The following article is an overview of the career of Spanish keys player, composer, arranger, and producer Javier Losada. The main source of information are two interviews with Mr Losada, conducted by Bas Tukker in April and May 2024. The article below is subdivided into two main parts; a general career overview (part 3) and a part dedicated to Javier Losada’s Eurovision involvement (part 4).
All material below: © Bas Tukker / 2024
Contents
- Passport
- Short Eurovision record
- Biography
- Eurovision Song Contest
- Other artists about Javier Losada
- Eurovision involvement year by year
- Sources & links
PASSPORT
Born: January 16th, 1960, Los Yébenes (Spain)
Nationality: Spanish
SHORT EUROVISION RECORD
Javier Losada took part in the Eurovision Song Contest on one occasion, arranging and conducting the Spanish entry to the 1992 edition of the festival, ‘Todo esto es la música’, performed on the night in Malmö by Serafín Zubiri.
BIOGRAPHY
Javier Losada was born in Los Yébenes, a village situated 40km to the south of Toledo. Although a cobbler by profession, Javier’s father was a musician at heart.
“His daytime job was being a shoe mender, but, even so, I guess it is fair to say that he was a musician first and foremost,” Javier explains. “He was the leader of a small entertainment orchestra, consisting of eight or nine musicians, which performed at weddings and other local events two or three times a week. His weekend job provided the family with important extra income. My oldest memory is listening to my father playing the saxophone. In fact, he was a multi-instrumentalist, because he also played flamenco guitar, mandolin, and a little bit of violin too. He never had the opportunity to pursue a high-level music education because of the Civil War in Spain in the 1930s. His father – so my grandfather – who was from a gypsy family, found himself on the losing side of the war and was killed by the Francoists. All my dad learnt about music theory was from his father before he was murdered – and then a little bit from one of his uncles. Many gypsies are fantastic musicians and there were some great examples in my family. My father was a very good sight-reader. I’ve never managed to reach his level of proficiency in that respect.”
“When I was about five years old, at the feast of Reyes Magos (a traditional Catholic festival in Spain celebrated on the day preceding the feast of Epiphany – BT), my grandmother gave me a melodica, a little keyboard which you can play by blowing air through a mouthpiece. I had tried the guitar and the trumpet before, and though I was intrigued by those instruments, I couldn’t manage to play them. With this melodica, it was different. My mother told me later that, about one hour after unpacking it, I had somehow figured out how to play ‘Silent Night’ on it. It made my father think. There was no pianist in his wedding orchestra – couldn’t I fill in that job for him in the future? That’s why he started teaching me the piano and solfege as best he could. One day, when I was six years old, he brought me to one of those wedding performances – and I got to play two or three songs, one of them being La Jenka (officially entitled ‘Let Kiss’, first released by Gudrun Jankis, a big dance hit across Europe in the mid-1960s – BT). When the audience applauded me, my overriding feeling was that this was what I wanted to do in life; being on stage entertaining people.”
Javier (far left) with cover band Los Zares performing in Benidorm during the summer season (late 1970s)
“A couple of years later, aged nine, I became the regular pianist in my father’s orchestra, performing with them for the next seven odd years. It was part of my education to play tunes like ‘Una paloma blanca’ and ‘Eviva España’ night after night. Around that time, my father said that he could teach me nothing more – and he then found me a professional teacher to prepare me for the conservatoire. Her name was Angelita Ferrero. She was a fantastic teacher, but I was a very bad student. I was forced to play and understand classical music, but I have to confess that I didn’t like it at the time. I was interested in The Beatles, Santana, Blood Sweat & Tears… and admittedly, it was a little bit of a disaster every time I had to play my lessons to Ms Ferrero, but I guess she must have sensed I had the intuition required to progress in music.”
“Listening to records from England and America, I was fascinated by the sound of the organ. My dream was to be Keith Emerson, the keyboard player of Emerson, Lake & Palmer. One of my biggest wishes at the time was to have a Hammond organ, but it was much too expensive. When I was about fifteen years old, I had finally saved enough money to buy myself a Farfisa Fast4, an organ of an Italian brand. It sounded a lot like the Hammond, but was much cheaper than the real thing. I was in love with the lush sound of this Farfisa organ. It felt like a liberation being able to express myself on this instrument rather than being stuck with the piano.”
“After being admitted to the Royal Conservatoire in Madrid, I studied the piano with one the academy’s professors for some years, but without much enthusiasm. I made sure I passed my grades, but nothing more than that. By the time I was seventeen or eighteen, I decided to quit the academy. My father must have been disappointed, but he didn’t say a word; he and I both knew that I was never going to be a concert pianist. My mother was very worried and wondered if I was interested in getting a job in the community hall, where my father had also found work after disbanding his wedding orchestra. I told her, ‘Mother, listen, if I have to die for something, I want to die for music. So please let me do this the way I want to.’ She asked me with the best intentions, because she knew from close range how difficult a musician’s life can be – looking for odd jobs here and there. Music is a profession with highs and lows, but it’s the only thing that I wanted.”
Javier (on the right) playing the keyboard with the group Fango in Benidorm; behind him is drummer Vicente Galvez (1979)
“By the time I got out of the conservatoire, I had been recruited to play the organ in a cover band from Madrid called Los Zares. For three or four years, I played in the club circuit day in, day out, playing the hits of the day. It was a step up from my father’s wedding band, but just a little one. In the summer season, we were performing in Benidorm on the Costa Blanca, entertaining the tourists. During that period, I got to know a Mexican girl – and at some point we travelled to Latin America together to get married.”
“Upon arrival in Mexico, her father told me straightaway, ‘Javi, welcome to our family! We love you very much, but you’re not going to be a musician here.’ They were rich people who didn’t look upon music as a real job. ‘Don’t worry,’ he added, ‘we’ll make sure you’ll have a proper job here with a secretary and all.’ This came as a shock to me. That night, as young as I was, I suffered a heart-attack! I was in hospital for two weeks. To make matters worse, I caught typhoid because I was unaware that you cannot drink water from the tap in Mexico. Although I still had a forty-degrees fever, I stepped on the plane to get back to Spain after those two weeks. I was disappointed my future wife didn’t support me, so I cancelled the marriage. Without music, my life would be insufferable. I moved in with my parents in Los Yébenes temporarily, suffering from fever for three more months before slowly getting back on my feet.”
“Even before going to Mexico, my dream was to be a studio musician, but it was difficult to work your way into that world. There was a small nucleus of musicians absorbing all session work. In Benidorm, I had become used to playing synthesisers, but all synth sessions in Madrid were done by José Antonio Quintano, who I hugely admired. How could I get a foot in the door? Shortly after getting back from Mexico, I was contacted by Phil Trim, a guy from Trinidad who was a successful singer in Spain. He had had a hit with ‘Mamy Blue’. I had struck up a friendship with him during my time in Benidorm, where he regularly performed with his own band, The Pop-Tops. Sometimes, he came down to the bar where Los Zares were performing – and he liked the way I played organ and synthesisers. While I was still suffering from a fever in my parents’ house, Phil came for a visit and told me that he was about to record a solo album. ‘I’m about to get into the studio. Would you like to be my musical director on this project?’ It was a dream come true! All the arrangements for the album (released in 1981 under the title ‘Aqui estoy’ – BT) had been done by Phil himself, but he insisted on crediting me as his MD. It was a very generous thing of him to do.”
