After four uninterrupted decades of obstacle course racing, one of the most mythical Spanish bands in the history of popular music bids farewell to the stage with a very special concert at the Wizink Center in Madrid. It will be next May 6, coinciding with the fortieth anniversary of the formation of Total sinister, but of their first concert in the capital (“at the Marquee with Derribos Arias as opening act, Asian luxury”, says Julián Hernández), and for the occasion they will have the best possible guests: the members of the group’s old formations. «Let no one cry because we are delighted with life. We say goodbye with a party, and we believe that this is the best way to
leave”, confessed Julián Hernández at a press conference that included the surprise appearance of his colleagues from Los Enemigos, who gave them a commemorative plaque for the services rendered before the band’s euthanasia was certified. After that we won’t know where we’re going, but we’ll dance on his grave.
Why don’t they give more concerts?
(Julian) I’m glad you asked me that question! Everyone agrees that you have to know how to retire on time, but nobody knows what that means. We are following the example of Miguel Induráin, who was required to run a sixth tour because they said he would win it for sure, when he said it was impossible. When he left, people stopped remembering him as a freak of nature, and he became unknown.
(Miguel) We should have done it in ’83.
(Julián) I think that forty years is enough to be able to say, ‘look, we’re not going to risk it anymore’. It’s like the seven-thirty game, you can’t go on permanently because you’re playing it.
The door to the recording studio will still be open, right? No one has said otherwise.
(Julián) For now, we will release the live album that will be recorded at the concert. If it comes out an absolute mess we’ll post it as concept art. If it comes off as hell, we’ll compete with the great live albums recorded at Budokan or Bataclan. That will be seen, but what we are clear about is that the van, the trips… not anymore. The other day I read that Alejandro Sanz, who has his private jet, is also screwed by trips. So imagine us. We’ll hitchhike on the runway so he can pick us up and take us with him.
(Miguel) Of course, it’s that people see us get off the stage and think, ‘damn, they work two hours a day and that’s it’, but they don’t take into account everything that’s behind it. Rehearsals, piano and ballet classes…
(Julián) Whole weeks completely drugged, giving everything… It’s true that people tend to think that we make a living goofing off for a while every night.
How were the calls to the old members, to bring them together in the Blues Brothers style? Were there exciting, movie moments?
(Julián) We are trying to avoid, as if it were ringworm, every moment of Operación Triunfo or the Goya gala, with everyone running a runny nose through tears.
(Miguel) I’m the same, just a little grayer.
Putting together the repertoire, having forty years of songs, is going to be complicated unless they play three hours.
(Julián) Be careful with the hours, the physical resistance is no longer the same. Look, I’m going to give you a figure, like Yolanda Díaz. I’m going to tell you something, Mr. Casado…
(Javier) No, better Egea.
(Julián) Okay, well, look, I’m going to tell you something, Mr. Egea… We’ll manage a range… I love this type of language… a range of forty to fifty songs. If you take into account that the Rolling do not reach twenty, it is not bad at all. We play more songs than them, and with a much higher intensity.
This farewell will have given them vertigo for forty years…
(Julian) And so much.
… and it will also have made them remember all that they have achieved.
(Miguel) Better not think about the past, that we were going to end very badly.
(Julián) If we do that review we all end up at the psychoanalyst. The past is past. Let it be. But it is true that we have no choice but to look back to make the repertoire.
Among the group’s legendary moments is that night they premiered ‘Miña terra galega’ at RockOla. They wanted to provoke the moderns by doing a version of a ‘Southern, racist, ’70s’ group, but it turned out that everyone loved it. You wanted to be a bit of a ballbuster and the shot backfired on you, did it bother you or did you celebrate it?
(Julián) We composed it expressly for that concert, and I remember it was World Gorilla Costume Day because the choristers wearing gorilla masks almost suffocated us. It worked so well that we recorded it for the next album. Yes, it was a frustration, but you also get frustrated. It’s like making jokes about Ayuso or Trump, you actually benefit them. The parody of making the modern RockOla’s upset turned into a very usable song.
