Latin

When Argentine musicians Gustavo Cerati, Zeta Bosio and Charly Alberti released their debut album as Soda Stereo 40 years ago, regional success was the ceiling for most Latin rock bands. In the early ‘80s, most Latin American rockers didn’t tour outside of their home country, much less play Anglo-style arena rock to tens of thousands of fans.

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Until Soda Stereo.

The band’s eponymous debut album, released on Aug. 27, 1984, on Discos CBS, laid the groundwork for Sodamania — a passion characterized by hordes of screaming fans wherever the trio went, not unlike the frenzy surrounding the band’s Liverpudlian idols, The Beatles. On the strength of their sophisticated songcraft and high-energy live shows, Soda Stereo’s fame spread throughout Latin America; tours would take them as far north as Mexico and even into the U.S., where the band was the first Latin rock act to headline a tour in the country.

For many Latin rock fans, their first concert experience was seeing Soda Stereo live. “Back in the early ‘80s, we had a huge musical void in Latin America,” recalls Miguel Gálvez, a former radio journalist in Mexico who launched a petition to get Soda Stereo inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

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“A heavily growing segment of young people, between 15 to 25 years old, was uninterested in what Latin music had to offer — but totally into the music coming from the English-speaking world with bands like U2, The Cure, Depeche Mode and The Police.”

That “void,” he says, was also a result of Latin music at the time not reflecting the reality of millions of young Latin Americans “who were breaking up with old traditions and paradigms” as dictatorships in Argentina and Chile were beginning to crumble. Soda Stereo emerged at an auspicious moment, and the band’s first album even took note of the generational shift underway in the outro of the song “Dietético”: “El regimen se acabó, se acabó!” (the regime is over) Cerati exclaimed. Democracy had returned to his country the prior year, following the collapse of Argentina’s military dictatorship, and the times were changing. “With Soda Stereo,” Gálvez continues, “we discovered that great rock was possible in our own language, with lyrics closer to our own reality. Soda Stereo became the band that made us proud to be Latino.”

By the time the group broke up in 1997, it had produced seven studio albums, sold millions of units and headlined tours that were drawing audiences of more than 100,000 — an unheard-of level of success for a Latin rock group, at least back then. And as a testament to the group’s enduring appeal, Gálvez’s Rock Hall petition has collected more than 36,000 signatures from 67 countries.

Cerati — Soda Stereo’s charismatic frontman, guitarist and principal songwriter — died in 2014 at age 55 of respiratory failure, after suffering a stroke that left him hospitalized in 2010. To mark the band’s 40th anniversary, Billboard caught up with bassist Bosio and drummer Alberti, who not only went deep on four highlights from the group’s discography but revealed that previously unreleased music is on the way.

“About the songs, it was very particular — because, as a matter of fact, the songs would come out from the three of us together,” Alberti says. “We composed and made song bases all the time, we rehearsed all week long, including Saturdays and Sundays, and the song bases were coming from those rehearsals. And Gustavo would add the melody and the lyrics to those bases to finish the songs.”

There’s A Previously Unreleased Song Coming Soon

Alberti confirms the forthcoming release of a song that he declines to name (for the moment) but says it is the first song that the members of Soda Stereo wrote together. “The lyrics talk about a kid who stares at the sky … a very youthful lyric, very naive. But, well, it was the first thing we did.” Alberti found the track on a tape that also included a longer version, with different lyrics, of “Por Qué No Puedo Ser del Jet Set?” — the first song on the first album, in which the singer asks why he can’t be part of the jet-set lifestyle.

As for the new, previously unreleased song, Alberti continues: “The audio is quite good. The most we’re going to do is a little mastering, but the idea is not to do another mix or split the tracks, because I think it would lose the essence of what it means. It’s important that people understand how we started, how the band sounded in that moment — obviously, arrange it to a more current sound, but not much more.”

“Trátame Suavemente” (from Soda Stereo, 1984)

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One of Soda Stereo’s most enduring love songs, “Trátame Suavemente” was at first a faster-paced dance song — and not suggestive of romantic love at all.

