Biography
Early years
Luca George Prodan was born in Rome on 17 May 1953,[2] the son of Mario Prodan, an Italian citizen born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Cecilia Pollock, born in China to Scottish parents who lived in Shangai and Beijing before World War II. Prodan had not only Italian origins but Scottish as well.[1] He was born after the return of the Prodan family from China:[2] his father had set up a prosperous business in ancient Chinese pottery that became untenable after the Japanese invasion of China during World War II.[3]
Prodan was the third of four siblings: Michela (Michaela) and Claudia the oldest, and Andrea was the youngest. Michela and Andrea worked in the world of cinema, although Andrea has an unusual musical background, as a soloist with England's most famous choir in his early youth and a creative musician in his later years.[4][5]
Life in the United Kingdom
In his youth, his parents sent him to Britain to the prestigious Gordonstoun College, the same school attended by King Charles, Prince of Wales; In Gordonstoun, Prodan befriended another student named Timmy McKern, who would be his friend until his death. In 1970, at seventeen years of age and one after finishing his studies, Prodan abandoned them and fled from Gordonstoun.[2] While his family requested his search from Interpol, Prodan travelled Europe alone back to Rome, where he was found by his mother at the very moment he had been arrested by the police.
Established in London during the 1970s, Prodan got a job at the Virgin records store. In that city he formed his first band, The New Clear Heads,[2] which shared aesthetics with contemporary punk bands like XTC, The Fall, Joy Division (who inspired the title of the first Sumo album: Divididos por la Felicidad, Spanish for "Divided By Joy") and Wire.[6] Prodan's musical sensibilities, influenced by the heyday of British ex-colonial rhythms such as dub and reggae (which influenced British popular music of that decade), were impacted by the personal style of post-punk singer-songwriters such as Joe Jackson, Graham Parker or Elvis Costello,[7] although the irony of Ian Dury & The Blockheads also refers to the jocular and festive style of some of the songs that Prodan would develop as a leader of the Argentine group Sumo.[7]
Prodan was in charge of the singles section (45rpm records) at the Virgin Records' store in Marble Arch, one of the places where Richard Branson's empire was born. There, he began to accumulate for himself some musical treasures–most of them stolen from the warehouse–with a limit: one in 10 records he sold ended up in his house. He was fired once but recovered his job, at the insistence of some clients who claimed "the Italian who could discover the title of a song and its interpreter just by listening to an out of tune whistle." Nonetheless, this second chance at Virgin was short-lived: Prodan had much more discs at their disposal, and the theft reached levels of excess. In addition to taking the records he liked, he came to steal records for his friends and his brother Andrea. This time the employer did not hesitate, and the final dismissal was ordered.[8]
Living in London, Prodan began using heroin.[9] In 1979, his sister Claudia committed suicide alongside her boyfriend, after locking herself in a car and inhaling carbon monoxide.[9] After knowing this, Prodan fell into a coma due to a heroin overdose, for which he was almost presumed dead.[9]
Life in Argentina
Searching for a way out of his addiction — which had already ended his sister's life, and almost his own — Prodan travels to settle in Argentina in March 1980. He travelled without knowing practically anything about the country, dreaming of a bucolic photo that Timmy McKern, the Argentine-Scottish friend whom he had shared school years in Gordonstoun and later lived in London, had sent him a letter. In the image, McKern's family was seen in the mountains of Córdoba,[10] as a paradise, to which his friend Timmy added some key information: in Argentina, at that time, there was no heroin and it was not known.
Luca Prodan was walking on the verge of death and the family postcard he received showed his friend Timmy McKern's refuge in Córdoba where everything was life and nature. One dog, two girls, and a couple smiling with the mountains of Nono as the frame of an idyllic life. With Timmy, the same day that Luca arrived in Argentina, Timmy MacKern went to meet him at the Ezeiza international airport and put him up at his home in Hurlingham, Buenos Aires province.
Among the relatives, Timmy introduced to him was his brother-in-law Germán Daffunchio, who was 20 years old at the time and was a sailor. At the end of dinner, Daffunchio began to play a Creole guitar and Luca sang, and the idea of forming a band was born between them. They immediately moved to the McKern family's field in Traslasierra (Córdoba, Argentina); with them were Daffunchio and his friend Alejandro Sokol. Thus began the jams that gave birth to Sumo, with Daffunchio on guitar and Sokol on bass.
