The Ride: 30 years of Los Lobos

Latin Beat Magazine, Oct, 2004 by Jesse Varela

Regarded as one of California's premier rock bands, Los Lobos is celebrating 30 years together and taking its fans on "The Ride" to celebrate.

That's the name of their latest album and testament to ah artistic vision that transcends borders and identity. Specials guests abound: Dave Alvin,

Mavis Staples, Bobby Womack, Elvis Costello, Rubén Blades, Marta Gonzlez, Café Tacuba and Little Willie G. (García) of Thee Midnighters.

The principal members of Los Lobos originate mainly from East L.A.'s City Terrace neighborhood. In 1973, they formed Los Lobos del Este de

Los Angeles and jumped in a van to Veracruz, Mexico to learn to play authentic regional jarocho folk music. In 1974, they went electric and began crosspollinating rock with traditional Mexican music. They gained popularity with songs like Anselma, Will the Wolf Survive? and La Bamba.

In the early days they recorded definitive albums and toured. They won a Grammy in 1984 for the song Anselma and became assimilated into the mainstream rock world. Lobo's saxophonist and production guru Steve Berlin came on board in 1983 and saw the band through the evolution from analog to digital technology.

There's something comforting about David Hidalgo, César Rosas, Conrad Lozano, Louie Pérez and Store Berlin sticking it out. They're now a singular musical institution that for three decades has expressed the sentiments of both rural and urban California's heartland.

This past August, I had an opportunity to sit down for a few minutes with Louie Pérez and Steve Berlin to talk about the group's longevity and legacy.

JESSE VARELA: Three decades of Los Lobos ... Wow ... How does it feel?

LOUIE PÉREZ: It's hard to believe it's been 30 years. The first few years yeah. Five years, you kind of feel that. Then it goes into hyper-drive ... you just don't notice anymore. About 1983 and on, which is when we first hooked up with Steve, it just flew by. It's been a blur.

JV: I think the group has proven in those three decades that it can achieve commercial success and still maintain an artistic vision. Has it been a struggle to balance the two?

LP: It's always a struggle trying to strike a balance between what is the music business and the creative side of music. It's a tough thing but we live in the area that is music and try to stay there or else we'd go nuts because things are so upside down in the music business these days.

JV: Steve, you've been very important in keeping the Lobos sound evolving. How has new sonic technological advancements helped Los Lobos develop its sound?

STEVE BERLIN: We realized early on that it would be wise to take those tools and learn how to use them. It struck us that we should learn how to do this stuff and possibly own the stuff. Basically, since the late 1990s, we've had a studio and become with every successive project more adept at using it as another instrument; making the records as close to our artistic vision as we possibly can. That paradigm is one that has occurred to an amazing amount of people. Most of the stuff I hear these days started in somebody's garage, basement, bedroom or back seat of a car. You used to have to enter this Valhalla of millions of dollars of flashing lights and buttons lining every wall. Now it's your laptop and a mike ... period. We did The Ride almost all by ourselves thanks to that technology and it was a lot of fun.

JV: The cast of special guests is pretty amazing. How did all that come together?

LP: We put together a list of heroes and people that meant a lot to us growing up in East Los, when we were listening to R&B and people we're crazy about right now. We're still music fans. Then we started whittling it down. I grew up with Thee Midnighters. When I was a little kid my sister would drag me around East Los Angeles to the parking lots of the markets on Whittier Blvd. They'd be playing on stages made out of pallets or something. It was a real good time for music in East LA that gave birth to the Eastside Sound. Back then, it was just really cool music. Mavis Staples is someone we heard a lot while growing up with the Staple Singers. Café Tacuba is what we're listening to now. But the reason that we did this was to have a party. To invite a whole bunch of people to come over and help us celebrate 30 years.

JV: I've always appreciated how you fuse folk and rock. How has this evolved?

SB: A lot people point to Kiko as being a breakthrough record, which it clearly was for us. But I think there was a moment even prior to Kiko when we were recording The Neighborhood that we did a track called Be Still. To a certain extent we had always, consciously or unconsciously, kept these colors sort of separata. There would be a norteño track, a country track, a blues track ... we were sort of parochial about how we'd show these influences. Somewhere in the making of that single track we said, 'What happens if we throw all this stuff in the same pot?' It was a real revelation. It unlocked the door to further experimentation. That's the ethic I've always tried to use with everything I've ever done. Let's use every possible tool we have. There's no reason to hold anything back. Every idea is valid until proven otherwise and that's how we approach making our records now.