“In those days, we went to see a lot of bands, and one of our favorites was Los Encargados,” says Bosio. “They were like a rock-techno band … Richard Coleman was part of that group, and there was also Daniel Melero (the composer of ‘Trátame Suavemente’). We were big fans of them, and we became very close friends.

“We made a slow version of ‘Trátame Suavemente’ because the original one was more dance-oriented. Our version and our vision put the song into a melodic setting, like a love song. But originally, the lyrics were inspired by the Malvinas (Falklands) War. (The singer) is talking to the general, not a girl. We made it into a love song.”

“Cuando Pase El Temblor” (from Nada Personal, 1985)

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From Soda Stereo’s second album, “Cuando Pase El Temblor” — in which the narrator asks to be awoken after a (presumably romantic) tremor passes — would eventually take on outsized significance across Latin America. In Chile, Galvez explains, fans there imagined the “tremor” referred to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Fans in Peru and Mexico, meanwhile, interpreted the song as a lament over a literal tremor from an earthquake, all of which helped turn the song into, as Bosio put it, the group’s first genuine anthem.

“We rented a house outside of Buenos Aires, and we went there a couple of months in winter. This song was born in that situation,” said Bosio. “We supposed that we were comfortable to rehearse in that place, but the explosion of the band … we worked a lot. All the days of the week. We didn’t have time to rehearse, because of the success. So, we didn’t have much time, but one day when I went to the supermarket to buy food, and I came back, I found Charly and Gustavo playing this kind of folkloric rhythm — trying to do an adaptation with the drum and bass drum. So I took the bass and began to play.”

“Luna Roja” (from Dynamo, 1992)

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Like The Beatles they idolized, Soda Stereo’s members were musical chameleons. Their songs veered from new wave to post-punk, shoegaze and symphonic pop. Dynamo, Soda Stereo’s shoegaze record, was the band’s least commercial release but produced several concert staples, like “En Remolinos,” “Fue” and “Luna Roja.”

“The whole concept of (Dynamo) was that we were changing again,” explains Bosio. “The next step was always a challenge for us. What are we doing now? We were getting very into Massive Attack and a lot of things happening in the British scene at the time. The Jesus and Mary Chain. A lot of distortion, and in distortion you can a lot of times find harmonies and different things, very psychedelic. So we got into that with a lot of passion.”

Bosio explains that the creation of a song like “Luna Roja,” with its evocative imagery of a red moon over a black sea, was made possible because “we became an organism that could think together. Like when the brain tells the finger to move, and the finger moves. We were like that, without even talking! We made songs, and we just knew when the chorus has to come. Nobody told us. And it never happened with a band for me again, a thing like this, this kind of feeling. Playing, all floating together.”

“Ella Usó Mi Cabeza Como un Revólver” (from Sueño Stereo, 1995)

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Soda Stereo’s final album found the group at the height of its songcraft. It was also jam-packed with Beatles references. The bass line on “Paseando Por Roma” is reminiscent of Paul McCartney’s in “Taxman,” while the brass-heavy chorus invites a comparison to “Got to Get You Into My Life.”

“Ella Usó Mi Cabeza Como un Revólver,” meanwhile, has a chord structure and backing reminiscent of “I Am the Walrus.” And the song, which laments a woman who used the narrator’s head like a revolver, even has a Beatles album in the title.

“That song was the last song of the record,” explains Bosio. “We had all the record done, but we didn’t feel like we had a hit. We said, ‘Well, let’s make one.’ So we began to work the last two rehearsals on the hit. We said, ‘If it doesn’t happen, we’ll still have good songs — but it needs a hit.’ We began to play almost together, and it comes, almost like water. All the notes — and when we listened to it, we began to imagine something like The Moody Blues, with an orchestra. I couldn’t believe it. But it was like, let’s do a hit.”

“There are phrases like ‘Ella usó mi Cabeza como un Revolver,’ which is something I mentioned to Gustavo once, when I told him about a girlfriend I had who triggered me very intelligently with a very interesting cerebral game. I told Gustavo a very similar phrase,” says Alberti. “Gustavo knew how to take that and develop the idea.”