At the bar, there is a CD on sale called Mariatchi Boogie with a track by Manu and others by various local musicians, which buskers can sell to make money. Donating the tracks is an example of Manu’s generosity but also his preference for encouraging self-help. Clearly, the scruffy Mariachi bar is a place where Manu feels at home and where he gets inspiration: ‘The number of songs that came to me in bars, listening to stories of guys who had drunk too much and became unbuttoned …’
It’s getting late, but I have to ask him about the cows – which he sees as portents that guide his decisions and ‘saved his life’ in Brazil. ‘It’s important to see the signs, but it’s not good to see the signs everywhere,’ Manu says, enigmatically. ‘I’m not anxious to see the signs; I know they are coming. After you get involved in this game, there are signs everywhere, so you have to take care. When you get signs in life they are very, very clear.’
‘People in the Occident get lost in the cocoon of mysticism,’ he continues. ‘There are a lot of charlatans there. It’s like food in Barcelona or London. Ninety percent is dog food, ten per cent soul food. There’s 90 per cent bullshit, ten per cent knowing what they are talking about. If that. So beware of the gurus,’ he concludes. ‘The only guru is yourself.’
Sometime around midnight we leave the bar. Out of the Barri Gòtic gloom, someone in the warren of alleyways whispers, ‘That guy looks like Manu Chao.’
CHAPTER 13:
NEW YORK – INTO THE HEART OF THE BEAST
‘I’ve met the devil in person … twice.’
There’s a dangerous storm and it’s heading our way. Backstage at the Prospect Park Bandshell, Brooklyn, the computer screen is locked on to the weather channel and it’s telling us that the deluge will strike right at the start of the concert. On the first truly hot day of the summer, with temperatures pushing one hundred degrees, there’s a tangible pre-gig, pre-storm electricity in the air. Six thousand Manu Chao fans know they are in for a memorable night, under the open sky, in the rain. Tickets are so hot that the Village Voice has run an article about the strategies and scams people are trying out on Craigslist to get one. Cash on its own won’t work. Claiming you were employed by an NGO or a homeless organisation stands a better chance.
As the band prepare to rush onstage, there are hugs and prayers, the psychological armour of gladiatorial troubadours. You can sense the tidal power of the crowd, baying for entertainment. A couple of music business types, pale courtiers, are talking quietly in a corner about units and demographics. I wish the band mucha mierda, the customary Spanish encouragement, and take up a perch at the side of the stage, looking out over the crowd. The rush of energy is exhilarating. I’m on a precipice, looking on, suffering from vertigo.
Electricity in the air – Manu onstage at Prospect Park, June 2007.
The United States is ‘the devil in the eyes of the rest of the world’, according to Manu. Although he has toured South America extensively, both with his current band, the Radio Bemba Sound System, and with Mano Negra, this is his first fully fledged tour of the US as a solo artist. ‘You cannot fight terrorism with terrorism,’ he pronounces from the stage, a massive banner flag draped over his shoulders. ‘You should fight violence with education not more violence.’ The flag bears the slogan ‘Immigrants are not criminals’.
With the skill of a sorcerer, Manu sings as if this huge audience were sitting in his front room, sharing a moment of intimacy. His records are full of loping, lazy rhythms, but live, his band regularly breaks down into a double-time hard-core thrash assault, led by the front-line trio of Manu himself, sinewy and elfin-like centre stage. He’s flanked by Madjid, resembling the Brazilian footballer Ronaldo, on electric or battered Spanish guitars, and the gentle-giant Gambeat on bass – both ‘loveable, shirtless brutes’, according to Village Voice. Behind them are Philippe ‘Garbancito’ Teboul on percussion and drummer David Bourgnignon, adding an essential Latin edge to the assault, together with Angelo Mancini on Mexican style trumpet and Javier Galiana, with his intellectual features, pumping out synth chords.
