Miguel Tapia (62) says he had to hide. Take refuge in his room under the arch and the sponges of those rudimentary eighties headphones that blasted the music of the British duo Yazoo, those with hits like Only you or Don’t go. “Those drums, those compressed basses… I loved them,” he admits.
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But it was an unconfessable pleasure. An emotion that embarrassed him. A guilty pleasure before that dreadful term existed: with his comrades in Los Prisioneros they were finalizing their debut, La voz de los 80 (1984), characterized by front guitars, urgent drums, and a much more skeletal sound. There, Yazoo’s electronic attire was a silent guest. “I didn’t share it with my bandmates because I felt they would criticize me for listening to music with programmed machines while we were recording a super punk album,” he recalls.
But time would take care of burying shyness and putting forward musical secrets that seemed embarrassing. For the next album, Pateando piedras (1986), the San Miguel trio would lean precisely towards those more synthetic textures of bands like Yazoo, incorporating keyboards, synthesizers, drum machines, and electronic drums, although without sidelining the guitars of their origins. Tapia, along with Jorge González, would give free rein to their growing love for names like Depeche Mode, New Order, Bronski Beat, or Soft Cell, also including the latest artistic resources in their shows.
Although Claudio Narea was never comfortable with the new times, the group was experiencing one of its deepest internal changes and demonstrated a voracious creative state, deployed in some of the greatest songs in their catalog, such as Muevan las industrias, Quieren dinero, Independencia cultural or El baile de los que sobran.
Tapia continues: “By the time this second album came out, the influence we had from these groups was clearer, songs like Muevan las industrias have a lot of that more Depeche Mode sound. We sampled the gas cylinders and lowered the tuning, and they ended up sounding like metal. We started discovering samplers, keyboards, sequences, and it was another world, very daring. It was very clear what we were listening to at that moment and Claudio wasn’t very attracted to it, because he has always been much more about guitar, more rock and roll, more rockabilly. He didn’t like the album much and even less playing it live. The keyboards bothered him and it was like a little struggle we had when playing this album, presenting it. And everything was very precarious, because the truth is that now what it means to play live has changed tremendously, all the infrastructure, the stages, the sound, the lighting.”
40 years later, it will no longer be so precarious to review live the songbook of Pateando piedras. Nor will it be uncomfortable.
Like a comeback with one of the most inventive titles in Chilean popular music, Tapia will revive the album in the celebration of the 40th anniversary of its release, with a concert scheduled for September 15 at 8:30 p.m. at the Teatro Caupolicán (tickets at Puntoticket). In the lead-up, the musician has had to rehearse not only his most significant songs but also some that have remained sidelined.
“I’m not very romantic nor nostalgic,” he clarifies. “But I liked working on the songs from that album to present it. I have been checking the tracks we recorded at the time and it has been quite pleasant to find our interpretation and even Claudio’s guitar sound on songs like Estar solo, which has a lot of influence from The Cure, exactly from the album Pornography. Besides the well-known ones, now we will also open up to play Estar solo or Por favor. It has been very fun to remember the influences we had at that time, particularly Jorge and me, because of the machines.”
“At that time we started playing with an electronic drum set, the Simmons. We bought it and it was very uncomfortable to play. It was never a pleasure to play it, because it was almost like playing this table. It doesn’t have that nice hit of the natural drumhead. I sacrificed that pleasure of playing the drums for many years to try to optimize the live sound. Because we didn’t sound that good live. And that drum set was never pleasant. It wasn’t like Phil Collins playing in London,” continues the artist, seated on the program Viernes de Culto broadcast through La Tercera.
But Pateando piedras not only meant a greater richness in the band’s sound; it also amplified their popular reach until consolidating them as the most important group in the country, with figures reporting an album that sold five thousand copies in its first ten days in stores, two dates at the then Estadio Chile filled with about 10,000 people, and a press that took them more and more seriously, admitting they were an undeniable competition for the Argentine groups that at that time dominated the media.
Although it was logical that in 1987 they would be on the stage of the Viña Festival, the suspicious gaze of the military dictatorship did not allow them to jump to the country’s most popular showcase.