Phil Trim's 1981 album 'Aqui estoy' was Javier Losada's first stint at working in the recording studio
“The recording with Phil turned out very nicely, but the album wasn’t a big success in terms of sales. What was I to do next? At that point, somebody asked me if I knew someone who could do background vocals for a recording session. I immediately replied, ‘Yes, I can do that! I’m a singer!’ That was untrue, but I was confident that I had a good ear. Singing backgrounds is not the same as being a solo singer. It’s mostly about being able to sing harmonies with a group of others. For the next year or so, singing backgrounds in studio sessions became my main line of work. It wasn’t what I had been dreaming of, because I was a keyboard player, but there were no opportunities in that field at the time. These were hard times, because I wasn’t making a lot of money, living in cheap apartments in Madrid – sometimes even without running water, meaning that I had to wash my clothes in a river nearby. But I persevered, because you sometimes have to fight to reach your goal.”
“One of the first producers to give me an opportunity as a keyboard player was Oscar Gómez. Apart from José Antonio Quintano, many of the other keyboard session players were rather old-fashioned. That was my luck. I had meanwhile bought myself a Korg Polysix, a synthesiser which produced a sound which was very close to the Minimoog – and I had somehow invented a way of constructing phrases which were perceived as very modern. Oscar Gómez worked a lot with a British arranger called Graham Preskett. That first time when Oscar called upon me, he told me, ‘Javi, I’ve just been sent this score by Graham from London, but I think we need some keyboards here. What do you feel? Can you invent something?’ He was looking for a gimmick which would make the record more memorable. I didn’t have to read a lot of music sheets, which was a good thing, because I wasn’t very good at that. Oscar learned to trust me when it came to finding the gimmicks he was looking for. For quite some years, Oscar Gómez was the main producer I worked with.”
“Graham Preskett usually worked from London, but sometimes he came to Spain too. If you gave Graham a bottle of rum, he could write a full orchestral arrangement in one morning. I saw it with my own eyes! While Oscar Gómez was mixing in the studio and I was working on keyboard lines, Graham was sitting on the floor, either sleeping or writing music, with a bottle in his hand. He’s one of the best I’ve ever worked with. Later on, Hans Zimmer called upon Graham to join him in Hollywood. I met Hans in London when he was still working as a sound engineer. He was interested in the technology behind the electronic instruments like me, so we bonded well. He didn’t have a theoretical background as a musician, but he’s a good businessman – and that’s how he built his career as a film composer in America. Still, every time when you see the name of Hans Zimmer mentioned in the end credits of a film, you should remember there are genius orchestrators like Graham Preskett behind him working on those great film scores of his.”
The band of Tino Casal away on tour in c. 1984, from left - Deo de la Cruz (bass), Oscar Quesada (drums), Javi Monforte (guitar), Tino Casal, Javier Losada (synths), a sound engineer called Javier, and Mac (keyboards)
“In my early days as a session musician, I saw someone walking by in the corridor of the studio – someone dressed really extravagantly. It turned out this was Tino Casal, who was about to have his major breakthrough as the singer of the new generation in Spain. He was our country’s most popular artist throughout the 1980s. A little bit later, I received a call from Javier Monforte, a guitar player I was playing with in the live circuit at the time. He explained that he had been included in the band of a new artist – and that they were still looking for a second keyboard player. It turned out the artist he was talking about was Tino Casal. His first keyboard player was Luis Cobos, who doubled as his producer. An audition was held with several candidates, of which I was one. Before I had finished my audition, Tino walked up to me and asked, ‘Do you want the job?’ ‘Of course!’, I said. ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘In that case you’re in!’”
“I was thrilled! Because I had been working in Luis Cobos’ studio in the preceding weeks and months, I had already heard bits and pieces of Tino’s new album, which I thought was great. The arrangements were amazing and the production was very progressive. There were delays in the vocals which were done so professionally – I had previously only heard something similar on records from abroad, but Luis and Tino managed to do it exactly right. I was in awe of them. Tino was at the forefront of the Movida Madrileña, a progressive cultural movement which I very much identified with. I was proud to become part of their team.”
“Working with Tino Casal felt like living in a parallel universe. Because he became so successful, he got advances from his record company EMI. Tino then took this money and spent it on plane tickets to London for himself and his whole band. There, he went looking for new musical instruments and clothes for the upcoming tour. Tino insisted on us wearing different outfits every night. Each show had to be a unique experience. The clothes we got to wear were usually very extravagant. All expenses were paid for by Tino. We also were the first in Spain to buy a Movement, which was a drum computer which could be used live on stage, and several other instruments which nobody here had ever seen before… such as a PPG synthesiser and a ten-string bass. Tino insisted on creating a sound on stage which was different from what people were used to. Spanish audiences were looking at us as if we were extraterrestrials. When performing in a club, people regularly forgot to applaud after the first few songs, simply because they were so astonished at what was going on on stage. It often took them three or four songs to get what we were actually doing.”
Javier (on the right) with Tino Casal (c. 1984)
“After the first tour, I also became part of the group of musicians recording with Tino in the studio. Very early on, Tino and I promised each other never to use the factory presets of a synthesiser. ‘Let’s try to find a sound which is very different from the ordinary,’ Tino said. ‘Let’s really get into this synthesiser and see what it can do for us.’ Wow, this was the next step for me! I didn’t just work on Tino’s own records, but also on studio projects for other artists produced by Tino; one of the main acts I got to work with because of this was a heavy metal group, Obús, which became really popular in that period.”
“Usually, I was doing live gigs with Tino Casal, but also with other artists, on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. For the remainder of the week, I could be found in the studio. Meanwhile, it wasn’t just Oscar Gómez or Luis Cobos I was working with, but other producers too. The 1980s were an extremely busy decade for me. I remember many days went by without sleeping. Tino especially liked working during nighttime. So we worked all night until 7am, then I got back home to perhaps get an hour of sleep, take a shower, and have breakfast – and then I would rush back to the studio again for an appointment at 9am with, let’s say, Manuel Pacho, a producer who mostly recorded jingles and commercials. After I had finished with Pacho, we went out to a pub to have a beer. Looking back, I cannot understand how I had the energy to maintain such a working schedule for months on end. I suppose the answer is that I was very young at the time. Like many of my colleagues, I was surviving on alcohol and some other substances.”
