Los Lobos - The wandering wolves of latin-rock

Life In East LA

David Hidalgo and Louie Perez attended the same school in the early 70s; they were rock’n’roll kids who grew up listening to Jimi Hendrix and Rolling Stones and played in their college bands. Fairport Convention, Randy Newman and Ry Cooder weren't exactly at the centre of conversation among teenagers, but they were among the pair's favourites, and together the two started writing songs - something they still haven't stopped doing.

In the eastern part of Los Angeles, commonly known as East LA, live roughly 130,000 people, 85% of whom are Mexican, or rather chicanas (that is, Americans of Mexican descent) like Perez and Hidalgo, who, following the spirit of rediscovery of their own roots - shared among others by The Band (“Music From The Big Pink”, 1969) and Fairport Convention (“Liege & Lief”, 1969) - threw themselves into their parents' songs. “It simply happened,” Perez recalls, “it wasn't a decision.” Their musical exploration began with the sound of northern Veracruz, Mexico, characterised by the son jarocho style, the result of a fusion of various cultures - African, Spanish, indigenous - often built on rhythms as fast as rock’n’roll: “La Bamba” originally comes from there. They started studying - “the same fingers that played the solo on ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’ were now devoted to learning mariachi music”, Hidalgo recalls - digging into a vast range of musical styles from their parents' homeland that they'd never heard of before. The norteño genre, from the northern border between Mexico and the US, proved the most influential through its two main styles, easily traceable throughout the band's records: the corrido, a detailed narrative form used for over a century to describe virtually anything, from cattle drives to union campaigns, and the ranchera, a ballad steeped in sorrow, because as Perez puts it: “Ranchera is the blues”.

Times were changing, once again: in the early 70s, the so-called “Chicano Renaissance” sparked a revival of Mexican identity among all immigrants. Mexican-American studies courses emerged in California colleges, and young muralists carried on the legacy of Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros onto the buildings and billboards of East LA. “We often played at schools, student assemblies and cultural programmes,” Hidalgo recalls. The dreams of the 60s were over, and the unrest of the 70s found its soundtrack in punk for some, and in corridos and rancheras for the two eccentric young chicanos from East LA, who in ’73 were joined by Cesar Rosas and Conrad Lozano, who lived in the same part of the city (Steve Berlin, fresh off his stint with The Blasters, would join in 1983).

In ‘74 they played their first show at a “tardeada”, an event held in the chicano community on weekend afternoons. They showed up with beards and long hair like true rockers, until they pulled out the traditional instruments they had learned to play with the help of older local musicians. They played two sets, one worthy of a Mexican mariachi band and one of rock’n’roll covers, pleasing everyone, young and old alike, who kept the drinks coming and couldn't stop blessing them. Perez recalls: “We came from a situation where our parents wanted to give us a better life than the one they'd had, so it was strange to discover that those lives were inside us all along”.

There's no need to explain the title of their first record: Los Lobos Del Este De Los Angeles (Just Another Band From East L.A.) (1978), self-produced and built around famous staples of the Latin American tradition, such as “Sabor A Mi”, “Celito Lindo”, “Guantanamera”, some traditional pieces and just one original composition by Hidalgo, “Flor de Huevo”.

Over the following ten years Los Lobos became one of the leading representatives of the chicano world in California (as shown by this 1975 TV documentary); Perez recalls in his book (“Good Morning, Aztlan: The Words, Pictures and Songs of Luie Perez”, 2018): “If you're chicano and got married between ’73 and ’80 in East LA, chances are Los Lobos played at your wedding”. And not only that: christenings, parades, parties, Cinco de Mayo celebrations (in 1862 the Battle of Puebla, the first victory of the Mexican army over the far better organised French forces) right down to the most tedious events - but great for getting paid. “They fed us,” Hidalgo recalls. Then they broke into the circuit of Americanised Mexican restaurants and tried to slip in some rock’n’roll, since they always carried their electric instruments with them, but they were thrown out: too loud!

"La Bamba" and more

Finally, after a Blasters concert, they met singer Phil Alvin and, talking about norteños and Flaco Jimenez (the master of tex-mex accordion), managed to get themselves introduced to Slash Records (later Warner Bros), a punk-rock label that sent them out to open some shows for the Blasters themselves and for Public Image Ltd (the band led by John Lydon, ex-Sex Pistols) during a show where the crowd, in full revolt throughout their acoustic set, hurled beer bottles and whatever else they had at the stage.

Their first EP for Slash, ...And A Time To Dance (1983), and the following LPs How Will The Wolf Survive (1984) and By The Light Of The Moon (1987), were co-produced by T-Bone Burnett (guitarist for Bob Dylan during the Rolling Thunder Revue, producer of Roy Orbison, John Mellencamp, Elvis Costello, Brandi Carlile, Natalie Merchant and many others) and Steve Berlin. A trilogy with a deeply American sound, constantly unsettled by Mexican infiltrations, the same ones glimpsed, not coincidentally, in the Blasters but also in Ry Cooder and Willie de Ville; in any case, something new on the early-80s landscape, when people were still picking up the pieces of instruments smashed during the 70s, getting ready to replace them with an avalanche of synthesizers.

