Luis Alberto Spinetta - The Complexity of Argentine Rock

The Pioneer

There is virtually no Argentine musician who doesn't point to Luis Alberto Spinetta as the cornerstone of the local rock scene. While he wasn't its founding father - a title that belongs to Litto Nebbia - he was undoubtedly the first figure to conceive of rock as an art form capable of absorbing high-profile cultural elements into its popular core. Much as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil did in Brazil.

Moving through multiple eras of rock, Spinetta built a universe of his own in which sonic contamination - from hard rock to folk, from blues to tango, from progressive rock to fusion - went hand in hand with literary contamination, pairing puzzle-box chord changes and counter-intuitive rhythms with poetic and philosophical constructions in which Jung walked arm in arm with Castaneda and Artaud. References that seem almost banal nowadays, with culture just a click away and listeners used to rock's more intellectual wing, which has been feeding on this stuff for decades, but anything but obvious in a country that, up to that point, had no scene of its own.

Spinetta, moreover, was a people's singer: he didn't appropriate these influences to overwhelm listeners with his own erudition, but rather distilled reflections on existence and the human condition that could speak to everyone.

His career developed first as the leader of four bands - in chronological order Almendra (1967-1970), Pescado Rabioso (1971-73), Invisible (1973-77) and Spinetta Jade (1980-85) - and later as a solo artist, although a couple of one-off albums under his own name had already come out in the Seventies. Each of his incarnations left behind at least one album destined to become a cornerstone of what Argentines call rock nacional. His death in February 2012, at the age of sixty-two, left an unfillable void in the country's culture.

The origins

Nicknamed "el Flaco" for the lanky frame that marked him out until the end, Luis Alberto Spinetta was born in Buenos Aires in 1950. That he was destined for great things is clear from his family background. His father was a tango singer who pointed him toward music from an early age, and on top of that his uncles worked at Columbia and over the years gave him steady access to their archives, letting him amass an uncommon depth of culture, particularly when it came to music from north of the equator. What gave him the decisive push, though, was local folk music, which was riding a wave of media popularity at the time. Spinetta thus began playing guitar, and by the age of twelve or thirteen he was already able to perform numerous songs. It was probably from this mix of influences that the knack for cross-pollination that would define all his work was born.

In 1965, while attending a Catholic boarding school he had no fondness for whatsoever, he devoted himself to playing Beatles songs with his desk mate, Emilio Del Guercio. Soon, though, that repertoire began to feel too narrow for him, and above all he chafed at having to sing in English, so he started writing his own songs: within a couple of years, Almendra was born. Besides Spinetta (vocals and guitar) and Del Guercio (bass), the project included Edelmiro Molinari (guitar) and Rodolfo García (drums), who up to that point had played in minor beat bands.

Almendra

Ricardo Kleiman, the most popular radio host of the moment, happens upon a performance by the band and, struck by Spinetta's personality, decides to secure them a record deal with Rca. Work proceeds at breakneck speed, and by November 1968 the first single is already on the market. The lead track is "Tema de Pototo", an elegy for a schoolmate Spinetta had believed dead due to a misunderstanding. It's probably the most advanced rock track released in Argentina up to that point, a little gem that blends garage rock guitars, electric organ, gentle vocal harmonies, baroque orchestration and a series of surprising tempo shifts.

Even though the public doesn't seem particularly interested in what Almendra has to offer, Rca has the bright idea of pitching the song to Leonardo Favio, who appreciates its melody and launches it under a new title, "Para saber como es la soledad" (taken from the lyrics of the chorus). Favio's tenorial, tamed version is almost comical set against the original, yet it becomes a huge hit and brings the band its first substantial earnings.

The next single came out in mid-1969, titled "Hoy todo el hielo en la ciudad"; it's even more complex than its predecessor, moving between pop dreamscapes (angelic voices, vibraphone, morse code, horn flourishes) and blues-rock guitars that don't skimp on solos and distortion. The B-side features "Campos verdes", for which the band made one of the first local music videos, later aired on the TV show "Sucesos argentinos". The public's first real approval starts to arrive, but it would still take a few more months for the definitive breakthrough.

On November 29, 1969, Almendra, the debut album, was released. It's a landmark date for Argentine music, because this was the country's first significant rock record, the one that made everyone realize that kind of music could have dignity even when sung in Spanish. The first barrier had actually been broken down back in 1967 by Litto Nebbia's Los Gatos, with the historic single "La balsa", but now Almendra closed the circle and kicked off the great adventure of rock nacional, one of the most thrilling scenes on the planet.

The album opens with "Muchacha (ojos de papel)", also released as a single in January '70. The lyrics are an erotic metaphor that was hard to swallow for the adult audience of the time, especially in a rigidly Catholic country like Argentina, but it resonated with younger listeners, who, as in the rest of the world, were going through a period of rebellion and awakening. "While everyone sleeps I'll steal a color from you [...] Sleep a little while I build a castle out of your belly, all the way to the sun." It's nonetheless an enchanting acoustic ballad, one that has the merit of blending Argentine folklore with the vocal harmonies of international pop rock, even if the words outweigh the music in importance.

