"I didn't go from the first hippies of Buenos Aires, I went from the latter," laugh Sergio Makaroff laughs. No se lo ve, se lo escucha: desde el comienzo de la entrevista –que atiende en su casa en Barcelona, ciudad en la que está radicado desde 1978– no hay manera de hacer funcionar la cámara.So there is nothing left but to imagine his unmistakable revolutionary mustache comb with poetic precision, which he drew with fibers in simple strokes for the accidental self -portrait - he calls him himself - that appears on the lid of his most recent album, the ninthof his solo career, disaster with legs. Una conjunción de rebeldía, humor y ternura que hoy, con setenta años recién cumplidos, aborda con el mismo desparpajo y la misma lucidez con la que se plantó en la década de los setenta junto a su hermano Eduardo en Los Hermanos Makaroff, aquel fugaz pero influyente baldazo de frescura que tendió un puente inesperado hacia el sonido descontracturado de los ochenta."Composing is a pleasure, an obsession and a way of life," he says. “Empecé a los diecisiete y ahora tengo la agradable sensación de no haber compuesto aún mi mejor canción”.

Self -edited by Makaroff and produced by José Nortes - known for his work with Miguel Ríos, Quique González or Enrique Bunbury–, the album has a luxury team: Candy Caramelo in BajosTogether for the albums of both for more than thirty years), the American Danny Griffin in batteries and Manu Clavijo, an Argentine violinist based in Madrid."We recorded the album in one of the best studies in Spain for this type of music, I spend a twine that should not be spending," he says.“But I don't complain, I like to see my songs leave my house.In fact, I already have all the issues for my tenth album, which is going to leave this year ”.

Las trece canciones de Desastre con patas ya estaban escritas desde mucho antes de la pandemia, algo que sorprende a partir del tono de dulce convivencia en medio del apocalipsis de piezas como “Conjuro”, donde entre cruces de galaxias, choques de estrellas y plagas de piojos mutantes que disponen del mundo a su antojo, Makaroff canta sobre un “tsunami de lava”, la misma expresión que luego leería en el zócalo de un noticiero televisivo cuando sucedió la reciente erupción volcánica en las Canarias.Will there be anything there of those artists who without looking for it anticipate what will come?"All that sounds very nice," he replies."But not.It is pure chance.I do not see myself as a catalyst for the feelings of humanity or anything like that, much less as a prophet! ”.He already sings in "Hollow head", also from his latest album: "The magic that fascinates me most/ is that of real things".

Something much more bohemian

Cantautor de cantautores, la carrera musical de Sergio Makaroff arrancó a comienzos de los setenta en su casa natal del barrio de Palermo, cuando junto a su hermano menor Eduardo (luego fundador de Gotan Project) dieron forma a un dúo acústico que arrancó en el circuito porteño de café concerts junto a artistas como Carlos Perciavalle para reformularse como quinteto eléctrico después.

Entre los primeros fans de Los Hermanos Makaroff se encontraba un jovencísimo Charly García, quien enseguida se llevó a Sergio como asistente e invitó a la banda a abrir conciertos de Sui Generis primero y La Máquina de Hacer Pájaros después. “Charly vino a vernos en el teatro Payró en uno de los primeros recitales que dimos y le encantó.He immediately hired me as an assistant, I suppose to have me close, because there was not much to do.Sometimes I was going to buy something, sometimes I took the stage to schedule the MOOG and little else.He was the first to get excited about the Makaroff brothers, and then he and Nito participated in ‘Rock of the elevator’ ”.

Another of the band's followers was Andrés Calamaro: “He was a teenager who came to see us usually,” recalls Sergio.“When I sold half of the teams I had to go to Spain, I bought an extension and went to his house to take it.He plugged the keyboard and said ‘oh, how this kid plays!’.Shortly after Beto Satragni called me, who was forming roots: ‘Che, crazy, don't you know a keyboardist?’.I recommended Andrés, and the rest is known history.He always remembered that first little push that gave him and always helped me a lot, but it was obvious that after two weeks he would have achieved the same in any other way ”.