Among the seven tracks on their debut EP, "Anselma," a Spanish-language cover of a norteña song, won a Grammy and quickly sold through the first 50,000 copies, giving the band enough money to buy a van and tour the United States for the first time. The mix of Mexican styles (almost all covers at first, but later skillfully crafted by the group's only Spanish speaker, Cesar Rosas) with brisk rock'n'roll ("Let's Say Goodnight," "How Much Can I Do") and often swinging r&b ("Walking Song," "How Do You Do") defines the record, putting accordion, saxophone and guitarrón on equal footing with the electric guitars. Their cover of Ritchie Valens's "C'Mon Let's Go" casts its net back into the history of the young Chicano musician who died in 1959 in a plane crash alongside Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper. A few years later, Valens's family would only approve the production of the film "La Bamba" (1987) on the condition that Los Lobos play Ritchie's songs.

The title of a National Geographic article inspired Louie Perez to write the lyrics for the title track of their debut LP, How Will The Wolf Survive? (1984), drawing a parallel between the band's struggle to make a living from music in the United States while holding on to their Mexican roots and the wolf's fight for survival: "It was like our band, our story: what is this animal that record labels can't figure out? Will we be given the chance to do it or not?" Rolling Stone magazine would go on to rank the album 30th among the 100 best of the 80s and 431st among the 500 greatest of all time.

The opening "Don't Worry Baby" is a blues cut with bleeding guitars and a breathtaking riff written by T-Bone Burnett with Cesar Rosas, kicking off the string of songs that would establish him, besides being the band's main Spanish-language voice, as the dark-shaded bluesman. David Hidalgo focuses on shuffling the deck between soul and folk-rock, cleaning up the loose, cajun-tinged sound of John Fogerty and Dr John with subtle soul melodies that spill into American ballads every bit as sturdy as those of The Band or Bruce Springsteen. Among the themes explored by the Hidalgo/Perez duo, aside from the title track, "A Matter Of Time" tells of a young couple's dreams of peace and quiet, "Our Last Night" is a country-ranchera, "The Breakdown" an r&b number built around the accordion, "Evangeline" a rock'n'roll tune inspired by Perez's sister, who used to cross the whole city, from the East all the way to the West of Hollywood, just for the pleasure of buying an English magazine about the Beatles; finally, there's the cover of "I Got Loaded," which wouldn't feel out of place drifting out of some club in the French Quarter as you walk through New Orleans.

The record has only one song sung in Castilian Spanish, "Serenata Norteña," while "Corrido#1," despite its title and Latin style, is in English, and on "I Got to Let You Know," Rosas throws everything together, muddying the waters: is it a rock'n'roll song or a ranchera?

With the soundtrack to La Bamba (1987) comes the unexpected smash hit: Los Lobos reach number one on charts around half the globe, selling more than two million copies. The band reinterprets eight Ritchie Valens songs, staying faithful to the originals while giving them new life. The old recordings hadn't done justice to a mature songwriting talent — Ritchie died shortly after turning 19, and his style had nothing to envy in Buddy Holly, who, with just a few extra years to his name, had more songs and more fame to show for it.

If the story of Chicano Ritchie Valens, tragic ending notwithstanding, became a symbol of the American Dream for every Mexican immigrant chasing their fortune, the new songs Hidalgo/Perez wrote for By The Light Of The Moon (1987) pick up the thread begun with the previous record, this time recounting the unease born of unmet expectations ("One Time, One Night"). Portraits of workers and ordinary people who are anything but ordinary, entitled to a life but facing a solitary struggle to get it ("Is This All There Is?," "The Hardest Time," "The Mess We're In"), culminate in the acoustic meditation "River Of Fools" and the prayer of "Tears Of God."

Despite being American, Los Lobos display an innate ability to understand and convey the meaning of immigrant lives in a foreign land, granting them dignity. This time the Mexican side of things is entrusted to a classic, "Prenda del Alma" (anyone remember Vinicio Capossela's translated version on "Ovunque proteggi"?), while Rosas keeps blending styles with his Latin blues numbers, "Set Me Free (Rosa Lee)" and the powerful "Shakin' Shakin' Shakes."

