• Obituary: the amazing Little Richard dies, pioneer and spirit of rock and roll

Five in the afternoon. Plaza Cataluña. 1977.

After posting an ad at Gay and Company record store on Hospital 94 Street that read: " Rockers Wanted to Build a Classic Rock and Roll Band: Abstain Hippies, " I just got a call: a guy from the Sants neighborhood that answered to the name of Carlos Segarra. We agreed that I would be dressed as Elvis in the GI Blues movie and that he would recognize me for my height. We talked for a long time at the Zurich café about rockers and teddy boys and about the whole gang scene in La Condal.

I was surprised by his impudence, he spoke faster than me! He was combing a toupee bangs that he suspected he was drinking from The Beatles' fountains in the photos that were circulating around dressed in black leather on the terraces of Hamburg. Carlos, even when he was a minor, kicked the gates of singer-songwriters-bored-panties or politicized with an unusual repertoire of rock and roll classics. All this happened when the Constitution had not yet been approved and with the residue of the late hippismo kicking in the midst of a punk explosion.

That same night, I went to a joint next to the central post office building called L'Angelot where half an hour acted between magicians, comedians and whatever was involved. When he went on stage he broke his voice and started with Long Tall Sally ... OMG! It was Paul McCartney imitating Little Richard in Hamburg! I could'nt believe it! A rocker vindicating the Georgia Peach when in the most orthodox environment he was looked down on for his effeminate and excessive appearance ... He painted himself on top! Is that thing on your head a toupee or a pumpkin? At the end of the bolus we did not stop throwing pests of the authentic ones and we raised the glass for everything that Little Richard represented; He was wild, transgressor, sexually provocative, incorrect, but above all a pioneer of that rock and roll such as Segarra and I understood that it had to be.

Little Richard was the disturbing, the forbidden, a closed door that you had to kick open. There is always an antecedent where you discover that nothing is chance. As preteens, Carlos and a server fell for the glam rock he drank straight from Little Richard. Those cool bands that filled the jukeboxes in the neighborhood foosball and played in the neighborhood's auto-shocks: Sweet, Slade, from David Bowie to Alvin Stardust and from there to the New York Dolls . There is his legacy. His influence on rock culture is thunderous, as much as his character. Its aesthetics has influenced in a very beast way Elton John, Alan Vega or Prince, to speak of a more recent reference.

In the midst of a punk explosion, he was the only rock and roll pioneer who could put British amphetamine groups on the spot and let's not talk about his hairstyle, from James Brown to Pedro Almodóvar, which you will tell me ...

I remember the phrase Carlos Segarra used in that mythical night when we had only met a few hours ago: «Loquillo rock and roll is Chuck Berry on guitar, Little Richard on piano and a queue of white people all to keep watching».

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