The following article is an overview of the career of Spanish drummer, composer, arranger, and producer Javier de Juan (Javier Juan Romeu). The main source of information is an interview with Mr Juan, conducted by Bas Tukker in December 2024. The article below is subdivided into two main parts; a general career overview (part 3) and a part dedicated to Javier de Juan’s Eurovision involvement (part 4).
All material below: © Bas Tukker / 2024-25
Contents
- Passport
- Short Eurovision record
- Biography
- Eurovision Song Contest
- Other artists about Javier de Juan
- Eurovision involvement year by year
- Sources & links
PASSPORT
Born: July 30th, 1949, Alcoy (Spain)
Nationality: Spanish
SHORT EUROVISION RECORD
Apart from his involvement as co-arranger of the studio version of Spain’s 1983 Eurovision entry ‘¿Quién maneja mi barca?’, performed by Remedios Amaya, Javier de Juan took part in the contest on one occasion, in 1988 in Dublin, when he conducted the festival orchestra for La Década (or La Década Prodigiosa), the group which he had co-founded three years previously. The song performed on behalf of Spanish broadcaster TVE in the contest, ‘La chica que yo quiero (Made In Spain)’, was arranged and orchestrated by Javier de Juan in conjunction with Manolo Aguilar and Manel Santisteban.
BIOGRAPHY
Javier Juan Romeu was born in 1949 in Alcoy, an industrial town in the southeast of Spain. “My father worked as an accountant in a large factory where clothing was manufactured, but music was what he really lived for,” Javier recalls. “He played the clarinet and the accordion. He also composed tunes for a local concert band, of which he was a member. In Alcoy and the surrounding villages, there are quite a few such bands. The highlight of the year is the celebration of Moros y Cristianos, in which a battle is remembered from the Middle Ages between the Arabs and the Christians. During the festivities, groups of people dressed up as Moors and Christians are accompanied by large concert bands of sixty musicians – and that’s where my father’s compositions were played. I also had one uncle, who played the trombone in another band. This uncle played several more instruments and, in old age, he taught classical singers for operetta performances. Yes, it’s fair to say that I come from a family which valued music.”
“My parents told me how, while I was still in a baby walker, I would listen intently to the radio and follow the rhythm of the music by hitting the chair with my hands. At age five, I was given a toy drum kit to play with – I’ve always been a drummer at heart. I just love the drums – bass drum, high hats, everything! I would always ask for a real drum kit as a Christmas present. But of course you can’t play the drums while walking the street with your concert band. So when I was ten years old, I chose to learn the clarinet, the instrument my father played. My first teacher was Don Fernando de Mora, who was the conductor of the concert band to which my father belonged. He continued being my teacher until I was nineteen years old. Other than teaching me to play the clarinet, he gave me a good background in music theory.”
Javier as a three-year-old playing the drums (1952)
“After primary school, I went to the Industrial School in Alcoy. I studied to be a draughtsman, but in the meantime I continued studying music. From the age of fifteen, I also went to the Conservatorio Superior de Música ‘Oscar Esplá’ in Alicante to study classical percussion, but not as a regular student. Once every three months, I went there to do my exams – and then the teacher, Maestro José Santana, would give me homework to do for the following months, which I would work through in Alcoy with Fernando de Mora. At the academy, I also got to learn to play the piano a little bit, which has helped me a lot later in life when composing music.”
“So my life consisted of going to the Industrial School during weekdays, then studying music in the evenings – and at the weekends, I played drums in various pop groups. At the time, all the boys of my age wanted to play the guitar or be singers. That was the reason why I was the drummer for six or seven groups in Alcoy and the surrounding area simultaneously. With these groups, I played all kinds of different music; Italian songs, soul music, The Beatles… anything. I can still remember how we couldn’t figure out how ‘Twist And Shout’ by The Beatles worked. We just didn’t understand it. It sounded so outlandish to our ears. We were used to boleros and Mexican tunes, but this was something which was so different! The 1960s were a time when so much fascinating music came out all over the world; it didn’t matter if it was Peppino di Capri, Charles Aznavour, Aretha Franklin, or Otis Redding… we loved it all and tried to play their songs as best we could.”
“There were quite regular competitions between pop groups in Alcoy and the wider region. It happened quite often that I was the drummer in all of the groups taking part! I remember sitting backstage waiting for the winner to be announced. I then had to put on the outfit which belonged to that band to go on stage with them to collect the prize. Then the announcement came for second prize, and I had to change clothes really quickly and get back on stage again with this second group. That was really funny. All the same, I didn’t have a lot of success with girls at the time! I could never take them to dance, because I was always studying or performing. I never had an evening off, but I knew what I was doing. I had a clear idea in mind that I wanted to get away from Alcoy and live in Madrid to dedicate my life to music.”
Camilo Sesto with his backing band Los Botines upon their arrival in Madrid, March 1968; from left to right: Rafael Pla (keyboard), Camilo Sesto, Roberto Ortiz (baritone sax), Javier Juan (drums), Jaime Torregrosa (bass), and José Miguel Lorca (tenor sax)
“The last band I was part of in Alcoy was called Los Truckers. Our repertoire consisted of soul music by James Brown and Otis Redding, although we also played tunes by Roberto Carlos, a Brazilian singer whose style we found to be very close to soul. We were a group of six, which included two sax players. At some point, in 1968, a singer called Camilo Sesto came back to Alcoy, which was his native town. Sesto had been working in Madrid for three years or so. He came back when his backing band had fallen apart. At that point, Camilo invited our group to come with him to work and perform in Madrid. Following the suggestion of Camilo’s manager, we took on the name of one of his previous bands, Los Botines. For about a year, we performed almost every day in discotheques all across Madrid, but also elsewhere in Spain, from Malaga in the south to Vigo in the north.”
“Being on the road was something which we found really attractive. I’ve always loved travelling and eating, so we enjoyed all the best hotels and restaurants in Spain. The atmosphere in the group was good and we had a pleasant working relationship with Camilo. Meanwhile, whenever I found myself in the capital, I continued studying. I had got in touch with José María Martín Porras, who was a professor of percussion at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música in Madrid. He mainly taught me marimba and xylophone, instruments which I thought were really difficult to master. It’s true that all of this education was classical, whereas my interest had always been primarily in pop music. I simply followed those lessons because I was curious to get as much background in music as I could.”
“After about a year, Camilo was called up for his fourteen months of army service. The band fell apart and most of the guys returned to Alcoy. What could I do now? I was sure that I didn’t want to go back! In the end, I found a group called Los Álamos. It consisted of two older couples, who were from Uruguay and Argentina. They were in their fifties and playing bossa novas. This music wasn’t exactly my dream come true, but they were looking for a drummer, so I took the job. This wasn’t a time to be picky. However, because this type of repertoire wasn’t very popular at the time, we only had two days of work every month; every second Friday, we played in a small club. Meanwhile, I was living in a small boarding house, for which I couldn’t pay. I owed the landlord five, six months of rent. I was just sitting in my room, studying and waiting for a miracle to happen.”
Javier Juan (centre of the photo) with his group Los Álamos in Madrid, mere days before leaving for Pakistan in the early months of 1969, with (from left) Mary Lamas, Hector Cañete, Juan Lamas, and Francis Cañete. Juan and Mary Lamas were a Uruguayan married couple, whereas Hector and Francis Cañete, a wedded pair as well, came from Argentina
“One day, an Italian manager came to the club where I was performing with this bossa nova band. He invited the whole band to go to Pakistan. We could go on a six-month contract to the Intercontinental Hotel in Karachi. In fact, financially, the offer was very generous. It was a wonderful opportunity. I spent the best part of the next three years, between 1969 and 1971, performing with that group in hotels of the Intercontinental chain in Pakistan and Afghanistan – mostly in Karachi, but there were spells in Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Kabul as well. In Rawalpindi, I met my future wife. She was a local girl, who ran the discotheque in the hotel in that city.”
“Coming to this part of the world was a great experience. Spain was a secluded country at the time and these three years abroad very much enriched my scope. Karachi was a very tumultuous city, but it had a huge international population. There were ambassadors, politicians, and officials – and also lots of hippies on their way to India. This was the fashion of the day after The Beatles had come to India to meditate with the Maharishi.”
“Not only were Karachi and other cities in Pakistan very open and welcoming, but the same could be said about Kabul. There were lots of Tunisian migrant workers, who used to serve self-made wine and beer. Of course, there was a part of the population which was religious, but a great percentage of the population was free-minded. Ramadan wasn’t observed by everybody. Believers and non-believers looked at each other with respect. It’s sad how the atmosphere in these countries has turned so much for the worse in later years.”