"It was nice to see the crowds starting to grow at shows, but after a while we began wondering if it was just because of the movie. In a way, we tried to distance ourselves from that success," Perez recalls, referring to the period after "La Bamba" when their concerts grew increasingly packed, to the point of triggering an identity crisis within the band. So they stepped down from the pedestal the record industry had placed them on and picked up their acoustic instruments again to record La Pistola Y El Corazon, an album of traditional Mexican songs with only two originals (the gorgeous title track and "Estoy Sentado Aqui"); the rest, in the band's skilled hands, reinterprets son jarocho ("La Guacamaya," "El Canelo"), huapangos ("Las Amarillas"), rancheras ("Si Yo Quisiera") and classics of the tradition (the waltz "Que Nadie Sepa Mi Sufrir").

All of it clocking in at just over 25 minutes: Warner Bros had been expecting a record that would cash in further on the success of La Bamba, and pronounced this one commercial suicide. It didn't sell millions of copies, but it did win a Grammy, and the band found its inner peace again: "We'd gone back to what mattered to us, and we thought it would be funny if people in Helsinki ended up listening to a huapango, or people in Sapporo to a son jarocho," Perez recalls.

The Neighbourhood (1990) is once again a return to roots, this time the roots of American music, with a prestigious guest to certify its authenticity: Levon Helm (voice, drums and mandolin of The Band) fills out the acoustic nursery-rhyme of "Little John Of God," coming in around the midpoint as the violin peeks out from behind, accompanying him the way you would an honored guest. On "Emily" he carries on, warming up Hidalgo's voice and enriching with mandolin an electric ballad driven along by Jim Keltner (drummer for George Harrison, John Lennon, Eric Clapton and a million others). The opening mantra "Down On The Riverbead" catapults us into the American South, and the Black-rooted voice of John Hiatt (also on the ballad "Take My Hand") is the dark echo of Hidalgo's crystalline one, a cry of survival rising up from the Mississippi, with Daniel Lanois at the mixing desk.

It's the most roots-oriented record yet — never had a Chicano band sounded so thoroughly American — with the huapanguera and the jarana weaving in alongside the steel guitar, this time following the path of folk, blues and country, only letting loose on the mariachi guitars of "Be Still." The riff of "The Giving Tree" is Celtic, and what would "Deep Dark Hole" sound like roughed up by Tom Waits and Marc Ribot? Cesar Rosas, denied the chance to sing in Spanish, drives things forward on "Jenny's Got A Pony," "I Walk Alone" and "I Can't Understand," co-written with Willie Dixon, whom they'd met while working on the "La Bamba" soundtrack. As for Mitchell Froom (the American producer and musician who would go on to work with Randy Newman, Suzanne Vega, Sheryl Crow, Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel and many others) — he had already produced the single, and on The Neighbourhood he delivers an encore with "Angel Dance," a radiant, soul-streaked electric ballad with a Beatles-esque finale, one that Robert Plant would go on to record for his solo album "Band Of Joy" (2010).

Kiko and other stories

Between the late '80s and early '90s, the band toured constantly, often opening for U2, Bob Dylan and Grateful Dead. The experience only deepened their frustration at the lack of attention their latest work received from both audiences and their record label, but it didn't stop them from writing new material: "In the end we were doing exactly what we wanted without listening to anyone," recalls Steve Berlin. When they played the new demos for Warner, Los Lobos got the green light, but with the suggestion to go back to producer Mitchell Froom and engineer Tchad Blake (the team behind "La Bamba").

"I open the door and take a peek inside the room," sings Hidalgo, kicking off Kiko And The Lavender Moon (1992) with "Dream In Blue". The world sketched out by the chicanos picks up right where the Beatles-esque ending of "Angel Dance" on The Neighbourhood left off, with guitars moving through psychedelic distortion to carry the melody along dreamlike lyrics: "Peace" grew out of a dream Perez had, which he hummed to Hidalgo, becoming an acoustic ride worthy of Neil Young, propped up by an arpeggiated riff running through the whole song: “Un giorno quel muro crollerà/ Caduto, il sole splenderà/ E porterà la pace a tutti noi”. The madness of the wall between Mexico and the United States wasn't yet ready to be captured in song, but the wolves had already lived through something similar, on their own skin and on that of their parents. The enveloping "Wake Up Dolores" opens its chorus with chants in Aztec, telling of indigenous people displaced by the wars in Central America and their return to reclaim their homeland: "Le pietre sono dure/ Su questa strada infinita".

"Some backwards guitar would sound good on this," Hidalgo had asked Tchad for "Angel With Dirty Faces". "Go on, try it," he replied, simply flipping the tape. "That's when I discovered you could actually have fun in the studio. Before, it had always been a struggle. Louie and I had a few ideas, and we just captured those first impressions." That's how songs that had started as sketches with abstract lyrics turned into little lo-fi gems — "Angels with Dirty Faces", "Two Janes", "When The Circus Come To Town" — "using heavier-than-usual compression and distortion on a lot of instruments, set against some very clean sounds."

The experiments with tradition arrive with "Saint Behind The Glass", where mariachi rhythms are enriched by the harp of Veracruz, though the lyrics stay in English; only on "Rio de Tenampa" does Hidalgo sing in Spanish, alternating the same verse with a loose, jumbled chorus played by a brass band.

