“My feeling is that humans will find love and warmth on hard times as our souls and bodies are strong.”

Having fronted the biggest band in Chile’s history of music, it should come as no surprise that Jorge González would want to take time away from the chaos of it all to focus on his own personal output. His most recent creative vehicle? Leonino.

As Leonino, González recently released his debut LP, entitled Naked Tunes, and we had the chance to speak with the iconic artist about the record, his history with Chilean music and his successful band Los Prisioneros, as well as the reasons why he doesn’t miss being involved with big labels. Follow us below to get the scoop from Leonino and make sure to check out his newest effort, Naked Tunes.

How long have you been creating music and what would you say first got you interested in becoming a musician?

I started toying with a piano at 15 years old, trying to figure out Bacharach and David, The Bee Gees, The Carpenters. Then at 17 I learned to play bass and guitar and wrote my first tunes, which were recorded by my band and became an instant success.

As most kids that grew up in the ’70s, music was everything. You crave for your song to be played on the radio (I couldn´t afford any records) and got crazy to see a glimpse of Queen or Kiss on TV. Huge albums with cool songs and perfect productions by the likes of ELO and of course the R&B-disco era that pushed sound and catchiness ahead with CHIC, Donna Summer, Foxy, Lipps Inc, Patrick Hernandez and so many faceless musicians that had the world on a groove. It was very sad that heavy rock fans and people from right wing media crushed this movement mostly because the stars were female or gay, Latin, black; dunno, it was a tragedy.

Over time, who have been some of your most important influences that have helped shape the way you write and create?

The first record I bought was the 7″ “Devotion” by Earth Wind and Fire and soon my dad gave me money to buy the Bee Gees masterpiece “You Should Be Dancing,” another single.

I must explain to the readers that Chile has a huge R&B tradition. The military guerillas that stole the country wanted no Chilean sounds, no folkloric artists; even killing some…they put lots on money on the cultural “Americanization” bringing what was big on the states. I was a kid and watched with awe on national TV artists like Grace Jones, the Stylistics, Hues Corporation, the Dells, KC and the Sunshine Band- and this gave me an education on black-Latino stuff. So in Chile, black sound is part of the culture, showing on the perfection of early Chilean hip-hop, cool and wise. In other countries they thought hip-hop was Beastie Boys or Rage Against The Machine, which is all fine but not Eric B. & Rakim, A Tribe Called Quest or so many others.

I would say the artists that have more influence in my life are Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Kraftwerk, Bee Gees, Queen, Phuture, LFO, Run DMC, Missy Elliott, D´Angelo, The Fugees, Bob Marley, The Specials, Nick Drake, Scott Walker, Adamo, Camilo Sesto, Los Angeles Negros, Violeta Parra, Los Jaivas, Victor Jara , Uff!. It can be 5 pages long, and then are the writers like Nicomedes Guzman, Manuel Rojas, Nicolas Gogol, Walt Whitman, James Joyce, Isaac Asimov- there are so many great ones.

How would you describe your current sound and style to someone who’s never heard your music?

This new album can be described as singer-songwriter soft music with a hint of R&B and doo wop. Lots of vocal harmonies, acoustic guitars, tinkling pianos.

And to further dive into the new album, Naked Tunes, what is it all about to you, lyrically and personally?

Gets to a very special point lyrically. There is this theme of dead grandparents helping you from this inner space where I feel they kind of float and you can reach them by praying. I had a rough time with drugs years ago and was involved in dangerous places and on the worst moments the face of my granny came to my mind and I am sure this is natural to every human, this link with “dead” ancestors was prominent in most cultures before Europeans erase them by the gun. I kind of think wars and invasions have a lot to do with spiritual matters, spending a lot of power to erase these cultures where people get together by praying, dancing and singing and you can see it right now. In places like Germany people don´t pray no more and believe in “reason” and “science” which means numbers, only numbers and money. Mate, science is a religion, with dogmas, popes and all.