Performing in Karachi’s Intercontinental Hotel, July 1969
“Also in musical terms, coming to Asia was a fantastic adventure. We performed a repertoire of beautiful tunes – songs by Jobim and Frank Sinatra. In between performances, we were left with enough leisure time to sit together to arrange and practise new songs. Up until that time, I was used to playing pop music, but thanks to my fellow musicians, who were so much more experienced than me, I learned to play not just bossa nova, but all kinds of other genres too which aren’t real pop music, but musically very interesting. I learned a lot in those years. Furthermore, in spite of the age difference between me and the two South American couples, the atmosphere in the group was always good. We had a relaxing time together. We were living at great hotels and all our expenses were paid. What else could you wish for?”
“When our contract ended, our Argentinian pianist and the Uruguayan bass player and their respective wives decided they wanted to go back to their countries of origin. I came back to Spain. I knew I faced having to do my military service, which I didn’t think was a really daunting prospect. While waiting to be called up, I worked in Madrid and played with several groups. The fact that I had worked abroad was actually good promotion for me. I now knew how to play in many different styles. One of the invitations actually came from the Dúo Dinámico. I played with Manolo and Ramón (Manuel de la Calva & Ramón Arcusa – BT) in some live gigs. It was a great adventure driving with Manolo in his convertible white Mercedes! The funny thing was that, when I was eventually called up, I got to perform my military service in Alcoy. That was pure luck, because it was determined in a lottery. During weekends, I travelled with an amateur band from Alcoy who I was friends with. Those fourteen months in the army weren’t so bad.”
“Naturally, during my time of service, I stayed in touch with friends from Madrid – and on the day I came back to the capital, I could start working again. Very soon, while I was playing in a club with an Italian pianist and bandleader called Filippo Carletti, I was approached by Patxi Andión and his manager. Patxi was a popular singer-songwriter and, as it happened, he was looking for a new drummer. It was a good opportunity. We performed a lot in Spain and Portugal. Patxi’s songs were critical of Franco and his regime. One of his compositions was ‘El maestro’, a song about a teacher who was expelled from a small town for teaching lessons which Franco’s Political-Social Brigade didn’t like at all. But these were the early 1970s and the iron fist of the Franco regime had somewhat mellowed by then. We could perform this type of repertoire everywhere without any problem.”
In Mexico City, crossing the street in front of the Teatro de Bellas Artes, from left: an Urban Guard flanked by Javier Juan (in blue jeans), pianist Fernando Sobrino (wearing sandals), Patxi Andión (blue T-shirt), saxophonist Manuel Morales (smoking behind Andión), and the band’s road manager, Berry (surname unknown)
“One day in Granada, when we played another of Patxi’s famous songs, ‘Verde que te quiero verde’, based of García Lorca’s poem ‘Romance sonámbulo’, the audience rose to a man and applauded us for fifteen minutes continuously. You have to know that Granada was García Lorca’s home region and ‘Romance sonámbulo’ is one of his most famous poems. People loved Patxi because he dared to speak out against Franco. That was some emotional experience! Another show was at the Coliseu dos Recreios in Lisbon for an audience of 14,000, another real highlight if you ask me.”
“In the spring of 1975, we did a Mexican tour with Patxi Andión, enjoying great success. We were due to go back there in October, but when Franco had five enemies of his regime executed in September, Mexico broke off all relations with Spain. We couldn’t go there any longer. We were out of work! Patxi then chose to focus on his acting career, so the other three of his accompanying musicians and I had to look for a new job. I then worked in the band of Alberto Cortez for some years. He was a singer-songwriter from Argentina who was especially popular in Mexico. It’s fair to say that I spent a considerable part of the 1970s in Mexico – and it’s a country that I’ve always remained attached to emotionally. The Mexicans are wonderful people, and so are their food and culture. It’s a great place.”
“In 1977, coming back from a tour with Cortez in Latin America, I found myself owing 3,000 dollars to him. I had spent all the money on the road! Back in Madrid, I had to go looking for money urgently. At that time, I was fortunate enough to meet Juan Carlos Calderón in a local discotheque. Calderón was looking for a drummer for a little jazz tour he was doing in the north of Spain. He played the Fender Rhodes piano and talked to the public in between the melodies – a very talented and charismatic man. To my delight, following that tour, Calderón asked me to come and do a session for him in the recording studio. This man was one of Spain’s most important composers and arrangers. This was what I had always dreamt of! I knew that recording musicians were better paid than their touring colleagues. You got to work with the best musicians and producers, playing different styles and developing artistically.”
Alberto Cortez with his band on tour in the Province of Jaén, staying at Hotel La Perdiz in La Carolina, from left: Miguel Ángel González (bass), Alberto Cortez, a Venezuelan guitarist, and Javier Juan (drums) (1977)
“In that first session, I started playing the drums in the style which I had used on stage with Alberto Cortez. The music we played with Alberto was based on French folk, like Piaf and Aznavour… round music, as I call it. But this was a pop session; and pop music is sharper. It requires more precision from a drummer. The engineer told me to stop, ‘No, don’t play like this. You have to keep more sound on the snare drum, or else I cannot do the mixing properly.’ I realised that I wouldn’t be given a second chance, so I had to apply what he was telling me on the spot. You had to learn quickly! Otherwise you were running the risk of not being called for another session.”
“Fortunately, I didn’t mess up… and I was called back. This allowed me to develop the speciality of playing sessions. A studio musician is not better or worse than a live musician, he’s just different. Listening to the exact wishes of the producers you’re working with, you have to develop a degree of perfection that isn’t always applicable in a live performance. There’s no school where you can learn to be a studio musician. The only way to learn how to do it is by being called back and practising more. In a short time, I became part of this small nucleus of session players in Madrid. My financial worries belonged to the past!”
“I’ll always owe a big thank you to Juan Carlos Calderón for introducing me to the session milieu. Sessions with him could take a long time, because he had a habit of becoming insecure about the smallest of details. ‘What shall we do with the bass drum? Try this? No, no, do it the other way!’, that sort of thing. In the end, he often said, ‘Do whatever you feel.’ But he was a very warm personality and a charming man. Another arranger who I got to work with a lot is Eduardo Leiva. I knew him from our days back in the live circuit. While I was touring with Patxi Andión, Eduardo was the pianist in the band of Juan Pardo. We would regularly meet backstage. Eduardo is a very different character than Calderón – a very open, lively guy who’s always full of jokes. I loved working with him.”
During a studio session in Madrid, Javier de Juan with synthesiser player José Antonio Quintano. In the background, guitar player Fernando Martínez can be detected (c. 1981)
“In those years, I didn’t work in the studio exclusively. I had an especially important involvement with Paloma San Basilio. When she performed the lead role in the musical Evita in Madrid, I was the drummer in the theatre orchestra. That was in 1980. Before that, in the winter of 1978-79, I joined her band on a tour in Chile with musical director Alejandro Monroy. Of course, in Chile, which is in the Southern Hemisphere, this was mid-summer and we enjoyed excellent weather during our tour. The Chilean public loved Paloma and they were very kind to us. In a country governed by the dictator Pinochet, we knew we had to be careful to stay out of politics. We noticed little tension, apart from the curfew in Viña del Mar. This meant that we had to wait at the venue where we had performed until the following morning before being allowed to return to the hotel. Apart from that, I also played the drums on most of Paloma San Basilio’s records, which were usually arranged by Juan Carlos Calderón. Working with Paloma was pleasant. She’s a wonderful companion with a great sense of humour – but above all, an excellent artist. Her theatre performance as Evita was simply sensational.”
“In 1979, Eduardo Leiva and his producing partner Juan Velón had the idea of forming a pop group, which they called Cadillac. For the project, they put together several of the best session musicians. I was the drummer and the only one of the original four band members who didn’t sing. The other three had mainly built a reputation on the back of their excellent backing vocals in the studio; Pedro Sánchez, Eduardo Ramírez, and José Maria Guzman. José Maria was the person who had the idea of adapting my stage name to become Javier de Juan instead of Javier Juan or Javier Juan Romeu, because people never understood that Juan is actually my surname. Thanks to the addition of this little word de in between, there was no longer any confusion.”
“That first year, we were just rehearsing and composing original songs. We were going to sing in Spanish, but the sound we were looking for was a bit like The Police, although there were lots of influxes from Californian groups like The Eagles and America as well. After one year, thanks to the intervention of Eduardo Leiva and Juan Velón, we got a contract with Polygram to record our first album, ‘Pensando en ti’. Work in the group to record a follow-up started practically immediately after that, but I left Cadillac, because I had just started working on another inspirational recording project with a new, intriguing group. They were called Mecano. There was never a conflict with the other members of Cadillac, but I just felt there were other, more promising opportunities which would come along for me.”