The album didn't bring them back to the big numbers of their most successful work, though it still sold half a million copies worldwide. It was, however, the turning point that let the band consolidate its standing, boosting its reputation as an outfit that could rock, groove and experiment all at once.

They got such a taste for experimenting that they started doing it at home too, sometimes in the evening once the rest of the family had gone to sleep, David Hidalgo recalls. That's how the first Latin Playboys project (1994) came about, and between a children's record (Papa's Dream, 1995) and a film score (Desperado, 1995), they arrived at Colossal Head (1996), again produced by the team behind Kiko. Steve Berlin recalls that at the start of the sessions Hidalgo came out with a "well, what would Jimmy Reed do?" So they set out to make a record inspired by the bluesman, and they swear you can hear him in every song.

Once again the five musicians shed their skin, unveiling a set of taut, acidic tracks in a melting pot of Latin sounds and jagged distortion, with Berlin's sax holding its own right alongside the guitars. The opener "Revolution" spins on a funky groove, some of the best guitar work from Black Crowes, and an accordion underlining a jingle that would otherwise go unnoticed. The riff of "Mas y Mas", sung in a slang mix of English and Spanish, rings out like a train engine, not unlike "Who Do You Love", which Willie Dixon arranged for Bo Diddley on the "La Bamba" soundtrack. Hidalgo recalls: "People think the blues is just about feeling, about expressing yourself. But Willie came in and orchestrated the whole thing. That inspired me to try things like that — a lot of the songs on 'Colossal Head' are blues-based. I was just trying to use what I'd learned from Willie. 'Colossal Head' is one of my favorite albums."

"Maricela" lowers the pulse, an electric cumbia sung in Spanish, and like the jazzy "Can't Stop The Rain" and "Little Japan", it stands among Cesar Rosas's best songwriting up to that point. "Everybody Loves A Train" does sound like Jimmy Reed, filtered through Creedence Clearwater Revival, with a voice worthy of Manu Chao. The title track shuffles the deck once again, with an Arabic-tinged violin resting atop a distorted riff held up by Berlin's relentless tenor sax.

The album received unanimously positive reviews, but Warner decided to cut the band loose from its roster; after signing with North Carolina label Mammoth Records, Los Lobos would go on to complete their experimental trilogy with Mitchell Froom. This Time came out in 1999 and is something of a summary of Kiko and Colossal Head, a 38-minute record of short, punchy songs that riff on rock'n'roll structure, with the exception of the title track, a loping soul number, Rosas's "Cumbia Raza", and "Corazon", one of those songs you don't see coming — a mournful salsa sung in Spanish by Hidalgo — along with the playful "La Playa".

The next step was called Good Morning Aztlan (2002), produced by English producer John Leckie, the man behind "White Music" (1978) by Xtc, "The Stone Roses" (1989) by the eponymous British band, "The Bends" by Radiohead (1995), and "Origin Of Symmetry" by Muse (2001). The band set aside the experimentation of the '90s to simply tackle a dozen rock songs (the opener "Done Gone Blue"), r&b ("Hearts Of Stone", "Get To This"), alternating them as usual with Latin-flavored numbers. Everything sits right where it should; it may not be cool, but it works brilliantly, because after nearly 30 years, Los Lobos are one of the longest-running American bands never to have stumbled.

Leckie's gleaming production lets one track glide smoothly into the next, and while the poppy title track rings out as a cry of hope, a bitter aftertaste lingers around certain lyrics — from Johnny Cash to Bruce Springsteen, the nightmares of America in the new millennium feel ever more real.

In 1999, Cesar Rosas's wife was murdered by her brother, and her body wasn't found until a year later. “Ho letto il giornale proprio l’altro giorno/ Che la città ora è piena di pistole/ Mi piacerebbe sapere cosa sia accaduta ai giorni semplici/ Quando i bambini potevano semplicemente giocare e correre”, sings Hidalgo on "The Big Ranch". Rosas answers back on the soul number "The Word": “Cosa dirai o farai/ Quando un bambino ti chiede/ Che tipo di mondo hai lasciato qui per me?”, later remembering his wife in the two Latin cumbia tracks, "Luz de Mi Vida" and "Maria Christina".

"Tony & Maria" could be an outtake from Steve Earle's "El Corazon" (1997), completing, a few years on, the story of the couple from "A Matter Of Time"; and even though Hidalgo has one of the finest soul voices in a band that isn't exactly a soul band, who knows how "What In The World" might have sounded with Sam Cooke, or even just Leon Bridges. Los Lobos prefer to write about personal politics rather than global politics; their take on the stakes — sometimes funny, sometimes unsettling — of life in Hispanic America makes clear just how deeply attuned they are to the everyday reality of their own neighborhood.

