Gilberto Gil and rock

“The proximity of (producer) Liminha with the rock world helped me a lot. So I was having the Lulu Santos playing with me here and there, Hebert Vianna (from Os Paralamas do Sucesso)…

“… during this phase, my music already was clearly a music by a musical group, a band, under my leadership…

“… In the Tropicália, the electric guitars got closer to my work, but not to my hands. They were in the hands of Serginho (Dias, from Os Mutantes), Lanny (Gordin). When I got to London I was thinking, ‘Here I am, alone, what am I going to do with my life?’…

“… I went to a guitar shop in Downtown London, bought a Gibson 335 and took it home to see what I could do with that thing…

“… then I had the beating of the electric guitar. I did not move on to solo with the electric guitar because I thought I was not good enough for it, but I kept the beating that came with the acoustic guitar.”

Gilberto Gil

The turn to Tropicalism, in 1967, had happened, partially, because of The Beatles. Gilberto Gil was fascinated by the Fab Four’s Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released in that year.

He was already into the band because of albums such as Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966), and saw there a revolution, which Brazilian popular music had to follow.

He was impressed by the virtuosity of the group’s guitar player, Serginho Dias, who would play classic music, jazz, rock, and Brazilian music in it, not caring about anyone’s opinion.

It is worth saying that Gilberto Gil went through a turning point in his way of seeing and thinking of music shortly before. In July 1967, he joined the March Against the Electric Guitar, on the request of his friend Elis Regina, leader of the movement…

… as a promotional tool for the TV show Frente Ampla da MPB, broadcast by TV Record. However, Gil stated to regret that, later on, and said he only attended it for Elis.

The Gil who lifted his acoustic guitar up in the air with open arms in the performance of “Domingo no parque” in the festival was the same one who used to listen to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones at home, and who, soon enough, would go crazy over Jimi Hendrix’s guitar.

The same one who would get to record with the Argentinian group who accompanied Caetano Veloso in “Alegria, alegria,” the Beat Boys. The distorted guitars accompanied him in one of his rockiest moments: “Questão de ordem,” a protest song, in the III International Song Festival, in 1968.

The association of Gil and rock moves further. His Londoner album had two great names of glam rock in the team: producer Ralph Mace and guitar player Mick Ronson, both linked to David Bowie (the guitar solos can be listened to in Crazy Pop Rock, by Gil and Mautner).

When he returned, he went for rock in “Back in Bahia,” which he recorded in the album Expresso 2222 (1972), in reference to “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” by the Beatles. In 1972, he appeared in a TV show in Rede Globo, with Caetano, playing guitar in this song.

In the first, he would write a song on the São Paulo punks, “Punk da Periferia,” with Lulu Santos on the electric guitar.

The second had new wave sounds in songs as “Feliz por um triz” and “Pessoa nefasta”, and featured yet another Brazilian rocker, Ritchie, in the vocals of “Tempo Rei”. Also adding one more rock to his repertoire, “Extra II – o rock do segurança.”

Meanwhile, he was preparing Dia Dorim Noite Neon (1985), an LP in which he honored Brazilian rock in “Rock santeiro,” with Sergio Dias on the electric guitar. Gil repeated, 17 years later, the verse “Serginho, cabelulado danado” which he had used in “Pega a voga, cabeludo,” from his second album.

The ties to Brazilian rock were fittingly closed during that time. In 1987, it would be Gil’s turn to have his first partnership with Os Paralamas do Sucessos, singing in “Alagados” and writing lyrics for “A novidade.”

The singer had started his relationship with the group throughout the year of 1985, in a collaboration that comprehended appearances in concerts and even Hebert Vianna’s electric guitar, in one of the tracks in Dia Dorim, “Seu Olhar.”

João Barone, Paralamas’s drummer, had participated in “It’s Good to Be Alive,” a song that Gil recorded during album’s sessions, but was kept out of final selection.

In the picture, the Bahia-born in a meeting with the band in the late 1990s.

Both Paralamas and Titãs were guests in the concert Gil 20 Anos-Luz, a major celebrative event of his 20th career anniversive, in 1985.

The Titãs even surprised him during the concert, with a version of one of his songs which had never been released, “TV Punk”—and which Paulo Miklos had recorded at a K7 in a Gil’s concert he attended.

In 1995 it was time for Gil to meet yet another novelty in Brazilian rock: Chico Science & Nação Zumbi, with whom he shared a stage in New York in that same year, performing the hit “Macô.”

In the album Afrociberdelia, the second by the Pernambuco-native group, Gil sings song title duetting with Marcelo D2.