• And he left. José Luis Perales retires from the stage
  • Interview: "Freedom is not patrimony of either the left or the right"

There have only been two occasions when José Luis Perales (Castejón, 1945) has allowed himself to act with a minimum of malice in music. The first was when he left the 'mili' and the one who had been his best friend of guards and guateques was revealed as a posh of the Barrio de Salamanca that was no longer such a friend. He made a song for spite. Then, when he had already made the leap of composer for others to a village singer-songwriter, he wrote another song, 'The snob', criticizing those who came from London with records and jeans. "There I was momentarily blinded, but then I regretted it. I usually do what I want to do and try not to hurt anyone ." That image of a simple type, away from the alharacas of other career partners, such as Julio Iglesias or Raphael , is the one that contributed to causing many regrets last week, when Perales announced that he is retiring from the stages on a tour that starts next May and ending on December 17, 2020 at the Wizink Center in Madrid. But he calms: there are still Pears for a while.

Because Perales remains for a while. Or not? I'm not going to stop being a musician . I feel great and I have no problem, the voice is fine and so it sounds in 'Looking at your eyes' [a triple compilation album published on Friday]. I have not thought about leaving everything. I have to continue making music and writing my novels, which I go for the third, and the month of March comes out. I'm sorry, but you have to ask yourself like this: what will you spend your free time on? I'll do what I did when I started: writing songs, taking care of my garden, recording my records in my studio, I don't know where they will stop, who He will publish them ... But I will continue working on music. The only thing I'm going to take off is the concerts, because they already weigh a little so many years. Also when I finished this tour I will be 75 years old, quite past. So I say: it's time to go back to where I started and where I was so happy too: the place of the author. The best? I don't say the best, because this has been truly great and I am tremendously grateful to everything that has happened and to the people who have loved me. And this is a tour of recognition to people. That's why I'm not sad to leave the concerts . There are people who are beginning to recriminate me, but ... But you do not back down. It gives me joy: without haste and with all the relaxation I need to write, away a little from the tension that has always created me scenarios.Is it because of your shyness? It's shyness or insecurity. I say to myself: "What if something goes wrong?" I am very shy to face people. Keep in mind that I never wanted this and in the end it came . And it came in such a way that it was success after success and spread in America and suddenly I was stuck in a garlic that I did not expect. And all because of Rafael Trabucchelli [producer and composer of the golden age of the Spanish melodic song], who insisted that I had to sing. I saw him as Aznavour, reaching 100 on stage. For me Aznavour He was the saint of French music. I started listening to it from a very young age, it seemed wonderful. And when I started, you're going to laugh, I wrote songs as if he had asked me some. And he made them in an invented fake French. 'Aplaguatá, lesenfan guapletuá' [song in 'pseudogabacho']. But returning to what you say, I think that in life you have to leave your best image and your best moment, which corresponds to the people. Then, one chooses the place where the rest of his life is quieter and lives. How has it been to compose for others, from the 'Why are you leaving' by Jeanette to the music of Paloma San Basilio? a game that is priceless: write for another artist and make me that kind of transvestism, believing that I am he or she. A challenge, something super fun: I was the Pantoja, it was Rocío Jurado, it was Raphael, it was Julio Iglesias ... any artist. What I wrote had to be a little at the service of that image we all have of them. We all know who Raphael is, how he acts on stage how his voice is and how temperamental he is in acting. We all know also how Julio Iglesias is, another different style. What has been the song that has worried you the most? Maybe Isabel Pantoja's 'Sailor of Lights'. Because, of course, it was the time when she was the widow of Spain and did not want to sing, she was locked in La Cantora, a whole drama. One day my manager told me that I should write something for her. But what could I say that it was not a topic, without falling easy tears? But he locked himself in his house in Cuenca for two months. When he finished it and taught it, he loved it. He told me: "How can you capture those deep feelings that I have while being oblivious to my problem?" I forgot a little about folk and bullfighter as much as I could, I stayed with the man and the woman, with the loneliness of the woman who loses her dearest being. Isn't it a bit 'against nature' to be a singer without fireworks? I don't agree with that that those who disguise more succeed more. They can succeed at first sight, but in the long run that guy does not stay a lifetime. However, if you speak a street language, the one that people speak, the one that you have learned in your town, in your school, in your dealings with others ... If what you tell are more common stories than all of the people, who are nothing special and of which we are all a bit involved, something as simple as life itself without any disguise ... I think that in the end people appreciate it because in what they like: it does not they like the pedantic or the arrogant or those who think they are smarter than anyone, maybe because we are not all so smart , and they accept someone who looks a little like them, about the neighbor of the room I always say. Has something hurt In all these years singing? Sometimes you feel a little the contempt of the most modern. Some said: "Pear trees is like a monk." I remember, recently, that I met a very important woman on the radio and she wanted to make a confession: that in her college years in Barcelona, ​​with her good class friends and more 'progre' music lovers of that time, nobody confessed that he liked a Perales song. "But we all liked you, we had all your records and we knew all your songs." Why did it take so long? Why this prejudice? Why haven't I made alharacas? Why haven't I alternated in certain environments? "Like we were ashamed. Your music was very simple and you are very young." Well, I'm still just as simple and ñoño. And when Perales is gone? I don't want anyone to remember me. "Let no one call me," as Pantoja once said, once dead, I have no interest in making any museum. "Where there is a solitary stone without any inscription, where the forgetfulness dwells, there will be my grave", which Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer wrote.

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