Los Salvajes

One of Spain's most famous Freakbeat bands are without doubt Los Salvajes, famed for such killer tunes as "Las Ovejitas" and "El Don Juan". Alex kindly gave this interview that he made with the Gabi, the lead singer, before their triumphant return on the scene at the Purple Weekend in 1999. The interview first appeared in Alex' Fanzine "Pussycat" in Spanish.

Alex:
Which groups did you play with
in Germany?

Gabi:
We played with the Spencer
Davis Group, Manfred Mann,
The Kinks, and also with
famous German bands, like
the Lord and the Rattles.
When coming back to
Barcelona, we played
with the Moody Blues and the
Animals. The concert with the
Animals was at the Sports
Palace, where a BMI A&R
man saw us and so we got
signed there.

Alex:
Tell us more about the Kinks,
we heard you told funny stories
about them.

Gabi:
The Davies brothers were very strange, we saw the door of their dressing room open and we saw them kissing each other. That caught our attention a lot. We didn't know if they were in love with each other, or if they loved one another as brothers.

Alex:
And what about the Spencer Davis Group. Were they as good on stage as on record?

Gabi:
Yeah, Manfred Mann and Spencer Davis Group were the best musicians. The Kinks were not good as musicians, they were very autentic and rough, but very basic. Spencer Davis Group was great, Steve Winwood was wonderful, but the problem with him was that he was not very communicative. We were close friends with his brother Muff.

Alex:
How did you understand each other?

Gabi:
More or less in English and a bit in German.

Alex:
Did you have problems, because I heard that your suits were kind of a problem for you in Germany.

Gabi:
Yeah, it was funny, in Germany we wore these green suits with small ties on stage, a bit like the Beatles, with black collars. And in the first city we were going to play, everybody was coming to watch us play, because in German it wasn't easy to get a record contract, and if you had a record it was because you were famous. We went to Germany and had one record, and the people thought we would be like the Spanish bomb or something. In those days we played Italian songs and stuff like Los Sirex , and after the first gig the owner of the place told us to go back to Spain, because the music we played hadn't been played in Germany for ten years or so, nobody was interested in that music and our suits weren't in any more in Germany. Our drummer Delfin, who was fifteen in those days started crying and said it was a tragedy for him, and then the owner felt sorry and said "OK, I think you've got something special, it might work. I'm going to give you gigs in the clubs all around in the villages, and after one month you come back and we see if it worked." So we started the transformation with some girls that we knew there and helped us with the lyrics of the songs, we ripped our suits, and put on small jumpers, and pianted "Ole" on our shirts. And after one month we got the job in Germany.

Alex:
Your drummer's jumper looks a bit like the ones that the Who wore in those days.

Gabi:
Yeah, he was fan of Keith Moon and he did the jumpers with the target, and "Ole" and so on.

Alex:
Is it true that you used to dress in Garvi (famous clothes shop) in Barcelona?

Gabi:
Yeah, Garvi was the only one who was crazy enough to understand what we were looking for. Actually the mod fashion was impossible to find in Spain. You had to find someone who could tailor a suit or paint a jumper for you, and Garvi was a kind of visionary, and he was clever enough to contact Los Sirex and us and did the clothes we were looking for.His daughter, who was of our age, fell in love with our bass player, and now they are married.

Alex:
You told us that "Es la edad" was very much influenced by the Who.

Gabi:
Yes, it's "My generation" translated into Spanish: "Short hair, long hair, what's the point, it's all the same …" - because in those days if you wore long hair you had trouble every day. The Who were our very band. But people always said that we were the Spanish Rolling Stones, because of our sound, but we always wanted to be like the Who. Our record label, however, forced us to record Spanish versions of "Paint it black" and "19th nervours breakdown" and didn't allow us to record any songs by the Who.

Alex:
Did you play Who songs on stage?

Gabi:
Yes, we did "My Generation", "Substitute" and "Happy Jack"

Alex:
And when you were asked what music you played, what did you answer?

Gabi:
When we came back from Germany, my brother, who was our manager, said that we played authentic "Liverpool sound", but after a while we said that we played R&B, because we played the Stones, Manfred Mann and later Easybeats.

Alex:
Who wrote your originals?

Gabi:
I wrote "Al Capone", "Soy asi" and "Es la edad" and I still get royalties for them. We were like a family and everyone did some things. One was was in charge of the press relations, one took care of accountancy and so on. But then we were all in the composition of the songs, but it was mainly Andi, the lead guitarist, and me. Andy was a very good musician, and I was like the crazy one who said "Come on let's write a song like the Who or something like this". "Soy asi" was written in germany, it was inspired by "Off the hook" of the Stones, because I loved that song in those days.

Alex:
How was your relationship with your record label. Did they trust and support you?

