Why did Jardes Macallie go 40 years without speaking to Caetano Veloso?

“There was a lot of intimacy with him (…) I was very shy as a musician, and he did not intimidate me,” Caetano said, in an interview with the newspaper O Globo, in 2012.

McCallie and Caetano met in the summer of 1963 in El Salvador. The Tejucano composer, who was on vacation in Bahia, was frightened by the almost chronic shyness of the young artist from Bahia, who, despite being a year older, behaved like a new student on the first day of class.

“We played the little guitar in the living room and then went to his room. And (Caetano) would do a handstand, stand upside down on the bed and say, ‘Turn around too, Macao, the session’s about to start,'” McCallie recalled, in a statement to the book. Other words – six times cayetanoWritten by Tom Cardoso.

The light coming through the window projects everything that is happening outside onto the wall of the room – but due to an optical phenomenon, this image was displayed upside down, so that, to see what was happening, you had to stand upside down, the musician reported.

“We stayed like that for a long time, looking at the pictures. Cayetano was silent, completely silent. We met that way,” McCallie said.

Two years after this unusual beginning of the friendship, McCallie hosted Maria Bethania at his apartment in Ipanema.

The singer had just arrived in Rio to replace Nara Leão on the show opinion. The friendship with the Veloso brothers became closer, but the bond was severed with Caetano’s arrest and exile in London.

In 1970, McCallie was returning from a carnival night when he received a phone call from Cayetano. The Bahian will begin recording a new album and immediately needs his friend’s presence at Chappelle’s Recording Studios.

He was full of ideas in his head, but only Macao could organize them and bring unity to the record.

The band that would play “Transa” suddenly formed in the studio. A selection of Brazilian music: Macalé on guitar, Tutty Moreno on drums, Moacyr Albuquerque on bass, and Áureo de Souza on percussion.

In charge of the production and arrangements, McCully took advantage of the climate in the city – the English capital was still suffering from the effects of “Swinging London”, as a period of great cultural and behavioral effervescence had become known – to take all the medications he could. He was soon called upon to organize the musical thought of Caetano’s Carta.

“Caetano never smoked, never snored, never took acid,” McCallie recalled, in an interview with UOL, in 2017. “He’s afraid he’s going crazy, as if he wasn’t already crazy. But he was moving around, he was crazy like the rest of us.”

In addition to marijuana, LSD and other additives, the musicians consumed liters and liters of milk.

“We were trained to drink milk to avoid contamination. There was an intensity. We recorded everything practically live to capture the heat of the moment. It’s a longing for your land, your language, your way of being, your people,” McCully said in an interview with UOL.

In this crazy atmosphere, a great album was recorded, one of the greatest albums in Brazilian discography. Caetano, who had been depressed since arriving in London, felt energized and energetic, and became grateful to McCully.

“It was organic and spontaneous, and my first group album was recorded almost like a live show. It was the curse This gave me the courage to do this work The other band of the earth, Caetano said, in an interview with Jornal do Brasil, in 1991.

“There’s ‘Nine Out of Ten’, my favorite song in English. It’s a historic song. It’s the first time a Brazilian song plays a few bars of reggae, and it’s a vignette at the beginning and the end. Long before John Lennon, Mick Jagger and even Paul McCartney,” Bahian said.

Cayetano and McCallie would certainly have recorded more LPs together if Rio’s musician’s name appeared in the album’s technical details. This is not what happened.

His name doesn’t appear anywhere, nor does Angela Rowe, who is also in the studio.

But unlike the then young singer, whose participation was limited to a harmonica solo on the song “Nostalgia”, Macalé, in addition to playing guitar on all the tracks, was the album’s chief arranger, producer and musical arranger.

First, Cayetano blamed producer and graphic artist Alvinio Guimarães, his good friend, who was responsible for the magazine’s cover. the curse.

“How do you do this fold-and-reveal nonsense, it looks like you’re going to make a lampshade out of the cover, without including the technical data? It was very important,” he said in an interview with Jornal do Brasil in 1991.

In 2006, during a press conference at the headquarters of the record company Universal Music, responsible for the re-release of the album, Cayetano said that at the time of recording the curse The names of the musicians did not appear on the covers of Brazilian records. Bahian was still right.

“Technical details of (disc)” Killer galfrom 1971, for example, is very confusing as to which musicians are playing. Who is the guitarist on which tracks? “Lani Jordin or Pebio Gomez?” asks music critic Tarek de Souza, in a statement to BBC News Brazil.

“The most scandalous case that happened to me after that time was the case of João Gilberto’s album recorded in the United States of America, Best of both worlds“From 1976, where he appears on the cover with Stan Getz and Miyosha and her name does not appear.”

The truth is that McCallie, deeply hurt by his friend’s neglect, broke off the friendship. And he did not remain silent. He complained several times to the press.

Leonen Caetano, who is good at fighting, did not let him down. The fighting escalated with both sides exchanging accusations.

Bethania, Gil and Jorge Mautner, who are also very close to McCallie, took Cayetano’s pain and moved away from the “Vapor Barato” author.

McCallie and Caetano made up the birthday of their mutual friend, actress Marita Severo. That same night, Bahian invited Macao to sing at memorial performances the curse.

Age did not allow them to watch a movie upside down on the sofa, but fraternal bonds were resumed.

“I’m crying because he died today. He was my first musician friend from Rio,” Cayetano wrote on his Instagram page.