Other songs have become classics over time as well. "Ana no duerme" is a garage rock number with pulsing electric organ, a galloping verse and a chorus that suddenly slows down, taking on an epic choral quality that suits its delicately feminist, hope-filled lyrics well: "Count the lights, look at the big city, Ana doesn't sleep [...] maybe tomorrow she'll wake up over the sea." "Plegaria para un niño dormido" is a lullaby in the form of a slowed-down tango, featuring jazzy electric guitar touches, piano and muted bass. "A estos hombres tristes" is the most ambitious moment, the archetype for many of Spinetta's future rock fantasies to come. The melody is made up of several interweaving sections that keep shifting speed, broken up by blues solos, epic riffs, tango steps and sharp folk flourishes. It's also Spinetta's vocal masterpiece up to that point, a rollercoaster of intensity that shows off the high, clean timbre that would later become his trademark.

Molinari nonetheless manages to steal the spotlight from the band leader, penning a magnificent nine-minute track, "Color humano", a majestic crescendo built on the crossing of his tormented lead guitar's acid rock with the electric folk driven by Spinetta's rhythm playing. Ever generous toward his collaborators, Flaco would later name the song as one of the best of his career.

The singles that preceded the album weren't included, partly for reasons of space, partly because they didn't quite fit the more mature style of the LP; they can nonetheless be found on the 1992 CD reissue, along with "Hermano perro", a 1970 single that went largely unnoticed.

It's December 17, '70 when the new studio effort hits the shops. For convenience's sake the album is referred to as Almendra II, even though the numbering doesn't officially appear on the cover. It consists of twenty-one songs, with wildly varying lengths, spread across two LPs.

The quality is inconsistent and it's not an easy listen, but amid the clutter a few gems can be found. "Toma el tren hacia el sur" is an acid, pounding rock track that echoes the early Fleetwood Mac; "Rutas argentinas" is a swaying rhythm & blues number; "Los elefantes" is a symbolist poem about the end of existence, laid over a backdrop of psychedelic folk and effects-laden guitars. "Elephants know how to forget [...] Look at their long, senseless trunks, how they sniff out everything there is, and when you watch how they stretch, you see how they resign themselves, to forgetting their inexplicable loneliness."

Running close to fifteen minutes, "Agnus Dei" is the heart of the record. One minute is taken up by a folk sketch drenched in echo, and all the rest by a delirious jam, perhaps a touch self-indulgent.

This time the tracklist includes several songs penned by Molinari and Del Guercio, who even take the trouble of singing them themselves, without ever reaching the interpretive heights of Spinetta.

The record came out with the band already disbanded, due to artistic differences that had become irreconcilable by then, and consequently received no proper promotion. Del Guercio and García would go on to form Aquelarre, while Molinari would give birth to Color Humano. Both bands would fade out around the mid-Seventies, after releasing a handful of cult albums straddling hard rock, prog and psychedelia.

Pescado Rabioso

RCA nonetheless insists that Spinetta honor his contract with one more album. Out of spite, the artist records an unsellable product, a collection of hippy nursery rhymes sung in a thoroughly tuneless way. Two future stars of Argentine music take part in the record: Norberto Napolitano, better known as Pappo, as a fiery hard-blues guitarist, and Miguel Abuelo, here on percussion and backing vocals, later the leader of Abuelos de la Nada. The label tries to patch things up by changing the provisional title Spinettalandia y sus amigos into the grander Almendra, even though there's no trace of the other band members on it and the credit belongs to Spinetta alone.

The album comes out in March '71, but as expected sales are scarce. Many years later the CD reissue would restore the title originally wanted by Flaco.

Free of hassles, he sets off on a months-long pleasure trip that takes him across Europe and the United States. On his return, "Muchacha (ojos de papel)" is still at the center of national attention thanks to an advertising campaign by a well-known textile company, a move for which RCA hadn't bothered to ask Almendra for permission.

It's this constantly disrespectful attitude that drives Spinetta to recruit bassist Osvaldo Frascino and drummer Black Amaya, both from Pappo's circle, launching a project devoted exclusively to blues and hard rock, Pescado Rabioso. The idea is to make gut-level, particularly aggressive music that distances him as much as possible from the sophisticated-leader image of Almendra and from RCA's yoke.

Having signed a contract with Microfon, the debut arrives in September '72 under the title Desatormentándonos. While entirely understandable as an exploratory step for a curious, never-satisfied musician, the album is somewhat weighed down by rhythms and riffs rather faithful to blues orthodoxy, and Spinetta lacks Pappo's visceral edge. Of the five tracks on the listing, "El jardinero" stands out for its cathartic instrumental coda, and "Algo flota en la laguna" for the violent symbolism of its lyrics: "La caridad del universo es falsa, la tempestad se llevará los nidos". The image of the nest, which has always played a protective role for childhood, comes under attack from a mysterious entity that manifests as a storm. The verb "coger" at the end of the cited line makes it even more unsettling, since it can also be used to indicate a sexual act. In the world painted by the song, then, there's no place left to be safe, a feeling that well reflects the author's view of an Argentina dominated by the military, economically weak and crossed by the Peronists' constant protests.

