Chico Buarque: “We were never as close as in 1990”

My first meeting with Gil happened around 1964, at João Sebastião Bar, a club in São Paulo where Paulo Cotrim welcomed great musicians and singers of bossa nova or jazz.

As Miúcha’s. brother, who was friends with Cotrim, I was always at a corner in the audience, and sometimes had permission to do a couple songs

I think there was one night of the week reserved for the presentation of newcomers, like me, Toquinho, Taiguara, and some others. In on one of these nights Gil showed up and played a bunch of songs like “Eu vim da Bahia” and “Roda.”

I was fascinated by his singing, his guitar, and the originality of his compositions, which for me had one foot in bossa nova and another in baião, a mix of João Gilberto with Jackson do Pandeiro. I soon recognized Gil was years ahead of me. I had a lot to learn from him.

Yes, there was a strong aesthetic break, because Tropicalism, as a revolutionary movement, needed to deny everything there had been until then. I was part of what there had been until then.

“Cálice” was written for Phono 73, a kind of festival sponsored by our label. On a Good Friday, Gil showed up at my house, an apartment by the [Rodrigo de Freitas] Lake.

I poured us a bitter drink, Fernet Branca, and he began to strum the guitar and hum the whole first part of the song, music and lyrics. I was supposed to compose the music for the second part, whose lyrics we shared equally. The song was censored for a long time.

I was happy with the invitation, because “A mão da limpeza” was my favorite song on that album. It talked about the issue of racism in a way that I had never seen in Brazilian popular music.

Today, racism has been flung wide open in our society in such an abject way that a video like that can even sound naive.

Gil stopped by my house, in Gávea, to show me a newly composed song, still with no lyrics. He played the song a few times, recorded it on a cassette tape, then started a conversation about the new directions for the country, because at the time he was very interested in politics.

We had come out of a dictatorship, and he talked all night about economic openness, about the power of private enterprise or something like that—I don’t quite remember his words.

I know that in the following days, with that conversation still fresh in my head, I wrote the lyrics for “Baticum.”

I had an invitation to go on a TV show in Milan, where I would sing a song or two and talk about soccer. It was the year of the World Cup in Italy, and besides me the program would bring together former Brazilian players living in Italy.

The invitation had come from a crazy friend of mine named Gianni Minà, and when I asked him about the possibility of taking Gil along, he was more excited than he naturally was.

I felt at that time that a trip abroad would do Gil good, and for me it would also be pleasant to travel without a guitar and be a duo with him.

I remember our conversations at the airport, at the hotel and especially on the train that took us to Rome, him, me, and our wives. On the show, in Terni, the set recreated a very flowery square with a park bench.

We sang “Baticum” and something else on the show, and right there on the backstage we were invited to another show days later in Terni, near Rome

In that same set, before our performance, Giulietta Masina gave a passionate interview about Federico Fellini. Only then did we realize that it was Valentine’s Day, the patron saint of couples, and that was the show’s theme.

The interviewer made us talk about love, then we sang “Baticum,” which for those who didn’t speak Portuguese could go pass for a sentimental duet. I don’t think Gil and I were ever closer than in those days.

Gil says he is a goalie, but he has never come to play with me.