A moment of relaxation during a studio session in Madrid, with (from left) guitarist Fernando López, synthesiser player José Antonio Quintano, arranger Alejandro Monroy, bass player Manolo Aguilar, and drummer Javier de Juan (c. 1981)
“One of the other musicians to work on that first Mecano record was Manolo Aguilar. I had met him some years previously, when we were both in the band accompanying Paloma San Basilio on a tour. One day, while I was working with the Portuguese arranger Johnny Galvão, the regular bass player for studio work, Eduardo Gracia, was unavailable – and I suggested to Johnny giving Manolo a chance to replace him. I knew that Manolo was very creative and a good sight-reader. As it happened, he fitted in amazingly with the other session players. Frankly speaking, his style of playing sounded fresher, more modern than when Eduardo Gracia was playing. That was the start of Manolo’s career as a session musician.”
“In fact, Manolo and I became very good friends. We loved working together. Work-wise, we became almost inseparable. Producers liked the groove the two of us managed to create. We were called to so many recordings together, that we decided to create a company, Lekip. Arguably the main project we worked on in the early 1980s was with Mecano and arranger Luis Cobos. Mecano were two very talented songwriting brothers, Nacho and José, who wrote their songs completely intuitively – they were no trained musicians. It wasn’t so easy to sell their songs to record companies, because the melodies were much ahead of their time. Furthermore, their lyrics were more profound than of most other pop groups. Finally, they got a contract with CBS. That company’s executive producer, Jorge Álvarez, put together a lavish budget allowing them to record twenty songs, with the company in the end deciding which songs to pick for the record. The first single, ‘Hoy no me puedo levantar’, was a huge hit – and four months after the release of the album at Christmas 1982, they had sold half a million copies!”
“Because of the success, Mecano were sent on tour by the record company. The original plan of Nacho and José was to go on the road with some of their friends in the backing group, but the company advised them to take Manolo and myself to have more experience on board. Manolo and I were eager to go. We relished the prospect of finally getting away from the studio for a while and having a couple of months respite from clicks and headphones. We missed the hotels and the restaurants! Furthermore, we loved dressing up artistically. In short, we joined them on that tour, which was a great success. In the beginning, we were even announced as Mecano featuring Manolo Aguilar and Javier de Juan! That’s because nobody knew this new group at the beginning. We performed some ninety gigs between April and December 1983 – which is a huge number, considering that we had a grave car accident that summer, which kept us from working for three whole months.”
On stage with a Simmons drum kit (1982)
“Manolo and I only did that first tour with them. It had been organised a bit haphazardly, which meant that the two of us could drive to a gig with our own car and come back to Madrid to do a recording with some arranger early in the morning. In other words, we could pursue two careers simultaneously. On the following year’s tour, however, all the musicians were supposed to come on a bus and the time schedules were very strict. Manolo and I have never been fond of that sort of discipline. We are free spirits, you know! I participated in the recording of three more Mecano albums, but that was it. Subsequently, Nacho Cano went to London to do his recordings with Hans Zimmer, while José remained in Madrid and employed Manel Santisteban as his personal arranger.”
“Around the same time while we were recording with Mecano, Manolo and I got the chance to work with the British singer Kevin Ayers, a former member of Soft Machine. One of Kevin’s friends was a guitarist from Liverpool, Ollie Halsall. Ollie was living in Spain. He was the reason why Kevin came to Madrid to record his album ‘Diamond Jack And The Queen Of Pain’ in Audiofilm Studios. The horn arrangements were done by Jimmy Kashishian, an American trombone player living in Madrid. In fact, during my time with Patxi Andión, I had regularly performed as a replacement with Jimmy’s New Orleans style group, The Canal Street Jazz Band. During the sessions, we didn’t get to see very much of Kevin Ayers himself. He only came to record the vocals after we had prepared the tracks with Ollie Halsall and producer Julián Ruiz. The best thing about this project was a review of the album by Steve Lake in The Melody Maker. Lake calls the album ‘a delight’ and also writes a line about me, ‘Percussionist Javier de Juan breaks down my hitherto cast-iron resistance to the Linn drum synthesizer. In the hands of a Latin, it begins to sound like timbales from outer space.’ As you’ll understand, I’m quite proud of that review.”
“Another high-profile British musician who Manolo Aguilar and I got to work with was Denny Laine, who had been in The Moody Blues and Wings. His time with Wings and Paul McCartney hadn’t ended very nicely and people in England didn’t like the fact that he had had a fall-out with Paul. As it happened, Denny was friends with Luis Cobos, who suggested getting away from England for a while and settling in Madrid. Denny rented a house in La Moraleja, one of the best areas of Madrid, where lots of artists and football players live.”
The earliest formation of La Década Prodigiosa in 1985, from left: Javier de Juan, José Carlos Tatay, Paco Morales (who left the group soon after this photo was taken, only to come back in 1990), Ana Nery Fragoso, Manel Santisteban, Manolo Aguilar, and Álvaro Villarrubia
“After Denny had written a couple of songs, he asked Luis Cobos for session musicians to rehearse them with him. Luis then suggested the names of Manolo and myself. So we went down to Denny’s house in La Moraleja. I had to pinch myself to believe this was real. The Moody Blues had been one of the favourite bands of my young years and I had played covers of them with my teenage groups back in Alcoy. Working with Denny was amazing. He had this beautiful high-pitched voice, which he used full-blast for nine hours a day, while playing his guitar and smoking one cigarette after the other. The man obviously had incredible stamina. It was a very intense and emotional week of rehearsing. Unfortunately, Denny’s record company didn’t support him in this project. The songs were never released. In fact, he left Spain shortly afterwards.”
“Gradually, Manolo and I also became in demand as songwriters and arrangers. I’ve always had songs and melodies in my head. In fact, when you’re working on a studio recording and rehearsing with a group of musicians, you’re used to all contributing to the creation of a tune. In this respect, I specifically remember the sessions with Tino Casal. Tino would come to the studio with a vague idea for a song, but the final version would be created in the studio. Working together, you create melodic patterns, add counterpoints, change harmonies and rhythms – in other words, that’s a form of songwriting without being credited as such. In that sense, it was a natural development. That’s why I’ve always adhered to the rule that everyone involved in creating the song should be credited as co-composer. After all, a lot of music is created while recording in the studio. One example is ‘Canela’, which was a tune I had invented for Azúcar Moreno (released in 1985 – BT), but Manolo Aguilar and José Miguel Estébanez each had their contribution when we recorded the song. That’s why their names were added. As you’ll understand, given our extensive working relationship, Manolo and I have a lot of shared composing credits.”
“Arranging was another natural development – something which we didn’t fight for, but which fell into our lap, simply because we were always around in the studio. So we wrote arrangements for Ole Ole, Remedios Amaya, and others. It was an opportunity to put into practice the theoretical knowledge about harmony I had been taught at the conservatoire. I didn’t buy textbooks, but I allowed myself to be inspired by scores of other composers and arrangers. The next step was simply using my inspiration. When writing pop arrangements, you need intuition – and I was young and had a lot of feeling for pop music. Some compositions were produced purely electronically, whereas others required strings. This meant we had to conduct groups of string players in the studio. Manolo and I usually divided up the arranging work, and in such cases we each conducted our own scores. We knew what to do while standing up in front of a group of musicians. We just used our inspiration and the experiences we had had as musicians working with Luis Cobos and other conductors.”
Performing with La Década Prodigiosa at a music festival in the Rockódromo de la Casa de Campo in Madrid (October 1986)
“In 1985, Manolo and I were approached by producer Jorge Álvarez, someone who we worked with a lot in those years. Jorge knew that there had been a successful project in Holland called Stars on 45, which involved putting together medleys of old songs from the 1960s, done with a contemporary arrangement (in fact, ‘Stars on 45’, an idea conceived by Willem van Kooten and Jaap Eggermont, was a number one hit in America in 1981 – BT). Jorge wanted us to do something similar, making a medley of songs by Karina, a popular Spanish singer from the 1960s. It was quite a crazy idea, because Karina was yesterday’s news. Nobody was talking about her or her music. By that time, people were fond of Tino Casal and Mecano instead. However, Jorge was persistent and he was backed up by the record company, Hispavox, who put a reasonably good budget at our disposal. That’s when we got to work. At some point, we felt that just songs by Karina wouldn’t be enough, so we got in touch with a music journalist, who passed us a list of all the number one and number two hits from the 1960s; there we found titles of songs by Raphael, Dúo Dinámico, and many, many others.”
