When I sat down with Steve Berlin, the group’s sax player and de facto spokesperson, I was a little more than intrigued. To most people around the world, outside of North America anyways, Los Lobos remain the La Bamba band. How wrong we are.
There is a very common thread with the artists I’ve had on the show - and with commercial longevity - every one of the artists (except so far, Laura Veirs and Maximo Park) had a very big song: James, Turin Brakes, Gary Numan, KT Tunstall…
But Los Lobos is the most extreme example of a longevity outfit with a big song - the band had no other hits. Taking nothing away from La Bamba, a fine record and a justified number one in ten countries back in 1987. But stop right there. Try Googling, as I did, “Los Lobos, greatest American rock band” and there are more than a few articles examining that hypothesis, for good reasons. Built around the soulful songs of drummer Louis Perez and lead vocal and guitar player David Hidalgo (throw in a few rollicking rockers by Cesar Rosas) Los Lobos make solid, classic Americana-rock, but from a Latin point of view - and a deep rooted connection to traditional Mexican music: cumbia, boleros and norteños. Finally, throw the city of LA into the mix and you have the Los Lobos agenda, musically speaking.
It’s not surprising that Los Lobos have made a record of cover versions of seminal LA songs (The Beach Boys, Jackson Browne, Thee Midniters, The Blasters, War, The Jaguars) but what is surprising is how long it took to come up with the idea to do just that.
“We have a sixth sense of when to do stuff, somehow the muse talks to us”.
Los Lobos go their own way and are guided by nothing and no one in particular. On at least two occasions the band has made a masterpiece of a record in a collective state that might be described as ‘adversity’. After the 1990 album The Neighborhood, the band had given their all, gone out and toured the songs relentlessly before even recording them, and they were pushed hard by a perfectionist producer when they did finally lay the tracks down. After going back on the road yet again the band was spent, broke, well & truly burned out. And, they were angry and disillusioned with the music business.
They hauled themselves into a downtown LA studio with six new songs and teamed up with Mitchell Froom (La Bamba’s producer as it happens) together with Froom’s chief collaborator Tchad Blake. Out of those sessions came the album Kiko, the band’s first genuine magnum opus.
“We went all in. We wanted to turn everything inside out. Nothing could sound normal, it had to be noisy, turned upside down. Tchad (Blake) could even take the mistakes and turn them into something that sounded genius. We sailed into the darkness but something beautiful came out of it. When we got together and listened to the record in sequence, we were all stunned, as if we had been dosed up”.
That’s Steve’s first hand account, from memory, of Kiko’s creation. One masterpiece in, with at least two more to come. It suggests strongly that all music fans might want to spend more time listening to Los Lobos. One of the most misunderstood bands in the history of the music industry has come pretty darn close to making as many classic albums as all the names we associate with rock & roll legends. There are almost no false moves in their entire catalogue - at least creatively speaking.
Yet, 18 studio albums in and with a 50th anniversary year approaching in 2023 there is more to come from Los Lobos.
“The main thing for us is longevity and being able to do what we do and to answer to nobody other than ourselves, we have such gratitude for that. We have no obligation other than to move forward with our music”.
Now that is an agenda for lasting the distance.
What’s next? Who knows, not even Los Lobos. Yet Steve and I have fun with one idea - for Los Lobos to soundtrack a Netflix (or HBO, or AMC) production of Jaime Hernandez’ genius Mexicana soap opera Love & Rockets. What a collab that would be. Somebody get Ted Sarandos on the line…it’s Steve Berlin calling. From Los Lobos...
See also Los Lobos: Wolves Of East L.A.
Mick Clarke’s cover art is inspired by Jamie Hernandez’ genius Love & Rockets.
The Art of Longevity is produced by Audio Culture in partnership with Project Melody. Original music is by Andrew James Johnson.