In New Orleans (USA) there is Talavera potteryThe set of plaques, installed in 1957, recalls the names that the city’s streets had centuries ago. Cradle of jazz and rhythm & bluesthe cultural legacy of New Orleans also reaches all over the world and, to complete the correspondence, that includes Talavera. The swampy sound of the band Lobos Negros, born in the city of Castilla-La Mancha, continues active 40 years after its founding, although its singer, guitarist and only permanent member throughout its career, Luis Martín (Talavera de la Reina, 62 years old), speaks as if they were just starting out: “We have more and more fans, we release better albums and we travel more. We are gradually rising, because what goes up quickly then goes down quickly.” The celebration of its four decades comes with a new album, The Silver Route (named so because it was partly recorded in Puerto de Santa María, and published by Rated-X, his independent label), scheduled for September, and a tour that includes dates in Latin America for 2025.
“To be in music for 40 years, you have to keep the illusion above all, because I like rock & roll and for me it is impossible to get off this train,” explains Martín, who is, among other things, a graduate in Sociology, an actor, inventor of the first electroacoustic ceramic guitar in the world and a brown belt in karate (he will take the black belt exam at the beginning of next year, he says). In Talavera he was a pioneer in founding a gang of rockersLos Rockadillos, and, after several frustrated projects, he managed to start Lobos Negros in 1984, with the disapproval of his father, one of the owners of the prominent local hat shop Cándido Martín. “He would say to me, ‘Have I been paying you for six years of college for this? Get rid of that earring now!’ Then I would take him the money from what I had earned in one night so he could count them and see how well I was doing. In the end he was proud, he was very conservative, but also very affectionate and a good person.”
Although the rockabilly Although it may seem like a more romantic than commercial bet, the musician appeals to the context of the Movida Madrileña, where the pull of concerts and records allowed bands from different currents to coexist due to the many different types of public that coexisted. “There were several of us in Spain doing rockabillylike Los Coyotes, Mario Tenia and Los Solitarios, Mississippi or a little Marmalade at the beginning. A day in Texasby Parálisis Permanente, is practically a song rockabilly”, he points out. “In our case, what we did was psychobillyfaster, with lyrics from horror films. I really liked Meteors and Cramps, who did the same thing.” Martín claims an omnivorous musical taste as the key to forming a group: “If you only have lettuce and onion to mix, then you make an onion salad. But when you have listened to 30,000 different records, you have 30,000 ingredients to choose from for your mix.”
The artist seems to strike a balance between, on the one hand, a music lover with encyclopedic knowledge and, on the other, a fan of myths who is already part of them, with Lobos Negros as an illegitimate son. For example, his eyes light up just by mentioning the anecdote of an acquaintance of his who played a game of pool with John Lennon in the Dakota building, because “that is like telling a priest that a colleague of yours was with Jesus Christ the other day.” “Coming from Talavera to Madrid and connecting with people like that, who had gone to Woodstock or seen Bob Dylan… that gets into you and makes you want to be there,” he confirms. “One Sunday I remember that Eduardo Benavente (singer of Parálisis Permanente, who died in 1983) arrived and made Víctor Aparicio (of Los Coyotes) and I eager, because he came from England, had bought some clothes and had seen the Stray Cats. He was the first one who told us about the Clash.”
Persevering in public relations and a passionate entrepreneur, Luis Martín says that he makes a living from music, copyright and concerts, as well as occasional work for the SGAE, cultural projects and multiple appearances in series and films. He frequently mentions his friendship since the nineties with the filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia, in whose productions Martín’s cameos are a kind of inside joke, since he appeared playing the mouth harp in 800 bullets (2002) or characterized as Elvis in Perfect crime (2004). In the series Pluto BRB Nero (2008) acted recurrently and even contributed a songwhile in 30 coins (2020) De la Iglesia introduced another visible reference to Black WolvesFor a group that, according to Martin, can fit “300 or 400 people at most” in a room, Lobos Negros’ trail goes back a long way: they have played in places as remote as Estonia and have a certain following in Germany, where their records were sold through the owner of Mental Disorder Records, a German label. rockabilly.
After publishing his first works with Nuevos Medios, the record label of the so-called New Flamenco and bands like Golpes Bajos, Martín edited the fanzine The Wolf’s Footprintsome issues of which survive on second-hand platforms such as Wallapop. “They are now highly sought after. The other day I sold a handful and they paid me very well for it,” he says. The singer took the task as seriously as the group. “A fanzine is more agile and allows you to publish what a newspaper does not. For example, we did a special on Chuck Berry and we had to talk about his sexual scandals. I got a porn magazine from the eighties at El Rastro, but not because of the porn, but because it had photos of Chuck Berry,” he explains. “I met a guy with a horror store in Madrid who had pirated sex videos of famous people. I said to him: ‘Shit, do you have the Chuck Berry one?’ And he gave it to me. It was fourth generation, it looked average, but you could tell it was Chuck Berry. The Chuck Berry porn recording had to be seen in order to be able to comment on it in the special.”