“One day, when I was away on tour in Barcelona with a popular lady singer called Mari Trini, Oscar Gómez called me from Madrid. ‘Javi, we have to go to London next week!’ He told me about a Mexican girl singer who he was recording an album with. ‘Well, alright, Oscar, whatever you want,’ I replied. ‘Yes, but you have to write me three string arrangements! Can you do that for me? It’s easy. I know you can do it! Don’t worry, I’ll send you the songs.’ I was astonished. It turned out Graham Preskett was unavailable at the time, which is why Oscar thought of me… but I had never arranged strings before. After the conversation with Oscar, I immediately called my old friend Phil Trim. Phil always wrote his own string arrangements. I asked Phil for advice, which he was generous enough to give me. That was my starting point. Then, well, I suppose I just did it; I wrote those arrangements to the best of my ability.”
Tino Casal (red trousers) and his band on one of their tours in a restaurant with two serving girls and, from left to right - Tino Casal, Mac (keys), Deo de la Cruz (bass), road manager Juan, Javier Monforte (guitar), Javier Losada (keys), and Oscar Quesada (drums) (c. 1985)
“Oscar hadn’t told me beforehand, but the studio in London he had booked for the string sessions was Abbey Road! I couldn’t believe this was happening to me and I was extremely nervous. My legs were trembling when I stood up to conduct. Fortunately the group of players in front of me was not too big; there were some sixteen of them. To my dismay, it soon turned out I had made some mistakes in the translation of the key of some notes for the viola. I told the concertmaster, ‘Please give me one minute to fix this.’ I felt really ashamed, because such errors are rare in studio sessions – especially given we had booked just one hour to complete the recording. In the end, it took me some twenty minutes to fix two or three notes – and then we got the recording done just in time. The musicians were very respectful, and so was Oscar Gómez. He didn’t fall out with me and afterwards he even went out of his way to thank me for the work I had done.”
“You could say I had just scraped through this first arranging stint. I was aware this was something which could take me one further step up the ladder, which was another reason why I had been feeling so nervous. As it happened, Oscar Gómez kept asking me to write arrangements subsequently – and slowly, other producers followed suit. I had never studied arranging in the conservatoire, but I had my role models; arrangers who I had worked with in the studio and whose orchestrations I felt were really good – of course there was Graham Preskett, but also guys like Jesus Gluck and Eduardo Leiva. So I knew what I wanted my arrangements to sound like. Furthermore, after that first experience in London, I found myself some textbooks which helped me acquiring the theoretical background required to write scores. This has always been my preferred way of learning, trying to figure out things by myself rather than listen to a teacher.”
“The same is true about conducting. I have never taken any formal lessons, but I saw lots of others conducting in the studio while I was one of the session musicians. Later, Luis Cobos, who is an excellent conductor, gave me some valuable advice. I may have made some horrible mistakes in my early days as a studio conductor, but I’ve gone on to do many recordings with large orchestras – even symphony orchestras. In fact, one or two years after that first conducting stint at Abbey Road, Julián Ruiz, who had taken over the producer’s job for Tino Casal’s albums, asked me to write a set of medley arrangements for an album of Walt Disney’s music recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London! (‘Magic Disney’, released in 1986 – BT) Standing in front of that orchestra and listening to the musicians playing my arrangements, I felt like Superman – but that was only for a split-second, because the responsibility is too big to allow yourself to get carried away! Still, it was a proud moment. From that time on, I’ve grown in confidence when standing up in front of a group of musicians.”
For the sessions of the 1986 album 'Magic Disney', Javier Losada conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London
“Although not regularly, I managed to compose some songs for the odd project here and there as well, but this always happened when somebody else asked me to. In my early days in the studio, one of the assistants of Oscar Gómez was Mariano Pérez. He had started out as a backing singer like me. Sometimes, Mariano could say, ‘I want to compose something, but I really don’t feel comfortable doing it alone. Shall we make something together?’ In that case, we sat together to work on new songs, usually at my apartment. That’s how we wrote ‘Mi mundo, tú’ for Camilo Sesto and ‘Hoy sin ti’ for Mocedades, titles for which I still receive property rights regularly.”
“It must have been some time in 1984 or 1985, when I was working as a keyboard player on a session organised by Oscar Gómez. During a break, Oscar approached me, asking, ‘Javi, somebody called from Mexico asking us to write a piece of intro music for a TV series – something romantic with the image showing a man and a woman kissing. Could you write something on the piano for me?’ I said, ‘Alright,’ and Oscar bluntly told the sound engineer, ‘Record!’, as I was improvising a melody – a very slow, romantic one. Two months later, Oscar told me, ‘I was contacted by someone who has been handed a big budget to make a cartoon series about imps. I think your melody written for my Mexican client could work wonderfully well for this. Let’s forget about Mexico and use your melody for this project instead.’ Clever as always, he had already figured out that the words Soy un gnomo (‘I am a gnome’ – BT) could be fitted onto the first few bars of the melody. However, I was still stuck with the idea of a romantic song, wondering how it could be appropriate for a cartoon series. ‘No, no,’ Oscar clarified, ‘We’ll speed it up a bit and turn it into a happy tune!’.”
“As it happened, even though it hadn’t been originally intended for a children’s series, my song was accepted as the signature tune of David El Gnomo (marketed internationally as The World Of David The Gnome – BT). The lyrics for ‘Soy un gnomo’ were written by María Lar, a background singer who I was good friends with from my early days in the recording industry. The original version was sung by Jorge Gómez, none other than Oscar’s brother, who has a deep, raspy voice, which fitted the song very well.”
Javier Losada composed the theme song for The World Of David The Gnome - a 1985 TVE series which was also sold to many TV companies abroad - as well as co-composing the incidental music for the same cartoon
“The budget being rather lavish, we had the opportunity to record the strings for our song in London, but all the synthesiser parts were done by me, simply here in Madrid. The production company then went on to ask us to write incidental music for the series as well – and I ended up being co-composer of all 26 episodes together with Eladio Camacho. Even though ‘Soy un gnomo’ isn’t a great song, I’m very proud of it. The series caught on in many countries and many people today still remember the tune. Everybody is amazed when they find out I wrote it. Also in terms of revenues, it’s an important piece of music for me. That one song earned me the property rights to buy a much larger apartment.”
“One of my best friends in those days was Daniel Maroto, a guitarist who I had got to know during the summer seasons in Benidorm in the late 1970s. We had continued to hang out together after I had become a session player. One day, while we were in a bar in Madrid, we decided that it was time to record a duet. ‘I’ll have a talk about it with Oscar Gómez,’ I said – and then Oscar agreed to record a single with us. We called ourselves Veni Vidi Vici and that first single, ‘Viviendo de noche’, was a big hit in discos in Spain and across the Latin-speaking world, but especially in Mexico and Brazil.” (in 1986 – BT)
“For me, Veni Vidi Vici had just been about having a bit of fun with a good friend, but because the song had caught on so unexpectedly, we ended up touring in Mexico for the next three or four years. We did an album, which sold well, and a second one two years later, which met with less success. At that point, I made the decision to let go of the project. It hadn’t been my ambition to be a star in my own right anyway. I wasn’t interested in taking centre-stage. I had seen from close range how stardom could weigh down upon artists. I guess I’m too much of a musician to work on advertising myself to remain in the public eye. By that time, I understood that I was best at working backstage, helping others to rise to fame.”