“We started by picking songs and trying to match them, building up combinations for medleys. Initially, our intention was to use singers who could sing the tunes exactly like the original version. For that reason, we called professional singers, such as the guys from Cadillac who were still my friends. The project was given the name La Década Prodigiosa. However, what we hadn’t foreseen… when our LP came out, it was put in the part of the record shops dedicated to rereleases of old music! At that point, Jorge Álvarez advised us to put together a group which was very visual, with beautiful singers and dancers. It proved surprisingly easy to find young singers who could also dance. These were the days when musicals like Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar were already popular. Academies across Spain were educating youngsters for those productions. In fact, it was difficult to choose from so many good singers who came to our auditions.”
“In the end, we picked Manolo Rodríguez, a professional guitar player who had been on the road with us for Tino Casal’s summer tour. Then there was Carmelo Martinez and José Subiza, who were no professional singers, but they were handsome guys and good dancers. We also chose two girls, Ana Nery, a dark-haired belle from the Canary Islands, who also became the group’s choreographer; and Cecilia Blanco, who was the only one of the four front singers in the group who was good enough to be used as a vocalist in the recording studio. Cecilia joined one or two months later. Both girls were very good-looking and expressive. One year later, our group was completed when we were joined by Manel Santisteban, a keyboard player who we had also got to know on the Tino Casal tour. Manel joined Manolo Aguilar and myself in becoming the group’s producers and arrangers; from that time onwards, we were a group of eight, four singers and four musicians.”
La Década after a gig in the summer of 1993, from left to right: Paco Morales, Cecilia Blanco, the group’s truck driver Fernando Zamora, Paloma Blanco, Manel Santisteban, and Javier de Juan
“When we felt we had created a nice image, we started doing television – and audiences actually loved the visual aspect. The record rose in the charts and we started getting a fan following. In November 1985, Hispavox gave us the budget to go on a nationwide tour. We were given a truck, the Super Uno, which allowed us to do a roadshow in fourteen different cities, starting in Burgos and ending on the Plaza Mayor in Madrid. While we were travelling from Barcelona to Castellón de la Plana, the record company gave us a call to break the news that sales of our album had reached 300,000. They told us to start preparing for the follow-up album. We were hugely surprised by the success of the project. From then on, we had lavish budgets at our disposal, allowing us to work with large orchestras and the best studio singers. We could make the productions in whichever way we saw fit.”
“In the following years, we released one album annually. You know what the funniest thing was? Thanks to our records, the original artists of whom we had done covers became popular again as well… not that they were grateful to us. They felt it was their divine right to be back in the spotlight. The problem we faced after a while was coming up with new ideas. After releasing records with medleys of songs from the 1960s and 1970s, we had more or less reached the end of the road. There were no more golden oldies left to cover. That’s why we started recording original songs, material composed by Manel Santisteban, Manolo Aguilar, and myself. So, at some point, half of our albums consisted of covers, with the B side being filled by new songs.”
“Being on the road with La Década Prodigiosa was unusual. In normal groups, the singers are the boss and the musicians have to follow their wishes. In our group, it was the other way around. Manel, Manolo, and myself were in charge, telling the singers what to do. After some happy years, though, the lead singers started to believe they were running the show. They felt too big to be part of a group and left to pursue solo careers. Apart from Cecilia Blanco, all the original singers of the group were gone before the group celebrated its fifth anniversary. They had to be replaced. That’s when Paco Morales, Mikel Herzog, and Cecilia’s sister Paloma came in. Initially, we were a little worried about whether the public would accept this new group, but everything went smoothly. Our shows continued to be well attended and record sales remained high.”
During the soundcheck of a La Década performance (1997)
“Meanwhile, because we were constantly touring with La Década Prodigiosa, Manolo, Manel, and I had not as much time as before to pursue our careers as studio musicians. We continued to do some work here and there as arrangers, working with Paco Escudero and Pepe De Lucia, but our places as instrumentalists were inevitably taken by others who spent more time in Madrid than we could. Here and there, I did some work with old friends; in 1988, I played drums on the Dúo Dinámico hit ‘Resistiré’ as well as on ‘Hijo de la luna’ by Mecano, but my output wasn’t the same as before. I simply didn’t have the time – so much so, that I had been forced to stop being a studio musician altogether by the early 1990s.”
“In 1990, Manolo Aguilar left the group. In a way, he was tired of touring. He joined Universal Records as an A&R manager. That same year, we signed a new three-year contract with Hispavox, but in the following years, that company was absorbed by EMI, with a new management in charge who weren’t fond of doing promotion for us. After those three years, we left and signed a new contract with Disney Records, doing a new album, which still sold quite well – some 50,000 copies. Apparently, though, it wasn’t enough for Disney; in 1994 we found ourselves without a company. Manel and Cecilia, who had become a couple, left the group one year later, all in the best of harmony, but this meant I was on my own to lead La Década… and without the support of a company. This meant I had to lead the group not only artistically, but commercially too, which is something I had to learn from scratch. We kept on performing with a new, younger group, which was still called La Década, but mainly because of the crisis in the sales of records in the second half of the 1990s and the early 2000s, it was quite difficult to keep the ship afloat.”
“In the 1990s, the group took part in the Benidorm Song Festival, coming third with ‘Las ganas de vivir’ (in 1996 – BT). The orchestra in that festival was conducted by Eddy Guerin – and Eddy always asked me to play the drums in his orchestras, which meant that I was involved in the event in two different ways; as a record producer and as an instrumentalist. Rehearsals with the orchestra started in Madrid, but after one week, the whole group of musicians moved to Benidorm. The festival was always held in June, at the start of the summer season, a lovely part of the year. When we had time off from the rehearsals, we took the opportunity to go swimming and discothequing, having lots of fun. It was a one-week holiday, with all expenses being paid for by Benidorm’s municipal authorities. Usually, the organisation of the festival was good, but somehow, one year, they couldn’t pay us – and they promised to pay us the following year, when we came back for a new edition of the festival. I have no idea why they did this, but it left us with a huge amount of money in our hands after that second festival. I only have good memories of Benidorm, in part also because I loved working with Eddy Guerin, who is a fantastic musician.”
Conducting Alcoy’s anthem on the Plaza Mayor during the Moros y Cristianos festival (2000)
“From the mid-1990s onwards, I mainly became the manager of La Década Prodigiosa, but I never stopped being a musician. Whenever the group was booked to perform live with musicians, I would join them on stage to play the drums. A highlight in this respect was the 2008 World Expo in Saragossa. Most of the time, when the group performed to pre-recorded music, I used to be with them as road manager and director. On average, we did some 100 to 150 performances a year, all year round, but mostly in the summer season, in open-air events organised by municipalities across Spain and at corporate parties. We also continued taking part in festivals, winning the last edition of the Benidorm Festival in 2006 with a song called ‘A ti’. By that time, however, the significance of the festival had dwindled so much, that the group didn’t really get much publicity on the back of their win unfortunately.”
“The last thing I did with La Década was an original song, which was called ‘Enjoy la fiesta’. It wasn’t composed by me, but I oversaw the recording, for which Manolo Aguilar came back to play the bass, as well as the production of the video clip. This clip was done in and around the swimming pool on the roof of a hotel in downtown Madrid. The song was a happy dance tune, so the boys and girls had to act as if they were enjoying the weather, dancing around in swimming shorts and bikinis. The video was shot on an early morning in December, with the temperature being around freezing point. That’s showbusiness for you! The following tour in the summer of 2018 was the last I paid for out of my own pocket. One year later, I sold my interest in La Década after nearly 35 years of being on the road with them. It was taken over by one of the singers, a guy who had been with the group for the last eight years while I was still in charge. They still do dozens of gigs every summer. Although the singers are different, people still love the old repertoire and the choreographies. I’m quite proud of that.”
“Since my return from Pakistan, I’ve always lived in Madrid, but the ties with my home region in the southeast of Spain are still there. In 2000, for the first time since my early years, I attended the Moros y Cristianos festivities in Alcoy. In fact, the town hall had selected me to conduct all the bands together on the Plaza Mayor to play the anthem of the town. It’s an honour that is accorded to someone else every year. You have to conduct a total of over 1,000 musicians at the same time. I was so emotional that the baton got stuck in the left sleeve of my suit, but the performance was alright. That was my re-entry into the Alcoy music scene. Since that year, I’ve continued being part of the event by composing instrumental pieces to be performed during the festivities the same way my father and my uncle used to do in the 1950s and 1960s. I had never written for concert bands before, but it’s something that I love doing.”
