Pancho Varona wanted to remember the singer-songwriter and painter Luis Eduardo Aute, who died this Saturday at noon at age 76, at Hora 25. The composer remembered his adolescence listening to and playing Aute’s music on the guitar, “He was one of my references”, counting on confessing that he feels “desolate”.
Listen Pancho Varona remembers Aute in ‘Hora 25’: “He has been a teacher” in Play SER
During the interview, Varona shared what made him fall in love with Aute, “his falsetto”, his musical sweetness, and what is the song that still excites you. The journalist Aimar Bretos wanted to end the interview with one of the last performances of Luis Eduardo Aute in Madrid.
How big is the space that Aute occupies in the soundtrack of Pancho Varona’s life?
Tremendous. Awesome. When I started playing the guitar when I was 12, 13 or 14 years old, I already started playing songs by Serrat and Aute, they were my two references. Then I went to the church park with my friends and the guitar and we kept singing ‘Al alba’. He has been a teacher. I am truly desolate.
Teacher more painter than musician or more musician than painter?
Of everything. He did everything: sculptor, painter, poet … He was very big. I consider him more author of songs, is what I fall in love with him. He was an impressive composer. And it had a very special thing that nobody had: the falsetto. He had a falsetto singing that came out with a terrible naturalness and it is very difficult to do. I fell in love with the Aute falsetto.
What made you fall more in love with the lucidity of the lyrics, the sensitivity, the erotic part that it had?
It had a very pronounced erotic part, if you dig through the letters there are many winks. As a poet I loved his lyrics, but musically I loved how sweet he was. At first he did not want to be a singer, he was just a songwriter, he composed for Masiel, for Rosa León, and then, suddenly, he became more refined and began to like singing. When he started to like singing, he delighted millions of people.
He sang ‘I love you with malice’ What song of Aute would Pancho Varona listen with malice?
Since I started listening to him, it is the song that I admire most of his, although I admire another fifty, another eighty; but somehow it is the song that keeps driving me crazy, keeps giving me goose bumps and still tears me up.
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