It is that Total Sinister has ended up liking many more people than you would have imagined. I’ve heard you in the most infectious punk club and at weddings of well-to-do people.
(Julian) Hahahaha!
(Javier) The same thing happens with the places where we’ve played. I remember that in Mexico one night we played in a super posh room, and the next day we went to a festival and as soon as we arrived we saw the head of security escaping by legs, from which they had a mess.
(Julián) Then we couldn’t even finish the concert, although there were people who must have cared the same, because you looked into their eyes and they were so empty that you could see the bottom of their skulls. They were all up to the gills. In the end we finished to hosts.
Isn’t it strange that you haven’t been retroactively victims of cancel culture?
(Julián) No… I’m remembering something that happened to us at Antzokia in Bilbao, with Manuel Manquiña. It wasn’t a concert, it was a dinner or something… total, there were people from Gestoras Pro Amnesty there, from the Basque National Liberation Movement, as Aznar said, and suddenly it occurred to Manuel to start saying barbarities like ‘ What the hell do you want independence for, with how well you eat in Spain!’, ‘Long live the Civil Guard, hell!’. When they looked at him with a bad face he said: Ah, what are you, damn it!’, And we all laughed because we knew what was a joke and what wasn’t.
(Miguel) I want a retroactive effect for the payment of royalties.
More than a growth of the feeling of offense, hasn’t there been a catastrophic loss of sense of humor?
(Julian) It is possible. But people are more aware of certain issues and you can’t make jokes about them. The question is in the following: In what head can you go to trial for a song? The judicialization of humor and art is what makes no sense. It is a bad thing.
(Javier) People take everything more to heart, machismo, that progressive stuff…
(Julián) We forget that humor is not a standard thing. Black humor exists, and it has to exist. We were once included in a hate song list for ‘I’ll Dance On Your Grave’. To say that it incites hatred is false, it is black humor. We would have to kill El Bosco, Quevedo, Gila, Álex de la Iglesia, and I am not willing to give up the work of any of them. Black humor borders on violence and bad taste, but if not, it’s not black humor.
Anyway, in the eighties things also happened. They canceled a television performance for you because the night before you performed on the same program Las Vulpes, and they messed it up so much with ‘I like being a bitch’ that they suspended the broadcast.
(Julián) It was Carlos Tena’s program. We recorded ours, they had the videos prepared, but the future minister Wert wrote a proclamation on ABC against the socialist government for that broadcast, and the program was cancelled. On the front page of the newspaper they put the entire lyrics of the song. In the end, what we recorded became a mythical video clip that can be easily found.
(N. de la R.) ABC played a leading role in the controversy over Las Vulpes in 1983. We gave outstanding information about the television performance that generated a great scandal in Spanish society at the time, because ‘I like being a bitch’ was broadcast during children’s hours. Our newspaper reproduced the complete lyrics of the song, dedicated editorials and an article in Tercera to freedom of expression. He even echoed the indignation of the then Attorney General of the State -Mr. Burón Barba-, as well as the departure of Carlos Tena after the program that caused the controversy. But he never published any text by José Ignacio Wert, neither then nor later, on the matter. In this extreme, memory must have failed our musicians and it is necessary to clarify it.
They have called their concert ’40 years without stepping on the National Court’. Have you ever spent a night in the dungeon, as happened to Eskorbuto?
(Javier) No, and that’s why we’ve put that title, to see if we spend a night in the dungeons of the National High Court and that way they give us free publicity.
(Miguel) It would be a great promotion for the concert.
(Julián) Yes, right now a summons from the National High Court would be…
There are those who complain that the last Siniestro Total concert is not in Vigo.
(Julián) It’s understandable, but we had reserved the WiZink for a long time because we had no other way of organizing it with this amount of people. Let those of Vigo come, we invite them to the cañas.