Javier (left) as half of the duo Veni Vidi Vici with Daniel Maroto
“All the while, I had continued to work steadily with Tino Casal. I can still see myself at Abbey Road in London in the recording session for Tino’s big hit ‘Eloise’. It had been arranged by Andrew Powell, who was Alan Parsons’ regular arranger. He had written a fantastic orchestration for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. We also recorded another song, ‘El volcan’, for which I had done the arrangement. During a break, Andrew Powell came up to me and said, ‘I love the arrangement that you did for that song, Javier. In a way, it sounds very Moroccan – it’s obvious that you put in a lot of Spanish soul in that track. I really mean it!’ That was another proud moment, because I hugely looked up to this guy. After ‘Magic Disney’, where some of the arrangements I had done were still perhaps a bit wobbly, I was now really starting to understand how best to write for large orchestras. Andrew Powell’s comment confirmed that I was on the right track.”
“When I heard that Tino Casal had died in a car crash (in 1991 – BT), I couldn’t believe it. For several days I kept asking myself what I was going to do now. There was nobody like Tino. After that, I did one more tour with another singer I worked for as an arranger and musical director, Emilio Aragón. It was a very nice experience; the musicians were taken good care of and the payment was handsome, but still I felt like stepping back in time. It was as if I was back in my father’s wedding orchestra playing ‘Una paloma blanca’. For almost ten years, I had been at the forefront of modern pop music with Tino – and I couldn’t accept going back to playing old-fashioned commercial dance music. That’s why I decided to quit touring altogether. From that day on, I’ve focused exclusively on recording.”
“By that time, I had also started producing records for several singers. One of the first artists to come my way was Massiel. Oscar Gómez said, ‘Why don’t you take over the production of her new album from me? I know you can do it.’ I first wanted to meet Massiel to see if she was comfortable with the idea. As it happened, she was good friends with Tino Casal, so she knew that I was rather progressive in my ideas – and she wanted to create a more modern sound than her previous record, which is why she agreed to Oscar’s suggestion to team up with me. Working with Massiel could be a bit of an adventure; like so many of us at the time, she was having some issues with alcohol, but she was lovely and very much willing to listen to my directions. In fact, we struck up a friendship which has lasted until the present day.”
Javier with his two-year-old daughter Stephanie (1992)
“By the early 1990s, Oscar Gómez had allowed his work pace to slow down a little bit. I didn’t have to look far for replacement work, because Oscar’s former assistant Mariano Pérez was now a producer in his own right. He was the producer of Ricky Martin’s first solo album (in 1991 – BT), right after Ricky had left the boyband Menudo. I did half of the arrangements for that album, the other half was done by Carlos Gomez, a pianist from Aranjuez who I had introduced to the record business. I can’t say I saw the potential of Ricky Martin as an international star at the time. To me, it was just one recording project among the many. It was obvious that he was a handsome guy, but his vocal range wasn’t that impressive. Perhaps Mariano Pérez was the secret behind the success. Mariano was the best producer when it came to getting the best vocal performance in a session. He was such a perfectionist! It didn’t matter to him if singers were crying when he asked them to sing a certain line for the umpteenth time, he just made them do it. Possibly it taught Ricky how to use his voice to the best effect. As a producer, I’ve always tried to remain friendly with artists in all circumstances – very much in contrast with Mariano Pérez’s approach, but Mariano’s instructions might very well have contributed to Ricky’s success later on.”
“Around that same time, I also did part of the arrangements of Mecano’s album ‘Aidalai’. José Maria Cano, the leader of the band, preferred to have me doing the keyboards on his sessions rather than his brother Nacho. Admittedly, José Mari wasn’t easy to work with. Just to give you an example; at some point, we were about to travel to London to record my orchestration to a new version of José Mari’s hit ‘Hijo de la luna’, with the vocals being done by Montserrat Caballé. While we were recording the rhythm base for the track in Madrid, José Mari approached me, ‘Javi, can I ask you a favour? Could you mime the conducting here in the studio over the bases? I will make a video of you doing that, which will help me to make the correct gestures, because I would like to conduct the session in Abbey Road instead of you.’ I told him that you can’t just stand up in front of a group of musicians imitating a set of hand movements taught to you by someone else… that you have to react to the musicians as they are playing, but it was no use. He insisted.”
“So José Mari made the video of me in Madrid, but somehow he must have had second thoughts, because when the session in London with the English Chamber Orchestra in Abbey Road was about to begin, he said, ‘Javi, I would like you to conduct it.’ He must have felt that he wasn’t up to it – and so I took over and the session was flawless. Still, it’s one of the funniest things which has happened to me in all my career. It just showed how eager José Mari was to demonstrate that he was an accomplished musician. There was always this element of competition with his brother. He wanted to be regarded as more refined, better educated than Nacho – that was the thing.”
In the studio in London for the recording sessions of Alejandro Sanz's album 'Si tú me miras', from left - Alejandro Sanz, producer Miguel Ángel Arenas "El Capi", guitarist Paco de Lucía, and keyboardist Javier Losada (1993)
“In the 1990s, I also got involved in composing advertisement jingles. In those days, there was still good money to be made in that line of work, unlike today. Furthermore, some interesting studio projects came along which involved a mix of dance and New Age music. With Luis Cobos and Julián Ruiz, I had previously done an album with monks singing over rhythmical music, which was something new at the time. It gave us the idea to do something similar – and two years later, we got together for an album project called ElBosco, with half of the songs written by Luis Cobos, and the other half by Julián Ruiz and me. The eventual hit song ‘Nirvana’ was by Julián and me. It came about in a very simple way. Working in Luis’ studio, the two of us found a melody on a basic rhythm track which we had created. At the time, Julian was working as a part-time radio deejay. One day, while he was away at the radio station, I finished this basic track with Cobos’ sound engineer Javier Casado, improvising vocals over the track – the vocals which were later replaced by a children’s choir singing words from the Bible. When Julián came back to the studio and listened to it, he agreed that it was a good additional track for our new album. We had no idea yet that this one track was going to be in the charts in so many countries worldwide.”
“For that first ElBosco album (called ‘Angelis’ and released in 1995 – BT), we decided to sign all the compositions with a pseudonym; I called myself Loxatus. We did this to create the suggestion in Spain that this was a mysterious project from abroad. The record company created a big hype around it by inviting a bunch of journalists for the album presentation which took place in a plane 9km above Madrid. It cost them a lot of money, but the trick worked. The media never even guessed that the album had been created by three local studio musicians. Otherwise they might very well not have accepted it the way they did. It certainly was different. The album took off in a way nobody could have foreseen, becoming a big hit in Spain and selling over two million copies worldwide.”