At the Christmas dinner of Artists' Association A.I.E., from left – Javier de Juan, Manolo Aguilar, and Javier Losada (2010)
“Around the same time as that first performance in Alcoy, I was invited to become a teacher of drums and classical percussion at the conservatoire in Alicante. An old friend of mine, who was the conductor of the symphony orchestra in Alicante, had become the director of the local music academy as well – and he offered me a teaching job. In the end, I lasted for just eight days! I couldn’t make peace with the fact that there were students of different levels, who you were expected to help simultaneously. So the advanced students became bored when I was talking to the beginners, and the other way around; Moreover, a job with fixed hours just isn’t for me. I found it terrible working the same hours every day, so I gave up on it. I need more freedom than is possible in that line of work.”
“Nowadays, I love taking life easy, but I’ve continued working here and there. I still enjoy playing live. A couple of years ago, Cadillac got together again, and, because their drummer died, the boys called me to rehearse and play with them. Apart from that, I also play drums in a cover band called Stúdio Ochenta now and again. Our repertoire consists mainly of 1980s Spanish pop and rock music. It’s a type of music that is much appreciated by people who are in their fifties and sixties. We perform regularly at private parties and in town halls.”
“Just around the time when I quit La Década, I also formed a prog rock group with four friends, all of them professional musicians. One day, while we were together taking a hike in the mountains of Central Spain, the idea came up to start composing songs and recording them. Yeah, why not? We call ourselves Los Noniná. Our keyboard player, Ivan García-Pelayo, has a home studio which he built into his garage. That’s where we started rehearsing. Our style is influenced by Peter Gabriel and King Crimson. Meanwhile, we’ve recorded our first album and we’re preparing a second, but we’re not looking for a record company or live gigs. We’ve got nothing to prove to anyone. This is something which we’re doing for our own enjoyment.”
“When at home, I usually sit at my computer composing. I don’t write pop songs any longer. Since my return to Alcoy and the involvement with the concert bands there, my interest has shifted towards instrumental music. Gradually, I’ve become enamoured with writing symphonic pieces for large philharmonic orchestras. During my career, I’ve always been primarily about pop and rock, but apparently you have to reach a certain age to appreciate classical music! Writing symphonic pieces requires a completely different approach than a pop song. Obviously, the melodies come from your inspiration, but following that you have to harmonise that melody, which requires using the lessons of classical music theory which I was taught at the conservatoire in my early years. You also have to learn to write for complicated instruments like cellos and harps, but it’s something that I love spending my time on. After all, I’m doing this for my own pleasure. It would be a dream come true to hear my music as part of the soundtrack of a film, but I don’t think it will happen. After all, you have to be realistic in terms of ambitions when you’re in your seventies rather than in your thirties.”
“Looking back on my life in music makes me very proud. I was lucky to be given the opportunity to work in the studio and to be offered the La Década project, but when those opportunities presented themselves, I knew how to capitalise on them and make things work. La Década is certainly my most popular and influential involvement, but I cannot say that it’s the part of my career I’m most proud of. It was more inspirational to work with Tino Casal and with Mecano, because those were productions which were innovative and contemporary, moving away from the type of music which had come before. Moreover, in those sessions, the studio musicians were expected to have their contribution in the creative process. It required taking risks. I mean, I can say that I was proud of playing drums on José Carreras’ album ‘Mi otro perfil’ (from 1984 – BT), because Carreras is a world star, but that was nothing more than just coming to the studio and playing the notes which arranger Eddy Guerin had written out for me. It didn’t involve an active contribution as with Casal and Mecano.”
“The main thing that I’ve always valued throughout life, though, is being free. I could never have been the timpani player in a symphony orchestra. It would have required showing up at 9am and following instructions from a conductor every day. I’m not workshy – quite the opposite, I can work for 24 hours, because I invent melodies mostly while I’m asleep. Also, if I have to drive for three hours to get to a gig, that’s no problem. But I just couldn’t bear having a boss telling me what to do. Considering that, I’ve had a perfect career. Above all, I am and always will be a free spirit!”
Friends for life – the team behind La Década Prodigiosa in 2023, from left: Manolo Aguilar, Javier de Juan, and Manel Santisteban
EUROVISION SONG CONTEST
Javier de Juan conducted the Eurovision orchestra on one occasion, in 1988 with his own group La Década Prodigiosa, but, five years previously, he had another involvement in the contest, when he teamed up with Manolo Aguilar to write the record arrangement to one of the best-remembered Spanish entries in the history of the contest, the modern flamenco piece ‘¿Quién maneja mi barca?’, which was performed on the stage of the contest in Munich by Remedios Amaya. Perhaps puzzled by the unusual character of the song or the performance, the juries failed to give a single point to this Spanish entry, which finished in joint last place with Turkey. What are Javier de Juan’s memories of working on ‘¿Quién maneja mi barca?’, a composition by José Miguel Évora with lyrics by Évora’s father, Isidro Múñoz, and the album ‘Luna nueva’, on which it was included?
“Although the name of the producer given on the record is Julio Palacios, the real producer of Remedios Amaya was Gonzalo García-Pelayo,” Javier comments. “Palacios was one of his assistants. García-Pelayo was a film producer, but he also had a hand in the record company Philips. Apart from his involvement with Philips, he had his own, small record company, with which he released music by rock groups from his native Andalusia. In the early 1980s, when Manolo and I were just establishing ourselves as an arranging duo in the recording studios in Madrid, García-Pelayo often asked us to record those rock groups, which were mainly from the Seville area. Now, García-Pelayo knew that Manolo and I were working with Tino Casal and Mecano – and those were really contemporary recordings, which had elements of techno music. Now, when he approached us for the record with Remedios Amaya in 1982, Gonzalo García-Pelayo wanted us to combine elements of traditional flamenco music with a techno sound. Remedios was a traditional flamenco singer and while we had to preserve the essence of the flamenco spirit, he wanted us to embed her singing in a modern, contemporary sound. That was the initial idea.”
“Manolo and I received the demos of the nine songs from the album, of which ‘¿Quién maneja mi barca?’ was one. All the songs were sung by one of the composers to the accompaniment of a single guitar. All the harmonisation, counterpoints, rhythmical patterns, further musical effects, and the final structure of the songs had to be added by us, the two arrangers. For each song, I would start the arranging work by establishing the pattern of the beat and the rhythms, following which Manolo designed a bass line. From there, we carried on together until the complete arrangement was finished to our liking.”
“We recorded the album in the Audiofilm Studios in Madrid with Luis Fernández Soria as our sound engineer. Because we needed a contemporary feel, we used all kinds of novel instruments, such as the Fairlight, the Prophet 5, the Chapman Stick, a Simmons drum kit, and a Roland digital guitar, along with some traditional instruments. All string lines were played by a mechanical instrument called the Mellotron rather than by real string players. All the same, not a single note on any of the songs was sequenced or programmed. Everything was done by real musicians; Manolo, myself and some others, who we hired for the project. All the same, it was quite an adventure and a lot of fun to work on.”
“When the music had been prepared, it was time to record the vocals. We had never worked with Remedios Amaya before, but she proved easy to work with and a nice girl all around. This wasn’t her first record, but because the musical backgrounds sounded so unusual to her ears, she was unsure about her singing. At first, she just giggled when she heard the music. In the end, I stood up in front of her, making gestures with my hands to indicate to her when to sing and in which tempo. She was singing into the microphone while I was conducting and giving her the pace and entrances, but also indicating where to cut and generally how to express herself. She was still quite an unknown quantity in Madrid, but it was obvious to us that she had talent.”
“Somehow, the album remained on the shelf for some time, when suddenly news came through that Remedios had been picked to go to Eurovision for Spain. It was a decision taken by Spanish television. I had no involvement in it, but I know that Gonzalo García-Pelayo had close relations with Felipe González, who had just become prime minister of Spain. They were both from Seville. Using his connections in the highest echelons of Spanish politics, García-Pelayo must have successfully pushed for Remedios to go to the contest.”
“When we learned that ‘¿Quién maneja mi barca?’ was the song which would take part in the Eurovision competition, Manolo and I realised it had to be performed live with an orchestra. The main thing for us was to maintain the peculiar, floating rhythm of the song in the orchestration. It wasn’t a straight pop rhythm, but a smooth feel not dissimilar to what you would get when listening to a flamenco guitar. We wanted to ask the Eurovision organisers to allow us to use the same electronic instruments which had been employed in the studio. The next step would be to enlarge the arrangement with strings and brass. Our idea was to ask Eddy Guerin to take care of this additional orchestration, while we also had Eddy in mind as our conductor in the contest in Munich. Eddy was one of the most prestigious arrangers in Spain, someone with a lot of experience on the back of his time as musical director at the Olympia Hall in Paris. We worked with him regularly and had a high regard of his abilities. I’m not so sure if we ever told Eddy about our plans.”