Frascino quits just as the record is coming out (he doesn't feel comfortable on bass, he'd rather play guitar). 1973 opens with a pair of 7-inch singles, which give us the three most famous songs released under the Pescado Rabioso name: "Post-crucifixión", "Despiértate nena" and "Me gusta ese tajo". These are concise, inspired hard-blues numbers, especially the second one, marked by the talent of two new recruits, keyboardist Carlos Cutaia – with his Hammond cranked all the way up – and bassist David Lebón, who takes it upon himself to make his debut by replacing Spinetta on vocals. The leader takes back the reins on the other tracks and hits on one of the fiercest lyrics of his career in "Me gusta ese tajo", an anti-dictatorship anthem built on sexual metaphors and foul language: "Con sus piernas lindas, ella me hace pensar, [que] tengo que destruir la mierda, de esta ciudad". Its success was possible because the release coincided with the transitional moment from dictatorship to Perón's mandate (once the military returned, the song would be banned from every Argentine media outlet).

That same year the second album comes out, Pescado 2, a double LP of eighteen songs that, however, doesn't include any of the three anthems that preceded it (they would only be collected in 1976 on the anthology Lo mejor de Pescado Rabioso).

For the occasion, Spinetta assembles a small encyclopedia of sounds. His wandering spirit has once again taken over from blind fury. Although it didn't produce moments that stuck in the collective imagination, overall it's one of the most acclaimed works of rock nacional, often compared to the great double albums of Anglophone rock. It's not an easy work to take in: almost an hour and a quarter of jams, solos, fragments, lullabies, but also pop choruses and performances of great intensity. The patience, though, pays off handsomely.

At least a handful of the shorter tracks could catch the attention of alternative audiences, once you notice how close titles like "Iniciado del alba" and "Poseído del alba" come to Big Star by Alex Chilton, including their most anemic, disillusioned side, in the frayed electro-acoustic harmonies of "Credulidad". Lebón carves out a small space for himself in what Spinetta considers the album's peak, the slow-motion country rock of "Mañana o pasado". Among the more drawn-out passages, standouts include "Peteribí", marked by Cutaia's virtuosity (and sampled by Eminem in 2020, on "Stepdad"), the tragic soul of "Como el viento voy a ver", the pastoral "Madre-selva" and the closing "Cristálida", a mini-suite that flaunts abrasive rock, reflective interludes on electric organ, and an orchestral finale.

Particularly fascinated by French poets, Spinetta pours his doubts into harsh lyrics, where philosophy and reason confront the terror of the unknown. The album's final words are: "How can I keep this valley of voids from rising up in me again? I no longer have a god. The shadows of this park are useless. Those I used to call out to, no, they never showed themselves. Every giant dies exhausted, and devours whoever lies beneath".

For Pescado Rabioso, this is the end of the line: Spinetta's rediscovered experimental drive clashes with Cutaia and Lebón's approach, which stays truer to the blues. The conflict soon becomes irreconcilable. And to think that, within five years, both Cutaia and Lebón would end up in bands led by the brilliant Charly García that had very little to do with blues, such as Máquina de Hacer Pájaros and Serú Girán.

In October '73, yet another album is released under the band's name, even though it's effectively a solo work by Spinetta, who plays everything himself on five of the nine tracks and, on the rest, gets help from his brother Carlos Gustavo and Almendra's rhythm section. This is the record that once and for all places him at the top of local culture, perhaps the most celebrated album in the history of rock nacional, Artaud. It's a record that has inspired entire books, the legendary monolith that every Argentine musician who came after would point to as a source of inspiration.

The cardboard sleeve housing the vinyl doesn't have the usual square shape; it's instead an irregular octagon designed by Spinetta himself as a tribute to Artaud's surrealism. A photo of the French artist appears on the cover, against a green and yellow background (the colors he himself identified as symbols of death). From this presentation alone, you can sense how singular the work is, though Spinetta always described it as a critical tribute to the playwright's writings, whose surrealism and iconoclasm he loved, but not his nihilistic streak.

The tracks Spinetta recorded solo break down every barrier: the splendid serenade "Todas la hojas son del viento", placed at the opening, is the only one with an accessible structure. The others are works in progress, folk bodies left floating amid seemingly senseless chord changes, unsettling sound effects and crystalline vocal swoops. "Por" is a minute-and-a-half sketch with words piled up at random, "La sed verdadera" tells of a rock star's inner conflicts over interwoven acoustic guitar and tremolo, before crumbling into a finale of ambient noise, "A Starosta, el idiota" starts as a slow piano piece and, in just three minutes, finds room for dissonant interludes, guitar digressions, backward-running tape, and weeping voices.

"Cantata de los puentes amarillo" is perhaps the album's manifesto. The lyrics are a sort of stream of consciousness on marginalization, inspired by two figures often cited by Artaud, Van Gogh and Elagabalus, characters who for different reasons disturbed the social conventions of their time and were therefore rejected by it: "A raft that had never set sail was shipwrecked at sea [...] Soon you'll see it's already time to go back, but bringing home all that splendor, and for whom? Souls reject every constraint, the crosses have stopped raining down". A symphony of guitar arpeggios unfolding over nine minutes into a genuine puzzle of melodies, it's so modern that, sung in English, it could pass for the latest critics' darling.

In the passages with a rhythm section, the contaminated rock Spinetta developed with Almendra and Pescado Rabioso resurfaces, but airier and more dynamic than usual. Though drawing on its scales, "Las habladurias del mundo" sounds a world away from the blues — it's more an indecipherable blend of tango and progressive folk. And then there's the celebrated "Bajan", a hybrid of southern rock with jangle guitars and refined bass movements (twenty years later it would be covered by the most brilliant of Flaco's disciples, Gustavo Cerati).