“In those years, I was involved in similar projects with Oscar Gómez and Luis Cobos, but none took off quite the way that first ElBosco album had done. Some years later, our hit song ‘Nirvana’ was included in the soundtrack of a British youth film (entitled Millions and released in 2004 – BT), which came as a big surprise to all of us. I cannot say that ‘Nirvana’ is the best tune I ever wrote, but it certainly was the most successful one. It was nice to explore this music genre for a while. Looking at myself as a musician, I’ve always thought of myself as a 4x4 car, a vehicle able to perform well in different circumstances. I love to try my hand at all kinds of things. I wouldn’t have wanted to write the same type of arrangements for years on end. I want to feel music in all its aspects. Whenever a new genre presents itself to me, I dive into it to fully understand what it’s about. While working on it, you have to love what you’re doing – otherwise, it’s no use trying to get to the bottom of it. You cannot create something good when you don’t like it.”
At work on the Globe Icon Project with the legendary American singer-songwriter Dr. John (c. 2005)
“For some of my advertisement and recording projects, I got to work with big orchestras. For yet another New Age project, produced by Julio Palacios, I conducted the City of Prague Philharmonic. For subsequent recording sessions, I’ve worked with the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra in Slovakia, which is a great group of classical players. With them, we did a recording of a song recorded by Sergio Dalma for the tourist board of the town of Peñiscola in Eastern Spain – and the orchestral sessions for an album called ‘Gala Latina’ were also recorded in Bratislava. This was a crossover project of Latin music recorded with a quartet of lyrical singers, two guys and two ladies who called themselves Pópera. The producer was Miguel Ángel Arenas, nicknamed El Capi, with whom I have worked very often until the present day.”
“This particular project unexpectedly gave me the opportunity to conduct the Costa Rica Symphony Orchestra. For some reason, the Pópera record was very popular in Costa Rica, which is why the local orchestra invited the four singers to come to San José to do a concert series with them. At some point, while I happened to be in Costa Rica with El Capi for a completely different recording project, we received the news that the local conductor had fallen ill. They wanted me to step in, which I did for one or two nights, after which he was able to take over again. Of course the arrangements were all mine, so it wasn’t that difficult, although it was a new experience for me having to work with a large symphony orchestra without the backup of a click track. You’re alone with the orchestra in front of you and the singers in your back. It was a bit scary, but everything went well.”
“After the turn of the century, the opportunities to work on new pop music more or less evaporated, but it simply meant that I went looking for new lines of work elsewhere. With Julián Ruiz, who had good contacts in a mobile phone company called Vodafone, I did a series of short music videos around the themes Human Rights and Globe Icon. For the latter, we got to record tracks with some world stars like Dr. John and Zucchero, which was very special. These were the early days of mobile phones being able to screen videos – it was uncharted territory, so to speak. Each month, a new video was released for users of the Vodafone network.”
At the Christmas dinner of Artists' Association A.I.E., from left - Javier de Juan, Manolo Aguilar, and Javier Losada (2010)
“The music tracks for the Human Rights videos were recorded in a very funny way, simply by Julián and me working on a laptop from the comfort of Julián’s house. We were completely free to create whatever we liked, without someone looking over our shoulder. Some of those videos turned out really amazing. We later tried to sell the Human Rights videos to the United Nations – Julián and I even travelled to New York for it, but we didn’t get further than the entrance hall of the UN Headquarters. We were a bit naïve to think that we could simply knock on the door and tell some functionary about how wonderful our videos were. We simply didn’t have the connections required to get further with it.”
“In more recent years, I’ve spent a lot of time and energy on board work for two organisations; the AIE, which is the defender of artists’ rights in Spain, and the SGAE, the Spanish Association of Composers, Lyricists and Music Publishers. When signing my first publishing contracts many years ago, I noticed that I was actually signing for my rights to be taken away from me until seventy years after my death. That made me think about justice and injustice in the music industry. Music publishers have a lot of power over artists and composers, even though they don’t create one single note themselves. When I got onto the SGAE board in 2015, my main ambition was to stop publishers being allowed to vote on matters within the association. They simply have too much power in almost any given field of the music business. Although I was SGAE’s vice-president for some five years and invested a lot of time on it, I didn’t succeed. It proved a nut which was too tough to crack. One of the things I’m thinking about is to stand for a new term in the future to try and achieve those ambitions at the second go.”
“These years on the SGAE board were hectic. In one week, I travelled from Madrid to Las Vegas, then on to Tokyo, and back to Madrid. I didn’t enjoy the travelling around very much and of course it left me with little time to work on my own music. One of the few things I did in those years was a project centring around the repertoire of Paco de Lucía, a flamenco guitarist and composer who had passed away a few years previously. With my good friend José Miguel Évora, I was commissioned to translate Paco de Lucía’s repertoire to orchestrations which were to be played by the Royal Symphony Orchestra of Seville – and it wasn’t easy to turn guitar music into full orchestral arrangements! José Miguel and I each conducted our own arrangements in a live recording session done at the Cartuja Stadium in Seville. It was one of the most ambitious projects I’ve ever been involved in.”
At work in the recording studio with guitarist Pedro Palomar (2013)
“In 2020, just when I had to stand down from the SGAE board after my second term, the Covid lockdown happened. I had a really hard time getting back into the music business. At that point, my wife and I thought about what to do. We were feeling uncomfortable living in Madrid in this unprecedented situation; and then I had this dream to have a big studio of my own. I had built a studio into our apartment previously – initially a very small one in our kitchen, and then another one which was a little bit more refined, allowing me to work on my own recordings. Aiming at moving to another place where we would feel more at ease, we decided to put our apartment up for sale and see what would happen. To our surprise, we sold it within a month, meaning that we had to hurry finding ourselves another house. One of the places we visited was an old farm in the vicinity of Perales de Tajuña, some 40km to the east of Madrid. There was a main house with an old stable some 100 metres away from it on a plot of land of three hectares. My wife wasn’t that thrilled about the prospect of living in this place, where a lot of work would have to be done to bring it up to our standards of living.”
“Subsequently, we found another apartment in Madrid – and we nearly bought it, but we ran into trouble with the sellers. Somehow we didn’t trust them and called off the deal. At that point, my wife relented and agreed to buy the dilapidated farm. From the moment I had first set my eyes on it, I saw myself building a studio in that stable. The first four months after buying the premises, I didn’t do any studio work. This gave me the time to build the studio in that stable. I was fortunate to get a lot of help from my older brother Mariano, who is a professional musician as well – but he knows a lot more about sound engineering than I do. Apart from the studio itself, we had two sleeping rooms built into the stable with a view of giving artists the opportunity to stay at the studio for more than just one day. After all the hard work had been done, the magic moment came when I switched on the light for the first time – boom, it worked. I can assure you, this place is my dream come true!”