“Rock del Ascensor”, cuya grabación también incluyó a David Lebón y Billy Bond, fue incluida en uno de los compilados Rock para mis amigos, de 1974, y poco después se convertiría en una influencia clave en la reconfiguración del rock español en los días de destape posfranquista de finales de los setenta, todo de la mano de otros jóvenes fans de los Makaroff: Ariel Rot, Alejo Stivel y sus exitosos Tequila, quienes grabaron un versión de “El Ahorcado” en su primer disco y otra de “Rock del Ascensor” en el segundo."When they were fifteen, they came to the essays of the Makaroff and listened to us sitting on the floor, but over time the influence ended up being mutual," says Sergio.

But before continuing along that path that years later he would lead him to collaborate in Los Rodríguez letters, it is worth going briefly towards those days of Makaroff and the second hippies in the convulsed and effervescent Buenos Aires of the late sixties, starting point of aSpeaker of film that includes appearances of Jimi Hendrix, Tanguito, Miguel Granduelo or Salvador Allende, in addition to his role as an actor in the successful and provocative Musical Comedy Hair.At least, until they fired him for too provocative.

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Wild laugh

"I was a typical middle -class bourgeois teenager who lived with my parents," he recalls."Until I began to relate to the true pioneers, people like Pipo Lernoud, Tanguito or Miguel Granduelo, and my life became something much more bohemian thanks to all this influence of rock culture.".With just seventeen years he began writing songs and articles for rock magazines such as Cronopios or the beautiful people: “I wrote them by hand, with pen, in my house.The first one I wrote was about Manal, I swept the fat drop! ”He laughs.That facet of a journalist since then continued as of his composer's trade, with columns published in Spanish media such as El País newspaper or the Musical Magazine Eme Eme.

Passionate about themes as diverse as the French medieval history or the social life of ants, those columns - Air Warks at the same time scholarly and casual that honor flaneur art of daily observation - they deal with ducks, sleep late, trains inMiniature, MTV programs, razors, candlesticks, synagogues, parks, shoes, the universe, its neighborhood and, of course, about music: incurable melómano, it can be explained so much about Zeca Pagodinho, Tupac Shakur and Georgie Fame as about Wilco or Adam Green. En una de esas columnas recuerda el episodio que lo llevó a dejar la secundaria: “Cuando tenía dieciséis años y lucía una cabellera tímidamente beatlesca, mis propios compañeros de colegio intentaron cortarme el pelo. Me sujetaron entre varios mientras uno se encargaba de la tijera.I stirred as a possessed.I got rid and I ran - disappointed - to the rector's office.‘Lord’ - I said - ‘I cut my hair!’.Chiérico Aristides - How to forget his name and his fine mustotillo? - Far from moving, he snapped: ‘To start, Makaroff, not between without calling;Secondly, calm down and go to class, which has finished recess ’”.

A few years later he would meet the director of that school in an episode with a pleasure in revenge, but before that, after leaving the studies and starting to work as a cadet, at eighteen years of age he decided to travel to the United States forKnow firsthand the hippies communities of that country: "I went with very little money, with the naive dream of living in a community and making round beds with all hippies, but none of that happened," he recalls.“In the end I had to cut my hair to work as a door -to -door seller.I didn't speak very well English, but I had to survive.Played doors that some contempt 'Nazis came out and had to fight excuses to sell them subscriptions.The best of the trip were all the artists I saw ".One of them was Jimi Hendrix, but it didn't turn out as he expected: “I was very fan of Hendrix, but it was a month before he died and was very long, he sang very little and was all one of those infernals typical of the typical of thepsychedelic era that later went fashionable quickly, because they were an ambole. Yo me pellizcaba, ‘¿Cómo puede ser que esté viendo a mi ídolo y la esté pasando mal?’.But I had a good time with others with those who had less expectations, such as Grand Funk Railroad.I also saw Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor or Dr.John, in Philadelphia: that concert was the best of the entire trip ”.

De regreso a casa, una presentación en un casting con su guitarra y sus canciones fue suficiente para que lo contrataran como actor debutante junto a Rubén Rada, Valeria Lynch, Horacio Fontova y Mirta Busnelli en la comedia musical Hair: “Nos desnudábamos y cantábamos alabanzas a las drogas, incorporando recursos teatrales que en aquel entonces –1971– resultaban vanguardistas”, escribió Sergio en una de sus columnas.“The actors got off the stage and put ourselves among the public.We caused people, we touched her, we rubbed against her.My hair was still growing ".In one of the functions he discovered among the audience Arístides Chiérico, that director of his high school: “I detected it and threw myself towards him as soon as I could.Without departing almost anything from the script I caught his armchair, howling like a demon, and I spent some delicious and unforgettable seconds looking in the eye, dedicating a wild laugh ”.

