He waves with his black hat and smiles as it plays over the speakers. The song of the (good) drunks… “who return home at dawn.” He proceeds with another bow and walks off to the side of the stage. The concert is over. and in the city where he lives, Madrid. Someone says that they have detected tears on the face of the eternal scoundrel. Difficult to see it from the stands. Perhaps some claim it to share that moment of shock, since they have had to wipe their eyes with their fingers to contain the ravages of emotion.
A stroke, a dramatic fall from the same stage last night (Movistar Arena), a thousand parties and dozens of immortal songs later, Joaquín Sabina (Úbeda, 76 years old) said goodbye last night “to the mass stages.” And this is what he said in the initial part of the concert: “This concert in Madrid is the last of my life and the most important because it is the one that I will remember the most.”
The master retains “the ace of reappearing at will, either because the muses whisper to me poems or songs that are worth sharing, or because I have the urge to get up on any platform to give me, to give us, a tribute.” The quotation marks belong to the protagonist and he said it when announcing this series of concerts. What seems certain is that last night looked very much like something similar to a requiem, a coda to a superb career, with its slips, yes, but who didn’t fall on a path that has already lasted five decades. And it had to be a Sunday, that day of the week that the protagonist doesn’t like, as he later sang in With you (“I don’t want Sunday afternoons”), but it was held at night, when attacks of melancholy become more bearable.
The 71st concert of a tour, Hello and goodbye, which began in January and its tenth (ten!) Movistar Arena of the year was a delight for the emotional palate of the public, with Sabina making efforts not to collapse, which was what her faithful audience was already there for, filling the venue with its 12,000 seats, all seated, including the floor part, although the public left their seats on many occasions to cheer on the protagonist and dance.
Because Sabina put on a show of high emotional voltage despite that strange beginning, with the song I deny everything playing on a studio recording, with the musicians still getting into position and the boss waiting in the dressing room. Couldn’t they have performed it live? It turned out to be a punctual temperance, because a few minutes later the protagonist appeared and it was flooded with applause, “oooooh” and “Sabina, don’t go.” It would never have been such a heart-wrenching recital without the dedicated predisposition of the audience, who took the night as a full-fledged farewell, a farewell to someone who has been giving them music and poetry with a popular acceptance that is capable of surpassing.
It began with a tribute to the city where he has lived the most, Madrid, contributing I get off in Atocha, a song that describes a city that is missed seeing the drift that the capital is taking in recent times. Sabina acted as boss at their last dinner in the center of the stage, sitting on a high stool. Next to it, a small table with a glass of… water. How things have changed. In front, a screen with what were supposed to be the lyrics of the songs, since he regularly looked in that direction. It’s okay: there are many poems written and we already know that memory has the bad habit of rusting over time. His splendid band of seven musicians stood behind him elevated on a platform. Each one had their role making incursions to the boss’s terrain to perform instrumental solos. Images alluding to the song being played were projected on large screens. The effect produced a simple but beautiful communion between image and music.
The man from Jaén chose a repertoire with a calm, sometimes parsimonious cadence (you cannot play any slower melancholy street), little presence of rock and roll and compositions so that his audience, who had already arrived with a hot throat, would chant without stridency, gently shaking their heads, with the variant of moving their arms up from one side to the other (“and they gave us ten and eleven, twelve and one, and two and three…”), and many times with the knot of shock clutched around their necks. He soon offered those recent twilight songs where he ironizes the clichés attributed to him (some real, others exaggerated) and takes stock from the exit ramp: “I deny everything, even the truth.” white lies It sounded great, stripped of those festive arrangements of the original recording.
Sabina’s always careless voice threatened to break on occasion, but that broken big voice held on the wire. In the decline of his career and after 70 recitals in ten months, it seems more like a pact with Satan on one of his nights of partying that he endured this last appointment at a decent level. But yes, he had air left in his lungs to remain on stage for two and a quarter hours, with occasional escapes to look for oxygen. In those breaks from the boss, Jaime Asúa (someday we will have to pay proper tribute to those Alarma!!! that he formed with Manolo Tena) played Pact between gentlemen, That marvelous throat that Mara Barros has attacked with power empty beds, and Antonio García De Diego, the man for everything, delivered a delicious The most beautiful song in the world.
With a sandy tone that in recent times has been impregnated with a warmth that is only achieved when seniority is more than a degree, Sabina showed that she is no longer a singer; He interprets, tells, gives life to his beautiful verses, dives into them, tears the words from his mouth and releases them. And that makes him believable because he is (or pretends to be very well) committed to the lyrics. It’s called pure and simple communication. His words came out tarry, penetrating. Last night he only needed a smoking cigarette in the corner of his mouth to complete that proudly worn figure. I’m sure he would have killed for that dose of nicotine.
He picked up a guitar for some song, as in 19 days and 500 nights, Of purest and gold, that sounded superb, or to accompany the majestic verses of Where oblivion lives. For the slower pieces (still), like the beautiful A song for Magdalena o Down the boulevard of broken dreams, He changed the stool for a low chair. He gave vocal polish to the two Mara Barros. Perhaps the most musical fans missed some change in a repertoire that was too rigid throughout the tour; Perhaps those who enjoyed the combative eighties Sabina would have gone home more satisfied if the protagonist had given some incisive speech, given how murky the outlook is. Any significant guests? Well too. They are drawbacks to an enjoyable and sentimental show, a shared tribute that Sabina and the spectators enjoyed, at the same level.
The party ended with a stoniano with the musicians placed at the same level as the leader and the people, already forgetting the composure of the seats, dancing already on the verge of laryngitis from singing so much. If there was a chill meter, last night it would have reached the highest point on many occasions.
After the recital, Sabina received her friends in a room in the same venue to continue her farewell party, now in an intimate format. On Monday he will wake up at his house in Tirso de Molina, we assume with a bit of a hangover. There are no more concerts left. He will read, write and paint. When the muses visit him we will hear from him.