“Manolo Aguilar and I also had a clear conception of Remedios’ styling for the Eurovision Song Contest. We wanted her makeup and clothing to be inspired by the character Rachael from the film Blade Runner. She had to wear stiletto heels and large shoulder pads, with her suit cinched at the waist. Moreover, her hair had to be tied back at the nape of the neck, with a chignon – very Spanish, but very avant-garde at the same time, just like the sound of her song. In order to get the right visuals, we had in mind to hire a professional makeup artist.”
Remedios Amaya on the Eurovision stage in Munich
“At that point, however, the entourage of Remedios Amaya took over. There was her management and her family – and, you know, gypsies have large families! ‘No, I will do your makeup,’ said her cousin. ‘I’ll design your dress,’ said her sister, ‘and you’ll go barefoot.’ We weren’t there, but this must have been pretty much what happened. Whatever the truth, this was the exact opposite of what Manolo Aguilar and I had in mind. We wanted a style which would make her look tall and stylish, whereas her family and friends preferred a traditional approach. To our mind, the blue dress made Remedios look like a traditional Spanish woman; short and with the shape of a guitar! This would have been very good if the song she performed was a traditional flamenco song – but the style of ‘¿Quién maneja mi barca?’ was so innovative, and unfortunately her outfit on the Eurovision stage really didn’t reflect this. Once Manolo and I got wind of this element of the project slipping from our hands, we decided to withdraw altogether. The musical part of the performance was not even discussed, because we had decided to step aside before we had the opportunity to bring it up.”
“After we had pulled out, Remedios Amaya’s management had to find somebody else to do the adaptation for the Eurovision orchestra. They made the logical step by asking the composer, José Miguel Évora, someone who we didn’t know personally. Given his abilities, he was a natural choice. We never spoke with him and he approached the arrangement as he saw fit. Listening to his orchestration which was played in Eurovision now, it’s fair to say that Évora made it with the utmost of respect for our original record version. The bass line is identical and the bass player in the orchestra played it wonderfully. The rhythm of the drums and other percussion instruments was also retained to detail. Judging by the sound, I even think a Simmons drum kit was used in the Eurovision orchestra, just like on the album. The harmonisation was perfect and the Roland guitar chords have been wonderfully transcribed for the brass section, with a fine result and an excellent sound.”
“However, the sequence of the song was transcribed to the string section of the orchestra and therein lies a great difference. On the album, the sequence was played by an electronic clavinet, an instrument which Stevie Wonder had used to such great effect in ‘Superstition’. The clavinet has a percussive sound, which is exactly what we wanted for the record. It was our way of emulating the traditional clapping in flamenco music. This gives the song a distinctly offbeat groove. String instruments, on the other hand, have a melodic sound rather than a percussive one. The result of this is that the groove of the song in the Eurovision version is downbeat and doesn’t have the modern, pop-rock feel we were looking for.”
“Another small difference is that the speed of the song in our record version is just a tad slower than in the Eurovision Song Contest; it’s a difference of just three beats per minute, but those three extra points of speed make the sound of the song a little bit less relaxed in the live version. It is for reasons like this that Manolo and I had wanted to be there in Munich; just to make sure that the presentation of the song, acoustically as well as visually, would have been in accordance with our vision. I would like to make it clear, though, that the orchestral arrangement done by Évora has been well done and, also because the orchestra plays very well, the result sounds absolutely wonderful. I wouldn’t like to claim that our version would have scored a higher number of points. Perhaps it’s only for the best that Manolo and I didn’t take part in Munich. Who knows, maybe our career with Spanish television would have been over before it had started!”
Remedios Amaya being consoled by her conductor José Miguel Évora after the disastrous voting result for the Spanish entry in Munich
“I think the reason why the song finished last is mainly in the stage presentation. Remedios is very temperamental, by which I mean that she probably behaved differently in each rehearsal. If you see how many difficulties the German director has following her movements on the stage, my conclusion is that he was puzzled. In Eurovision, the image is very important. Manolo and I had a plan ready, but here you just see a barefoot woman walking across the stage in an improvised way. International audiences must have been part shocked, part confused. They didn’t understand what was happening. Perhaps the song was too novel for Eurovision, who knows? The record itself sold quite well in Spain, but that isn’t the same as making a good impression internationally.”
In 1988, Spain’s broadcaster TVE allowed itself to be represented in the Eurovision Song Contest by the group La Década Prodigiosa – although the name was abbreviated to just La Década for the event – and one of the ensemble’s first original songs, ‘La chica que yo quiero (Made In Spain)’. From the foundation of the group in 1985 onwards, the output had consisted almost exclusively of cover versions of songs from the 1960s and 1970s. Apart from being the co-producer and co-arranger of the group with his business partners, bass player Manolo Aguilar and keyboardist Manel Santisteban, Javier de Juan was also the drummer of the eight-man formation, which had enjoyed great success touring Spain in the preceding years. At the international Eurovision final in Dublin, the group’s performance of ‘La chica que yo quiero’ was awarded an eleventh place in a field of 21 competing nations.
“Eurovision came along just when we were starting to write our own material,” Javier de Juan comments. “It wasn’t our idea to go to the contest. I can only guess at the reason why we were chosen. One year before the festival, we were booked to perform at a private dinner party organised by King Juan Carlos on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his graduation day from law school. The party was held in El Parador Nacional, a hotel in Segovia. The king had invited a group of former fellow students. We were the closing act. Juan Carlos danced along enthusiastically to our songs, copying all our choreographies on the dance floor. At the end of the night, we had our photo taken with the king. When the two girls in our group, Ana Nery and Cecilia, came to stand by his side, he joked that his wife would kill him when she saw him surrounded by these two wonderful young ladies. As it happened, one of the invitees at that dinner party was Pilar Miró, future managing director at TVE. Who knows, perhaps this was the night that sent us to Dublin?”
“Whatever the truth behind that, it was months later when our record company Hispavox told us that we had the opportunity to go to Eurovision, if we agreed to sing the song ‘La chica que yo quiero (Made In Spain)’. When Manolo, Manel, and I first listened to the demo, we weren’t really impressed. We didn’t hate it, but it was such a simple song – really not our cup of tea. That’s why we suggested the company to pick a song by the three of us, entitled ‘Si, si, mañana’, instead. We had composed it when we first heard talk about going to Eurovision. It was an optimistic song, reflecting how perhaps tomorrow, we could conquer the world. Given that the Eurovision Song Contest could serve as a springboard, we felt it was an optimistic message fitting our intentions. We’ll never know if it would have done better in the contest, but the song was certainly more contemporary, more 1980s, than ‘La chica que yo quiero’.”
King Juan Carlos’ private dinner party in Segovia, from left: Manel Santisteban, Manuel Rodríguez, Javier de Juan, Cecilia Blanco, King Juan Carlos I, Ana Nery Fragoso, Carmelo Martínez, Jose Subiza, and Manolo Aguilar (1987)
“The director of Hispavox at the time was Rafael Gil and he didn’t want to hear of our suggestion. Because the names of the two songwriters of ‘La chica que yo quiero’ were pseudonyms (Enrique Peiró & Francisco Dondiego – BT), we assumed that Rafael Gil himself was one of them. As it now turns out when checking the credits of the song in the directory of the Spanish songwriters’ union, the composer was Pedro Vidal and the lyrics were done by Luis Gómez Escolar. Both were seasoned songwriters. Gómez Escolar in particular wrote lots of songs for Mocedades and Ole Ole.”
“I haven’t got a clue why the two composers of the song didn’t use their own names at the time, but it was clear they must have had a financial agreement with Rafael Gil. Otherwise, Gil wouldn’t have insisted on this song so stubbornly. It was put bluntly to us that we were either going to the festival with ‘La chica que yo quiero’ or we wouldn’t go at all. Given those two options, we chose Eurovision. Why not? We were expecting to have a lot of fun, spending a week in Dublin with all expenses being paid by Spanish television and the record company. It was something to look forward to and good promotion for the group. When you’re working in the recording business, you are used to sometimes not being able to make the artistic choices yourself. This was what had happened with ‘¿Quién maneja mi barca?’. Now, in the case of La Década, we decided to swallow our pride and see what the event would bring us.”
“The demo version of ‘La chica que yo quiero (Made In Spain)’ was sung by the composer, the man who we now know was Pedro Vidal, to the accompaniment of an acoustic guitar. By that time, Manel Santisteban, Manolo Aguilar, and I weren’t just arranging all the material for the group ourselves, we usually did the production and recording independently as well. As we learnt when working on the Eurovision project, those responsible at Hispavox didn’t have much faith in us in our role as producers. When we passed them the recorded version of the song, they said they didn’t like it very much. They then demanded that the piece be re-recorded under the supervision of Jorge Álvarez, who had been the producer of our group at the outset in 1985, but who had retired to his native Argentina by that time.”