Esa experiencia actoral duraría un año, y con el dinero que juntó por su participación en el musical se embarcó junto a su hermano en un viaje por Latinoamérica. Primero fueron a dedo hasta el caribe colombiano y luego partieron hacia Chile: “Éramos hippies de izquierda, algunos iban a luchar de verdad por la revolución, nosotros íbamos un poco por eso pero a correr aventuras a la vez”, contó en una entrevista reciente. “Un día salimos a caminar, terminamos en medio de la nada y dimos con un aeropuerto regional pequeñísimo. Y ahí, en medio del campo, estaba Salvador Allende, esperando que viniera un helicóptero a buscarlo. Nos acercamos y le dijimos: ‘¡Doctor Allende! ¡Somos dos jóvenes argentinos que vinimos a apoyarlo!’. ‘¡Ah, mucho gusto!’, dijo él. No teníamos ni idea de qué más que decirle, pero el recuerdo no me lo quita nadie”.

An important name

En 1978, en medio del mundial, Sergio decidió partir hacia España, parte por escapar de la dictadura y parte por experimentar aquello que Rot y Stivel le venían contando: los Tequila, la banda más exitosa en España en aquellos días, tocaban canciones de Los Hermanos Makaroff en vivo y el público, ávido de nuevas experiencias tras cuatro décadas de represión franquista, enloquecía."Exile was a heartbreaking that had more appetizing adventure than anything else," he says.The day he arrived, Stivel received him at the airport and told him that from there they would go directly to Malaga, where the band would appear that same night.“I was going to live in Alejo's house, since the mother had accepted that I had two months left at home.That concert of the day I arrived was crazy.I was among the public, and when my songs played people next to me sang them to the screams.I thought: ‘I think I'm in the right place’ ”.His suspicions were confirmed shortly after, when he got his first record contract in the prestigious CBS: “I went with a guitar borrowed to the Picasso Tower, then the tallest building in Spain, and I played three or four songs.I was all the plain of the company, and at one point the boss told me ‘Well, Sergio is fine...Welcome to the house ’.It was one of the most pleasant moments of my life, when I finished the meeting I ran down, I looked for a phone cabin, I called my old woman and said: ‘Mom mom, they hired me!’.I, who are easy to tear, I remember it today and I still get excited ".

Su primer disco solista, Tengo una idea (1980), con tapa de Juan Gatti y canciones que invitan a bailar mientras hablan sobre casos reales de asesinos seriales norteamericanos (“El hijo de Sam”), viajes astrales (“Explorador Celeste”) o romances inesperados de discoteca (“Ella dijo ¡hola!”), no tuvo el éxito esperado, y muy pronto la compañía lo cajoneó.“I immediately went to Ariola, where they told me:‘ You are going to be like Bob Dylan, a long -distance artist, we do not want an instant success, we want to develop your long -term creative career ’.I said ‘how barbaric, how good!’.There I recorded with Ariel Rot the simple ‘crazy for you’, ”says Sergio, referring to the same song that Andrés Calamaro would choose in 1988 to open his album for looking at you.“But then a CBS executive of those who didn't want to know anything with me entered Ariola, so they fell again.Then I got ‘Farruco’, as they say here.I calculated that the money they would have spent on recording an album and I said: ‘If they don't give me half of that, I nake, I paint blue, I challenge the door and tell how you treat artists’.As it seems that I said it very convinced they gave me the twine, but all the rest of my life I had to fight a bad reputation acquired by pulse within the Spanish record industry ”.

At that time I lived as I could, "a bit of actions that I did, a little copyright, my old men sent me some twine from time to time, I spent very little money".Finally he left Ariola and signed with PDI, an independent Catalan stamp, and with the silver they gave him to record a single armed a band with friends and managed to record his second LP, the good life, co -produced with Ariel Rot.A note called "could be a party", published in 1988 in the newspaper El País, accounts"Sergio Makaroff should, at this point in his career, be an important name within Spanish pop," begins the note in which the author then blames the record company for the little promotion of the album.

