Number One in Brazil

ADDAPTED FROM MY BOOK ‘SOUR MOUTH SWEET BOTTOM’, PUBLISHED BY UNBOUND BOOKS, AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE

In 1973, I got the idea that a Spanish pop singer would one day break in the UK. With millions of British holiday makers going to Spain every summer, sooner or later they’d surely get to like a current hit and bring it back home with them. So I went there to check out the scene.

There were three top singers at the time: Julio Iglesias, who had a funny waver in his voice that I couldn’t imagine Brits getting to like; Camilo Sesto, who was excellent but couldn’t speak a word of English; and Junior, who’d been in Los Brincos (the Spanish Beatles), and spoke perfect English. He was currently in need of a new hit to compete with a recent number one by Camilo Sesto, and since we got on well we decided to write one together.

The end result was ‘Perdóname’. We recorded it in London with Johnny Arthey, a British arranger who’d cornered the market in giving Spanish artists just what they needed in terms of orchestral brashness. Afterwards, Junior asked me to manage him. I said I would if the song was a hit but didn’t want to commit myself until I was sure, which I wasn’t. To me the recording sounded over-orchestrated and over-echoed.

I then drifted off to Australia and Japan, where I went to Miyazaki to see the cherry blossom, then to the Philippines, where I bumped into Junior’s cousin Mario.

‘The record you made with him is going to be released shortly,’ he told me. ‘He’d love you to be there. Why don’t you go back to Madrid?’

I did. And when I got there it was number one. So I became Junior’s manager and we went together to see the head of RCA Spain who told us the record was also number one all over South America. Except in Brazil.

‘They don’t like songs in Spanish,’ he said. ‘Maybe Junior could sing it in Portuguese.’

Junior didn’t want to, but he reminded us he’d recorded a version in English.

Moving from one side of the music business fence to the other was something I’d been doing for years - sometimes on the creative side, sometimes on the managerial. I wasn’t sure which I liked better but without question what I liked best was to travel. So I said, ‘The Brazilian company must release the song in English. I’ll go there at once and sort it out.’

Surprisingly, the head of RCA thought that was a good idea and even agreed to foot the bill. Life was being good to me.

It was Thursday evening. I sent a telegram to RCA in São Paulo asking if it would be possible to release the English version of ‘Perdóname’. I said I’d be there early the following week to discuss it with them.

I then flew to Miami, which gave me the best connection, and at the airport I bumped into Tony Stratton-Smith, Genesis’ manager, who was on his way back from Puerto Rico.

‘You should go there,’ he said. ‘Even better than Brazil. Brilliant beaches, lovely people, dance all night and shag all day. And it’s the home of piña colada.’

At thirty-four I was still a piña colada virgin; it was time I tried it. So I thought: ‘Why not? I don’t need to be in São Paulo till Tuesday or Wednesday, I’ve never been to Puerto Rico, why not go now?’

It was lovely, just like Strat said it would be – swimming, dancing, a little bit of shagging and a great deal of piña colada. But come Sunday evening, I felt a tinge of guilt; RCA were paying for this, shouldn’t I be working? I decided to stay over on Monday and visit the record company - make sure they were doing the necessary promotion on Junior’s record.

I thought it would make more impact if I arrived unexpectedly so I looked up the address in the Yellow Pages, then took a taxi. It was out of town a bit, on an industrial estate, and the neon sign didn’t say ‘RCA’, it said ‘Westinghouse’.

The building was scruffy, like a warehouse, but a sign said RCA was on the fifth floor so I shared the lift with a trolley loaded with boxed TV sets and the man pushing it. RCA turned out not to be the glossy record company I’d expected but a large space stacked with electrical goods. Behind a row of deep freezers, I found a girl called Maria with an RCA logo on her overall.

‘I’m Junior’s manager,’ I told her. ‘I want to talk to someone about promotion.’

She smiled. ‘I’m sorry, we don’t do any record work here, we deal with sales of TV sets. Records are dealt with out of New York, direct to the record stores. There are two in San Juan, perhaps you should visit one of them.’

On the way back to the hotel I did as she suggested and stopped the taxi at a large record shop. ‘Perdóname’ was displayed in the window, just as it had been in Spain, and it was number one. There was nothing left for me to do - whatever promo was needed had already been done.

When I got back to the hotel I learned my work in Brazil had also been done. After my mistake with the Westinghouse warehouse I thought it best to phone RCA in São Paulo before turning up. When I got through, the head of marketing came on the line.

‘Simon, we got your telegram. No need for you to come. We’ve had Junior’s record scheduled for weeks. It’s coming out in English tomorrow and the reaction has been great, it should go straight to number one. Bring Junior over next month and do a gig. You can coordinate it through RCA in New York.’

‘Why do that,’ I asked, ‘when every other Latin American country coordinates releases through Spain?’

 ‘Simon,’ he said sternly. ‘We are not a Latin American country. We are Brazil.’

I was about to point out that Portuguese is a Latin language but he sounded too grumpy for that so I left things as they were.

The next morning I flew back to Madrid and told Junior, ‘It’s all fixed. Brazil are releasing the record in English. It should be number one this week.’

Junior was impressed. So was the head of RCA, whose New York office still hadn’t told him about the Brazilian release. Like Junior, he got the impression it was me who’d fixed it so he thanked me with dinner at Botin.

Blagging people was so much easier when the world was unconnected.

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