The Ride (2004) is a studio album mixing new material with covers of old songs, all seasoned with an array of notable guest appearances. It opens with "La Venganza de Los Pelados" alongside Café Tacuba (a Mexican band popular since the '90s, ranging from punk and ska to electronica and hip-hop, as well as regional Mexican styles like norteño, bolero and ranchera), and continues with an appearance by Little Willy G, leader of the first chicano rock band, Thee Midniters, on a fired-up rendition of "Is This All There Is?". Dave Alvin of the Blasters couldn't be left out: he co-writes and sings the frontier ballad "Somewhere In Time". Bobby Womack, meanwhile, gives "Wicked Rain" a funky coat of paint, Tom Waits lends his booming voice to "Kitate", born out of a psychedelic Latin Playboys dream, and with Ruben Blades ("Ya Se Va") we get a taste of a cocktail blending Afro-Cuban son and mariachi. On "Wreck Of The Carlos Rey", Richard Thompson and Hidalgo weave a winding thread between English folk and minor-key blues rock, Elvis Costello deconstructs "A Matter Of Time" at the piano like a cubist painter while keeping its original melody intact, and Mavis Staples wrings "Someday" (an unreleased track from the The Neighbourhood era) dry into acidic r&b.

Three months after the release of The Ride, the companion piece Ride This – The Covers Ep came out, on which the band reinterprets seven songs by some of the artists who had taken part in the previous record: Tom Waits, Bobby Womack, Elvis Costello, Rubén Blades, Richard Thompson, Thee Midniters and Blasters.

"In The Valley" opens The Town And The City (2006), taking its title from Jack Kerouac's debut novel. It's the story of the first settlers in Mexico's Valley, a tribute to people whose history remains largely unknown despite its significant impact on the modern Americas. The album's lyrics, told in first person, deal with Louis Perez's childhood in East LA, with each song serving as an episodic passage. In "Hold On" time seems to be marked out by a clock that pulls us back into everyday reality, “Resisti a ogni respiro/ E se faccio sorgere il sole, fallo di nuovo/ Ora mi sto uccidendo solo per sopravvivere/Mi uccido per sopravvivere”.

"The Road To Gila Bend" kicks off like the start of some impossible C-side to "Ragged Glory" (1990, Neil Young) and wouldn't be out of place on "The Revolution Starts Tonight" (2004, Steve Earle), while on "Little Things", if a big black voice came in after the intro, we wouldn't be that far from Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade Of Pale".

The jazzed-up cumbia of "The City", on the other hand, doesn't resemble anything they've recorded in the last thirty years, like "Don't Ask Me Why?", where electric guitars duet with Berlin's sax as if they were a jazz quintet (and yes, they're also skilled jazz players). "Free Up" is simply an uptempo number, a reggae gospel that blurs into a jagged swing, and the closing "The Valley" is a dark blues with an indelible riff that brings us back to where we started, “So dove ritroverò il mio cuore/ È dove finalmente potrò stendermi/ Ci posso andare quando sogno/ Chiudo gli occhi ed è tutto quello che vedo/ La città da cui vengo”.

Los Lobos Goes Disney (2009) was born to fulfill a contractual obligation to Disney Music. The band tackles a handful of themes from the American giant's filmography, reshaping them in their own style. So the songs we know from "Snow White" (the record actually opens with "Heigh-Ho", the seven dwarfs' homeward-bound song), "The Jungle Book" ("I Wan'na Be Like You"), and "101 Dalmatians" ("Cruella De Vil") get roughed up with rock'n'roll and R&B. Given the result, it might be more accurate to say Los Lobos went to Disney.

Tin Can Trust came out in 2010 on the Shout Factory label, recorded in East LA like in the old days. The title track gathers the thoughts of a kid trying to make ends meet by collecting cans and bottles, whose wardrobe consists of "a ten-cent shirt / and two dollars for a pair of shoes". The economic crisis that hit the world starting in 2008 is palpable, and being born on the right side of the street is no matter of luck. The opening "Burning Down" starts out acoustic like a million other songs, moving from the major chord to its relative minor, before opening up in the chorus, where Hidalgo's voice is joined by Susan Tedeschi's, underscoring the drama of the lyrics, an escape in which everything belonging to the past gets burned away.

We return to themes dear to Los Lobos, food for thought in trying to understand which way the world is heading, while remembering the power of small things: a beautiful sunny day ("On Main Street"), a virtuoso guitar (the instrumental "Do The Murray"), or simply singing ("Yo Canto", one of Rosas's two Spanish-language tracks, along with "Mujer Ingrata"), while "Jupiter Or The Moon" arrives from another dimension entirely, an unusually "spacey" theme for the band.