Invisible

That '73 is the busiest year of Spinetta's career is beyond dispute: not content with two 45s, the double album by Pescado Rabioso and Artaud, he also manages to release the first single from his new project, Invisible. His companions on this venture are bassist Carlos Rufino, aka Machi, and drummer Héctor Lorenzo, aka Pomo, who had just taken part in Pappo's legendary third album. Their background is immediately felt on the hard blues of "Estato de coma", but it's the other side that steals the show, with "Elementales leches". Spare and bright, Spinetta's guitar strikingly anticipates much of the funk-rooted alternative pop that would emerge in the Eighties (both in English-speaking countries and in Argentina), while the delicate vocal melody winds between hermetic mantras and unexpected pauses.

The lyrics are pure hermeticism — translating them into Italian would require a Calvino; we do what we can: "Curves of the air, they are doors of the slow white boat of the hours. Insonnia. Figli amici, mordono quelle foglie dai loro piedi, e latte elementare". At the time Spinetta was particularly absorbed in Eastern philosophy, which explains the pairing of the elements, the basis of matter, with a symbol of nourishment such as milk. Taken as a whole, though, the verses remain a question mark.

The first album, Invisible, came out in mid-1974. The first edition consists of eight songs, six on the LP and two on a 45 included with the package, all credited collectively.

Recorded under the supervision of Jorge Álvarez, the leading Argentine producer of the era, it's split between adventurous, progressive tracks with a strong jazz imprint, and more muscular moments. The fragmentation of the melodies is pushed to the extreme, and it's no coincidence that, despite satisfying sales and the mythical status the album has earned, no single song has stuck in the popular memory. That doesn't detract from its quality: consider ambitious structures like "El diluvio y la pasajera", a manifesto on pre-Columbian culture opened by freely roaming guitar refractions and culminating in a brief jam, or "Azafata del tren fantasma", progressive folk with harmonies drawn from Latin tradition, obsessive riffs and constantly shifting rhythms. The heaviest rock, meanwhile, is done justice by "La llave del mandala", almost a Led Zeppelin track, though technically superior to their average.

Towards the end of '74 came another 45, containing "Oso del sueño", a superb, all-out funk rock assault, and "Viejos ratones del tiempo", which condenses Flaco's state of the art into six minutes, with alien harmonies and melodies that create a constant sense of disorientation, like a subtle dissonance. Unfortunately both tracks went unnoticed. They would later be included as bonus tracks on the CD reissue of Invisible, along with "Estato de coma" and "Elementales leches".

The trio's second effort was released in September '75. Durazno sangrando marks a turning point in Spinetta's career, both because it signals the move to Cbs and because it's the first time he resorts to synthesizers. The Arp String Ensemble makes its appearance halfway through "Encadenado al ánima", fifteen minutes of melodies and improvisations overlapping in the usual short-circuit of styles. But it's the shorter tracks that steal the show, in particular "Pleamar de águilas" (tango-paced, laden with acoustic flourishes, falsetto breaks) and the splendid title track. The lyrics, a symbolist meditation on the passing of time, tell the story of a peach. Fallen from the tree, the fruit rolls to the riverbank and there hears the pit singing a song about its own fate. With the arrival of the January wind, the peach slips into the river and begins to bleed, just as foretold.

It's anything but a commercial song. The atmosphere is intimate, the lyrics are anguished and the story told has no happy ending, the guitars tread lightly, the muffled beat recalls a heartbeat, the delivery drips with melancholy. But somehow it strikes the right chords and deservedly becomes one of Flaco's best-known songs.

The final act of Invisible, El jardín de los presentes, was recorded right during the 1976 coup, but contrary to popular belief, its uneasy atmosphere wasn't shaped by the event. Spinetta was in fact not opposed to the military junta's show of force: he actually hoped it might restore some stability after the disastrous administration of Isabel Martínez de Perón, which had led to violent crackdowns on student protests and the collapse of the local economy. He would only realize his naivety several months later, when rock musicians found themselves facing censorship, boycotts, and fierce smear campaigns.

Early solo attempts

On December 9, 1976, Patricia Salazar — who had been with Spinetta for three years — gave birth to Dante, who in the early Nineties, with startling precocity, would end up fronting one of the cult acts of the Argentine alternative scene, Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas.

At the start of '77 the singer is arrested without any warning, for a check on his criminal record that fortunately comes to nothing.

Whether these two events influenced his decision is unknown, but that same year sees the release of the album that seems to kick-start his solo career proper, A 18' del sol. It's his closest brush with fusion to date, though still filtered through a pop/singer-songwriter sensibility. Machi is back on bass, this time purely as a session player, while the little-known Diego Rapoport takes over keyboards.

It's not among his most accomplished albums melodically, but it does contain at least one memorable title track, an instrumental jazz-funk piece in which the rhythm section and electric piano boil away at breakneck speed, providing the backdrop for arguably the most inspired Spinetta ever sounded as a guitarist.

Despite poor sales at the time, the acoustic "Canción para los días de la vida" is today regarded as one of the writer's classics. Sung and played almost under his breath, it stands as one of his most intimate moments.

Having assembled a backing band that would eventually swell to eight members, he spends 1978 on tour playing unreleased material, by now fully immersed in jazz (many passages recall the contemporary work of Pat Metheny and Weather Report). Sadly, that formidable ensemble never made an album, and the only evidence of its existence comes from bootlegs of the period. Well worth seeking out, if only for the colossal "Tríptico del eterno verdor", twenty-two minutes of adventures through plastic-toned guitars, horn flourishes and unruly synthesizers. Without a doubt the most ambitious thing Spinetta ever attempted.

