Máximo Pradera has sucked music since he can remember. He comes from a “very music-loving” family and received classes from a somewhat eccentric teacher, who taught him musical pieces that he “would not have heard by himself.” In a new work dedicated to music, he wants to bring his readers closer to the pieces that the characters in the story listened to.
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Maximum Prairie presents They’re playing our song a compilation of the songs that people like Franco, Lauren Bacall or Almudena Grandes liked. Though recognizes that they are an excuse to talk about what really interests youmusic.
Where does your passion for music come from?
He had quite a music-loving family. My mother sang, played the guitar and her brother is Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio, who is a very talented and politically active singer-songwriter. Then they put me a very unique teacher as a teenager. Instead of the classic guitar teacher, my mother hired the Renaissance music director Gregorio Paniagua. Added to this is my musical sensitivity, which led me to become interested in music.
With Gregorio Paniagua did you learn to play an instrument or music in general?
He made me listen to a number of pieces that I wouldn’t have listened to on my own feet. From his style of Renaissance music to Spring consecration, which he taught me. I was a little zumbao, but he was a very good musician and restless musically. I learned a lot.
Why write a book about music and historical figures?
It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to approach certain songs and classical pieces drawn by the interest in characters like Audrey Hepburn, Lauren Bacall or Paul McCartney.
Is the goal for the reader to get to the music through the characters or the other way around?
I spend little time on biographical aspects. The biography of the characters is only played when it serves to highlight the music.
Can you know someone by the music they listen to?
Definitely. If someone says that they only listen to classical music, be suspicious. It is impossible for someone with musical sensibility to close the band to the wonders that pop, rock, jazz or copla music can give us.
It is frowned upon among the ‘puretas’ for someone to say that they like to listen to everything.
I believe the opposite. Eclectic people are the most sincere, they do not try to prove anything. In that sense, Almudena Grandes is a great example. She liked everything from Puccini to Alaska. Whereas people who say they only listen to classical try to prove something I don’t believe.
It is quite difficult to hide that one understands classical music.
“Gallardón used classical music as a posture to give himself an intellectual garb”
Yes. In fact, Alberto Ruiz Gallardón used classical music as a posture to give himself an intellectual garb. A music teacher from El Escorial wrote a letter to The country talking about “this guy who talks about the chords of the flute”, when the flute is a melodic instrument that can only play one note at a time. It is assumed that Gallardón was a music lover and spoke of the chords of the flute.
What character in the book has surprised you the most because of your tastes?
Queen Elizabeth II is a totally amazing character. We know that one of her favorite songs is Dancing Queen, from Abba. Then she has things like a taste for bagpipes. It’s an outdoor instrument and every summer night in Scotland this lady brings a piper into the dining room before dessert. He is a person who, according to what they say, dances “like a motherfucker”.
With whom would you sit down to have a coffee and chat about music?
There are many, but my two favorites are Julie Andrews, for being an extraordinary woman, and Cat Stevens, for being the best singer-songwriter in pop history.
What character has been left out of this book and is missing?
In the book 24 have entered and could have entered 100. I have preferred to squeeze more and cover less. I would like to do a version with live characters, with the soundtrack by Yolanda Díaz or Antonio López, to learn more about their musical tastes. Or Imanol Arias, who is now very fashionable.
And Almudena Grandes entered at the last minute.
“I included Almudena Grandes in the book after Mayor Almeida’s big ugly”
I included Almudena Grandes in the book after Mayor Almeida’s big ugly. She had almost closed the book and Almeida did not want to support her appointment as Favorite Daughter of Madrid. I decided that the tribute that the Madrid mayor’s office did not pay him would be in the book. I called her widower, Luis García Montero, and within 24 hours she sent me a list of songs that she would have chosen. There were some things from opera, from Alaska, from Lola Flores or Sabina.
If the book included a chapter dedicated to Máximo Pradera, what would his musical list be like?
There are some songs from my childhood that are Italian, about resistance and activism, and even though they deal with the war they still move me a lot. As the Hello beautiful, I have known him for 50 years. Also they Brandenburg concerts Wendy Carlos or the songs of the Beatles. All my childhood songs and classical pieces would have a place.
With this creating playlists, have you ever considered being a DJ?
Never. I have not been a clubber, the volume scares me and I have a lot of appreciation for my eardrums. All DJs end up deaf or with tinnitus. It seems to me an infernal job, a torture at the height of Guantanamo.
What songs evoke people?
Hello beautiful I have it associated with my mother. Guantanamera, to Javier Pradera, because he liked it a lot. Putin will be forever associated with Blue Berry Hill by Fats Domino, because the guy had the audacity to sing it at a charity festival in St. Petersburg. I have a theory that the westernmost in conflict with Ukraine is Putin. He is a hick who wants Russia to join NATO and be accepted as one of the Westerners. Instead, Zelensky reminds me of Tchaikovsky.
The last few years have been a bit difficult. What is the soundtrack from the beginning of the pandemic?
“What makes us citizens is paying our taxes and many people don’t talk about money”
We should recover an old song by Jesús Munarriz called let’s say no. It was dedicated to Franco, but it could be perfectly used as a rebel anthem in the face of all the things with which we now have to commune. Among them, that one of every two records opened by the Tax Agency is won by the taxpayer. It is like a newspaper in which 50% of the news is false or a lawyer who loses half of the cases. We have to talk more about money and less about the latest bullshit that Ayuso said. What makes us citizens is paying our taxes and many people don’t talk about money.
What lessons can be learned from this book?
Of all the uses that are given to music, I think that the preferred one and the one that predominates in this book is music as a consolation, when something big happens to you. Those potholes that take one to overcome. Many personalities cite songs that have comforted them in low moments of their lives. Music is enormously effective in overcoming potholes.
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