Rock en Espanol Races to U.S. : U.S. imports new rock music from Spanish speaking countries

Argentine rock star Miguel Mateos was puzzled last summer when he began receiving dozens of fan letters postmarked far from his Buenos Aires home--places like Chicago, New York, Miami and Fresno.

Mateos, whose recordings have sold more than 1.2 million copies in Latin America and who has shared concert billing in his country with such international rock acts as Queen and INXS, had never stepped on stage in the United States and his records were barely known here.

So why these fan letters?

“I realized something is happening here,” Mateos said in an interview during a break from a band rehearsal in a Burbank sound studio.

Curious about what prompted the fan mail, Mateos--a 35-year-old singer-songwriter whose music combines some of the social commentary of John Cougar Mellencamp with the more traditional melodic hard-rock of Bon Jovi--came to L.A. last September to test the waters.

He played one night at the Palace in Hollywood, selling out the 1,500-capacity hall and leaving another 500 frustrated fans waiting outside. Reviewing the show for The Times, staff writer Victor Valle hailed Mateos’ music as having “the tough, rebellious bite worthy of rock ‘n’ roll’s aggressive, urban reputation.”

Suddenly, Mateos found himself in the vanguard of a new kind of music--Rock en Espanol. The sound is hard-driving rock ‘n’ roll with little influence from other types of Latin music including the soft, pop sounds of such artists as Julio Iglesias or Gloria Estefan. The target audience: Spanish-speaking youth in the United States.

Says Mateos: “I try to explain to American reporters that I’m doing rock, Latin music has more to do with percussion and the Caribbean rhythms,” Mateos said. “I tell them I’m doing rock ‘n’ roll, hard guitars and all that stuff. Then, when they hear me play, they say ‘Yes, you were right. This is rock ‘n’ roll.’ ”

Enter Jack Leavitt.

Leavitt is a 44-year-old rock concert promoter who has worked over the last two decades with such major rock acts as Pink Floyd and Hall & Oates before tiring of the business and going into “retirement” in the early ‘80s, dividing his time between his Northern California ranch and his Catalina Island haven.

In 1987 he decide to go back to work. But he was tired of dealing with the same type of rock acts. His goal was to find a new musical niche for himself.

“I didn’t want to do the same old shows that I’ve been doing for years,” Leavitt said. “That’s just no fun. The music was old to me. How many times can you see Hall & Oates?”

Suddenly, he began to think Latin.

“I was looking at the different music of Hispanics,” Leavitt said. “These friends of mine were telling me there was this big thing going on in Argentina and Venezuela but nobody would book them here. They gave me some tapes and I went, ‘Jesus, these guys are great!’ ”

So, last year Leavitt began setting up concert tours for the bands that seemed the most likely to catch on in heavily Latino areas of the United States. Some of those attractions--including Mateos--will be touring the United States this year.

“There is a big market for this,” said Enrique Blanc, production coordinator for L.A.’s KNSE-AM (1510), a Spanish-language radio station. “With people of all types immigrating and many having listened to Rock en Espanol, I think there’s a potential, though perhaps not in every area. But, I think in the big cities it will be a big phenomenon.”

A producer for MTV International, Alejandro Pels, agrees. “Things are really beginning to happen with this music,” he said. “You’re probably not going to have 4 million records sold by one of these bands from one day to the next, but the most important thing is that the (American record) industry is beginning to pay attention to this.

“I don’t think any kind of music that wasn’t sung in English has been big here ever. . . . But this is something that’s going to be growing. There’s 30 million Hispanics in this country. There was a void for the Latin youth and this is filling that void.”

Despite such optimism, Leavitt regards his latest venture as a gamble.

This week he’s launching the most ambitious U.S. tour ever attempted by Spanish-language rockers. Mateos will headline, backed by his mostly American five-person band, and a popular Spanish trio called Duncan Dhu will open for them. The two bands will perform in 18 cities from New York to Los Angeles, in 3,000-5,000 seat auditoriums, culminating in a show at the Hollywood Palladium on Feb. 11. (Tonight, Mateos is scheduled to appear in Anaheim at the Celebrity Theater.)

The Mateos-Duncan Dhu bill is being closely watched by the music industry.

“I think (the Mateos tour) is going to open up more tours to come through America,” says Mike Missile, BMG Records director of marketing for Rock en Espanol. “I think it’s opening the door for bands to come over and be taken seriously. The logic behind it is that Latin youth in America is receptive to either language. I think you’ll see a lot more of this.”

“That’s a big weight on my shoulders,” said Mateos with a shudder. “So, I’m trying not to think about it.”

But promoters and record industry executives are thinking about it. Already nearly a dozen Rock en Espanol shows are planned for this year, said Missile. Some of the bands expected to tour include the Mexican group Caifanes and Argentine rockers GIT, Charly Garcia and Soda Stereo.

What sets these bands and Mateos and Duncan Dhu apart from other Latin-American artists is that their music is pure rock ‘n’ roll and does not contain many of the rhythms and sounds associated with “Latin music.”

“When people think of Hispanic music, they think of Julio (Iglesias),” Missile said. “We want to put the spotlight on rock. . . . It isn’t Latin, it’s rock.

