'Antonio Vega. Entre el espacio y el tiempo', a new book on the Spanish pop songwriter by Jordi Tormo, has been published by Muzikalia with the blessing of the Vega family. According to an El Pais column published on 2 November, the volume gathers diary pages, poems, notes and unpublished fragments in a miscellany aimed at admirers of the musician, who died in 2009 and was born in 1957.
The book also includes testimony from more than a dozen colleagues, presented in laudatory terms. The column takes issue with that approach, arguing that Vega is already protected by several rings of myth: record executives who might have despaired at his evasions but never dropped the language of genius, musicians who close ranks around a fallen colleague, and fans who hold a romantic image of the man that does not match the reality.
The article places Vega as the most obvious Spanish pop example of the "consentido", a Latin American figure it describes as the artist so beloved that even his most conspicuous errors are tolerated. It also notes that Vega rejected the tidy description of him as a sad and lonely boy. Tormo's book, the column says, details a nomadic existence: numerous houses in the countryside and the city, plus hotels where he stayed for stretches at a time. None of them lasted long, it adds, observing that fires tend to accompany consumers of certain substances because of their tendency to fall unconscious. Vega, the piece says, disguised that unsettled life behind an air of affable perplexity, counting on the fact that those around him were too respectful to name the elephant in the room.
According to the column, he lied when it was necessary and lied well. Pushed into duets, he swallowed his objections in public but railed against some of those supposed collaborators off microphone, having a clear sense of his own worth. He was unmoved to learn that 'Lucha de gigantes' featured in 'Amores perros', the debut of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and made no effort to see the film: his only concern was when the royalties would arrive. His musical trajectory, the piece continues, showed a notable capacity for recycling, as a progressive rock fanatic found a place in new wave. At home with an acoustic guitar, he was more likely to play Yes's 'Roundabout' than Elvis Costello's 'Alison', and his cousin Nacho Garcia Vega reveals that 'Chica de ayer' began life as an instrumental suite of more than 12 minutes.
Vega used to justify playing small venues as a search for intimacy with his followers, though in candid moments he admitted it was about taking money outside the view of the tax authority. The column sums him up as a born survivor who adapted his way of living to the demands of his habits, which explains why, as the 1980s wore on, he gave up Madrid nightlife. A small square, the plazuela Antonio Vega, now bears his name on the edge of the Malasana district by municipal concession. The columnist's verdict: he would have found it hilarious.
Sources: El País Cultura.