Chechu interview, from 'Family doctor' to 'midas' of the cañí hospitality
Anyone who has tried to get on the piano at Toni 2 will recognize Jesús Serrano, the drunken foreman who, almost two years after the bar closed due to the coronavirus, misses the customers.
"We are a family.
I just ask for a little reassurance.
The piano is sacred
.
On Thursday he made up for lost time: "It was the great night of many people", he refers to
My great night
, the first song he touched.
His eyes, which have struck down so many singers with too much self-esteem, do not have the brightness of the early mornings.
Jesus, the ill-faced pianist of Toni 2, is a kind old man in the morning.
«People are surprised when they talk to me.
Drunkards misunderstand everything.
I don't work in a pharmacy, you know? "
.
Get back on the instrument;
wipe it off.
"You have to make some things clear", such as knowing the lyrics or the rule that prohibits hitting the piano.
"I understand the enthusiasm for some song," he concedes.
«The second there is no excuse.
And on the third, you go to the street
.
The drink and the
zumbadera go a
long way ».
-One night a girl crawled under and grabbed my ankles.
-What did he say?
-As you keep going up, you'll see.
The place, hours before reopening, has a clarity from which literature escapes:
in the smell of clean there is no legend.
Everything is in sight
.
«I usually arrive earlier to tune the three or four notes that are lost every night.
A tuner also comes once a week ».
Of the team of four pianists, Jesús is the most veteran.
That is why the inauguration was requested.
"Although I was free, I asked to be the first to play
.
"
He is "68 years old" and has been "twenty-one or twenty-two" playing for "Don Antonio, may he rest in peace," the founder of the myth.
«I started in the Versailles orchestra.
In winter, we played venues in Madrid.
We did cabaret.
We were at Cadena Real Club or Cadena Consulado », like the Madrid version of
Radio Days
,« and I started to make substitutions here ».
"Let's see when you get tired of traveling and stay with me," the boss told him.
And thus was formalized one of the relationships that have contributed the most to the mythology of the Madrid night.
"I never got married.
I have alternated Toni girlfriends with other girls I knew abroad »
.
He was born in Morata de Tajuña. «I worked while I studied. He checked water meters, took special food orders to special houses.
That was how she earned a little money to help out at home
. From Narváez Street, her parents moved to Villaverde Alto. Now he lives "on Calle Alcántara", to which he walks back, during the summer, from Almirante. “Sometimes the kids recognize me. 'I'm
jogging,
' I tell them.
José Luis Colt
was one of the clients with whom he has had the most trust. «He used me to scare off the heavy ones.
They don't know that the famous man comes here to do the same as them ».
The vocation for music was inherited from his father.
«He played the harmonium [wind instrument with keys].
I spent much more time teaching with a private teacher than in the conservatory.
I have learned from all over the world, going to listen, studying and playing
»a classic repertoire that he combines with the
new
songs
of his classmates.
The pandemic did not stop his night owl routine.
"I tried to keep the same pace."
Before everything stopped, Jesus would come home, "if the
after
don Pepe
didn't get complicated
," at eight or nine in the morning.
Without the Toni 2, “when I got up I would go for a walk.
I tried to stay awake watching a cultural program or repeat series
.
I have dedicated myself to memorizing, to rereading ».
"From time to time I also saw something erotic," he says.
I've been very lonely.
I've spent all this time alone.
-And now?
-Now I'm single.
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