In 1979, Only Love Can Sustain is recorded in Los Angeles, an anthology of bland background pop sung in English without much conviction. It would be released at the start of the following year to general indifference.

Spinetta Jade and the Almendra reunion

Edelmiro Molinari's return from the US toward the end of '79 is the spark needed to reunite Almendra, a band Spinetta had in any case never really stopped keeping company with. The quartet plays six concerts, drawing more than 30,000 people, even as the police presence was heavier than ever at the time, as shown by the harrowing episode at La Plaza, when Spinetta watched nearly two hundred fans get arrested right in front of him. Years later, a document would surface from the Interior Ministry's archives, dated December 4, 1979, which stated of Almendra: "The members flaunt their drug addiction, a fact that is also hinted at in the lyrics of some of their songs, as well as sexual dissoluteness and rebellion against our traditional way of life."

Once the brief tour with Almendra wraps up, El Flaco launches Spinetta Jade, a band with which he intends to carry on exploring fusion while steering back toward more accessible territory for a wider audience. The new project is unveiled in grand style at the end of the summer of 1980, with a triumphant concert alongside Charly García's Serú Girán.

In October the debut album, Alma de diamante, is released.

Besides El Flaco, the lineup includes Rapoport (electric piano), Beto Satragni (bass), Juan del Barrio (synthesizers) and a returning Pomo on drums.

Opening the record is yet another gem of an instrumental, "Amenabar", with a robotic refrain worthy of Herbie Hancock, the bass out front and del Barrio's electronic layers lending it depth. The title track is a genuine manifesto: introduced by half a minute of meditative keyboards, often stretched out live, it's an enchanting piano ballad with an instantly catchy melody, a vocal performance that alternates calm phrasing with emotional surges, an Oberheim OB-8 synth filling out the space, and Minimoog flourishes in the finale. The lyric is one of Spinetta's most straightforward love poems, but it suits the song's caressing tone perfectly. "Come to me with your sweet light, diamond soul."

Although the musical structure is similar, the tone turns sterner on "Dale gracias", influenced by Castaneda's hallucinated anthropology: "This dream is one more whistle in the wind [...] it's pointless to pretend to shine with your personal story, remember that a warrior never halts his march."

The most intricate track is "Con la sombra de tu aliado", with Satragni going wild on bass, the leader chasing after him on six strings, the tempo constantly shifting between straight and syncopated, and the various instruments trading rhythmic and solo parts like pieces of a puzzle.

In the atmospheric “La diosa salvaje”, Rapaport's long piano solo takes center stage, but Spinetta holds his own, unleashing intricate acoustic guitar interlocking patterns.

The eight minutes of “Sombras en los álamos” close things out, a kind of desperate, technological blues, with the low tones of the Arp Odyssey driving the rhythm section while much of the track veers into instrumental digressions.

Despite the success of the title track, this is one of Spinetta's most difficult records: every song is swollen with timbral inventions, sly melodic turns and rhythmic ideas, to the point that first listens risk leaving you lost. It's arguably his finest work of the Eighties, a decade in which he would go on to produce several other outstanding records.

For the few Italian listeners familiar with the artist, it's curious to note that starting with this album his voice begins to resemble that of Pino Daniele, at least in its calmer moments.

Right after its release, Spinetta Jade go on hiatus to let their leader focus on the final stretch of Almendra, who decide to bow out with an album and a long tour. El valle interior comes out in December, overshadowed by Alma de diamante due to their close proximity in release. That's a shame, because although it can't match the tension of Spinetta Jade, it's an album in step with the times and far removed from mere nostalgia. At least two of the seven tracks on the record are exceptional: “Buen día, día de sol”, perhaps the most contagious funk of his career, and “Las cosas para hacer”, written by Del Guercio, which manages to blend FM-radio choral warmth, new wave tension and jazz phrasing.

The band consoles itself with the massive crowds of the ensuing tour, the biggest and most successful in the history of Argentine music up to that point. Once it ends, Almendra go into hibernation for good and Spinetta Jade once again command their leader's full attention.

Los niños que escriben en el cielo comes out at the end of 1981. Del Barrio and Satragni have been replaced respectively by Leo Sujatovich and Frank Ojstersek, both of whom had already worked with the Italian-descended singer-songwriter León Gieco, a close friend of Flaco's. The album keeps the sound of its predecessor, somewhere between plastic pop and futurist jazz, but trims down the song lengths. It isn't Spinetta's most beloved work, since it doesn't bring any particular change from what he'd recently been doing, and it didn't produce any classics. Though a couple of tracks would have deserved to become just that: the frantic “Moviola”, with guitars thick with chorus effect and Eastern-tinged digressions, and the reflective “No te busques ya en el umbral”.

Resuming the solo career and the end of Spinetta Jade

1982 is a sabbatical year for the band, but not for Flaco. In April, the Argentine military junta, its popularity in freefall, attempts to seize the Falkland Islands from Great Britain in order to win back public favor, a move that would backfire and seal its final downfall. Right as the first attacks are underway, Spinetta releases a new solo album, titled Kamikaze.