“My aim isn’t to rent the studio (officially called the LoxStudios – BT) to others and then leave. I do package deals, which has worked out quite successfully. The studio is a tool for me, helping me to make productions and record arrangements for anyone willing to come here to do sessions. At the moment, I’m working on an album with a flamenco singer from Jerez de la Frontera who I had never met before. Working on a shoestring budget, I wrote all the arrangements and I produced the guy as he recorded the vocals. Everything went well, in part because this singer proved to be a good professional. He didn’t make my life as a producer very difficult. Being a producer is a lot about psychology, but that is true of the human existence in general, isn’t it? Each client is different and I’m different with each client.”
Speaking at a meeting of S.G.A.E., the Spanish Association of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers (2018)
“In the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of energy on learning how to master my own productions. My brother taught me a lot, and I studied the way I prefer – on my own, diving into books and taking online courses. Now that I had my own studio, I just needed to learn about this part of the job. In the course of my career, I’ve been the victim of other people’s bad mastering too often! In Spain, anyone thinks he can master, but usually the results are atrocious. Therefore, I often sent my productions to Los Angeles, London, or Germany, where the level of sound engineering is a lot higher than here. Being able to do this part of the job myself now is very satisfying – and of course something attractive to be able to offer to potential new clients as part of a recording deal.”
“The music business has changed profoundly over the last thirty, forty years. Back in the day when I started out as a session player, you went into the studio and created a sound while working with your fellow musicians. Today, I find myself doing most of my productions alone, even if I regret it; I prefer the old way of doing it, but the budgets have become so tight that this is no longer possible. Whenever there’s no money available to hire a real drummer, I’ll have to programme my own drums. I’m very fortunate that I chose the piano as my main instrument instead of the trumpet or the guitar. If I had been a trumpet player, I would probably have been without work now. Working on my keyboard, I’ve created a sound library of about 300 gigabytes. Each instrument can be recreated using modern technology... but rest assured, whenever I’m not happy with the result, I call a real musician to do the job for me. Whenever I need big strings, I book a plane ticket to Bratislava to work with the symphony orchestra there. I’m convinced that, whatever happens, we’ll always need real musicians to create real emotions.”
“Working in the music industry has allowed me to grow as a person. If you’re a little bit of an observer, you can learn about new subjects in the business. This is the main reason why I feel satisfied about my career path. Instead of spending a lot of time at school, I’ve been fortunate enough to learn about life while living it in the company of colleagues in the only environment that I feel happy in, which is the music business. Of course, I could have made different choices. I was once offered the opportunity to come to Los Angeles. Perhaps I could have been an arranger for a famous film composer, who knows? But that would mean I hadn’t had the life I now lead in Spain, with my wife Jackie and my two grown-up children, Stephanie and Javier Junior, both of whom I’m very proud of. No, I wouldn’t change a thing – not even the heart-attack I suffered in Mexico. All of it together has allowed me to reach the point where I am now. Really, I don’t have regrets.”
EUROVISION SONG CONTEST
Javier Losada took part in the Eurovision Song Contest on one occasion, in 1992, being the conductor of the Spanish entry ‘Todo esto es la música’, performed by Serafín Zubiri. “At the time, I was working extensively as a studio musician in Madrid,” Losada recalls. “I played keyboards, wrote arrangements, and was getting my first production work. This Eurovision song in 1992 came my way because Serafín’s manager was Toni Rico – and Toni had also been the manager of Tino Casal, the singer who had passed away one year before and who I had worked with for almost ten years. Toni Rico told me, ‘Record company EMI wants to go to Eurovision with this song. Could you write the arrangement and come along to Malmö to conduct it?’ Of course I said yes. It was a good opportunity.”
“I had never heard of Serafín before. He wasn’t well-known in Spain before being chosen for Eurovision. Apart from Toni Rico, there was someone else connecting me to this singer. The producer for the Eurovision track was Miguel Ángel Arenas, who I worked with regularly in those years. Miguel’s nickname was El Capi – that’s what we all called him. One of the big stars produced by Capi in those years was Alejandro Sanz. I had played keyboards on his debut album (‘Viviendo deprisa’ – BT), which was also released not so long before Eurovision came along.”
“I have no idea how the song was chosen by Spanish television. I wasn’t involved in that – I was only called upon when the song choice had already been determined based on a demo made by the composers, the main one being Luis Miguélez. I never got to know Miguélez very well on a personal level, but he was and still is good friends with El Capi. That explains why Capi got to produce the single.”
The Spanish team for the first rehearsal in Malmö, from left - Ernesto Baquero, Mabi Vidal, Serafín, Adolfo Rodríguez, Manu Rodríguez, María Lar, and Javier Losada
“When first listening to the demo of ‘Todo esto es la música’, I remember thinking to myself that this was a very old-fashioned song. I told this explicitly to Toni Rico, who replied, ‘All of us are just going to do our best to reach the best possible result in Malmö.’ His tone betrayed that he didn’t really believe in the song either. After all those years of working with Tino Casal, I was used to working on contemporary pop music. This Eurovision song could have been released twenty years previously. I would have loved to represent Spain with something much more modern. Apart from that, there’s something in the melody that I’ve never been able to understand. Somehow, it wasn’t a composition designed to win something. That was my initial feeling and it has been my feeling until the present day.”
“The demo version was longer than three minutes, so my first job as an arranger was to cut it down to be in conformity with Eurovision rules. Honestly speaking, the only thing I took from the demo was the melody. I changed some of the harmonies and invented an arrangement which was completely different than the demo version. The piano intro is probably mine as well, but I cannot remember for sure. Even after recording the track, we were still over the three minutes – which meant we had to make some extra adjustments for the Eurovision final in Malmö to keep it within the time frame.”
“I met Serafín for the first time when recording the studio track. I was quite curious to find what he was like. As it turned out, he was an angel, a fantastic guy. He came to the studio with his brother, who accompanies him everywhere – because, as you know, Serafín is blind… well, he’s not completely blind, because he told me that he can see some colours. One day, he walked into the studio, greeting me with a loud voice, ‘Hey Javi, I can see you very well today!’ I was surprised and asked him what he meant with those words. ‘Yes, man, I can see you perfectly today!’, he laughed. You see, the guy had a sense of humour. In between sessions, when we went out to have lunch somewhere near, we were about to cross the street and suddenly he said, ‘Javi, be careful, there’s a car approaching!’ I suppose his sense of hearing was quite strong given that he had been blind or practically blind all his life. With his jokes and general cheerfulness, he was a joy to work with.”
Serafín backstage in Malmö
“When we left for Malmö, I was quite excited. I had watched Eurovision from my early childhood onwards. The earliest Eurovision memory I have is of Massiel’s victory in 1968 with ‘La, la, la’. I was eight years old at the time. Funnily enough, when I became Massiel’s producer many years later, I could finally tell her that I had fallen in love as a boy when watching her on television winning the festival. The following year, when the festival came to Madrid, it was an important event in Spain. There was only one TV channel and absolutely everyone was watching. My favourite was a French boy who sang a tune called ‘Maman, maman’ (Jean Jacques representing Monaco – BT).”
