He says that he would like to be remembered “as a good person”. Miguel Ríos returns to the stage because, he considers, “there is nothing more exciting than singing. And they also pay me.” “Every time I have fewer things left, although I confess that I wouldn’t mind learning to be bored,” says the man from Granada, who, accompanied for years by The Black Betty Trio, seems not to age.
It always comes back. How addictive is the scenario to overcome any obstacle and come back?
I suppose that for me, at this point in my life, there is nothing more exciting than singing. And they pay me too. I am very grateful to the patrons who for six decades have allowed me to make a profession out of my vocation.
Why was your latest album, A long time, born?
A long time is part of a verse of the great poem So that I call myself Ángel González and is born from the need to continue singing my life. Also from the collaboration with the musician Jose Nortes with whom I have been collaborating a lot in the last years of my career.
In Memphis-Granada and others like Crossroads, he goes through many stages, both personal and those that led this country to freedom. What rescues from this time travel?
The truth is that it takes a while to discover that the goal is the path itself. I feel privileged for everything I have lived and experienced in my career. For the opportunities I have had to share my emotions with the people who have followed me. The satisfaction that comes from being on the soundtrack of the lives of some of your peers is indescribable.
What does it mean to reveal yourself so sincerely to your audience?
I have always tried to be honest with the people to whom I owe. I believe that sincerity is the vehicle of emotion which, in turn, is the stuff rock lives on. Also, as I believe that the public that buys a ticket to see me looks like me, I know that when I tell my life, in some way, I also tell theirs.
We return to war, we return to the extreme right. Where do your thoughts take you?
It seems that we are in the eternal return. But, despite everything, I have faith that we are evolving something. Although at a collective level it costs society so much suffering to organize itself around an idea of collective social justice, as individuals, I think we have gained critical awareness. Now it is a matter of voting for the social model that excludes the least, until reaching the final triumph, that of zero exclusion.
What is the solution against the loneliness to which he sings in The Blues of the Third Age?
That song is a tribute to the women of my generation, who happen to be in their third age. Because it seems to me that, as a group, they have been and are much more valuable and courageous than us. They have fought for the same as us, but also against the residual machismo with which we were educated and that is very difficult to eliminate from our customs. The social market model is to blame for the human catastrophe suffered by older people in care homes during the pandemic. For that the solution was in the courts, but it seems that nothing happened.
He already sings to the grandchildren of rock and roll. At 78 years old, how do you see this young generation?
Well, look, I see them with tenderness and compassion. The same one I have for myself. I think the mistake is not seeing life as a whole. Until the last breath everything is life. Of course, they go through many emotional stages and biology imposes its laws, but essentially we are the same material with which we enter life. Morally I do not judge the generations, I understand myself with the individuals.