On this trip he has brought ‘Infinity in a Junco’ (Irene Vallejo) and ‘2666′ (Roberto Bolano). “I read very quickly,” he says. Manolo García who reads and paints more and more. And he also writes more songs. Since the pandemic stopped his tour in 2019 until a couple of months ago, he had not been on stage. But he has put out two albums,’my life on mars‘ y ‘Plucked nonsense’, which he presents on his tour.
All summer on tour. This already seems normal.
Well it seems, but we live in a very uncertain world. The pressure has dropped a little, but then the monkey, the duck… we are all floating and disguising looking the other way. That’s why people go to concerts, to the theme of leisure, desperately, because they need to breathe, forget about all the paranoia that surrounds us. There are millions of conflicting reports. The antidote to this poison of prostration is music, it is a reason for living, it gives meaning to days, art in general. As Frida Kahlo said “my life is art”. In our world, we get ahead thanks to the fact that we can dedicate a little time to culture and you hang on there. That is my idea that art heals us, it is a lifeline. From a very young age I understood it that way and I continue to practice it. In the grayest hours I start to paint and make songs. Going out on stage and seeing that I can share a moment of light, a smile, a gesture of kindness, that saves my life. That is the reason for the music, the emotion, the pulse of the songs. It doesn’t matter which artist you are. That emotion, that exciting pulse that the creator gives us. The world does not stop, we are a powerful matter. We are soul nomads. And I am a hunter gatherer, I am not sedentary. My inner being has not been able to stay still. So in this time I have been traveling with my books, with my paintings, with my songs. That has been my mobility and it has saved me from falling into a pit.
What was the first concert after all this?
I returned to Onda, in Castellón, a month and a short time ago. I only have six concerts. It has supposed to resume the pulse. I finished my previous tour in December 2019 and until now. Little by little we have been reuniting with the public, with the album, with the songs. A very strange emotional situation, of fear, suspicion, despair, fright. And the music serves a bit to whiten the spirit.
Has something changed in you as an artist and have you noticed that also in the public?
Vitality is inherent in one, you have what you have. It hasn’t made me want to sing. It has not saddened me, it has not diminished me, it has not left me lying down. And people are very receptive, more smiling, more grateful to be on the street. The gesture that I have noticed in the concerts is that the people have been very affectionate, very affectionate. Before I was more crazy, more exacerbated. Now they are calmer, but more smiling, with a more friendly gesture.
And he does it with this tour in which his most renowned songs will be heard, but also those of his new albums ‘Mi vida en Marte’ and ‘Desatinos ppl’. Two?
In the history of music, when we worked with CDs and vinyl, there have been very nice precedents. I am a follower of Springsteen or The Clash, because I believe that an artist is suddenly prolific and generous, and he jumps into the pool and offers you 30 songs. Well, welcome, if you feel like creating and have songs to offer and you’re honest, why not. And more so now that we live day by day in the face of the uncertainty that there is no tomorrow. Why save them if I have a lot of songs? So I post them. At the present time there are some entities that have decided that records are useless, that everything has to be on the networks. They have set up a prolific network business and throw us crumbs. If now four albums are sold the way I like them, well, I’m going to be generous so I’m going to offer them to people. Everything has been arranged so that the physical disk is secondary. They have set it up like this and we musicians have not been able to prevent it. We continue for the love of art and we can’t wait to continue playing. It’s not that they pay us or not, it’s that if we don’t play we die of anguish.
Do you think that we are now aware of the value of that little bit of time to listen to music and read that we were losing?
For a sector of the population intrinsically yes. But perhaps that idea has spread because people were more for the consumption of the lighter and shallower culture. And I think it’s more appreciated. There is also a great leisure offer disguised as culture that aims to drag the masses, but there are more and more people who do not enter the rag. That is where the level has risen. The voyage of deception is a boomerang backfire. In music we are seeing how more and more great artists are being used. Not everything new is great anymore, no. Not everything old is archaic, either. You have to look for the great things themselves. I want to continue reading Shakespeare and listening to music like Janis Joplin, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix…. More and more people are noticing. You can compare and that makes things take the real form, what is rubbish is it and what has a weight and a residue is forever. There is a current of good conscience, that in the end what is important is the emotion, not the present.
“The physical album is now secondary and we musicians have not been able to prevent it”
There is a lot of controversy with Rosalía’s concerts because there are no musicians on stage or with C Tangana’s way of singing, for example. How do you see these new records?
Any artist, call himself X, who brings together an audience and manages to move them, forget about their problems, is valid for me. I don’t question anything. A person with a stick and a rope can do magic. Without a focus. If someone is capable of moving people, the method is the least important, the important thing is the result. I will never criticize anyone for having more or fewer musicians on stage. If I go to that concert and for an hour and a half that proposal manages to abduct me, all my respect. If you get there and it doesn’t catch you, well, there’s something strange. But if he catches you, I don’t care. If there is an energy that captures you in a concert, I respect it. I don’t care about the name. I could have had prejudices with Lady Gaga and one day I discover that I love her voice and I see a concert and she excites me.
Did you feel at some point with El Último de la Fila that you also broke schemes?
Well, we’ve always been alternative people. We lived in a Catalonia that came from a world of counterculture, of varied music, but also a bit out of control. Culturally, he was very anarchic. It was a wonderful “viva la pepa”. It was a speech, let’s say geek, with a very libertarian proposal, with a message of seeking freedom and escapism from the powerful, from a gray world. We grew up in that discipline and we were quite a geek group. And we got a lot of people. Even today, when I sing a song from El Último, everyone sings it. The truth is that I am very glad to have made songs that are a bit of popular imagination. The important thing is to engage little moments of emotion. And there is hope because there are always wonderful beings who have the gift of generosity.
“I will never criticize anyone for having more or fewer musicians on stage. If someone is capable of moving people, the method is the least of it”
How do you see the Manolo García of now to the one of 40 years ago if you look back?
Well, I had no idea that all this was going to happen. He was an orchestral musician who played at festivals. The possibility of composing songs, writing texts and reaching the public has been a gift in life. I was committed to it and I’m still committed. I am the same as when I was 18, I have not lost my enthusiasm for life. I have become more eccentric than ever and the way the world works does not surprise me. The world has not changed but it is in our hands to find that vital corner.
And how do you see Manolo García ten years from now
I see myself with the illusion of music, the illusion of the sea and bright days. I don’t mind having a very expensive house or a brand motorcycle. I don’t give a damn about that. I don’t feel like spending all day sending whatsapp; I did not study typing to spend all day with the keys. Now they say that everything is like that, but you can also give a kick. In the future I would like to see myself painting like now, reading like now and making songs like now.
And on stage like now?
This i do not know. By my will, yes. For lack of desire it will not be. But I am a person who does not like to make long-term or medium-term plans. I am worried about today.