Gabi:
Yes, very much. The man from EMI, Jesus Jaravo, was like our father. We gave him a percentage that nobody in the label knew about. So he was on our side. We were happy with this deal, and he was in charge of getting us on TV and appear in every newspaper and magazine. He was very good for the band, he supported us a lot. Inside the record company there were so many people who preferred Los Mustangs or Lone Star. In "Musical 14.05", which was the programme that we used to play, once we arrived, they sent us to the hairdresser, and they started to put our hair back so that it didn't look that long and they never showed a shot of our faces.

Alex:
But the audience love your image.

Gabi:
Yeah, it was great. Things started to change in those days in Spain.

Alex:
What about the critics?

Gabi:
Fortunately the critics in those days were very passionate about what was happening abroad and they saw us as an answer to what was happening abroad.

Alex:
Was "Soy asi" your biggest success?

Gabi:
No, which is funny, because nowadays in the music histories it's called our most succesful song, but it wasn't. The most succseful was "Las Ovejitas".

Alex:
Many bands in that period appeared in movies. Did you have and opportunity of doing such a thing?

Gabi:
We tried with Sonor-Play. Their boss Sancho loved Los Salvajes and came to Barcelona with a 1,000,000 Pesetas cheque to do four LPs and a movie. We were very young and absolutely excited, but our manager talked to EMI and he got 400,000 Pesetas that we never had to pay back, and they tried to persuade us to stay with EMI. Sonor-Play finally signed Los Canarios, who then did "Peppermint Frape".

Alex:
Which other bands, apart from the Who did you like and how did you get their records in Spain? Gabi: We were lucky for having been in Germany, because we kept in contact with the girls that we'd met there and they sent us records. We also travelled there quite a lot. We'd also go to London and buy records there. But even our company gave us records that were not commercial enough to sell them I Spain. They also gave us terrible things they wanted us to record, like "Paff … bum" or "A la buena de dios". But we said, "OK, we're going to do it, but our way". So "Se llama Maria" a song by the Italian singer Pino Donnagio, was done in the vein of 'Not fade away', and when Pino listened to it he wanted to kill us. But our record company organised a party and invited him to calm him down, and we ended up hanging around with him in the streets of Barcelona completely drunk . And the next time we saw him live his band introduced the song with our sound.

Alex:
What was Barcelona like in the sixties?

Gabi:
Barcelona was London, it was the real thing, with bands like Los Cheyennes and Los Gatos Negros, who had something to say.

Alex:
Which Spanish bands did you like, Los Cheyennes?

Gabi:
No, Los Cheyennes were friends, but they were a terrible band. But they had a wonderful image. We didn't like Spanish bands really, we preferred the English bands.

Alex:
And what about the English bands that came to stay in Spain, like the End?

Gabi:
Well, when the End wanted to go back to England, we bought their vox amplifiers, Los Gatos Negros bought their hammond and the Leslie, which was hard to find in Spain.

Alex:
Did you have the opportunity to play in other countries apart from Germany?

Gabi :
We also played in Holland and we were asked to play in the UK, but we were very afraid of going there, because we were very young. We were afraid because we didn't know the language.

Alex:
You also told me that you went to London as a tourist.

Gabi:
Yes, we went to buy clothes in Carnaby Street and Kings Road and that was great.

Alex:
Did you record your records in Barcelona?

Gabi:
Yes, but we produced them ourselves. EMI gave us an artistic supervisor, Alfredo Domenech, but while we were recording, he was in the bar having a Tapa and he didn't say a word. Then he came back to see if we had done anything out of tune … you know, we got on very well with him.

Alex:
Did you use and strange instruments?

Gabi:
The only strange instrument we used was a sitar. Our guitar player was a fan of Indian music. We didn't want to use organs, we were fans of the guitar sound. There were smaller Organ parts, but we never used an organ on stage.

Alex:
You also recorded a Spanish version of "Reach out I'll be there". Did you like Soul?

Gabi:
No, we didn't like it that much, to be honest. In those days we wanted to be like the Who, and Soul was like Disco music to us. Nowadays I like it very much, however. Alex: Which were the singers that influenced you the most?

Gabi:
I had two favourites, Mick Jagger and Roger Daltrey, but I also liked Eric Burdon and PJ Proby.

Alex:
Did you also get into Psychedelia? Gabi: In those days we had project with Los Gatos Negros, which was called "Clan Gatos Salvajes". We played together live, and Los Gatos Negros became very Psychedelic. And this is where "Don Juan" came from, it was our experimentation with something like "Vanilla Fudge".

Alex:
Has your personal development lead you into Hard Rock?

Gabi:
No, there is some heavy stuff that I like, but everybody identifies wme with that, cause after I'd left Los Salvajes in 1969 I became a promoter and took bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden or Kiss to Spain. But what I have always wanted to do was to get the Who to Spain. I tried several times, but they never wanted to. Most of the records I fave at home are 6Ts records!

Alex:
Did you ever think 35 years ago that your songs would still be important to young people nowadays?

Gaby:
No, we never thought something like this could happened. Do you think it will happen to Los Flechzos?

Alex:
Well, let's wait and see.

Thanx a lot to Alex for leaving the interview to us and also translating it into English.