Carlos Goñi (Revolver): “I have never written a beat thinking about the public or fashions”

He has always been on his own, although his presence was frequent for decades on the charts and he sold albums like hotcakes. Carlos Goñi (Madrid, 1961) has just published Playlist (2024), an album in which he has the pleasure of bringing a handful of modern Spanish rock classics closer to home: Extremoduro, Leiva, Elefantes, Amaral or La Cámara Roja pass through his particular filter. A whim? Could be. In any case, what the body asks of you. And with the utmost respect to its authors: everyone was notified in advance, although it was not required because they were versions in Spanish. The respect is also palpable in the versions. There is reverence, and no disfigurement. “I’m not going to play the vocal melody, I’m a Taliban for that, because there is someone who has decided that those are the notes, and not others,” he tells me about his reasons for making these songs sound both like him and like them. their first responsible. “As Woody Guthrie said on his deathbed to Bob Dylan, what matters is the lyrics and how you say it: I don’t want to do something that is the most weird possible, but rather that the song seems like I wrote it,” he emphasizes.

The material was already diverse, and it is logical that some songs cost him more than others. He confesses that “the most complex was The back door sidewalk, by Extremoduro, because it has some very complicated rhythm changes, which I resolved with a rise in tone and doubling the tempos of the snare drum.” Aside from the fact that there are those who may be surprised to hear him sing that “they bury me with my dick on the outside so that a mouse can eat it”, which should not be: “you see, as if I fucked it with paper smoking: I have never done it.” Perhaps the most surprising is Indestructible, from The Red Room, which he strips of electricity to make it acoustic. “Jorge (Martí) was moved when he heard it: to make an album like this you have to have very little shame, because people are used to listening to these songs in one way, and if you change them they can look at your profile,” he assumes. . Luckily it was not so.

Goñi, born in Madrid, later raised in Alicante and living in Valencia since he was 18, has been living in the capital of Spain for some time, although he maintains his home in L’Eliana, in whose studio, now run by Luis Martínez, they record a multitude of groups. He states that “I would choose Valencia to live with my eyes closed, it is the most beautiful and livable, and it has treated me immeasurably”, but also that he has always felt like “an exiled Madrid native”, and that is why he now feels compelled to closing a circle and living in the mountains of Madrid: “I get on extremely badly with my childhood, but the only decent memories I have of it have to do with Navacerrada and getting on my mother’s scooter with a sidecar to spend a Sunday there” , recognize. That’s why he has returned to where it all began. Is Valencia a good city to promote a career in music? “Nowadays it doesn’t matter where you live: you can be in Alaska, and if people like it, you will reach them, because there is no longer a place, everything happens at home or in the cloud,” he reasons.

Goñi has returned to self-publishing and self-management, and I ask him if he came away scalded by his previous experience with Nena Records, a label he founded in the late nineties that also published material by other musicians. “One of the reasons I closed it is that I sent one of my promotion bands to Galicia for interviews, but they only wanted to do Radio 3, when I continued giving interviews to everyone and had sold two million records: they didn’t understand it,” he says. The experience was recently repeated on her new label with “another artist who didn’t want to come as an opening act with me on tour: I must be from another planet, it surprised me.” Revolver’s imminent tour begins on May 3, and will not skimp on classics. “I am aware that Radiohead do not always play what they are supposed to: I make my albums only as my heart dictates, never thinking about the public, fashion or avant-garde,” he says, but admits that in their “concerts I am the host of a party.” in which I have to ensure that my guests have the best possible time, and it is not about being condescending to them, but rather that I have a lot of people in front of me who are giving me their time and their money. So he is clear what he is going to do The Golden, Saint Peter either The touch of your skinlike the Who, whom he saw recently in Barcelona, ​​“they do not leave themselves in the pipeline Won’t gel fooled again”.

_