José Alberto Iglesias

José Alberto Iglesias was born on the 16^th September 1945; he died on the 19^th May 1972. He is better known with the name Tango. He was an argentine rock music composer and a singer. His short career was essential in the first years of the argentine rock nacional, the earliest avatar of the rock en Español.

source of picture: www.fotolog.com

Biography

José Alberto Iglesias was born on the 16^th September 1945 in the industrial town of the country, San Martin Buenos Aires region of Argentina. His family lived in the modest house in Caseros, close to the city of Buenos Aires. Tango never had any interest in going to school, and after failing when he was 13, he tried various apprenticeships. The only problem that attracted his interest was the rock and roll music. When he turned 17 years of age, Tango was a fixture of the social ballroom in the Matraderos and the Flores neighborhood, and he was singing mostly rock and roll covers. He also became popular as a rock and roll dancer, while most people in the suburbs were the dancers of Tango. To highligfht the contrast, his friends started to call him Tango. With his first band called Los Dukes, he recorded a few cover and one of the original music in the year 1963. He never got commercial success; Tango started looking for a new outlet for his creative energy.

In the year 1965, Tango and his friend Horacio Martinez became constant of the night club called La Cueva in the Recoleta region of the country. The club became the cradle of rock music of the country, with celebrities like Moris, Sandro and LittoNebbia always performing at the club and some other prominent people like PipoLernoud, Miguel Grinberg and Miguel Abuelo always sharing the limelight of the rock music of the country. Some of them found it hard to write the lyric of the rock music in the Spanish language.

When Tango ranted in the café’s washroom about being alone in the world and always being sad, Nebbia gave him encouragement to write his songs based on his catchphrase. Tango indulged and Nebbia added a choir with a vaguely bassa nova air. The music became the first mega-hit of the Spanish language rock and roll called La Balsa. Nebbia’s band called Los Gatos Salvajes recorded the music on the 19^th June 1967 and gained a good number of radio play of the song and it assisted the music to sell more than 250,000 copies. Both the name and the lyrics of the music may refer to Jose Feliciano’s La Barca and most of Tango’s friends acknowledged the fact that he had the music in mind.

Tango’s rendition was not recorded immediately, but was shown on the national TV some months later, a section about the Buenos Aires variety of the hippie spectacle. The success of Los Gatos and his status as a co-composer of the music La Balsa suggested to the people that a career breakthrough will soon come his way, yet his first single music that was recorded on the 18^th January 1968, was not marketed well by the RCA and the sale of the record failed.

In the year 1968, many of his music especially the track called Amor de Primavera, were being covered or borrowed by the upcoming artist in the rock and roll scene of the country.he always took credit for the music of the people.

All his songs are credited Ramses VII, one of his numerous pseudonyms, after the Egyptian PharoahRamesses and the affection for the 7^th chord.

When Tango broke up with the RCA, he found another home in Mandioca, a label that was dedicated to rock music, which quickly made arrangements for studio time. Tango had difficulty with the motivation of himself for the completion of the album. He recorded one or two tracks with his musical instrument, guitar alone, or jams with any available musicians and disappear for days. By then time he moved to the use of hard drugs and injection of amphetamines from alcohol and marijuana whenever he can afford them.

In February 1971 was arrested and charged with the heading of drug gang and was said to be mentally insane, he was committed to the José T. BordaNeuropsychiatric Hospital, and it was there that he was acquiesced to the insulin shudder rehabilitation and some other treatment that are designed to wax him off the amphetamines and the hard drugs. Rather than getting better, his mental health diminished to the point that in the year 1972, he was committed to the long term care of the hospital facility.

He escaped from the hospital in the morning of the 19^th May 1972. He managed to get to the Pacifico train station where he board a train to his parents’ home in Caseros at 10:50 AM, he fell on the track of the train and was hit by a train.