During this project, Luca had to find ways to calm the nerves and anxiety that had remained as a result of his heroin addiction. The area was, already at that time, a hotbed of artists and hippies who retired to live in rural areas to escape the repression prevailing in the big cities during the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983. In this area, Luca found relief in marijuana, of which there were numerous artisan producers, as well as in alcohol.
He became fond of gin, of which he came to drink a bottle a day. When he returned to Buenos Aires to start Sumo, Luca took these new habits with him and thus joined the nascent Buenos Aires underground, a cultural movement that began to develop between the end of the military dictatorship and the return of democracy in which drugs occupied a central place, especially cocaine. However, Luca — unlike other members of Sumo — would never become addicted to this substance.
Sumo
Beginnings of the band
After observing the promising evolution of those jams, Timmy McKern, his friend and future manager of the band, would introduce Luca to a young guitarist friend of his, to whom he would propose the idea of forming a band:[11] Ricardo Curtet, at that time a resident of Mina Clavero and that he was convinced by his friend McKern to be part of the group. Once presented, Luca returns to London to start buying the instruments and tries to (successfully) convince his friend Stephanie Nuttal to be the drummer for his new band.[12] Nuttal had been part of the Mancunian group Manicured,[13] a band with which he had come to open for Siouxsie And The Banshees and XTC, and edited a couple of singles for the Charisma label (the same as King Crimson, Van Der Graaf Generator, and Genesis, as well as the personal projects of various members of this last band: Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, and Steve Hackett), and would arrive in Argentina in October 1981 to join the team that was rehearsing in Córdoba. In this way, the band was made up of Luca on lead vocals, Daffunchio on lead guitar, Curtet on rhythm guitar, Sokol on bass, and Stephanie Nuttal on drums. The presence of the English girl in the lineup was quite an event since most of the rock bands of that time were made up exclusively of men; Thus formed the group. In 1981 they recorded in Nono's studio the songs that would later make up a posthumous album by Luca, Time, Fate, Love.
After this recording, the idea of moving the entire team to Hurlingham, where most of the members came from, began to flourish. However, this caused the first casualty of the group when Ricardo Curtet disassociated himself, who — having been a father during that time — finally decided to return to Mina Clavero to take care of his new family.[14]
Second formation
Once the band was established in Hurlingham, Province of Buenos Aires. The band's first concert was at a nightclub called Caroline's Pub, with a show based on songs sung in English. From there they went on to give several shows in another local venue called Mastropiero. In April 1982 the band was surprised by the Falklands War as everything related to the United Kingdom - including language - was prohibited or frowned upon; this caused Nuttal's immediate return to her native country at the request of her parents.[15] As a result of this departure, Sokol became the drummer and the position of bassist was taken over by Diego Arnedo, who played in a band from Hurlingham called MAM with the brothers Omar and Ricardo Mollo.
The formation of Sumo would reach its maturity with the entry as saxophonist of Roberto Pettinato, in mid-1983. Pettinato was a music journalist and had directed the rock magazine and he hosted a music segment in a Radio. Impressed after seeing a live Sumo performance, he invited Luca to his radio show; they became friends and Luca decided to incorporate Pettinato into the band.[16]
In 1984, Sokol left the band and, due to the lack of drummers, there were a couple of shows with Luca playing electronic drums. Soon after, Luca Prodan heard a rehearsal at Café Einstein by the band Oiga Diga and recruited their drummer, Alberto "Superman" Troglio to replace him; shortly after, invited by Diego Arnedo, Ricardo Mollo joined as guitarist.
That formation, with Prodan, Daffunchio, Arnedo, Mollo, Troglio, and Pettinato, would remain until Prodan's death and the subsequent dissolution of the group.