“So then we called Jorge and he agreed to come to Spain. When he listened to the song as we had done it, he commented that he felt he couldn’t add anything useful to it. He liked it as it was. We then also asked our friend, the well-known arranger and conductor Luis Cobos, to listen to the record. He felt there was nothing wrong with it either. In the end, we decided to change just one note in one of the keyboard lines. Nothing else! That’s how we sent back the song to Hispavox. You know what they said? ‘Now it’s perfect!’ The funniest thing was; when they sent the recording to the pressing plant, they accidentally sent the first version instead of the second! So the version which they released commercially was the first recording of the song, which they had deemed unsatisfactory. We surely had a good laugh about this in the group. It tells you that those in the highest positions in record companies often know next to nothing about music.”
La Década at full strength in a photo taken for promotional reasons in the run-up to the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest, from left: Javier de Juan, Manel Santisteban, Ana Nery Fragoso, Cecilia Blanco, José Subiza, Manolo Aguilar (seated), Carmelo Martínez, and Manuel Rodríguez
“The arrangement of the song was done in a way which was quite similar to ‘¿Quién maneja mi barca?’ five years before. I started by establishing the rhythmical pattern, then Manolo Aguilar would do the bass line, and from there we discussed the details in perfect harmony together. It was great to have Manel Santisteban on board. He was originally a jazz pianist and someone with excellent arranging ideas. He also knew a lot more about computers than Manolo and I did. We used his knowledge to our advantage while preparing the Eurovision project. The three of us also sat together to write the adaptation for the orchestra in the Eurovision Song Contest. We didn’t prepare any backing track. We wanted the song to be played entirely live. There were no problems in doing so. I have no idea what the advantage of the use of a pre-recorded track would have been for this particular song.”
“Another thing which wasn’t entirely to our liking was the preview video which Spanish television recorded with us. The choreography and images were entirely prepared by TVE without the production team asking us for our opinion at any point. We decided to roll with the punches once again, going along with their ideas. The filming was done at the Crystal Palace, a nineteenth-century conservatory situated in the Retiro Park in the heart of Madrid. I just remember that we had fun making it. There was a good spirit in the group and we were all determined to make the best of it.”
“We had our way in one respect, though. Nobody in the group had ever been fond of the name La Década Prodigiosa. This had been the choice of the record company when the group was founded. We were called The Prodigious Decade, because that was the nickname in Spain of the 1960s and we started out as a 1960s cover band. At the time, we would have preferred to have been called The History of Pop in Spain. We found it a bit pretentious to be called prodigious. I remember talking to Luis Cobos’ lawyer once, who just said, ‘This is much too flashy.’ We felt uneasy being announced with that name, although it proved catchy and people remembered it. When Eurovision came along, we suggested shortening our name to just La Década, which meant we were rid of that unwelcome word prodigious. Our request was granted. Not that we were happy with the word decade either. To our ears, it sounded too much like decadencia (or ‘decadence’ in English – BT). All through the existence of the group, I’ve attempted to feel comfortable with the name of the group, but I never really managed it.”
“It was obvious from the start that we had to find a solution for the Eurovision rule of having a maximum of six performers on stage. After all, we were a group of eight. In the end, the song itself dictated our decisions. Of course, our four singers and dancers, Cecilia, Ana Nery, José, and Carmelo, all had to be there. Then, Manolo Aguilar and Manel Santisteban had a vocal intervention in the middle of the song, which meant that they had to be up on that stage as well. During the performance they were holding a guitar and a bass, but this was just for the show – to give them something to do. They weren’t playing it for real. This meant that the six places were taken. Our guitarist, Manolo Rodríguez, could come along with us to Dublin to enjoy the parties and the press attention, but he couldn’t join the group on stage. Lastly, because the presence of the two other arrangers was required on stage, it meant that the role of conductor of the orchestra fell to me. Honestly speaking, Manolo Aguilar and Manel Santisteban could have done the job just as well as me… perhaps even better, who knows?”
At a party in Dublin, from left: Manolo Aguilar, José Subiza, Manel Santisteban, Cecilia Blanco, Carmelo Martínez, Ana Nery Fragoso, and Javier de Juan
“We weren’t nervous to come to Dublin for the contest; at least I wasn’t. On the morning of our arrival at the airport, we were offered an Irish coffee – and they hadn’t held back with the amount of whiskey in it! What a lovely drink! This was my first time in Ireland; and, in fact, I’ve never been back after the event, but I remember feeling very well looked after all week. We were staying at the Shelbourne Hotel, a five-star hotel in the centre of the city. On our day off, the organising committee took all the delegations on a train journey across the country. We were shown around a beautiful village, a port city, and some museums. We met a lot of friends and nice people. Those eight days in Dublin were a delight from start to finish. We were made to feel very welcome.”
“The only setback we experienced was being forced onto the street in the dead of night three times because the fire alarm of the hotel sounded. It was a terribly loud alarm. ‘Run out, run out!’, hotel servants shouted in the corridors, and there we were in the street – but even that was lots of fun, because, after three nights, it became some sort of a routine. When we were allowed back into the hotel again, it was so close to the morning, that we could move to the breakfast table straightaway, enjoying lovely pasties, hot coffee, and of course some nice whiskey. Not bad at all!”
“As a group, we came to the contest well-prepared. Given that we had been touring Spain so extensively for the past two years, the singers were used to performing live with real musicians backing them up and giving a visually attractive stage performance. One of the singers, Ana Nery, always took care of the choreography and she had done a good job on that. It was important that the cameramen in Dublin would know about the essential parts of our stage performance. At two points while they were singing, the girls unfolded a typical Spanish fan – to reinforce the ‘Made In Spain’ message of the song. During the rehearsals in Dublin, we found the Irish director and his crew very receptive and open to our suggestions, which was nice. We were happy with the way the group was shown on television.”
“When I came to the orchestra in Dublin, it was clear that it had been rehearsing our song thoroughly. The musicians each had their score on the desk and all I had to do was count to four and then they played the arrangement perfectly. As is usually the case with such festival orchestras, most of the musicians were seasoned and used to working with different arrangers, each with their own distinctive style. There was no need to explain any details. It was easy for them, so it was easy for me as a conductor as well. More attention and rehearsal time was spent on the camera work than on the music. It sounded fine from the outset.”
Ana Nery rehearsing on the Eurovision stage in Dublin’s Simmonscourt Pavilion
“I wasn’t an experienced conductor in terms of leading orchestras for stage performances, but I had led groups of musicians in studio sessions dozens of times. Before that, I had watched conductors at work in the studio and on stage many times; guys like Luis Cobos, Eduardo Leiva, and Eddy Guerin. As a drummer, I knew what I was looking for in a conductor. Moreover, I had been conducted since my earliest childhood in the concert band in Alcoy. To me, making the gestures has always come naturally. As a conductor, I never stick to just indicating the tempo. While I’m standing there, I’m feeling the music through and through and I’m transmitting that expression to the musicians by indicating the pianos, the emphasis, and all the rest of it. Musicians can see my bodily movements and they’ll respond well to it. At least, that’s what happened in Dublin.”
“The only thing which I could never explain to the singers is how to pronounce the English word Spain. It’s very difficult for Spanish-speakers to pronounce foreign words that begin with an S without adding an E in front of it. It’s may be true that Luis Gómez Escolar really thought that the correct pronunciation of the word was Espain and that he wrote his lyrics accordingly, but I think this could have been avoided. I can pronounce the word SPA-IN in two syllables perfectly without the need of adding the extra E at the beginning of the word. I never asked about Gómez Escolar’s true intentions at the time, because we didn’t even know who the songwriters of our entry were anyway! Other than that, the group’s singing was one of perhaps too many things that I had to take notice of at the time. The pronunciation of the word during the Eurovision performance isn’t correct and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my days… and it sounds terrible!”
“You know what the best thing of our time in Dublin was? We were in the same hotel as Céline Dion! She represented Switzerland with a song written for her by a guy from Turkey who also conducted the orchestra. His name was Atilla (Atilla Şereftuğ – BT). They were one of three or four delegations booked in the Shelbourne Hotel. So I can claim that I shared my breakfast with Céline Dion! I remember spending some time in a pub with Atilla, having a chat and a beer together. We attended a performance of U2 there, who were promoting their new song. At some point, Atilla got up on the stage himself and played a tune on the piano. He obviously was a very artistic guy, so he was a perfect conductor for Eurovision. In such an event, you’re looking for people who somehow stand out from the crowd. Atilla stood out because of his personality, which shone through on the television screen. Probably through our connection with the Swiss delegation and Atilla in particular, we also made good friends with the Turkish group. Especially their drummer, who was an extremely tall guy, became very friendly with us and spent a lot of time away from rehearsals with our group.”
