Excerpt from Interview with Juan Garcia Esquivel
RE/Search:
There is an intriguing sentence on the back of To Love Again: "As for
Esquivel's romantic life, fortune has amply blessed this good-looking
young Latin American--there has been a long and uninterrupted succession
of names of beautiful and famous women mentioned in connection with him,
and it does not seem very likely that the end is in sight."
Esquivel: I know, that was one side of my life. I loved music, cars (my last one was a red Cadillac El Dorado) and women--not necessarily in that order! That was one of my weak points. I don't think it would be right to mention names if they are still alive and active. I can say that some of those relationships cost me money and gave me experience--both. There's a famous opera, Mozart's Don Giovanni, and my friends used to call me by the name of the hero, "Don Juan Tenorio." I was very lucky, not for my facial features necessarily, but because I was young and played piano. At first I was involved with one or two ladies, very famous and very successful, and that gave me a kind of "halo." Curiously enough, this would attract the attention of other beautiful ladies who would be very nice when I approached them...Let's just say that I had many relationships with beautiful and very well-known names, but I don't dare name them!
R/S: What was your first big break?
E: A very popular radio comedian, who had a program at 8 o'clock at night, asked me, "Do you think you could use an orchestra?" Of course, I said "Yes!"--I never said no to any proposal! He asked me to supply little pieces of music as a background for his comedy skits.
The comedian was very pleased with the musical backgrounds I invented. He might say, "I want background music for a Frenchman walking in Russia." [laughs] I would think, "How can I describe that?" This is how much imagination started developing. Fortunately, I had all these instruments to experiment with: five trumpets, four trombones, five saxes, and the rhythm section, plus violins, violas, cellos and a harp. The radio station became interested in experimenting or in being imaginative. They would buy "stock music": orchestral arrangements printed in the United States, and all the orchestras sounded the same because no one would write original arrangements.
Other excerpts from Incredibly Strange Music II :
Excerpts from Incredibly Strange Music I:
Table of Contents for Incredibly Strange Music
I
Table of Contents for Incredibly Strange Music
II
Body Modifications and Sexuality / Music
& Films / Subversives/Alternative Acts