"My mother always told me 'You were born the way you are' and at a very young age I took a path that, although unpaved, was already there for me. I have just followed it without paying attention or worrying about what was happening on the sides, a bit like donkeys, which are animals I have a lot of affection for. Forward, forward!", explains Jorge Nunes, leaning on the bar, beer in hand, while outside night falls and the transistor spits out the rattling, bony Rhythm and Blues of his adored Bo Diddley with his legendary Mama, keep your big mouth shut.
"I am an old man who, for now, more or less, has done what he wanted. I have been dedicated to music non-stop for more than 35 years. My main group is called Brioles, my brother Daniel and I started it in 1986, and we are still going. My life has been playing, playing and playing, traveling, recording. For some seasons I have combined it with working in nightclubs, two of which were mine... great ideas of the 20th century –he laughs--. So far I must have recorded 20 albums, maybe more."
Son of the mythical filmmaker José Nunes, Jorge is one of the most representative figures of classic Rock & Roll forged in this country, although he confesses that "I have never felt comfortable nor have I needed to feel part of a group, movement, sect, church, choir or neighborhood chat, much less follow guidelines from the enlightened ones of the moment."
Vocational rocker and new writer
--Do you remember the moment when everything changed for you to decide to dedicate yourself to Rock & Roll?
--The truth is that I don't have, or I'm not aware of having had epic moments in my life, not like Scarlett O'Hara or Saint Paul. Moments, days and nights of glory, yes, but they didn't make me see the light, they didn't change anything or make me decide anything important.
Simply, in the case of this fifty-something from Barcelona, things just followed a course that has ended up yielding a life of thrilling concerts, album recordings and, now, a book recently published by 66Rpm publishing house: "it's titled Bo Diddley's Glasses, and it's not a book about Bo Diddley, the truth is I don't really know how to explain what it's about, so it's better to buy it, read it, and then have a division of opinions: some can curse my father and others my mother."
Musically, he has had a record stalled since 2020. "We recorded it just before lockdown and there it is, waiting for its moment, which will be as bad as any other." It is hoped (and desired) that this album, which will be titled Jorge Nunes & sus Full Time Fools --and which Jorge defines with his usual sarcasm as "very nice and harmonious at the same time"--, will see the light during this year. "Making records that exist, even if almost no one buys them, is still beautiful," he adds.
Adding up those albums, that book, those hundreds of gigs, his career, all the paths traveled and all those still ahead of him, the artist prides himself "on my fierce independence: that which has led me to never be when and where I should have been, to not rub shoulders with whom I should have rubbed shoulders, to not know whom I should have known, which has made everything turn out, and continue to turn out, more difficult. The best part is that it started because I didn't agree or feel like it. Afterwards, it was out of conviction."
A city that doesn't need to be much bigger
"Like George Orwell, I also don't understand why the anarchists didn't tear down the Sagrada Familia when they had the chance during the Civil War," explains, downing a second beer, with a crooked smile and small brown eyes dancing to the rhythm of a thousand ideas, this Barcelonian who believes that the W Hotel could be the representation of everything he dislikes about the city, "compressed into an ugly building, placed where it shouldn't be."
--But, how would you define your relationship with the city?
--I suppose good. So far we've put up with each other quite well, although many times Barcelona hasn't treated me well. It's my city forever, it's full of hipsters, artistitas, super dynamic entrepreneurs, snake oil salesmen, and other semi-human entities, but it's the only place I almost feel like I belong. I'm not very interested in anything bigger.
And, upon these words rises a wall of memories that amalgamate sentimental memory and past episodes of a city in its times of untamability: "I love episodes like that of the Liceo Bomb, the stories of the Montjuïc shacks or the escapades of Durruti and García Oliver. Bill Haley at the Palau d'Esports evacuated by the Civil Guard. The anecdotes of the Jamboree that my father told me. Buffalo Bill with his circus and the Indians admitted to the Clínic. The doorless bars that never closed. My parents running, crossing the Gran Vía at night, eating peanuts very pregnant with twins. The first times that, intoxicated in a park, the whole city moved before me. Rehearsing in an abandoned dry cleaner's in Valle Hebrón long before the Olympics. The stampedes to sneak into concerts. The Sheriff of the Ramblas…".
And, before the et cetera prolongs ad infinitum, Link Wray's guitar bursts into the atmosphere with his anthem, Comanche. And a reverential silence falls.
Jorge Nunes makes a gesture to order another beer and scans the tapas and portions with his gaze.
--Are you going to want to eat something?
--Portions perhaps, although age is sweetening my palate.
A few seconds pass.
--Only the palate--, he then clarifies, without losing his smile.