It is one of the tightest, fiercest bands I’ve ever seen and they whip the crowd into fist-punching frenzy from midway through the first number. The mix of Hispanic, world and rock music fans sing along in Spanish and English to “Clan-destino”, that hymn to the lonely and dispossessed, and “Mr Bobby” (‘Hey Bobby Marley, sing something good to me’), whose shadow seems to linger on in the bitter-sweet “Welcome To Tijuana” (‘tequila, sexo y marijuana’), “Bongo Bong” and what has become his most famous song, “Me Gustas Tú”. Snatches of flamenco, rumba and Mexican banda brass music drift in and out of focus. Sadness, celebration, saudade and fiesta are never far from each other. There are a couple of Latin-punk numbers from the Mano Negra days, including “Casa Babylon”, where Manu takes the opportunity to remind us that we’re actually in the ‘House of Babylon’, or at least its antechambers. He even reaches back to his beginnings and plays “Mala Vida”, the first song he ever wrote, with its fears of servitude and dreams of escape.
From the splendid isolation of the backstage world I venture out into the middle of the crowd and stand next to a group of fans wearing Mexican wrestling masks. The Latin American cult of Lucha Libre, or free wrestling, seems to be taking off in the States. Each wrestler has their own distinctive mask. Blue Demon’s is a classic blue and white. Now, his son is carrying on the family tradition, sponsored by Coca-Cola, who launched a Blue Demon energy drink. El Santo was buried wearing his silver mask, and other fighters like Místico, El Rey Mysterioso and Mephisto all have their own masks and followers. Losers can be unmasked or humiliated by having their hair shorn. There’s even a mini estrellas division of dwarves. I have my very own party with that masked crew, shadowboxing with a Mephisto fan. We sing. We drink. We dance.
Brooklyn’s Anglo-Hispanic crowd are already sympathetic to Manu but other dates on the tour present a far steeper challenge. Backstage I meet Adam Shore, the boss of Vice Records. ‘I saw them play the Coachella Festival, just before Rage Against the Machine,’ he tells me. ‘There were 90,000 Rage fans impatient to see their comeback gig, and it could have been a disaster. But Manu managed to totally win them over. If he makes it in the States, that will be a key moment.’
A couple of days earlier in Boston, on the Manu Chao tour bus, the nerve centre of the travelling music circus, with its sleek exterior and scruffy interior, I bumped into Manu’s tour manager Paget Williams. He looked so relaxed and in his element that initially I thought he was a member of the band. Whilst I was waiting for Manu, I asked Paget about the nuts and bolts of tour logistics. He has worked with Nine Inch Nails. ‘They have forty or so people on the road,’ Paget said with mild disbelief. ‘A stadium band like Muse has sixteen big trucks to tour their live show. On this tour, it’s just me with an amazing sound man and the best band in the world!’
A good tour manager is both diplomat and gatekeeper. You have to treat him with a certain wary respect should you desire, for whatever reason, good or bad, to gain access to the backstage kingdom. Unlike most, Paget managed to perform his circus ringmaster duties and be highly personable at the same time. He had a tattoo on his arm, which read ‘Stand Up For What You Believe In’.
Manu climbed on to the bus, unshaven but looking in great shape and, despite the ‘No Smoking’ sign, rolled a cigarette. Not for the first time, it struck me that success in many competitive fields such as music, literature or even journalism, is as much about physical fitness and stamina as it is about creative power.
I compliment Manu on the funkiness of the bus; he says he loves going to sleep in one city and waking up in another. The band is like ‘a great family. I can imagine touring with these guys for years,’ he adds. ‘We stopped in the desert in Utah and made a fire. We stopped in parts of the far West, deep down America, not just the big cities. We were jamming with Russian guys in San Francisco. We did a crazy batucada with some Iranians. All of them were trying to get into this American
way of life.’
The whole band had fallen in love with New Orleans, which reminded Manu of Rio, of Africa, with its ‘malicious’ sense of humour and its jazz, swamp blues and zydeco music. They saw some of the neighbourhoods that had been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
I asked an obvious question: ‘Why come to the heart of the beast if you seem to hate America and all it stands for?’ Manu was ready with his answer: ‘I always criticise the government not the people. And if I am criticising, it’s better to understand what it is you criticise. For people in South America and Africa, the United States is seen more and more like the devil. There’s a heavy cost to the way of life here, and the rest of the world pays it. But everyone here applauds when I criticise their government so I just don’t understand why there aren’t thousands protesting outside the White House every day.’