The response is unprecedented, because once war breaks out, the authorities ban radio broadcasts of any song in English. Rock nacional, viewed with suspicion up to that point, suddenly becomes a valuable ally for the military and their need to rally national unity. All of a sudden only Spanish-language music is heard on the airwaves, and artists like Spinetta, Gieco and Charly García are instantly elevated to the status of national heroes. Spinetta's record, showing remarkable prophetic powers, happens to contain no fewer than three songs about the war.

The title track portrays the kamikaze figure as the bearer of a noble spirit, not to glorify an act that nonetheless brings death, but as a symbolic jab at North American culture and its tendency to mock anything that doesn't fit its own standards (specifically, the courage shown by the Japanese as soldiers of the empire). Then there are the two parts of “Águila de trueno”, dedicated to Túpac Amaru II, the heroic Peruvian indigenous leader who in the 18th century attempted to reclaim independence from Spain, only to be executed. Success, however, comes with “Ella tambien” and “Barro tal vez”, impeccable intimate ballads. The latter would be covered years later by Mercedes Sosa, the queen of South American folk.

What's striking about the album is its spare tone, in sharp contrast to the Spinetta Jade productions. Voice, guitar and the occasional effect are all that five of the eleven tracks need. Five others feature Rapoport's keyboards, though kept well away from his usual virtuosic flourishes, while drums appear only in the second part of “Águila de trueno”. This leanness, combined with the ethereal guitar textures, the almost ambient keyboard washes and the sense of a live, direct recording, has led many to regard the album as a forerunner of the lo-fi sound that would fully emerge the following decade.

Somewhat removed from the rest of the tracklist is the closing “Casas marcadas”, which ends with an unsettling crescendo of cosmic keyboards and disturbed radio signals.

With the assault on the Falklands a failure, the dictatorship is in disarray. On December 10, 1983, Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín is sworn in as the new president and the nation returns to democracy. Just a few days earlier, Spinetta had released two albums simultaneously, Mondo di cromo as a solo artist and Bajo Belgrano with Spinetta Jade.

In the former, one can trace a move toward new wave sounds, territory the artist had until then left unexplored. Proof of this is “No te alejes tanto de mi”, a hugely successful funk track that rivals many English-speaking bands of the era (Pretenders, Police, B-52's), though what really carries it to glory are its intricate vocal harmonies, backed by the returning David Lebón. The ballad “Días de silencio”, a frontal attack on the oppressive military, instead sees an impromptu reunion of Invisible. Of the five instrumental tracks populating the record, only the opening “Paquidermo de luxe” manages to showcase a memorable theme (via Sujatovich's Prophet 5 synthesizer), while the remaining ones somewhat dilute the album's cohesion.

New wave also peeks through on the Spinetta Jade album, mainly via keyboards and guitar filters, though the density of the production still makes the jazz component predominant. The new bassist is César Franov, while Sujatovich plays all the keyboards, making up for Rapoport's departure.

Two lesser-known songs emerge from this, though held in high regard by fans and critics alike: "Maribel se durmió", a lullaby dedicated to the mothers of the desaparecidos, and "Resumen porteño", an evocative midtempo track narrating the hardships of three Argentine youths. To one of them, the fisherman Cacho, el Flaco attributes yet another jab at the dictators: "⟦Q1⟧"

Overall, the reception of Mondo di cromo overshadows that of Bajo Belgrano. After yet another lineup shuffle, the band records what would be its final effort, Madre en años luz. Mono Fontana, previously a sideman for Nito Mestre, replaces Sujatovich, while jazz musician Lito Epumer joins to back up Spinetta's guitars. Pomo is no longer involved, replaced by a drum machine that Spinetta credits as an actual band member: Señor Tempo DMX.

Many fans couldn't stomach such mechanical drumming, far removed from Pomo's intricate, dynamic patterns. On top of that, it was the first Argentine production recorded digitally, resulting in a much colder sound than usual, and the arrangements had by now fully embraced new wave. Too many "betrayals" all at once to be easily accepted.

And yet the songs are crafted with great care, shot through with oddities and bizarre touches, at times almost unsettling. "Camafeo" opens with a martial feel and hints of the Far East, "Entonces es como dar amor" delivers synthetic romanticism and slapped bass, while the symphonic, drum-heavy electronics of "Este es el hombre de hielo" recall the sound Susumu Hirasawa was developing in Japan at exactly the same time with his band P-Model. It's rather thrilling to see how two contemporary sensibilities, despite belonging to such distant cultures, could arrive at the same conclusions. There's also room for the arpeggiated guitars and impassioned delivery of "Ludmilla", and for the grand finale of "Díganle", a kind of spatial lounge piece that alternates between choral passages and understated moments, with Epumer soaring into exquisite displays of virtuosity.

For Spinetta Jade, the curtain falls in mid-1985, after a handful of shows in support of the album.

From 1985 to 1993

"Como conseguir chicas" was meant to be the title of the album recorded with Charly García. The two greatest Argentine musicians together for the first time — it seemed like a dream. And it remained just that, because a fire destroyed García's apartment, along with all the tapes.

The pair had already recorded several demos, and only "Rezo por vos" survived, having been handed over to radio stations to promote the project. A pop anthem built on Byrds-style guitar and drum machine, it's one of the finest singles of the 1980s.