While the album was being made, Hidalgo and Rosas were caught up in the Experience Hendrix Tour (a series of concerts celebrating the life and music of Jimi Hendrix) and running behind schedule to meet the album's recording deadline, so much so that Steve Berlin would pop up whenever they had a free day to drag them into a recording studio (San Francisco, Denver, Fort Worth, Chicago). The album was made on a shoestring budget, and it shows: it's not the studied lo-fi of Kiko, it's "just" 11 songs and the bright sound of five wolves who never let their egos or mannerisms get the better of them.

Gates Of Gold (2015) is, to date, their last album of original compositions (aside from the cover of "La Tumba Sera el Final", a Mexican standard with countless versions), and it's a best-of showcase of what the wolves do best: the songs and arrangements are the beating heart of the record. The record industry had changed, contracts were being renewed practically album by album, and their deal with 429 Records was set to expire right after this one, so they decided to self-produce: by now they were veterans.

In "Made Of Break Your Heart", layered textures of acoustic guitars combine with drums and percussion, building toward the slow-motion explosion of Hidalgo's guitar solo. Conrad Lozano's basslines on "When We Were Free" create a rarefied dream somewhere between soul and jazz ("I remember you playing, I remember you laughing, a long time ago, when we were free"). But Los Lobos are still free now too, in their "old age", their music soaring because it's light and original, even in Rosas's more classic-leaning compositions — the brisk shuffle of "Mis-Tuesday Boogie Blues", the acoustic blues of "I Believed You So", or the Spanish-language tracks, like the fun cumbia of "Poquito Para Aqui".

"Too Small Heart" sounds as if Jimi Hendrix had dropped in on the sessions; Hidalgo's filtered vocals on "There I Go", the electric arpeggio underpinning "Magdalena", the sea of mandolins opening the title track — these are the most successful experiments, and they win us over once again. The band sounds curious and sharp, keeping alive the fire that still binds its members together after all this time.

Llega Navidad, from 2019, is a solid, well-rounded work that dispels the myth of the "dreaded" Christmas album. It's a collection of covers drawn from South American and Mexican tradition, sung in Spanish, with a couple of exceptions in English but always in tex-mex style. The rest is salsa, cumbia, ranchera, son jarocho, played with warmth and joy as if we were at a New Year's Eve party. It could pass for the follow-up to La Pistola Y El Corazon — a genuine new Los Lobos album rather than yet another tired, predictable Christmas record...

"Just another band from East LA giving a handful of songs to their city": that could be the subtitle for Native Sons (2021), the band's seventeenth album. Just one original track, the title song, and 13 covers chosen without any real common thread beyond the many styles that have always made the California city unique: R&B, rock'n'roll, folk, Latin music and punk.

The album opens with a powerful R&B number, "Love Special Delivery", with Carlos Rosas spitting out the rhymes, staying true to the Thee Midniters original. "Misery" comes from Barrett Strong, the man who delivered Motown's first hit back in 1960, the famous "Money (That's What I Want)", and who went on to co-write many more to come. David Hidalgo (vocals and lead guitar) sings it while reinforcing the song's soul cadence; the breaks are sharper, the beat quicker, and an electric guitar solo takes up the same bars as the original's sax solo, with the female backing vocals dropping out to make room for the band's own seasoned voices.

The pairing of "Bluebird"/"For What It's Worth" revisits two of Stephen Stills's masterpieces for Buffalo Springfield, without making any changes to the original versions, as is the case with most of the album's tracks. The same treatment applies to "Jamaica Say You Will", from Jackson Browne's self-titled debut LP (1972), where Perez sings one verse while Hidalgo handles the rest. From the Beach Boys catalogue comes the lesser-known "Sail On Sailor": Conrad Lozano (bass, guitarrón and vocals) wouldn't budge — he wanted a Mike Love song.

Lalo Guerrero's "Los Chucos Suaves" (also covered by Ry Cooder on 2005's "Chávez Ravine"), together with Willie Bobo's "Dichoso", the other Latin track on the record, stand at the opposite end of the spectrum from their earlier mainstream pop hits. "Dichoso", in fact, dates all the way back to the days when the band used to play at weddings.

Their beloved fellow travelers The Blasters are honored with the rock'n'roll of "Flat Top Joint" (from "American Music", 1980). "The World Is A Ghetto" comes from a legendary 70s funk outfit, WAR, while "Farmer John" was chosen as a tribute to Don "Sugarcane" Harris (the father of the electrified violin, played for everyone from John Mayall to Frank Zappa), who performed it in the duo Don & Dewey, although the Lobos' version leans closer to the one by Thee Midniters, once again the first chicano band to weave the threads of the group's musical memory. The song was also covered by Neil Young on "Ragged Glory" (1990), and he had already been playing it back in his first surf band, The Squires.

Percy Mayfield's "Never No More" is a brisk r'n'b number, revisited here without the horn section propping it up and with a dreamy Hammond organ that still manages to plunge us back into that era. "Where Lovers Go", an instrumental by the Jaguars, closes the album, and Hidalgo enriches it with a spine-tingling solo that cuts in rough and dark against the retro melody, widening out into the lower notes before climbing back up to the high ones.