I was so sure that this third world war that started with Iraq being destroyed and keeps on going with the media fabricating an alternative reality that this theme pops up, a guitar player trying to come back home walking down burned roads not only in the south part of the world by, soon, in places like Germany or Spain. Anyway, my feeling is that humans will find love and warmth on hard times as our souls and bodies are strong. You can always tell the baddies from the goodies. The bad guy has a gun, the good guy has bare hands. You take a gun and become an instrument of evil, no matter your intentions. There are songs that take love deception, small affairs that finished on a sour note and there are fully realized love songs that end well, getting inspiration from my personal life. I have to add that when I did this songs I was mostly sending them by mail to my girlfriend in Santiago and singing them when we find the time to travel together. I had no plans for an album, and I usually was naked when singing to her, hence the name of the album.

You did all the production on the new album yourself, right? Did you have anyone else helping out with the instrumentation or do you play everything yourself?

Yes, I did the recording and playing on my own. There is a friend who did an electric guitar on “Not The Sound” and another who tried some backing vocals that you don´t discern among my own vocals besides a bit of percussion that was added, but it is mostly made by myself on my flat. I play terribly technically but I always find my way to arrange and record guitars and pianos. I am a fast worker, never think that much, just get my hands on the sounds.

Why did you choose to record this album in English?

I was writing songs for my Libro LP and lots of good melodies and words were in my head that had English verses. I save them and made this Naked Tunes album as soon as I finished the Spanish one. Some tunes just are given to me in Spanish, some in English and I would love to be able to do German; an amazing language but tough to learn. I got to get a glimpse of English when living in Manhattan, catching a simple street version of it, and by reading books I think I could find a flow and a way of saying things that in my mother language were impossible to say. I love words. I mostly read biographies, by the likes of Django Reinhardt, Charlie Chaplin , Oscar Wilde, James Brown, Isadora Duncan, Salvador Dali and fiction by Michel Houellebecq. I love Morrisey’s book and Tracey Thorn’s account.

Can you explain the reasoning behind the two versions of the video for “Don’t Change Your Mind”?

Oh, very simple. We went to my new flat and thought to use this empty space to do a bit of filming. Pier Bucci, the camera artist, wanted to do some editing and that took time. He is a live artist that tours a lot, never spending enough in Berlin. I decided to give it a try by using a long take with my brother Marco using the editing suite, and the whole song worked nicely. Pier saw this and ditched that editing idea using another long take to make an alternative version. It´s all about the tune, really. I love this one.

How would you compare your solo work to what you created with bands in the past?

Well, this new one is good. To me is kind of a first effort. I don’t remember that much about my past efforts; have no space in my head.

Do you ever find yourself missing the big label days of being in Los Prisioneros, or are you content with working in a more relaxed capacity?

I hated the big label thing. I got a very convenient contract in the early ’90s for 4 records, signed from London and all. My first solo album had the weight of an expectation of 300.000 units and there was no way. I found myself “competing” with balladeers that really sold their souls doing promo. Me, I wasn´t delivering the goods.

So then I did a strange and bleak LP called El Futuro Se Fue and refused to do videos or promo. Of course it tanked. I still had 2 more albums to deliver with a cool $150,000 US dollars as advance and I gave them their contract back which made all of us happy. I must tell you that the 3 times I got serious money, my life got a wrong turn. It is not you who changes, it’s the way your friends and family change the way they treat you. So I don´t miss big labels and they for sure don´t miss me.

With the album now out for all to hear, what plans do you have lined up for the rest of the year? And do you have anything in the works already for 2015?

My plan is playing live, both with my Jorge Gonzalez band and Leonino. I just finished a new Spanish speaking LP that will be out next June and is called Trenes. I wanna rest from studio work so my melodies and lyrics can find a fresh well of magic info; I am a bit smashed of studio work doing 3 albums in a row. For sure a bit of air will do no harm.

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Brian Leak

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