“In the following years, whenever I wasn’t working on Saturday evening, I would watch the festival. The level of music in the contest was very high at the time. The night ABBA won it with ‘Waterloo’, I was in a bar playing with a little entertainment orchestra. Somehow, we weren’t playing ourselves when ABBA performed and we were all watching them on a small TV set. I remember it like yesterday. Wow, what a performance! At the time, I could never have thought that I would participate in this event myself.”
“Coming to Malmö, I had brought a DAT tape with some synth tracks – just as a plan B, in case the orchestra wasn’t as good as I hoped. I told Toni Rico, ‘Toni, if need be, talk to the sound engineer and tell him to put on our tape.’ I was a bit nervous, because I didn’t know what to expect. At the first rehearsal with the Swedish orchestra, however, it was clear to me within minutes that I needn’t have worried. It was obvious that they had been rehearsing for one or two weeks and everything sounded just perfect. I could stand there moving my hands whichever way – it would just be to look good on the TV screen. The musicians played the song well from beginning to end. After that first rehearsal, I told myself that this was just going to be a very nice one-week holiday.”
Serafín and his backing group on the huge stage in the Malmö Ice Stadium
“Of course we never used our DAT tape. The only tool we used while performing our song was a click track in our ear to indicate the exact tempo. The drummer of the orchestra – and possibly the rest of the rhythm group – had this click in their ear, and so did Serafín at the piano and our guitarist Ernesto Baquero. They played their parts completely live. Serafín is a very steady pianist and Ernesto was solid as well. That’s why I had picked him in the first place. He was a friend of mine and I worked with him in the studio regularly.”
“In the course of the week, there was some discussion about backing tracks and the rules under which they could be used. When I told some of the Swedish crew about my DAT tape with keyboard lines on it, he told me straightaway that I couldn’t have used it even if I had wanted to. To my surprise, one of the other countries taking part made use of a backing track with recorded sequencers. As far as I can recall, it was the Israeli entry. There was a bit of a discussion going on backstage if this was a breach of the regulations of the contest, but someone in the Swedish organisation came up with a vague statement that it was. It was all very confusing.”
“Picking the four singers to back up Serafín on stage in Malmö was also part of my responsibility in the preparatory stages of the Eurovision project. The first on my list was María Lar, who had been a friend since my early days in the studio. In fact, I had started my studio career as a backing singer as well – and she was one of this nucleus of singers called upon to do most of the sessions. María also wrote the lyrics to several songs which I composed or co-composed. She is a lovely singer and a clever lyricist – and a wonderful person on top of that. I must have asked María Lar or the other girl, Mabi Vidal, to find two guys to complete the backing group for Malmö. One of them suggested Manuel and Adolfo Rodríguez, who I had never worked with previously. Adolfo is best known for working with José Maria Guzmán, the lead singer of Cadillac, a pop group here in Spain (and in fact he was one of the backing singers as well when Cadillac represented Spain in Eurovision 1986 – BT). They seemed a solid choice, so I agreed.”
At a reception in Malmö, from left - Javier Losada (second from left) and guitarist Ernesto Baquero flanked by backing singers Mabi Vidal (left) and María Lar
“Coming to Malmö, I was impressed to see beautiful women absolutely everywhere. Remember that I was very young at the time and I wasn’t married yet. That’s why I set my mind on trying to seduce one or two of them during my stay in Sweden, but nothing happened! On the other hand, Serafín was extremely popular with the women in Sweden. You would think girls would feel pity for his blindness at most, but he proved himself a real womaniser. He took a different girl to his hotel room every night. It was very funny to see him make his moves in Malmö. He really was the star of our delegation – and a very nice guy to be around with.”
“Generally speaking the organisation in Malmö struck me as amazingly professional. The orchestra was fantastic. The level of sound engineering was good. All rehearsal schedules were adhered to exactly by the minute. Moreover, the Swedes made sure we never had to sit around thinking about what to do in our free hours. We received invitations all the time for excursions and evening entertainment – and we could get in everywhere for free. It was a lovely opportunity to meet and interact with artists and staff from the other countries taking part. I had never been involved in such a big television event before. Many years later, I was in Vegas to attend the Grammy’s – which perhaps even were a little bit bigger in terms of professionalism and organisation than Eurovision. But let’s not take away anything from what Swedish television achieved in Malmö. Everything was amazing. I was walking around all the time wide-eyed in sheer admiration of their performance.”
“Among the other artists we met, I was most impressed by a dark-haired girl who wasn’t much older than twenty. I remember she was singing karaoke in a bar and I wasn’t just impressed by her looks, but by her vocal range as well (probably Morgane from Belgium – BT). Actually all of the interaction taking place with other countries was positive, although I remember one of our backing singers told us there was talk of one of the other countries trying to manipulate the performance of others by changing a microphone. ‘We have to beware of them,’ that kind of talk. Perhaps Malta? Yes, could be. It was all a bit mysterious and never out in the open.” (Maltese delegation leader Gaetano Abela was accused from various sides of selling their votes, among others by Turkish conductor Aydın Özarı in the interview he did with us in 2020 – BT)
Serafín at the piano rehearsing the performance of 'Todo esto es la música' with his quartet of backing singers in Malmö
“I was excited about the prospect of performing – yes, excited rather than nervous. On the night, I knew nothing could go wrong as far as the orchestra was concerned. But the exciting part was knowing that friends in Spain would be watching to see me take my bow. In Los Yébenes, the little village where I was born, everybody was going to switch on their TV sets. When watching the performance now, the thing that embarrasses me most – even more than the hairdo – is the red jacket that I was wearing. It was Julián Ruiz who had given it to me back in Spain before I left for Sweden. He was a friend from the studio business, with whom I worked a lot in that period. ‘Put this jacket on!’, he told me in a commandeering way. ‘But Julián, this red colour really is too much,’ I protested. ‘Javi, listen,’ he answered. ‘Eurovision is a special occasion and everybody is going to be watching, so you’d better wear something special. This is a beautiful red jacket and I’m giving it to you to wear on the night.’ It was a gift from a friend. I would have insulted him if I hadn’t worn it – and having worked on stage with Tino Casal for many years, I was used to wearing striking outfits – but even at the time I wasn’t feeling really comfortable dressed in red.”
The Spanish entry, which was performed first of all the 23 songs taking part on the night in Malmö, was voted into a modest fourteenth place with 37 votes. “That was just about what I was expecting we would get,” Javier Losada comments. “I knew we weren’t among the contenders to win it. I don’t remember the Irish song which won it, just that it was a ballad – and a good one. Our performance on the night was ok, but not perfect. The backing vocals were slightly out of tune in some parts, but it didn’t ruin the song. Not many people watching would have taken notice. It was funny to sit together with all other participants in one room backstage while the votes were coming in. There were coupes full of champagne on all the tables, so you can imagine the atmosphere was excellent. After the voting was over, all the artists and staff were invited to a huge hall where we were all served a meal. It was a fitting end to a week in which the Swedish organisers had taken care of us so well.”
