Javier Esteve - Cerebrum
Born and raised in Barceloina, Esteve began playing music at the age of 11/12 before he picked up the guitar. Playing numbers from his favorite outfits at the time, Esteve would soon begin playing in his very own groups such as RitSon, Furrows, Los Surcos, Los Mas and eventually Cerebrum throughout the 60s and 70s. Having released a few singles in 1970, the group would go through what a lot of groups experience in their evolution and Esteve found himself at a crossroads and well… the rest is history. Enjoy!
When and where were you born? Are you originally from Madrid? What was growing up like for you? Do you have any siblings? When did you first begin to fall in love with music and what was it about the guitar that initially fascinated you?
I was born in Barcelona in October 1949, but at the age of 8 my family moved to Madrid, which is where I developed most of my musical career. I was lucky enough to become a teenager at the beginning of the 60s, with which, being very young, I lived a fascinating and difficult time, which made it more attractive, since in Spain we suffered a dictatorship that saw the new ones with very bad eyes. artistic expressions that invade the world, and especially some hairy and extravagant guys who made incomprehensible and challenging music. I am an only child, I do not have brothers or sisters. When I was a baby and I would listen to certain music on the radio in my house, I would stand up and jump and dance, so my love for music was very early.
I consciously fell in love with music, like many at that time; listening to music programs on the radio. When I was 11 or 12 years old, I joined a musical student association at my school playing a traditional instrument (the lute), because there were no guitar positions, which was what I wanted to play. With this association we gave classical and popular style concerts. As for the guitar, at that time instrumental music groups were in fashion and I listened to The Shadows, The Spotnicks, etc. When I got my first guitar I was trying to play songs from The Shadows, which I thought were incredible at the time, and I was just thinking about starting my own band.
RitSon circa: 1966.
What would you and your friends do for fun? Did you go to many local shows in your area back in the day? What groups left a huge impression on you early on?
My friends and I had a preference for music, we used to organize parties and parties to dance, listen to music and make female friends. I would go to all the places with live music that they let me in, since I was still officially a minor (16 years old). In this my first musical period my favorite groups were The Animals and The Kinks, although I also liked many other The Beatles, Dave Clarkn Five, Stones, Lovin Spoonful, Electric Prunes, some Spanish group like Los Bravos, etc. Also Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Three Dog Night, later Hendrix, King Crimson, Cream, Doors, Led Zeppelin, Julie Driscoll, Steely Dan, etc., etc ..., the list would be endless until today.
Furrows circa: 1967.
Did you participate in any groups prior to Cerebrum? If so, can you tell me about those and what those experiences were like for you? How did you initially meet your bandmates Chema Pellico,Luis Navarro and Pedro Moreno and what led to forming a group together? How did you meet the other guys? What were your first impressions of them? What was the chemistry like between everyone and what commonalities outside of music did you guys share?
When I was approximately 16 years old I started my first group convincing classmates, the group was called "Rit-Son" then I had my first "serious" group called "Surcos" with which we mostly made pop-rock, later I started a soul group (“Conexion”) that got to record and that became known, followed by another R&B group (“Raspberry”), and soon after I started a group called “Mas”, which was the name that Cerebrum had before recording. The group “Mas” was created together with the drummer Fernando Artalejo, the group's first drummer and with whom he had been friends for some time, later we incorporated Chema Pellico on bass and Jose Ma. from Inés “Perry” to the keyboards, at first the singer was going to be Chema's partner named Raúl but the guy disappeared and we had to look for another who ended up being Luis Navarro. For the members of the group, except in the case of drummer Fernando Artalejo, we were not united by any previous friendship, we were only trying to find good musicians with whom we had musical coincidences and who were interested in setting up a new and different project.
All this was confirmed in the first tests; there was excellent chemistry. We rehearsed in the basement of an old house, which was actually a cave, and that belonged to the grandparents of a friend of ours, there for a long time many friends and fans came to listen to the jams with long improvisations that were part of our rehearsals. After a while, the drummer Fernando Artalejo was called in by the army to fulfill the compulsory military service that existed then in Spain and was replaced by Pedro Moreno, whom Luis Navarro knew. When the record company offered us a contract, the keyboardist "Perry" refused to sign it because he did not want to commit to anything and left the group to live in the United States, with which we went from quintet to quartet. The name of the band was changed to "Cerebrum" just before signing the contract by mutual agreement with the record company.
Los Surcos at Club Milujuma circa: 1967.
Los Surcos circa: 1967.
Where would you guys rehearse and what was that first initial jam session like? How did you guys come up with the name for the band? When and where was the group’s first gig and what was that experience like for you?
When the group started we performed in many clubs and small concert venues, but I don't remember where the first one was. The first concert of the band as Cerebrum was the presentation of the first album in a famous place in Madrid called Piccadilly.
Los Mas (Poster) circa: 1969.
Los Mas circa: 1969.
How did the deal with Dimension come about in 1970? When and where did recording take place and what was that experience like for you when recording the band’s first single ‘Eagle Death/Read A Book’? Who did the illustration for the cover art? Can you tell me about writing as well as recording those songs? Did you guys tour, or play any gigs after the single was released? Tell me about working with producer Miguel Casas?