“There was always bad energy with Los Prisioneros. It was always uphill. It was always antagonistic. And mainly because of the media, not the public. It was healing when in the 90s I met many people who went on vacation to Peru, Ecuador, or the Caribbean and came back and told me: hey, you guys are super famous there! But in Chile we felt frustration, frustration. Especially there was bad energy with Jorge.”
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To illustrate it, Tapia tells an anecdote: when they returned to Santiago after the massive shows they starred in the Pacific coast countries, no one from EMI came to Pudahuel to pick them up, despite being one of the best-selling artists in the country. “But one day we arrived in the afternoon and I see an EMI driver at the airport. Then I said: wow, they finally got the ‘hint’ and sent someone to pick us up to take us home. I talk to this driver and say ‘Mr. Mario, how nice that you came to get us.’ He answers me: ‘No Miguelito, I came to drop off Myriam Hernández.’”
Then he resumes: “I was with Jorge some time ago and I told him I was very happy for him, because Jorge received a lot of hate. For whatever reason, for his personality, for what he said. And I told him how nice it is that now people are showing you a lot of affection. They have recognized your work as a composer and all that. When I travel I also feel the same.”
Despite conquering other markets in the region where their work still sounds today, Tapia clarifies that they always thought locally. Becoming universal was an achievement beyond their control. “We thought about Chile, nothing more. Muevan las industrias is a song related to the moment when my father was laid off from the factory where he worked. El baile de los que sobran is about school, about our story. At school, we were six very restless friends, very attentive to what was happening in Chile. We were very interested in what was coming. In simple Chilean words, we were super lazy.”
Despite constantly deciphering the history of Los Prisioneros—and strictly speaking, their own history—the instrumentalist assures that he has never been interested in reading the several books that exist about the trio. Moreover, he emphasizes that he would not write one either, unlike what has happened with González and Narea.
“I haven’t read the books about Los Prisioneros. None. I imagine some have told the stories from high school. It happens that many times when they have read me some parts, I actually say ‘it wasn’t like that.’ Everyone has their own perspective. They have told me to write a book, but I don’t think it would be very successful: my book wouldn’t throw bad vibes. I would tell the good, fun, entertaining, and creative part of Los Prisioneros, which is what I have held on to. So, it wouldn’t be very successful. But yes, they have offered me to write my story.”
-What is your current relationship with Jorge González?
With Jorge we were through the good and bad times of Los Prisioneros, always. Also, we have a family connection, my sister is married to his brother. We have a niece in common who is a nurse and takes care of him. So, my relationship with him will always be affectionate. Two guys who were together in the microphone throwing, in the letter, in tense and uncomfortable moments, but also in two full National Stadiums. And I have been quite grounded. We made a good combination. I was telling him the things that were happening. I was quite a seer with many things about Los Prisioneros.
-Like what?
Betrayals within the band. I was very prophetic. And I know that in a book Jorge tells it, in that book Maldito sudaca he tells something about how I saw things that could happen a little earlier. So, I have a good connection with him.
–Is the relationship with Claudio Narea already buried?
It’s just that I was always very different with Claudio. I mean, anyone who knows us personally will discover that we have very different personalities. So no, I have no contact with Claudio. It’s not a distance that hurts me, I’m very little nostalgic.
“I mean, there are people who pass through one’s life and leave, I mean you have partners, mothers of your children, and they leave. No, it doesn’t have much importance. I have always tried to talk about the good history of Los Prisioneros, because it’s always the bad or lame stuff that is talked about. I never liked it, it always annoyed me. Carlos Fonseca, our manager and who was our first fan of Los Prisioneros, was also very annoyed. It was very unpleasant when there were internal band things that were aired out.”
-Have you arranged for Jorge or Claudio to be at the show at Caupolicán?
I have my rock school and when the 40th anniversary of La voz de los 80 was celebrated we did a symphonic concert. The La Granja symphony, all kids and young people from eighth to twelfth grade, we did a symphonic version of La voz de los 80. I invited Jorge there. But he told me he doesn’t go out, he hardly goes out. And it’s understandable. So probably he will also get some message, but I see it difficult, because he is no longer going out. In fact, I have been told that they visit him more than he goes out.
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