All thoroughly

En 1990 nacen Los Rodríguez, que en sus conciertos en vivo interpretan las canciones de Makaroff “Loco por ti”, “Rock del ascensor” o “No estoy borracho” (“Mira cómo me mantengo en un solo pie/ soy un buen muchacho”). Estas dos últimas formaron parte de Disco pirata, su segundo opus, un álbum en vivo de la banda editado en 1992, y a su vez Sergio también escribiría junto a Calamaro la letra de “La puerta de al lado”, del disco Palabras más, palabras menos, casi una película con un personaje encerrado en un cuarto de hotel (“En la recepción hay un nombre falso/ nadie en el mundo sabe dónde estoy”) que entre melodías contagiosas habla de la soledad, las adicciones, la paranoia, el suicidio.

"It was a time when I was quite on the canvas due to drug problems, and that my friends invited me to sing with them was to have contact with the stage again," he recalls.“I had been without a record contract for several years and without doing more than looking for the next dose, and that may sound very adventurous in some biographies but for me it had nothing romantic.Ten lost years, much wasted health, but one of the good things that happened to me in those years was to play with them. Después, cuando dejé las drogas, el tabaco y el alcohol para nunca más probar nada, recuperé la inspiración y la alegría de componer y cantar, y me acompañaron en el regreso de esos años oscuros, que fue el disco Un hombre feo (1996).It is a pride, because the Rodriguez are for me the best group in Spanish in history.And the thirty -three years since then the best of my life were far away ”.

Tras Un hombre feo llegaron Rico y Famoso (1998) y Makaroff (2002), con colaboraciones de Fito Páez y Jorge Drexler y producidos por Ariel Rot y Eduardo Makaroff, quien por entonces ya estaba asentado en Francia con Gotan Project: “Mi hermano es un orgullo, un guitarrista y un músico con una formación muy sólida, ya desde chico siempre estudió mucho. Participé como letrista en varias canciones de Gotan Project y él también participó en varios discos míos”, cuenta Sergio, que se confiesa pésimo dibujante, aunque el autoretrato que eligió para la tapa de Desastre con patas, su noveno disco, nació de una serie de postales artesanales que suele dejarle a su pareja por las mañanas: “Fue un dibujo que le hice a mi mujer, durante muchos años le hice postales con mensajitos: ‘Que tengas buen día’, esas cosas románticas.There I also discovered that I could express that with these stickers that use girls in schools.I have thousands, boxes and boxes.I don't think there is anyone for more than fifteen in the world that has more stickers than me, except for some princess of Saudi Arabia of those who send their butler with the private plane to London to buy them ”.

Las canciones de Desastre con patas poseen la cualidad de levantar estados de ánimo en tiempos tempestuosos, tanto en la primera escena en el tema que abre y da nombre al disco –donde cuenta que casi se desbarranca de un columpio– como en la furia repentina en la misma canción (“Cuando mi cabeza explota/ todo el vecindario lo nota”), la bossa de entrecasa “Bizcochitos”, el homenaje al poder transformador de la música en “Canciones” (“Música para bailar/ todas las mañanas del año/ ya que el mundo es sumamente extraño/ necesito canciones para empezar”), el espíritu de peleón de bar en “Take it Easy, Batatón” o la dulzura del remoloneo en pareja comiendo chocolate en rama en la cama retratada en “Claro que sí”, uno de los puntos altos de un disco con muchos puntos altos.After configuration settings, the camera finally works and there is Makaroff, its mustache of curved tips that Atusa in Tic Coqueto and its full, contagious smile. “Cuando compongo no especulo, no soy frío ni calculador, soy auténtico.It is very bad that I say it because it seems that I am self -elogying, but I am simply like I am and that has to be reflected in the songs.It is not something new, any artist realizes that for something to happen with art, and I do not mean to succeed but to make the artistic thing go well, you have to really give yourself, regardless of what happens later with that ”.And concludes: “There is not much more. Todo ahora, todo en serio y todo a fondo: eso es el arte para mí”.