Unfortunately, the disastrous event led to a string of personal grievances that sealed the project's fate. For a long time, the two wouldn't exchange a word. "Rezo por vos" was nonetheless a massive hit, so much so that both of them went on to record their own versions of it in later years. The original version was later included on some of García's compilations.

Never one to give up, el Flaco went straight back to work. In 1986 he produced Privé, an album with increasingly sterile sounds, unable to yield any songs of real substance, despite the presence of rising stars like Andrés Calamaro and Fito Páez.

His creative vein was actually still fruitful, but it needed stimulation, which arrived that same year when he decided to put together a massive project co-credited to Páez himself, La la la. Twenty songs, two LPs, an hour and twenty-three minutes of music. A work widely praised by critics, it's something of an encyclopedia of 1980s pop. It might lay the sugar on a bit thick here and there, but there's no shortage of quality tracks: "Folis Verghet" (a pop romp with AOR-style vocal harmonies, funky guitars, percussion and orchestra), "Instant-táneas" (almost a futuristic take on Manhattan Transfer), "Tengo un mono" (Indian-flavored pop awash in echo and interference), "Asilo en tu corazón" (an ambitious torch song), "Parte del aire" (influenced by Japanese film scores), "Serpiente de gas" (the tensest moment, between nocturnal keyboards and rhythmic quirks), "Carta para mí desde el 2086" (a preview of the noir atmospheres Páez would later craft for a song like "Sasha, Sissí y el círculo de baba"), "Jabalíes-conejines" (a harrowing acoustic ballad shot through with layers of electronics), "Hay otra canción" (the refined chamber pop that closes the show).

That eclecticism doesn't repeat itself when el Flaco goes back out on his own with Téster de violencia in 1988, a solid-enough urban rock album featuring the spirited energy of "Lejísimo" and the moving "La bengala perdida", a tribute to a young man killed by a flare in a stadium stand.

Don Lucero (1989) continues down that path, but despite the power of "Fina ropa blanca", a certain fatigue is clearly showing.

The 1980s saw the musician produce some of his finest work, but also show signs of inconsistency, especially toward the end. The sounds of the new decade, however, seem to heal those wounds, and in 1991 Pelusón of Milk brings him back to the heights he deserves. He does almost everything himself, handling guitars, bass, samplers and programming, crafting a cutting-edge pop-rock built entirely on contrast. The rhythm guitar and arpeggiated parts are softened by chorus effects, while riffs and solos are sharpened by distortion, compression and a metallic edge. The angelic tone of the new-age keyboards provides depth, while the skeletal electronic rhythms push in the opposite direction.

"Seguir viviendo sin tu amor" is one of his most heartfelt love songs and wins over audiences across the board, while "Ganges" and "Hombre de lata" stand out for their aggressive edge. Then there are tracks that sit halfway between the two, where the album's different souls coexist beautifully, like "La montaña" and "Cruzarás", and others still harder to pin down, such as "Lago de forma mía" (part dream pop, part lo-fi) or "Domo tú" (a fine early hint of trip hop).

In 1993 he put together Fuego gris, the soundtrack for Pablo César's film, in which he retraces the paths of the previous album without much fire.

Spinetta y los Socios del Desierto

In effect a solo album, recorded in 1995 and released a couple of years later. All the songs are written and produced by Spinetta, but the cover credits bassist Marcelo Torres and drummer Daniel Wirtz under the Socios del Desierto banner. The move mainly serves to signal yet another turning point. After many years, he returns to the power trio format: guitars reign supreme and there's no trace of sophistication.

The undertaking is perhaps excessive (two CDs, thirty-three songs, more than two hours of music), but the average quality is surprising and the filler, inevitable given the sheer size, is kept to a minimum. You risk overdosing on labels and slipping into the ridiculous, because in all likelihood Spinetta conceived these songs simply by picking up his instrument and playing, yet if this had been an English-speaking band we'd now be reading praise for its ability to breathe life into a formula that stays cohesive and, without needing to alter the arrangements beyond the odd tweak of effects, manages to move from hard rock to alternative funk, from post-hardcore to jangle pop, from slowcore to jazzy shades.

In such a vast body of material, it's not especially useful to single out one track over another. It's hard to choose between the ecstatic electro-acoustic harmonies of "Diana", the catalepsy of "La orilla infinita", the bucolic ballad "Cuentas de un collar", the carefree gait of "Holanda", the melancholy of "El sol y la afeitadora eléctrica", the disembodied sounds of "2 de enero", the tragic surges of "Bosnia".

Once again Spinetta creates a summa of the contemporary moment and bends it to his own modus operandi, to his intricate melodies, to his diaphanous voice.

Recorded with the same lineup but fleshed out by several guests, Estrelicia Mtv Unplugged (1997) contains as many as six unreleased tracks out of fourteen, but the slightly glossy sound of that series has never particularly appealed to this writer, and this installment is no exception. Either way, "Tu nombre sobre mi nombre" becomes a hit, the last of his career. The following albums will sell mostly among the aficionados, though his name will remain a big draw, his concerts consistently sold out and his old classics unshakeable.

After the electric live album San Cristoforo (with four forgettable new tracks), 1999 brings the second and final studio effort with the Socios del Desierto, Los ojos, where electronics forcefully return to the fore. Among the guests, sampling wizard Tweety González, already known for his work with Soda Stereo and Fito Páez, stands out. The songs are thus all blankets of keyboards, synthetic flourishes and pulses of manipulated sound: on the verge of turning fifty, Flaco still shows a young mind and a hunger to explore anything new.

