“If you touch my roast, I’ll stab you in the eye,” he repeated jokingly. Rodrigo Bueno to his loyal manager and sideman José Luis “Pepe” Gozalo that afternoon in January 2000 in Pinamar. That afternoon, with a sharp knife in his hand, Rodrigo spoke to this journalist about his career.
It was already almost five in the afternoon, but he was talking about lunch, after a night in which Rodrigo had gone to bed late in the morning since he had presented his album “A 2000” in Pinamar. The songs were recorded live S’Combro Dancing Bowling by José C Paz on July 23, 1999and became their most iconic and symbolic album.
It was his second live album that marked his final dedication and boom in popularity, with classics such as “Yerba Mala”, “Soy Cordobés” and “Como le dice”. The success of “A 2000” was so great that He needed it to fill Luna Park, marking a record 13 consecutive appearances.
That January 2000, Rodrigo was happy, smiling and enjoying like no other the success that overwhelmed him but made him feel powerful. “They always ask me about the woman in my life. Do you know who she will be? When I have a daughter. I’m already imagining her,” he said with optimism gave the emptiness the finishing touches and cut the ribs with the precision and pulse of a butcher.
He offered a beer, his favorite drink, as Pepe, his representative and friend, watched him with his best smile. The Córdoba quartet continued to dream while posing for photos showing all of their tattoos: the Belgrano de Córdoba coat of arms, their favorite club, the S of Superman, the word Sarita (“a person well remembered”), a dawn, a vampire and a foal.
For this summer Diego Maradona He had been hospitalized in a serious condition in Punta del Este and “El Potro” remembered him with concern: “I just composed ‘Vivo’ for him. I was shocked by what happened to him because I consider myself his friend. I don’t let him breathe. Does anyone think about his daughters when they attack him and he is on a stretcher with heart problems? I try to make them respect me. I tell everyone not to mess with me because I don’t mess with anyone.
He referenced his childhood again and the dreams returned: “I remember my old lady (Beatriz Olave, known as Betty) taking me to the shows. Mona Jimenez. I was only two years old and was singing with a wooden microphone. When I was four, I played the song from the children’s show Carozo y Narizota on a children’s album called Baby. At eight I sold newspapers on the street and at eleven I made my debut with the group Chévere. These were difficult times for the quartet. In the 70s it was a very marginalized music. I remember a text that said, “I was not in the stream when Don Goyo died.” He was referring to the dead thrown into the dam by the military during the dictatorship. I left school at thirteen to pursue music. They sought me out at school to try out for the Manto Negro band. I asked for permission to go to the bathroom with the excuse that I was sick and left. I never looked for the backpack again. Later I became a soloist and at fifteen I was already Rodrigo. Since 1987 I have released eight albums and from this last CD Rodrigo to 2000 more than 150,000 copies. I can’t believe it”.
The reference to his father was immediately apparent: “He died four years ago. He died in my arms before a concert while carrying a keyboard to help me with a show at Villa Fiorito. He got out of the vehicle, said he felt bad, fell and died. I went to the gig anyway because he wouldn’t have forgiven me otherwise. He kept repeating the phrase, ‘The show must go on.’ I continued working and three weeks later the money started dropping. Nobody is prepared for that. It’s a slap in the face that life hits you and you have to get over it because you have no other choice. A lot went to hell, I fell on a spiritual level. I finished a show and cried. He left when I started to fulfill my dream of paying off my debts and from one day to the next everything was destroyed. above. My old man was a great man who ran an important record label for many years. He also did the Pimpinela project, discovered María Martha Serra Lima and spent a long time with Sandro. Eduardo Alberto Bueno, but everyone knew him as Pichín.”
Now he spoke about his mother, who he got angry with because she went on TV to defend him, and said some strong things: “My mother needs me a lot because she is alone, she accompanies me to shows and “Ulysses, 14, who is in Cordoba with my mother.”
I mentioned it again Mona Jimenezwhich Rodrigo visited since childhood: “I left Córdoba for rivalry reasons. I felt that they didn’t respect me and I left Rodrigo. For me he is the king of the quartet, I always talk about the three greatest Charlies that there were: Gardel, García and him.
For four months he has been dating Alejandra Romero, a young woman from Avellaneda who accompanies him everywhere. But for him, The light in his eyes was Ramiro Ezequiel, the son he had with Patricia Pacheco. “He is my legacy, able to go on stage and move people like me.”
“El Potro” said that he felt bad as a child, that he was hungry: “That’s why I swear to you that I’m not afraid of anything. Maybe I’ll end up under a bridge playing the viola, I don’t care because it’s what I like, it makes me happy. Money has only brought me problems, that’s why I don’t want it.”
The last question seems almost obligatory:
-What else are you dreaming about?
-With releasing an album every summer, with my friend Maradona healed and happy, with singing with my son on stage, with the fact that I’m still from Córdoba, with dying singing in a quartet.
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