The deal with Dimension arose thanks to the fact that we recorded some demos in the studios of RNE (Radio Nacional de España) and a famous DJ. At the time, called J. Maria Mantilla, he listened to them and played them on his radio programs, this reached the ears of the head of Dimension's promotion department, who became interested in the group and contacted us. There was also something to do with an executive from the Chappell / Warner publishing house called Chevi Semprini who liked the group so much that he came to many of our rehearsals, all of this was the reason we recorded with Dimension but published with Chappell / Warner and that I, with some exceptions, have continued to publish most of my repertoire with this publisher. The records were recorded at Gema studios in Barcelona. The experience of recording an album, let's not give as before, was fantastic since it also gave us the opportunity to experiment in the studio, since we had freedom from Dimensión to do what we wanted. The cover illustration was made by an artist who worked for Dimension, but I don't remember his name.
As I already mentioned, we made a presentation of the album in public and before the specialized press, the tour as such was not done, we did different concerts but without being part of any tour, mainly because we had a lot of difficulties finding a manager to organize it; We were a group of weird guys who made even weirder music and at that time the managers weren't used to those things. Curiously, he did take an interest in us, thanks to an article that appeared in Record World magazine in the US entitled "Surprise in Spain", the then Soft Machine manager who offered us a small tour of the USA, which was rejected because two of The members of the group did not want to do it and the other two did, which created some discomfort between us. The producer Miguel Casas went a little crazy when he saw us do the "oddities" that we did in the studio and he got infected, since once we had recorded and returned to Madrid, he on his own account and without consulting us, he added the classical piano of the end of Eagle Death, question that created some discussion between the group and him.
Cerebrum circa: 1969. Gema Studios in Barcelona.
Cerebrum and Perry 6-4 circa: 1970.
Cerebrum circa: 1970.
That same year you guys recorded your last single on Dimension. First, can you tell me about writing and recording the songs ‘Time’s Door/It’s So Hard’? When and where did recording start and what did you guys want to express and/or achieve with this single that differed from the previous release? What was the band’s process and approach like when writing original material?
These two songs, like most of the songs of the group, arose from our jams and improvisations, except in some cases in which someone brought the structure of a theme to rehearsals and in rehearsal we finished implementing it. In this case the songs were written in Barcelona in the basements of a restaurant, where we were rehearsing for a few days prior to recording. We recorded again in the same Gema studios, since the headquarters of Dimension / Ekipo were in that city. This second single was the continuation of the style and form that we had established in the first.
Cerebrum circa: 1970.
Cerebrum at the Piccadilly Club circa: 1970.
What were the band’s activities after the singles were released? Did you guys stay together much longer after that? What shows are most memorable for you and why?
Well, I left the band in that same year (1970), because it was intended to change the band's focus, and because I did not agree on several issues. In a few months two or three different guitarists passed through the group, another singer, another bassist, and the band with these other musicians did some concerts. The fact is that Dimensión got tired of the supposed "chaos" that the band had entered and terminated the record contract, the band endured a few more months but ended up dissolving in 1971, if I remember correctly. There are many memorable concerts, even some that were not held, such as one in the Iris auditorium in Barcelona, which, because we did not want to bend to the whims and interests of a promoter, canceled the performance minutes before the show. Anyway, in my memory there are the disc presentation shows, some live and public performances on Cadena SER radio that was nationwide, or the first concert we did after releasing the first album that paid us 20 times more. of what we charged before releasing the records, (nobody believed it, ha, ha, ha).
Cover for the Disco Expres circa: August 2nd of 1970.
With The Walker Bros. circa: 1970. John Walker, Javier Esteve and Luis Navarro.
What eventually happened to the group? Did you continue to pursue afterwards? If so, what projects and/or other creative endeavors did you pursue? What have you been up to in recent years? Are you still in contact with the other guys? When you reflect on your time in Cerebrum, what are you most proud of?
As for me, I have continued to mount my own projects, during the 70's bands like Araxes and Araxes II, for whom I wrote music and lyrics, of a certain experimental nature, pursuing what I always wanted to do; something different and with its own personality, I went from the Cerebrum quartet to septets or octets with rhythmic and stylistic fusions, with drums, one or two basses, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, oboe, flute, keyboards, violin, synthesizers, one or two singers, etc. In the eighties I formed a hard-rock group called “ETC” and later a project called “Metrópoli” with which I set out to do everything myself; production, music, lyrics and arrangements, in addition to taking charge of the guitar recording, with this project two L.P. and several singles, it had some repercussion, TV programs were made all over the country, radio, press, it was some time in a radio hit list, etc., and the project lasted approximately 4 years.
Araxes and Araxes 2 circa: 1972-75.
Later I have been dedicated to production, I have produced approximately 170 albums until today, I have also dedicated myself to great concerts such as sound engineering, but I have never stopped playing, for many years and parallel to production, I have a band called Delirium Blues Fusion in which my partner sings, who is one of the best jazz-fusion singers around here. With the former members of Cerebrum I keep in touch, from time to time we talk, and sometimes we see each other, although little, since we live in different cities; Pedro and Luis are still in Madrid, Chema lives on the island of Ibiza, and for now I live on the Costa del Sol in Malaga. Perhaps one of the things that I am most proud of about Cerebrum is that we managed with only 2 published singles, to create a different style, our own and completely different from the bands of the time.
Esteve throughout the 1980’s.
Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
The truth is that I can't think of anything else, I have the impression that I have spoken a lot.