Martín fondly remembers the crazy parties for the presentation of the fanzine issues, a B-series spirit burlesque He imported it to Lobos Negros’ concerts, with mixed results. “We did an instrumental show like Link Wray. I had a cardboard scythe stuck to the neck of the guitar and an artist, Ismael Ballesteros, was breathing fire out of his mouth, as if representing a fight between good and evil,” he recalls. “Until we played in a bar in Talavera called The Beat, very small. He couldn’t breathe so much fire because it would burn people, so he threw it up and his head caught fire. The guy who rented us the equipment was wearing a leather jacket, he took it off and was able to put it out quickly, fortunately.” The video of the event, which took place in 1996, came to appear on the program Impact TVfrom Antena 3. “It was not serious, as if a car had been done liftinghe was left with a little butt like a child. I told him, ‘Ismael, you bastard, in the end you’re going to take a flamethrower and open a beauty clinic.’ The old skin fell off, he put on creams and it looked even better.
Jailhouse Rock
Lobos Negros’ references to Talavera are constant throughout their discography. 116 km from Talavera, Brawl in Talavera either When the humidity of the Tagus affects us are some of the titles that spice it up. In keeping with the formation of a local and personal mythology, Lobos Negros published in 2014 I am the man with the ceramic guitarinstrumental song recorded with the guitar in question, patented by him and created by the ceramist Manuel Carrillo and the luthier Carlos SabrafénThe idea was born from Victor Aparicio, designer of the cover of a book by Luis Martin, Those first steps of pop and rock in Talavera de la Reina (2002). “We thought, what characterizes rock? The electric guitar. And what characterizes Talavera? Ceramics. So he painted a ceramic guitar. The light bulb went on for me, because I wondered what that would sound like.”
And how does it sound? “We made two prototypes. The first one was a bit rougher, harder, and the sound was more bluesy. The second one is thin and sounds very bright, very Mark Knopfler. It is all ceramic, hollow inside, like a closed ceramic pot.” The guitar, acquired by the Talavera de la Reina City Council, is currently on display at the La Milagrosa Multipurpose Social Centre. Martín, however, hopes to continue perfecting the instrument, since it is very fragile: “The project is on hold because we need to find an element that will harden it without losing the sound, carbon, graphite or something like that. Because people back out. But Carlos Santana wanted it. I’ll just tell you that.” After asking him for details, the story takes on considerable nuances. He says that a Spanish musician commissioned a personalised one with his initials, CS, but at the last minute he stood him up. “I said, CS? CS could be Carlos Santana! So I contacted a guitar agency, and he decided to make it.” management They were interested, but when I told them that they had to pay 2,400 euros, they didn’t answer me. They thought that we were going to give it to them as a promotional offer, which was what they should do, but man, we’re just starting out, and you’re loaded!
In 2019, Martín gave music classes in Valdemoro prison, within the SGAE Actúa program, to help people at risk of social exclusion. There he joined a group made up of prisoners, Cal Viva: “We had two hours a week to get intimate, they told me about their lives. When we played they relaxed, they forgot everything, they told me that for them it was freedom.” The experience was so gratifying that the musician will repeat the project in the fall and, in addition, he will present his album on October 5 at the penitentiary center, which includes a song dedicated to the inmates, Two hours of freedomThe album, in which Luis is accompanied by drummer Ricardo Virtanen –who has been in the band for 35 years, with substitutions in between– and bassist Roberto Bahía, his latest addition, will also be presented at the Rockville venue in Madrid on October 19.
The leader of Lobos Negros is preparing a new documentary, which will be added to the one previously dedicated to him by Aure Roces, The Hatter’s Son (2008), hosted by journalist Diego A. Manrique. Asked about another musician from Talavera who is more famous and who also recently had a movie, Luixy Toledo, Martín confesses that he is still friends with him. “When I made the book about rock in Talavera, I had to look him up, because in the sixties he was the singer of Los Aracaris,” he says about the multifaceted artist, who gained notoriety after accusing Michael Jackson of plagiarizing him. Thriller and appearing in the nineties on sets such as that of Martian Chroniclestalking about life on Mars. “He says science fiction stuff, but I see the Michael Jackson thing as feasible. That doesn’t mean it’s true,” he says. “An American gospel group came to Talavera and then Los Aracaris played. There was a guy in the gospel group who, according to him, later became Michael Jackson’s backing vocalist. The last thing he told me was that the heirs had deposited 50 million pesetas in a Philippine bank that nobody knows about, because Luixy’s wife is Philippine.” Like many in the industry, Luis knows that success can be relative, but myths and legends are not.
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