“Standing there to conduct the orchestra on the night of a broadcast was a very proud moment. When I take my bow, you can see that I am stroking my hair. This was something I did consciously, because I was thinking of my good friend Luis Cobos. He is a popular conductor in shows in theatre and on television – and Luis’ trademark is his long hair. It was part of his image. Luis often ruffles his hair in between conducting one song and the other. I did this as a little wink to him. He may not even have taken notice, but that was the reason I did it!”
Javier de Juan in Dublin, flanked by the two girls in La Década, Ana Nery and Cecilia Blanco
“When Céline Dion won the festival, she invited the artists of the other delegations who stayed in the Shelbourne Hotel to her room to have a glass of champagne with her in celebration. We were very happy for her, because she had become our companion during the week. Looking back, I think she was the correct winner. Atilla had composed a fine song and she sang it to perfection. It was the perfect combination of an excellent song and an excellent artist.”
“As for our own expectations, I’ve always come to song festivals with the same mindset. I took part in the Benidorm Song Festival on many occasions and my attitude was always, ‘This is just about promotion’ and ‘We don’t need to win.’ In other words, you’re being cool and you don’t think about winning. But once you’re there, you start thinking about how nice it would be to win. Finally, when you don’t win, you say to yourself, ‘Ah, what a pity!’ I’m sure this was the kind of mindset of the artists of all other countries taking part in Eurovision in Dublin as well. Finishing in eleventh place was good for us. Considering how badly Spain did in some editions of the contest before and after, we had nothing to complain about. We benefited from our participation in the following months, when we went on a successful summer tour across Spain. Audiences treated us very well. We sold lots of records and ‘La chica que yo quiero’ became one of our most popular songs. In fact, it's still being sung in karaoke bars in Madrid today. It may not have been the song of our choice, but this proves it must have had its merits.”
“We had never thought of breaking into the European market on the back of our Eurovision performance. For such a thing, our band was a bit too Spanish and not international enough. Our natural international market would have been to go to Latin America. We would have loved going there, but travelling to the other side of the ocean with a large group of eight people would have been pretty costly. On top of that, we were doing so well in Spain, performing almost daily all summer season, that going abroad for three months would have cost us a lot of money in Spain. La Década remained very popular as a performing group in Spain in the following years. We did Eurovision on the conditions of our record company, which may have been a bad starting point. I’m pretty sure that we had more to offer as a group, but the experience as a whole turned out very positively. We had a great time!”
“In later years, I tried several more times to get La Década back onto the Eurovision stage. We came pretty close in 2001, when the group had been renamed Hi Priority specifically to give the four singers who were in the group at the time a new image for the contest. The song was ‘A nadie como a ti’ and it was co-written by Pablo Pinilla, with whom I produced the group at the time. Unfortunately, the song finished in second place in the Spanish selection behind David Civera. It was quite a memorable performance, because the backing group consisted of Andrea Bronston, the daughter of film producer Samuel Bronston, who settled in Spain to be a session singer, and my old friend José Maria Guzman of Cadillac. It would have been a nice opportunity to do Eurovision again, but it wasn’t to be. The guy managing the group with me at the time told us dryly, ‘The one finishing second place is the first loser,’ and he was right. It would have been interesting to see what the song could have done internationally.”
Manolo Aguilar and Manel Santisteban during the performance of ‘La chica que yo quiero’ on the festival stage in Dublin
“I couldn’t say that the Eurovision experience in Dublin was a milestone in my life as a musician. After all, the event didn’t change the course of my career. On the other hand, it was certainly something interesting and above all a proud moment standing on that stage to conduct the orchestra. I’m glad I still had the opportunity to work with an orchestra in the contest. It was sad to see the orchestra taken away from the contest later onwards, but you could see it coming; money dictates how productions like the Eurovision Song Contest are run… and you can surely save a lot of budget by removing a sixty-piece orchestra from the podium.”
“Something similar happened on the live circuit decades before that. When I first arrived in Madrid in 1968, there was a band or small orchestra playing in every club around the town to entertain the audiences. I was in one of those bands, with Camilo Sesto being our lead singer. Sometimes, in between two sets of songs to be played by us, we had to back up an attraction; a humourist, a dancer, or a magician. In the beginning, this artist would bring a written score of the music he wanted us to play during his performance. We loathed that, because this involved extra rehearsal time. So when, at some point, these artists started using a pre-recorded tape they brought with them, we were happy. It meant we had a little break, which we used to sit relaxedly in our dressing rooms and play a game of cards. That was a pretty short-sighted reaction by us, because, in the end, we were sent to our dressing rooms forever! Our band was replaced by a DJ bringing a box of vinyl records with him to entertain the audience. Nowadays, you won’t find a single orchestra or entertainment band playing in any club in Madrid. That’s what we like to call progress, eh...”
“In retrospect, taking away the live musicians was only the first step in taking away the human element from music altogether. Nowadays, everybody is talking about artificial intelligence. There is a big danger in AI. These days, you can often hear musicians say, ‘How helpful AI is, because I don’t have to think about what to write – I just use my computer program, which helps me gett my songs ready on time.’ This is the beginning of the end! Eventually, musicians will not even need to switch on their computer at all, because the producer commissioning the music from them will learn about using AI for creating music as well. Why would a producer pay money to a musician to get compositions for his film or television programme, when he can do it himself by using an AI program, without having to pay any bill to any musician at all? That’s what I’m afraid is going to happen. I’ll be glad if I’m proven wrong.”
“If I can, I still watch Eurovision nowadays. To my taste, it has become too showy. The technique with which the songs are presented is sophisticated, there’s no doubt about that. You can see people flying around on stage, lots of light effects, and pyrotechnics coming up from the floor, but let me stress the positive; behind all that there’s still plenty of quality and creativity to be found. Do you remember Måneskin, the Italian group which won the contest (in 2021 – BT)? They were excellent. Their singer is charismatic, the girl playing the bass is great, and the drummer has a flawless technique. Their songs are good as well. I surely love traditional Italian music, but this rock group had something else; a powerful stage presence. I thought they were so good that I bought their record. This is just an example, because I still hear lots of nice songs in Eurovision every year. That doesn’t take anything away from my opinion that I would love some musicians backing them up playing live music, but what can we do about that?”
Javier de Juan in the greenroom in Dublin with (from left) Manel Santisteban, Cecilia Blanco, and Manuel Rodríguez
OTHER ARTISTS ABOUT JAVIER DE JUAN
Keyboard player and arranger Javier Losada worked with Javier de Juan in the studio as well as on stage. “I think I first met Javier de Juan and his musical partner Manolo Aguilar in the studio when we were recording the second album of Tino Casal. Javier had already worked with Tino on the first album, while I joined the team for the second, staying with Tino until the end. We did some sequence programming, with Javier taking care of the drums and Manolo playing bass. In subsequent years, the three of us, Manolo, Javier and I, were often called as a base team for studio projects. Arrangers called us first to record the basic tracks. Manolo and Javier became very good friends. Javier enjoyed great success with La Década, and I was happy to work with him on the group’s last album, which was a good production. During all those occasions of working with him, I learnt to appreciate Javier as a very clever musician and a good friend.” (2024)
EUROVISION INVOLVEMENT YEAR BY YEAR
Country – Spain
Song title – "¿Quién maneja mi barca?"
Rendition – Remedios Amaya
Lyrics – Isidro Múñoz
Composition – José Miguel Évora
Studio arrangement – Manolo Aguilar / Javier de Juan
Live orchestration – José Miguel Évora
Conductor – José Miguel Évora
Score – 19th place (0 votes)
Country – Spain
Song title – "La chica que yo quiero (Made In Spain)"
Rendition – La Década (Manolo Aguilar / Cecilia Blanco / Ana Nery Fragoso / Carmelo Martínez / Manel Santisteban / José Subiza)
Lyrics – Francisco Dondiego (= Luis Gómez Escolar)
Composition – Enrique Peiró (= Pedro Vidal)
Studio arrangement – Manolo Aguilar / Javier de Juan / Manel Santisteban
Live orchestration – Manolo Aguilar / Javier de Juan / Manel Santisteban
Conductor – Javier de Juan
Score – 11th place (58 votes)
SOURCES & LINKS
- Bas Tukker did an interview with Javier de Juan, subdivided in two sessions, December 2024
- Thanks to Javier Losada for his additional comments about working with Javier de Juan
- A playlist of music by Javier de Juan can be found by following this YouTube link
- Photos courtesy of Javier de Juan & Ferry van der Zant
- Thanks to Mark Coupar for proofreading the manuscript
No comments:
Post a Comment