Os Mutantes

OS MUTANTES LIVE - RECORDED AT THE BARBICAN, LONDON 2006 Double CD/DVD
How did 60s Brazil produce the wildest, most psychedelic rock’n’roll group of them all? And why, three decades on, has the rest of the world gone crazy over them? As the Daily Telegraph put it ‘people talk about cult bands, but there should be a separate category for Os Mutantes, who have had a fanatical following among music lovers for years.’ Kurt Cobain, Beck, Super Furry Animals, Devendra Banhardt and David Byrne are just a few of the musicians that have flown the flag for Os Mutantes. Against all odds, in May 2006 the band reunited for the first time in over 30 years for a euphoric show at the Barbican’s Tropicalia Festival. The recording of this historic concert, with special guests Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson, is now to be released on CD and DVD by Luaka Bop and coincides with return dates in the UK.
Os Mutantes In 1964, just as The Beatles were emerging to change the face of pop forever, Brazil came under the power of a military dictatorship. Making music became a political act and the student left aligned themselves to the Brazilian styles of samba, bossa nova and baiao. Meanwhile, the innovations of The Beatles were firing up three teenagers from Sao Paulo: Sergio Dias, his elder brother Arnaldo Dias Baptista, and Arnaldo’s girlfriend Rita Lee. Not knowing or caring about the political implications of playing rock’n’roll in front of student audiences that believed electric guitars were the tool of the imperialist devils, Os Mutantes was born.
“We always knew that music was an expression of the soul and not of politics,” says Mutantes’ guitarist Sergio Dias. “There is something political about being free under a dictatorship anyway — tell a teenager that they can’t do something and they’ll do it more.”
Necessity is the mother of invention. The guitars, amps and effects pedals that gave The Beatles their sound were not available in 60s Brazil. So Os Mutantes came up with a solution: to build their own. Sergio and Arnaldo’s brother Claudio studied the techniques of the great violin maker Antonio Stradivari and constructed guitars that could switch from electric to acoustic and had pick-ups on every string. For the warbling sound on “Batmacumba,” Claudio built an effects pedal powered by a sewing machine. And how did Mutantes recreate a hi-hat cymbals hiss for their version of Francoise Hardy’s “Le Premier Bonheur Du Jour?” By aiming a can of bug spray (the popular Flit brand) at the microphone and firing. Their producer Manoel Barenbein had to admit, it worked brilliantly.
Arnaldo Baptista and Sergio Dias come from a rich musical heritage. Their mother was the first woman to write a concerto for piano and their father was a poet, so by the time they discovered rock’n’roll as adolescents they already had grounding in classical music and literature. Arnaldo met Rita Lee Jones met when they were 16, in 1964 at a high school Battle Of The Bands. With Sergio on board as guitarist (he had left school aged 12 to turn pro), the band was formed. They quickly graduated to television shows, performing Beatles tunes with an orchestra and singing Bach fugues a capella on a show hosted by the singer Ronnie Von. Then along came Tropicalia.
Mutantes became Tropicalia’s house band, performing on the landmark album Tropicalia, Ou Panis Et Circenses (1968) and including many Tropicalia-era songs by Caetano, Gil and Tom Ze on their first and second albums from 1968 and 1969. They raided the wardrobe departments of the television shows they played on and dressed as aliens for one performance, witches for another. Then Tropicalia came to an abrupt end. In 1968 the Institutional Act Number Five was introduced and the military clamped down. Caetano and Gil were jailed then exiled to England from the end of 1968 until 1972. “It was a huge repression,” says Sergio. “We were getting threats all the time, but the kids who came to our shows just wanted to have fun and that was lovely to see.”
Os Mutantes fleshed out into a full rock band, with drummer Dinho and bassist Liminha added to the line-up. They relocated to Paris for three months in 1969 to perform at the Olympia Theatre and record Tecnicolor, an album of English language versions of their songs that did not get a release until 1999. On their return to Sao Paulo they recorded their masterpiece, A Divina Comedia Ou Ando Meio Desligado (A Divine Comedy, or I’m Feeling A Little Spaced Out). Featuring baroque odes to Lucifer, laments for broken fridges and the Deep Purple-influenced hit of the title, the album featured the sound of Os Mutantes coming into their own. But it also marked their loss of innocence.
Rita Lee and Arnaldo Baptista, sweethearts since they first met in 1964, broke up under the weight of increasingly hectic lifestyles. Rita Lee left the band in 1972 to pursue a solo career that continues to this day. Arnaldo left two years later and suffered a series of nervous breakdowns that culminated in an attempted escape from a psychiatric institute in 1981, leaving him in a coma for six weeks. The brothers’ relationship also collapsed, making any kind of reconciliation between them seemingly impossible… until the Barbican’s invitation to play together in 2006.
In January 2006, Sergio and Arnaldo Dias Baptista made music together, at Sergio’s studio in Sao Paulo, for the first time since 1976. Dinho came too, while Rita Lee politely declined their invitation. “Actually, she’s been very kind,” says Sergio. “She is pleased for us, because she knows that for Arnaldo and me to be together again is some kind of miracle. And we’re sounding great.” Sergio, Arnaldo and Dinho are back, with Zelia Duncan on vocals and Claudio’s arsenal of inventions, to unleash their mutant mania onto the world once more.
The Live album features the best-loved tracks of this legendary group:
DISC 1
1. DON QUIXOTE
2. CAMINHANTE NOTURNO
3. AVE GENGIS KHAN
4. TECNICOLOR
5. VIRGINIA
6. CANTOR DE MAMBO
7. EL JUSTICIERO
8. BABY
9. I'M SORRY BABY
10. TOP TOP
11. DIA 36
DISC 2
1. FUGA Nº II
2. LE PREMIER BONHEUR DU JOUR
3. DOIS MIL E UM
4. AVE LUCIFER
5. BALADA DO LOUCO
6. I FEEL A LITTLE SPACED OUT
7. A HORA E A VEZ DO CABELO NASCER
8. A MINHA MENINA
9. BAT MACUMBA
10. PANIS ET CIRCENSES
The full-length DVD will be available soon and includes the entire Barbican concert plus extras – documentary, backstage footage, video clips, photos and more.
A MINHA MENINA
I FEEL A LITTLE SPACED OUT