Not that Manu was proud of his own governments in France or Spain. He has passports for both countries.
‘From the days of Mano Negra, everyone always said you have to make it in the United States,’ Manu continued. ‘But I always thought the best way was to tackle South America first. Now we have a lot of our people at the shows in the States.’ Once again, Manu’s maverick, unconventional approach seemed to be delivering the goods in the end.
The only concert outside the States on this tour was over the border in Tijuana. Manu’s song “Welcome To Tijuana’” from Clandestino has become a classic. Somehow Tijuana remains emblematic for Manu, the place where desperation, corrupt politics, drug violence and wild fiesta collide. Manu mentioned a music journalist he met there who had to have a bodyguard following the assassination of his editor. ‘Actually, I really love the place,’ he concluded with a wry, non-committal smile.
When we meet on the American tour, I haven’t seen Manu for more than a year – not since that night at the Mariatchi bar in Barcelona. Back then a new album was supposed to be on the verge of release but it seemed to have disappeared into the cosmic wormhole of Planet Manu. But then it seems the album release is, once again, on the cards: the idea is to release it to coincide with the US tour, though Manu is still tinkering on his laptop, changing titles and shaving off a few seconds here and there. The album, La Radiolina, is eventually released in September 2007, by which time the tour is pretty much over.
My trip to see Manu’s American dates is down to an invitation from Manu’s manager, Emmanuel de Buretel, who with the album imminent, suggests I join a couple of legs of the US tour and write it up for the Observer. Meeting me at Heathrow airport, Emmanuel hands over a rough copy of the album, treating it as though it was microfilm in a spy movie. He gives me strict instructions to hand it back on arrival in Boston.
Record company execs are understandably paranoid about pre-release leaks, as an album can often turn up pirated on the internet before it is even released. But I couldn’t help comparing his cloak-and-dagger attitude with the careless generosity of Manu, who had, with no concern, let me record him playing several songs from his as-yet-untitled ‘Brazilian’ album in the Mariatchi.
Emmanuel de Buretel had scaled the rarefied summit of the international record business when he became head of Virgin Europe, then EMI Europe, before setting up the Because label. After checking into the hotel in Boston, which was the stop before New York on the tour, we meet up at the bar for a drink. He is keen to emphasise that, despite the obvious caricature of being a capitalist who manages anarchists, his prime motivation for managing Manu is not the money, but the challenge … and because of his personal fondness for the man himself.
‘Manu is like a wild animal,’ says Emmanuel, in answer to my question that he can’t be the easiest guy to manage since he refuses to commit to anything far in advance. ‘You can’t put him in a cage.’ The comment is a vivid illustration of the eternal tension between art and business. Music is very much a commodity on one level and, on another, as far from being a commodity as it’s possible to be. But, like Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records or Nick Gold of World Circuit, Emmanuel is highly unusual in that he possesses both a sharp business sense and good ears. He was instrumental in the success of French acts like Air, Les Négresses Vertes and Daft Punk, and established the first French hip-hop label Delabel. He signed top African acts like Youssou N’Dour and Cheb Khaled to publishing deals and later helped establish the mainstream success of acts like Amadou & Mariam and Justice when he set-up his Because label.
In Boston, I get to see something of the Manu-manager relationship in action. Manu is pissed off. He is having stiff words with Emmanuel about the ticket prices the previous night, which, at $50, felt way too high. Emmanuel’s explanation is that the show was part of some kind of festival and, because of that, no one can control prices.
It seems that, despite their apparently regular rows – and Manu’s oft-muttered dictum ‘Never trust a Frenchman’ – Manu does trust Emmanuel and has said that he might well have given up without him. ‘Without management, I get fucked,’ he tells me. ‘Every time! Well, not every single time, but when it happens, it’s desesperating!’ (one of those typical Manu non-words). ‘The reason our relationship works’, Emmanuel commented later, ‘is that we don’t need each other’.