The only original track is "Native Sons": its rock structure, with a dreamy melody in the best West Coast style, can only make us hopeful for the new album of original material the band will tackle once the renewed touring season is over.

Collaborations and side projects

"After all these years, we believe our music has stayed fresh - we're not as famous as other bands, but plenty of rock'n'roll legends know and respect us. That means a lot to us, and we're very proud of it." From the mid-80s onward, Los Lobos have shared the stage with artists far more famous than themselves: with Carlos Santana, another illustrious chicano who took part in both the "La Bamba" and "Desperado" soundtracks, there are some memorable live jams; with the Grateful Dead we remember a great "Mexicanized" version of "This Land Is Your Land" that would have delighted Woody Guthrie, plus numerous guest spots with Jerry Garcia; with Neil Young, during his 2005 Bridge School Benefit, they played an acoustic "Cinnamon Girl", and we could go on listing many more names...

Cesar Rosas's words are also borne out by the band's numerous appearances on tribute albums, soundtracks and other artists' records, especially in the case of David Hidalgo, acting as guitarist and accordionist.

We'll mention just a few in chronological order, starting in 1976 with "Si, Se Puede", a charity album featuring various artists and the first record on which the name Los Lobos appears. They play on every track as the backing band, and the proceeds from sales went to the United Farm Workers of America (a labor union) led by the chicano Cesar Chavez.

In 1986, Paul Simon asked the band to take part in "Graceland", on the song "All Around The World Or The Myth Of Fingerprints", without however crediting them as co-writers. According to Steve Berlin, the approach Simon took wasn't all that different from the one he'd used to record the other tracks in South Africa: he'd listen to something he liked (in this case, the wordless theme brought in by Los Lobos), record it, and then write lyrics to go with it afterward. When the record came out, the band were stunned to find their names missing from the songwriting credits. Simon has never clarified the matter.

In 1991 they opened the album "Dedicated: A Tribute To The Grateful Dead" with an electric version of "Bertha", a song they often played live (including with the Dead themselves) and which also appears on the box set El Cancionero Mas Y Mas (a 2000 4-CD set containing original tracks, live recordings, rarities and alternate versions, material from solo and side projects, soundtracks and tribute albums) as "Beautiful Maria Of My Soul", sung by Antonio Banderas in the film "Mambo Kings" (1992). The actor is also backed by the band on "Canción del Mariachi" from the soundtrack of "Desperado" (1995), which would earn them a Grammy for another track, "Mariachi Suite". The genesis of that film is tied to the cover art of their album La Pistola Y El Corazon, created by George Yepes: the story goes that Hidalgo and Perez wrote the album's title track inspired by the painting that would later become its cover. A few years later, in a record store, the LP caught the eye of aspiring director Robert Rodriguez, who after listening to the album threw himself into writing his first film, "El Mariachi" (1992). Made for $7,000, it grossed $2 million, becoming a cult movie that opened the door to Hollywood for Rodriguez and led to two sequels with Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek, "Desperado" and "Once Upon A Time In Mexico".

Also included on "Cancionero" are a few of the band's covers drawn from various projects: "Down Where The Drunkards Roll" from "Beat The Retreat – Songs By Richard Thompson" (1994), and "Alone In A Crowd" from "I Only Wrote This Song For You: A Tribute To Johnny Thunders" (1994).

On the Buddy Holly tribute "Not Fade Away" (1996) they play "Midnight Shift", and on "Goin' Home: A Tribute To Fats Domino" (2007) they play "The Fat Man", although live they often perform "I'm Gonna Be A Wheel Someday" instead.

"Billy 1" is the Bob Dylan song (from another soundtrack, "Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid", 1973) that they perform for the film "I'm Not There" (2007), a Fellini-esque biopic about the life of the American songwriter.

David Hidalgo would later return to work with Dylan, playing accordion and guitar on his albums "Together Through Life" (2009), "Christmas In The Heart" (2009) and "Tempest" (2012). Staying among the greats, he also took part in various projects with John Lee Hooker, in the recording sessions for Elvis Costello's "King Of America" (1986), and with Tom Waits he contributed to "Frank's Wild Years" (1987), "Bone Machine" (1992) and above all "Bad As Me" (2011), also joining him for some live shows. With another musical explorer, Ry Cooder, he shares credit on the precious "Chávez Ravine" (2005), and given his skill on six strings, Eric Clapton couldn't overlook him for his "Crossroads" festival.

In 2016 the band gave a Mexican makeover to the track "La padrona mia" on Vinicio Capossela's album "Canzoni della Cupa", appearing in the song's video alongside selected archival footage, in a kind of celebration of the figure of women across different eras. Capossela had already covered the traditional "Prenda del alma" on "Ovunque proteggi", translating it as "Pena del alma" and admitting he'd worn it out through countless listens of the Los Lobos album By The Light Of The Moon (1996).