During these years, Luca Prodan, who did not have a home in Buenos Aires and had made a great friendship with the owners of Café Einstein, came to sleep on the premises or in the house of one of them, Sergio Aisenstein, and played practically there. every day. On weekends with Sumo and weekdays with his parallel projects The Hurlingham Reggae Band, Ojos de Terciopelo, and Sumito (an acoustic group). All these groups, with small variations in the formation, played several recitals every weekend in venues not only in the Café Einstein, but also in other underground strongholds such as Zero, Stud Free Pub, La Esquina del Sol, or in the Parakultural.[17] After publishing Corpiños en la Madrugada in the form of a cassette and with limited distribution, in 1985 the band released their first "official" album, Divididos por la Felicidad — titled playing with the translation of the name of the English band Joy Division — on the who captured a lot of reggae with influences from Bob Marley and also from funk and post-punk. The single La rubia tarada was the greatest success of this LP.
In 1986 they recorded Llegando los monos, their second album that contains reggae, aggressive rock, and post-punk: some of their songs have become hymns, such as Exploding from the Ocean, El Ojo Blindado, or TV Caliente. The hit of the album was Los Viejos vinagres. In that same year, they gave a great concert at the Obras stadium, consecrating themselves as one of the most attractive bands of that moment.[18] Thus, Luca Prodan was part of the short film The Day the gas lamps burst, by director Rodrigo Espina.[19]
In 1987 they released their third and last album, After Chabón, which shows a remarkable maturity in musical and lyrical matters. Such is the case of Mañana en el Abasto, a song in which Prodan gives a particular and emotional description of a typical neighborhood in Buenos Aires (19).
Death and legacy
Prodan died either of a heart attack or cirrhosis in Buenos Aires shortly before Christmas 1987.[20]
Two posthumous records of pre-Sumo recordings are available and provide an "insider's" view of the artist.[21] Recorded mostly in the Traslasierra region of Córdoba, Argentina (his initial home territory), they bear testimony to his musical influences and inspiration: Peter Hammill, David Bowie, Jim Morrison, Nick Drake, Lou Reed, Ian Dury, Ian Curtis of Joy Division and Bob Marley.[21]
After his death, two bands were formed by former Sumo members: Divididos and Las Pelotas. It is believed that the actual names came after a heated Prodan's answer referring to an eventual Sumo break-up: ""Are we breaking up, you say? Bollocks we are!""; hence Divididos (Spanish for "The Divided") and Las Pelotas (Spanish for "Bollocks").[21]
Tributes and recognitions
- The Argentine group Divididos, made up of his former colleagues Ricardo Mollo and Diego Arnedo, dedicated the song "Luca" to him on their album Gol de Mujer (1998).
- The singer Vicentico dedicated the single "Luca" to him from his album Sólo un momento (2010).
- The Chilean funk group Los Tetas dedicated the song "Sale Luca" to her on their debut album Mama funk (1995).
- The Argentine group Bersuit Vergarabat mentions him in their song "En trance" from their album Don Leopardo (1996) and, without mentioning him, pays tribute to him with the song "Murguita del sur" from their album Libertinaje (1998).
- The singer Andrés Ciro Martínez dedicated the song "Malambo para Luca" to him on his first solo CD with Los Persas, released in 2010.
- He is also named in the song "Todo eso" by Callejeros on his album Rocanroles sin destino (2004).
- The Argentine heavy metal band Tren Loco dedicated the song "Luca no murió" to him on the 2005 reissue of their second studio album, I don't care!
- In 1999 Luca, a documentary directed by Rodrigo Espina, was released.[22]
- In 2002 the film Luca vive was released, directed by Jorge Coscia with a script by Carlos Polimeni, Daniel Ritto and Jorge Coscia.
- In 2008, the Danish documentary Together by Jannik Splidsboel, a portrait of the brothers Andrea and Luca Prodan, premiered in competition at the Berlin Film Festival.
- A group of Argentinians, with the Argentinian consulate, are working toward the placement of a blue plaque in the house where Luca Prodan lived in Chiswick, London.
Discography
With Sumo
- Corpiños en la madrugada [Bras in the Morning] (EP, 1983)
- Divididos por la felicidad [Divided by Joy] (1985)
- Llegando los monos [Here Come the Monkeys] (1986)
- After chabón (1987)
- Fiebre [Fever] (1989)
Solo
- Time Fate Love, recorded in 1980. Released in 1996
- Perdedores Hermosos [Beautiful Losers], recorded in 1981. Released in 1997
