It’s barely a few minutes past four in the afternoon when the guys from He Killed a Motorized Policeman enter the lobby of a central hotel in Mexico City. They arrange the suitcases and instruments in a corner of the place, next to the elevators. It is the first stop for the Argentine group after getting off the plane that brought them from Buenos Aires, almost 10 hours into the flight. The band’s singer, Santiago Motorizado (La Plata, Argentina, 44 years old), goes outside for a moment. This Friday the band performed at the Zócalo in Mexico City. “I hope I don’t get nervous,” the singer will say during the interview. They will not be on stage, from where they will thrill the audience for an hour. Motorizado spoke with EL PAÍS in those previous moments about Super Horror (2023), the album that gives its name to the tour, the state of health of Argentine rock today and its performance in the capital’s great plaza. This Saturday they will complete their appointment with Mexico in Tijuana.
Santiago Barrionuevo – the vocalist’s real name – wears a black T-shirt from the Scottish group Primal Scream and bright green sports shorts. He puts on his white helmets and listens to songs by Charly García for a few moments. He sits on one of the sofas at the hotel entrance. Without rushing, Motorizado responds and reflects closely. In between the conversation he will worry about where his travel suitcase is, “the blue one”.
Ask. In his lyrics, melancholy plays an important role. Does that feeling inspire you?
Answer. Well, everything inspires me, you see? The joy, the melancholy. All the feelings. But it’s also true that when I have the energy to write or make songs, or get to work, it’s usually a joyful time. It’s not that melancholy leads me to work, on the contrary, melancholy leads me to do nothing. At the moment of writing, what comes out, what is manifested there, is crossed by melancholy; and I don’t really know how it works, but I understand that, in some way – I didn’t think about it much – that exercise of bringing out melancholy in the form of a song, lyrics, whatever, maybe helps me day to day, to get through it. Yes, I am convinced that at the moment of creation and all that I have to be crossed by more positive feelings.
Q. So he doesn’t go into the studio sad.
R. Quite the opposite. The moment I’m depressed, sad, I don’t do anything. I am indirectly inspired at some point, because all those feelings are later transformed, a little further back in time, into songs, into phrases. But at the moment when I’m writing, working, I have to be, I would say even in love. That is the ideal moment.
Q. They created Super Horror in 2022 (published a year later). They talked about it being an “intense and unforgettable” year. Because?
R. It was an intense year because it was the first year after the pandemic, that we played again after almost two years. We chose to wait until everything looked a little bit like it always did. A lot of time passed, in the middle things came up, the Squatters (the Argentine series re-released in 2021 with new music, composed by the leader of Él Mato)… That kept us a little active in the studio already in the second part of the pandemic, when you could get together to record. And 2022 was a year where it accumulated. First, many new invitations and some that had been postponed and we wanted to do everything.
Q. I thought he was going to talk to me about the Argentine National Team (champion of the World Cup that year).
R. Well, that at the end of the year, it’s true. It was like a great end to the year. It was something that I had always wanted and I am just old enough not to remember, I was very little, when Argentina became champion in ’86. I don’t remember it. I have very blurry images. So, I have a conscience and love for football starting with the next World Cup. I saw every possible defeat that could be seen. So I put a lot of energy into that. It’s something that interests me a lot. Especially the World Cup. I am a soccer fan, but the moment of the World Cup, when all the countries converge, seems fascinating to me.
Q. What do you think is the state of health of Argentine rock today?
R. I see it well. I think that after the pandemic there was a spring effect of things that were about to start, that the pandemic cut off the vibe in the middle; and I see a lot of new bands, which is where I put my focus first. Bands of kids who had to go through that moment and who later appeared with a lot of energy.
In that sense, I see it well if we talk about rock; and if we talk about beyond, too. There are things in this dispute between urban culture and rock, let’s see who has the center of attention. That dispute is something that doesn’t matter much to me, but I do see that after the explosion of all urban music, there is like a post that interests me. I’m excited that there are a lot of new things, there is also an electronic, pop, dark movement, which also has contact with the things that I like about urban music and this new Argentine rock scene. There is something of the darkness that challenges me. And I like that it responds to this half-artificial thing of ostentation that I didn’t like so much, especially in the context that exists in Argentina. I see it as a slightly darker response to that, which coincides with the times we live in.
Q. What artistic evolution have you seen in your more than 20 years playing?
R. I like that we were always exploring and that we all agreed with that. For a band to change and start taking new paths, the first thing you have to do is agree with others, you have to agree. In the history of music there are bands that had members who were more conservative with what they had already achieved and others who wanted to experiment. That was a conflict. Here we were always in search of something more, everyone is willing to go after that.
Q. They have traveled to Mexico many times. Have you taken influences from the country?
R. Uh, sure, but not directly, see? I can’t tell you that I wrote this thinking about that. But we do take a lot from the aesthetics, from the things that visually or musically nourish He Killed. The lyrics, everything, have to do with travel and what one learns along the way. For now, what I remember now is one of the last videos we made, Broken Diamondis filmed here in Mexico 100%, and with a whole wrestling aesthetic that we love, which I always liked as a kid and it seemed like a good opportunity to mix that with our music.
Q. Did you feel nervous when you went on stage at the beginning?
R. At first I was very nervous, I felt scared, total panic, although it was something I wanted to do, I’m glad I didn’t avoid that. Then, over time, I thought that perhaps there is something in vertigo that calls us to go headlong into the place of fear. With repetition I got around a bit of that. You get used to the setting, becoming more comfortable with it, and you start to like the idea of well, let’s see what happens if I do this, what happens if I go further.
Q. Don’t you have that vertigo anymore?
R. I have another feeling, in those first recitals I was afraid. It was the nerve most associated with fear, and today it is a vibe more associated with excitement, with the anxiety of enjoyment. When I’m on stage I enjoy it a lot. I no longer have that feeling of the beginnings, at all. Now it happens to me with very specific things. Last year we played at Luna Park, it is a mythical stage in Argentina, in Buenos Aires, and it was calm until the moment I went up and felt a fear similar to the one at the beginning. Something about the context disturbed me, it bothered me a little, I didn’t want it to happen, as the songs went by I calmed down.
Q. Many European artists say that the Latin public is very different.
R. It’s a bit of the way we live these types of circumstances, with that passion and with a lot of physical things. I love it. Maybe I also like to experience the different audiences, generalizing, but over there in Europe I see it as a more intellectual audience, so to speak. And I also like that challenge of that kind of attention. Maybe a totally festive audience, that no longer matters what is happening, I don’t know how good it is. But I really enjoy both things. From traveling around Latin America I can also distinguish different audiences, but in general there is a pattern that unites us, that we like to live on the surface, but everything: music, football, politics. Everything is lived with a lot of passion, sometimes we go overboard, but I like it that way.
Q. The Zócalo of Mexico City is an imposing place. What does it feel like to arrive at a place as emblematic as this?
R. When we received the invitation we were very happy. I am a good friend of Vicentico (singer of Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, who achieved an attendance record at the Zócalo last year), and I remembered when we played a long time ago at a festival that was held in the Zócalo, Youth Week. Nobody knew us there. It was still impressive to see the entire square full, and it was also fun. I love playing for free for the public, so that from time to time they don’t have to spend money, and they can see us. That excites me. And I hope I don’t get nervous like I just told you, because I’m calm.
