For three or four long hours, half the world took it for granted that José Luis Perales, 78, had died. It was the night of August 7, when dozens of tweeters began to improvise their panegyrics to fire the great author of And how is he?, Because you are leaving either A sailboat named Liberty. It had to be the interested party himself who, with a gesture between astonished and annoyed, recorded a denial with his mobile phone in the middle of Reeves Mews street, a step away from London’s Hyde Park, endorsing his optimal state of health and confessing that the hoax had surprised him while dined with his family in the British capital.
A colossal absurdity? Indeed: this is life (and death) in our very advanced and communicated post-industrial era.
In addition to the grotesque ingredients, Monday’s episode has served to highlight at least a couple of relevant circumstances. The first and most obvious, the ease with which, in times of digital virality, we can spread false news among thousands of people that many will spread without the most basic verification. And the second and most encouraging, the sincere admiration aroused by an unusual artist, because he is very discreet, and of which he has been able to become acquainted directly thanks to this supervening condition of risen.
The singer-songwriter from Cuenca, faithful to his proverbial allergy to any role that does not strictly correspond to his artistic activity, has preferred not to make statements to EL PAÍS about this “unpleasant matter.” “After this mess, to which he does not want to give more importance, he will be disconnected for a good while,” warns his son and representative, Pablo Perales, who postpones any appearance by his father “until he has new music, which is what truly real and important.” Nothing surprising, knowing that the artist from the small municipality of Castejón abhors noise and has never sought notoriety in his daily life.
What is relevant is in those very words, even if you have to read them between the lines, and it will materialize sooner rather than later. The singer-songwriter is working “undated” on a new collection of his own compositions, a job that he had been hesitating in recent years. And he advances in the project without haste, “but with many ideas”. That is to say: with the muses reactivated and back to the notepad.
literary facet
In this eagerness to move on tiptoe, oblivious to the springs of vanity, Perales has not even boasted of his supervening literary side, by far the creative activity to which he has dedicated the most hours over the last decade. While the latest collection of his original songs, the excellent Calmdates back to 2016, in this period he has given birth to three almost consecutive novels, the melody of time (2015), The potter’s daughter (2017) and The other side of the world (2020), somewhere between customary and autobiographical, greeted with the surprise of those who do not have to limit themselves to applying a diplomatic indulgence.
“Actually, those novels are a natural continuation of his extraordinary work as a composer and lyricist,” notes Alberto Marcos, his editor at Penguin Random House. Emotional, lyrical and sentimental, framed in those La Mancha coordinates that are so familiar to him, Perales surprised by his status as a more solvent writer than a toddler. “They are choral novels in which love and family stories are mixed, full of wonderful characters and written with the same passion and humanity as their songs”, concludes the head of the publishing house.
Marcos was born in the 1970s, the same decade as Perales’s children, and he endorses the intergenerational passion that the work of the man from Cuenca increasingly arouses. This is the only way to explain, for example, the success that Elefantes have obtained with their version of I love you, recorded in 2015 in the company of Sidonie and Love of Lesbian (“other total admirers”) and since then an infallible asset in Barcelona concerts. Shuarma usually warns him from the stage, before singing it: “This song is not ours, we would like to! It is from an unattainable author.” Unattainable and eternal among us, no matter how much on Twitter –or X– they crossed him out this week for a few hours from the realm of the living.
a stealthy man
Contrary to other colleagues of the trade and generation, much more given to noise, José Luis Perales Morillas has had to find himself in the picturesque circumstance of this “death in life” to abandon for a few minutes his everlasting and longed-for status as a stealthy man. Nothing to do with the now-defunct Camilo Sesto (who today would add 76 springs), wrapped in a permanent noise, or with the media profile and eternally attached to the very first person that Julio Iglesias or Raphael embody, both sons of the generation of ’43, although the first will not acquire the status of octogenarian until September. Even the two halves of the Dynamic Duo, the affable and mild-mannered Manuel de la Calva and Ramón Arcusa, both 86 years old, have acted as more media-focused artists than Perales, a shy textbook to whom his mother, in her twenties, would repeat, annoyed : “What beautiful songs you make, what a pity that nobody knows them”.
In the end we have met them, well yes, but never for extra-musical reasons. José Luis always felt more like a composer than an interpreter, but he debuted as a solo artist just half a century ago with the extraordinary Jealous of my guitar and he no longer got off the stage until April 2022, when his tour ballads for a farewell the curtain fell forever in Montevideo (Uruguay). It was a way of expressing his gratitude for the market on the other side of the ocean. “Latin America opened its doors so much, so much, that it already forgot to close them for me,” he had summarized, with that embarrassment so his, when he undertook his penultimate tour, that of 2016.
A huge repertoire
In this half century we must count two dozen of his own albums, entire albums for other singers (impossible to ignore the cases of Rocío Jurado, Isabel Pantoja or Raphael) and nearly 600 songs with his signature; among them, a handful of indelible classics (And you go, I want to say your name, Things of Doña Asunción…), some occasional success that is more difficult to claim over the years (let the children sing) and even commissioned curiosities, such as the tune of the television series Once upon a time the man either Dance with the hula-hoopthat famous choreography with a ring at the waist that the duo Enrique and Ana popularized in 1979.
This extremely valuable and enormous repertoire ensures the economic solvency of the Perales heirs for several generations (copyrights do not expire until 70 years after the death of the owner), and has been among the most prosperous of the SGAE for years, in fierce struggle with the works of Joaquín Rodrigo and Alejandro Sanz, especially as a result of the worldwide emergence of Broken heartaround the turn of the century. The discretion that characterizes all his movements meant that Perales did not even make public his departure from the SGAE, which he decided as a result of the scandal known as La rueda, the maneuvers of a group of irrelevant authors to obtain large income with emissions. music television stations in the wee hours of the morning. Those tricks infuriated the author of I love you, disappointed by a glaring example of picaresque and careless management. But, as usual, he preferred to close the door without making the slightest noise.
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