In 2017, Los Lobos appeared in the award-winning documentary "The American Epic Sessions", directed by Bernard MacMahon and produced by Jack White and T Bone Burnett; they recorded "El Cascabel" live, straight to disc, using the earliest electrical sound recording system (1925).

In 2018, for Record Store Day, a hard-to-imagine project came out: a collaboration with the English band The Shins, in the form of an EP featuring three versions of the same song: the two original takes of “The Fear”, taken from the albums “Heatworms” (2017) and “The Worm’s Heart” (2018), plus a Los Lobos cover born out of some joint sessions; James Mercer (The Shins’ frontman) commented: “They just destroyed our version.”

In 2019 they contributed two tracks to the album “Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration”, a live tribute to Joni Mitchell (among the other artists featured were Diana Krall, Rufus Wainwright, Brandi Carlile, Emmylou Harris etc.).

Among the side projects pursued by the band's members are Latin Playboys and Los Super Seven, the latter a supergroup - or rather, a collective that reassembles itself differently depending on the theme chosen for each album. The watchword for the self-titled debut (1998) is tex-mex, bringing together, besides Dave Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas, Freddy Fender, Flaco Jiménez, Joe Ely, Rick Trevino and vocalist Ruben Ramos, earning solid success and a Grammy for “Best Mexican-American Performance.”

On many tracks Spanish alternates with English, as on “Rio de Tenampa” (taken from Kiko, 1992, and reworked here in a slower version), in a fusion of styles dominated by Latin rhythms: rancheras, “Margarita”, “El Ranchito”, huapangos, “La Sirena”, but also cumbia with “El Canoero”. “Plane Wreck At Los Gatos (Deportee)” is a Woody Guthrie cover sung by Joe Ely and “Mexicanized” by the rest of the band: it tells the story of a 1948 plane crash that killed 28 Mexican farm workers on their way home after being “hired” by the US government to work in California. Newspapers of the time only printed the names of the four Americans on board the plane, without specifying those of the other passengers.

The second installment is called Canto (2001), again produced by the "wolf" Steve Berlin, and is a journey through Latin American folklore reminiscent of Ry Cooder's revival work with the “Buena Vista Social Club”; an exceptional guest joins in, Caetano Veloso, on the closing track, “Baby”. The album moves between classics - the cumbia of “El Pescador”, the salsa of “Me Voy Pa'L Pueblo” - and original compositions; the Hidalgo-Perez duo contributes two songs (“Calle Dieceseis” and “Teresa”), while Cesar Rosas offers “Campesino”. The third installment, “Heard It On The X” (2005), features no members of the band at all.

Latin Playboys grew out of a series of demos recorded between Kiko (1992) and Colossal Head (1996), which Hidalgo put together for Los Lobos on a four-track recorder. Their producer at the time, Mitchell Froom, listened to these homemade experiments and suggested using the material for a new project, which was soon joined by Tchad Blake (the sound engineer who worked with Froom) and, naturally, Louie Perez.

The self-titled 1994 album received unanimously positive reviews, with some even hailing it as a masterpiece, despite having little commercial appeal: a sequence of musical sketches in which traditional instruments sit alongside urban sounds (“Mira!”), noise, strange percussion, voices, laughter, all recorded in lo-fi with few other additions. “Viva la Raza” opens the record, an acid riff merging with an Arabic-tinged melody while, in the background, a little girl bursts into laughter. Hidalgo's clean, soulful voice surfaces here and there over hallucinated lyrics and wordplay (“Ten Believers”, “If”), and gets run through a vocoder (?) on “Chinese Surprize”.

Two tracks made it onto the soundtrack of “Desperado”: the jazzy “Manifold de Amour” and “Forever Night Shade Mary”, which sounds like it could have come from This Time by Los Lobos, much as “New Zandau” feels lifted from Colossal Head. It may not be an easy album to warm to on first listen, but it's packed with ideas and genuinely original, engaging sounds in the form of sonic experiments.

In 1999 the second chapter, Dose, came out, and the quartet's winning streak continued: the songs (when they can be called that) take on more conventional shapes without losing any of their psychedelia (the extreme talking blues of the title track, the lopsided pop of “Latin Trip” or “Mustard”, with its electric violin solo and instantly catchy melody); on “Cuca's Blues” the guitars sound like they were recorded with a mic stuck in front of a home Marshall amp. “Lemon 'N Ice” is a slow soul number with a ticking clock marking time and a sensual chorus that conjures up some Mexican beach, perhaps with a “Palatero” strolling by with his flavored ice pops. And the closing track, “Paula y Fred”, confirms the suspicion: a nursery rhyme about betrayal and murder set to the rhythm of a huapango recorded from a distance...

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