“We didn’t let the result get us down. Serafín was upbeat and happy; and he had nothing to reproach himself for. He had put all the energy he had into those three minutes and couldn’t have done anything more. The representatives of Spanish television were satisfied as well. One of them had told me in between rehearsals that the board of directors of our broadcaster TVE would kill us if we won. As she explained, having to organise the contest would cost TVE 300 million pesetas, which was a lot of money in those days. Perhaps this explains why they later sent this idiot Chikilicuatre (Spain’s performer in Eurovision 2008 – BT) – simply because they wanted to be sure not to win it! Be that as it may, I must say I was puzzled by her words at the time. Why take part anyway if you don’t want to compete for first place? Besides, the organisation of a Eurovision Song Contest is an opportunity for any television station which takes itself seriously… but apparently they were keen to spend their money on something else.”
Backing singer Mabi Vidal backstage at Eurovision 1992 at the door of the changing room reserved for Serafín and Javier Losada
“Coming back from Malmö, I had some trouble with Serafín’s company EMI. They were really slow in paying me the money for the job I had done for them – recording the song and conducting the arrangement in Malmö. I lost count of how many times I had to call them before they finally paid the bill I had sent them. After the festival, Capi asked me to arrange Serafín’s album, which included the Eurovision song. At the time of his participation in the contest, Serafín received a lot of media attention in Spain. This probably also had to do with his role as one of the standard bearers of ONCE, which is the Spanish national organisation for the blind. Their president came with us to Malmö as well. Unfortunately, Serafín’s popularity ebbed away a little bit after the contest. Although he never really disappeared from the scene, he didn’t become a big star. Perhaps his voice is a bit too unpolished for that. He sings in tune, nothing wrong, but his timbre isn’t that nice. Just let me say that I prefer to listen to Stevie Wonder!”
“Later on in my career, I conducted the Costa Rica Symphony Orchestra in a live concert on stage without having a click track to help me. I can tell you that was a lot more difficult than conducting that one Eurovision song for Serafín in Malmö. Still, Malmö is important to me personally. It was and always will remain the first time I conducted an orchestra live on stage. I’m very happy that I had the opportunity to do Eurovision. Some people have bucket lists of things they want to do at least once in their life – plant a tree, write a book, etcetera. For me, as a musician, doing Eurovision was part of this bucket list. It didn’t change the course of my career, because I returned to Madrid and continued working on the same sort of projects as I had done before, but still I’m really proud of having stood on that conductor’s platform in Sweden.”
“It’s sad to note that live music is dead now; and not only in Eurovision. Even in concerts put on by some world stars, they are leaving out the musicians and put on a big pyrotechnical show with a dancing group around the main singer – sometimes even going as far as to leave out the live singing in some cases. It’s something that I cannot understand, because music is music and it doesn’t need anything more than just that. Eurovision used to be a nice event in the old days. You would watch someone taking the stage and having to cope with the nerves of singing live with an orchestra – with not only singers, but also musicians sometimes making their natural mistakes. That was the human dimension which is lost now.”
Javier Losada sporting his striking red jacket just prior to the Spanish performance at Eurovision 1992; behind him, from left - Manuel Rodríguez, Ernesto Baquero, Serafín's manager Toni Rico, Mabi Vidal, Serafín with vocal coach Mikel Herzog, María Lar, a Swedish hostess, and Adolfo Rodríguez
“There are lots of factors why the contest, and the music industry in general, has changed so profoundly. A lot of the blame has to be put at the feet of the record companies. They control the business in many different ways, much more so than thirty, forty years ago. From the days of Bach and Beethoven to jazz music in the first half of the twentieth century – or Brazilian bossa nova or even Engelbert Humperdinck and Emerson, Lake & Palmer… all of this music was rich in harmonies. Music was like a garden full of beautiful flowers; very different flowers, but all interesting and beautiful. Why? Because the people creating the music were musicians, real musicians. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case today. Record companies discovered a long time ago that they can earn a lot more money by selling trash. After all, it’s cheaper to make and if you allow the audience to get used to such trash, they will start thinking that this is good music. That’s why the music market today is full of reggaeton and other rhythm-driven genres. If you give people only McDonald’s meals, they’ll start believing that’s the best food available. The same is true of the music industry today.”
“The next step is record companies using artificial intelligence to write songs – and we’re not far away from that anymore. Recently, I listened to a couple of songs created by AI; and even with my knowledge of engineering and mixing, I couldn’t really distinguish them from a normal recording. This development means that record companies can avoid having to deal with composers, with real musicians. They have already minimised their influence by mostly accepting only songs written by six or seven different people. This way, the one guy who really wrote the song gets cancelled out by five or six others who agree to a record deal in which they sign all their property rights away. With artificial intelligence, companies can do away with the nuisance of having to pay property rights altogether and keep all the money to themselves. It’s a depressing prospect, but at the moment it’s hard to see how this development can be stopped.”
“Today, I cannot bear to watch Eurovision in its entirety. The only thing which I find interesting today is the technology used to stage the event. Other than that, I have more interesting things to do than sit out those three or four hours. Did you watch the contest this year? (in 2024 – BT) Our song was called ‘Zorra’, which is the Spanish word for hooker. Why would you send such a song to be performed in an international event? I also saw a snippet of the Irish entry, in which satanic rituals were performed on stage. Is that the world we are living in today? If you take away the staging and the pyrotechnics, you’ll notice that most of the songs sound the same – exactly as the record companies want it. I find it very easy to admit that ‘Todo esto es la música’ wasn’t a very good song either, but it was certainly much better than what is on offer in Eurovision nowadays.”
Javier (far left) conducting the Swedish Eurovision orchestra behind Spain's four backing singers, from left - Mabi Vidal, María Lar, Adolfo Rodríguez, and Manuel Rodríguez
OTHER ARTISTS ABOUT JAVIER LOSADA
So far, we have not gathered comments of other artists who worked with Javier Losada.
EUROVISION INVOLVEMENT YEAR BY YEAR
Country – Spain
Song title – “Todo esto es la música”
Rendition – Serafín Zubiri
Lyrics – Luis Miguélez
Composition – Luis Miguélez / Alfredo Valbuena
Studio arrangement – Javier Losada
Live orchestration – Javier Losada
Conductor – Javier Losada
Score – 14th place (37 votes)
SOURCES & LINKS
- Bas Tukker did an interview with Javier Losada, subdivided in two sessions, in April & May 2024
- A playlist of Javier Losada’s music can be accessed by clicking this YouTube link
- Photos courtesy of Javier Losada and Ferry van der Zant
- Thanks to Mark Coupar for proofreading the manuscript
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