"Ave seca" and "Guíame" cast a spell with their blend of ethereal arpeggios, minimal techno rhythms and orchestral digressions, the gentle funk of "La flor" sees jazz musician Javier Malosetti lavish a great acoustic guitar solo on the track, while "Donde no se lee" is ambient pop with synth swells and stern orchestral entrances. A leaner tracklist might have helped, but once again, hats off.

Curtain Call

The final stretch of Spinetta's career is taken up by four albums that are somewhat alike. Having faced down, almost always victorious, the upheavals that swept through from the Sixties to the Nineties, and built up a monstrous body of work, Spinetta seems to land on a planet untouched by the passage of time.

No longer obsessed with keeping pace, he generates songs as if in perpetual motion. A melodic, poetic art rock with progressive shadings and arrangements orbiting alternative music and jazz, where the furthest thing changes is the dose of electronic instruments. Luckily for us, it's a perpetual motion that's sweet to get lost in. The melody doesn't always surface, but when it does, it holds nothing back — it's dazzling. The old lion thus compels us to listen to every album from this period; it would truly be hard not to pull at least one vital track out of each.

Silver Sorgo (2001) tends to be a bit drowsy, but the single alone, "El enemigo", would be enough to justify its existence. More than a ballad, it's an endless melodic embrace in which guitar arpeggios, electric organ, Japan, Argentina and the foam of ocean waves all dissolve together, as shown in the video, wisely shot on a deserted beach. The tracklist also includes one of the artist's rare brushes with dub, "El mar es de llanto".

A touch sharper and more dynamic, Para los árboles (2003) has going for it the downtempo of "Sin abandono" and the airy chorus of "Agua de la miseria", amid darting guitars and fragments of Indian music. Pan (2005) could pass for a reunion of Spinetta Jade given its strong fusion component. Worth noting is "Atado a tu frontera", the only track with a lively pace, its chorus so unusual that the melody is driven instead by the riffs, distorted and repeated at regular intervals.

The final act is the most striking of all. Unaware of the illness that lay ahead, Flaco poured all his remaining energy into Un mañana, an album so solid it feels like a conscious closing curtain.

The relaxed electronics of “Vacío sideral” are enriched by soaring Steve Howe-style guitar runs, “No quiere decir” is cocktail-lounge romanticism dressed up with piano flourishes, the aching “Canción de amor para Olga” and the brooding “Hombre de luz” move through suffocating orchestral landscapes, while “Tu vuelo al fin” is Flaco's idea of a power ballad, all crooked riffs and mood swings.

The two singles are “Mi elemento”, a relaxed rock track that's a model of sonic clarity, and the extraordinary “Preso ventanilla”. Seven minutes of cinema set to music, moving through reflections on death, urban landscapes, magical scenery and every kind of instrumental delicacy (the relentless rhythmic pulse, the melancholy piano, the hazy keyboards that sound like they've drifted in from a deep house track, the brief but dazzling orchestral bridge, the guitar writhing desperately in the finale). Listening to a track like this, you can't help but think how much more an artist like this still had to give. “And how could one imagine that so much solitude could awaken such pity in him? Not only has he lived again, but he has also helped everyone. He has turned [transformed] into a flower, to rise in the lost flames of his love” (it should be noted that the rhyming couplet, rather clumsy as it is, comes from the translation and isn't present in the original version).

If the studio farewell is perfect, the live one is no less so. On December 4, 2009, to celebrate forty years of his career, Spinetta put on a concert that spanned his entire body of work. He thus called together the whole history of Argentine rock: every member of the bands he'd been part of, plus a parade of guests including Gustavo Cerati, Ricardo Mollo, Juanse, Fito Páez and a finally reunited Charly García. The result was over five hours of music in front of 40,000 spectators, one of the most important cultural events in recent Argentine history. Exactly a year later came Spinetta y las Bandas Eternas, a triple CD collecting forty-two of the fifty-one songs played that night. A couple of years later it was reissued, bringing the total to forty-eight. Yet some songs are still missing — even if it meant adding another disc, it would be worth immortalizing such a gathering in full. Even the DVD version, which can be watched in full on YouTube, is still largely incomplete, however essential it already is.

Worth noting are two evocative songs placed near the end of the show, dedicated to the victims of the Ecos school disaster and not found on any studio album: “Retoño” and “8 de octubre”, the latter written a few years earlier together with León Gieco.

2010 wound down with a handful of smaller concerts, during which he played Soda Stereo's “Té para tres”, dedicating it to Cerati, who had fallen into a coma after a stroke that very May.

After disappearing from the scene for a while, on December 23, 2011 Flaco published a letter admitting he had lung cancer, though he expressed confidence in his treatment's success. Unfortunately the situation was already beyond saving, and on the following February 8 it was all over.

Days of mourning followed, across newspapers, TV programs, tribute concerts and homages of every kind. But this was only the beginning, because, without a shadow of a doubt, Argentina's cultural world will fight tooth and nail to keep Flaco's memory alive. In an age when it's increasingly hard to stop commercial viability from crushing artistic vision, we should keep our eyes on those who, like him, crossed five decades keeping a perfect balance between the two, without ever stooping to vulgarity.

Special thanks to José Santelli, co-author of the description of “El jardín de los presentes”.

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