridency of rock and roll. And that’s what I do.