Manu talks later about some of the difficulties inherent in holding down a reputation like his. ‘I’m known for doing free concerts in aid of various causes,’ he tells me, with a mix of resignation and frustration. ‘So if I turn down a normal commercial concert, some businessman will pay someone, say from Chiapas, to say, “We need you to do a benefit concert for the indigenous people there”. And when I get to the concert, I realise it’s all been set-up by this businessman, and that it’s commerce disguised as charity.’
The uncomfortable proximity of commerce and charity is an unavoidable reality of Manu’s world. ‘But in these things, the only way that works is instinct,’ Manu says with a shrug. ‘And sometimes I miss. Sometimes I give money and now the result is not there and sometimes it’s good. But that’s life. It’s not because you had a bad experience that you have to stop.’
‘I don’t have to smash nobody or do tough business,’ he asserts. ‘Business is not dirt. When you do business with someone, you should both go out happy. The problem of business in the West is that if you try to do good for the one, it is gonna fuck the other. When you try to do good business, often they fuck you. But I don’t care, I’m clean. But the band have all got families and need to be paid. So there has to be an equilibrium. Anyway, as soon as you get up to a certain level you need some infrastructure, which has a good part and a bad part.’
Then there’s the whole minefield of sponsorship and advertising, with its multiple temptations for any artist of Manu’s stature. Thomas Cookman, Manu’s American record company representative, mentions in passing that another ‘alternative music’ act he looks after, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, who were inspired by Mano Negra, had pulled in half a million dollars for sponsorship deals during a tour. Manu’s comment on that story was: ‘I don’t need sponsorship and I don’t want it, either.’
When it comes to Mano Negra’s music, these issues get even more complicated. Although Manu was the main driving force and the chief songwriter in the band, La Mano still vote democratically on such matters – and, of course, the band often want to take the money. Manu always votes against the use of his music for TV ads. Emmanuel tells me that Manu turned down an offer of $100,000 to use one of his songs for an advertising campaign, and on another occasion the HSBC bank offered even more. They had inadvertently used some of Manu’s music, which had been sampled by Fatboy Slim. The ad was ready to go, and they offered Manu a cheque which could be written to any charity he wanted. He still turned it down, though it was too late to stop the ad in some territories, and the bank’s cash helped set-up Manu’s foundation, which has helped finance causes such as the Zapatistas.
Of course, if La Radiolina sold big, all these problems were only going to get worse. Emmanuel would love Manu to be huge in the States, but what about Manu?
Does he even want the album to be a colossal hit? ‘If it’s big, it’s good for a lot of things,’ he answered. ‘But maybe bad, as well. I honestly don’t care.’
I would have been suspicious of that answer if it came from most other rock stars, but my bullshit detector doesn’t pick up any bleeps or buzzes.
Later, in the backstage warren at the Boston venue, I manage to corner Manu and ask him about La Radiolina. The first few tracks grab you by the throat, but the less obvious and more captivating ones are buried deeper into the album, like hidden treasure. They include “Otro Mundo”, which imagines another, better planet, and “La Vida Tómbola”, a song about the lottery of life, inspired, like “Santa Maradona” from Mano Negra’s album Casa Babylon – by the bittersweet life of Diego Maradona. It was later to earn Manu a meeting with Maradona himself and end up in Emir Kusturica’s film about the football legend. The record’s stand out is “Me Llaman Calle”, a gorgeous flamenco-flavoured tune which was originally commissioned for the soundtrack of a film entitled Princesas about two prostitutes in Madrid.
These songs may well be the ones that lodge in the heart and endure better than banging tracks like “Rainin’ In Paradize”, which is the first single release. This reels off a list of the world’s main trouble spots from Angola to Baghdad and is rescued by the wonderful insanity of the chorus ‘Go Masai, go!’ It’s also probably the only hit single in the history of rock’n’roll in which ‘democracy’ is rhymed with ‘atrocity’.
Until La Radiolina, there had been a clear distinction between the studio albums and the live shows, which were always much rockier. According to Manu, La Radiolina is ‘more of a combination of the two’, partly because he had Madjid at his disposal, who was able to unleash heavy guitars at the flick of a plectrum. The result is slightly schizophrenic, less of an artistic whole than Clandestino or Próxima Estación: Esperanza.
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