In fact, Tower Records, which used to throw Spanish-language rock albums in the same bin with Iglesias or salsa queen Celia Cruz, this month will start a separate section for Rock en Espanol, Leavitt said.

“A year ago the record companies wouldn’t distribute them,” Pels said.

Trip Reeb, general manager of KROQ-FM (106.7), which prides itself on playing “new music” (though most of it is by British and American groups), said Duncan Dhu’s music was something that he considered putting on the station’s play list. “This is in every way on a par with anything that’s being done in English.”

“They’re already kings in their own country and it’s just new challenges for them,” Missile said of the bands. “This is the rock nation and I think this is a dream to some of them, to conquer America. Now, they have that opportunity.”

Mateos says it is indeed a dream come true for him to play in the United States. He got his start 10 years ago, after winning a contest in which he beat out 100 other bands to open for Queen in a huge soccer stadium in Argentina. Five years and four albums later, he returned to the same stadium as the headliner filling all 50,000 seats.

“It was one of the biggest days of my life,” he said. “It was like a dream. I began to cry. And now, to be able to come and play in the country of rock ‘n’ roll,” he stops and gazes off in seeming disbelief. “I think this decade is going to open up a lot of new possibilities.”

Mateos’ golden-haired, blue-eyed good looks suggest comparisons physically to Don Henley and U2’s Bono. One of Mateo’s most accessible songs, “Cuando Seas Grande” (“When You’re Grown Up”), has a hard-driving beat and deals with the universal themes of youthful rebellion and confusion about one’s place in the world.

Sample lyrics: “I’m a guy of the streets/I walk the city and don’t bother anyone/I want to cut the chains. ... But when I go home, I hear only ‘What are you going to do when you grow up? Be a rock and roll star? Become president?”

Despite limited radio air play--in Los Angeles, only Spanish-language station KLVE-FM (107.5) has begun playing some of the biggest acts--many of those in the audience are familiar with the music, having heard it in the countries they emigrated from or about it from friends and relatives in Latin America.

“L.A. is like the strongest market,” Pels said. “In Mexico, rock in Spanish hit very hard two to three years ago. Huge bands from Argentina and Spain went to Mexico for the first time, and they began to play them on the radio. That influence gets much faster to L.A. than to the rest of the country.”

Leavitt wants to introduce the music to the remaining Spanish-speaking Americans who have not yet heard Rock en Espanol.

“I’m trying to break down barriers and show people this stuff’s hot,” Leavitt said. “It may work and it may not. No one knows because no one’s done it.”

Foreign and domestic red tape and auditorium owners fearing gang violence have not made this ambitious tour an easy one to organize, Leavitt said.

“Some halls won’t let them in,” Leavitt said. “They’re afraid of gang wars. They make huge demands on deposits or they’ll say they’re booked, but it’s B.S.”

And, though crowds may be flocking to see them, no one involved is exactly getting rich--yet.

“It costs so much to bring them over here,” Leavitt said, adding that an average entourage includes about 35 people, as well as busloads of lighting and sound equipment. “We’re not making a lot of money yet. We’re just looking to break even.”

He said the Mateos tour--which is scheduled to hit several venues in Northern and Southern California as well as Phoenix, Albuquerque, several Texan cities, Chicago, New York, Miami and Puerto Rico--will likely cost more than $300,000. Paul Mitchell systems, which manufactures hair-care products, is underwriting the tour, Leavitt said.

The fact that this music is not in English, widely perceived as the language of rock, could put off some listeners, Mateos acknowledges. He does not expect to have crossover success in the Anglo market unless he records some songs in English. That is something he plans to do eventually, when he finds the right writing collaborator, but in the meantime he is concentrating on attracting Spanish-speaking audiences.

“I know there are a lot of Latin people who want to listen to rock in Spanish with the same kind of professionalism as (that sung in) English,” Mateos said.

What about those who say these groups are just copycats? Pels responds by saying: “I don’t think they are copying what is going on here in the United States. They are influenced by it. When punk came up, they adopted it too. But their lyrics, the good bands sing about their own things, their own countries. The Spanish language has its own rhythm. They like to play with words, they’re sort of surrealist.”

But, there are also those who point to the drawbacks of lyrics in a foreign language.

Leavitt responds to such criticism with practicality: “If you listen to an English band, Phil Collins or whoever and you’re more than 100 feet from the stage, you can’t understand what he says anyway. Espanol music is music. You just can’t understand the vocal that well, but I never listen to vocals anyway. . . . Most songs don’t make any sense. What’s ‘Stairway to Heaven?’ What the hell does that mean?”

Missile believes that the improved sound quality of rock ‘n’ roll in Spanish will draw more listeners. (Increasingly, many Latin artists are producing records here in the United States with producers well-versed in the latest techniques.)

“In the past people threw the argument at you that if kids want to listen to rock, they’ll listen to it in English,” Missile said. “They said English was the language of rock ‘n’ roll. I think the production qualities of Spanish rock just weren’t up to par. Now, that’s changed. They’re creating their own sound, and it fits in with the international youth sound of rock. Europe is open to all languages, and I think that’s starting to happen in America.”

Said Mateos: “I think it’s the breaking point. We have no more wall of Berlin. So it’s time for us, maybe. We can tear down some walls now.”