Luis Alberto Spinetta

Luis Alberto Spinetta (23 January 1950 – 8 February 2012), nicknamed "El Flaco" (Spanish for "skinny"), was an Argentine singer, guitarist, composer, writer and poet. One of the most influential rock musicians of Argentina, he is widely regarded as one of the founders of Argentine rock, which is considered one of the first incarnations of Spanish-language rock. Born in Buenos Aires, he was the founder of several iconic rock bands including Almendra, Pescado Rabioso, Invisible, Spinetta Jade, and Spinetta y Los Socios del Desierto. In Argentina, January 23rd is celebrated as "Día Nacional del Músico" (National Musician's Day) in honor of Spinetta's birth.

Spinetta devoted himself fully to his own music. In his lyrics, there are influences of multiple writers, poets and artists like Arthur Rimbaud, Vincent van Gogh, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Carlos Castañeda and Antonin Artaud, whom the album Artaud (1973) is named after.

In December 2011 he announced that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. He died on 8 February 2012 at the age of 62. His ashes were scattered in Buenos Aires in the waters of the Río de la Plata, according to his last wish.

Luis Alberto Spinetta was born on 23 January 1950 as the second of three siblings: Ana María and Carlos Gustavo, the latter of which also became a musician, to Luis Santiago and Julia (née Ramírez), and grew up in the neighborhood of Núñez in Buenos Aires. His childhood home was only two blocks away from the Estadio Monumental. Luis Santiago was an amateur tango singer who formed a group accompanied by guitarists and performed on several radio stations. Through his father, Spinetta was of Italian descent, as his great-grandfather was from the municipality of Carrega Ligure in the Piedmont region.

Amid the counterculture of the 1960s and the political turmoil in Argentina, several artists during this time would develop Luis Alberto's musical range, especially the work of the Beatles. In one such case for example in 1964, during the height of Beatlemania, after winning a local music competition, Spinetta used the earnings to purchase their recently released album, Beatles for Sale. Spinetta also credited Los Shakers, a Uruguayan rock band heavily influenced by the look and sound to that of the Beatles, and their leader, Hugo Fattoruso. With these personal and cultural influences, Spinetta began to compose songs from a very young age, even before learning to play an instrument, even composing a hymn about Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. In a 1988 interview, Spinetta said, "I had fun imitating singers, copying sounds. That's why music was born in me before words." Spinetta also began singing tango songs and, from the age of four, his family, especially his uncles, encouraged him to sing at family gatherings. The influence of tango would be noticeable throughout Spinetta’s work. Three of his uncles worked at Columbia Records which allowed him access to a wide variety of musical expressions at a time when access to records was very expensive. Spinetta said several times that his artistic debut took place in 1964 in a television contest called Escala Musical on El Trece, although his father mentions that year he also sang in a children's program called La pandilla One and Two, later known as Pandilla Uanantú, which was broadcast on El Nueve between March and May 1964. Spinetta attended San Román high school.

Having grown near Estadio Monumental, Spinetta was a lifelong supporter of Club Atlético River Plate, having mentioned the club in his song, "El anillo del Capitán Beto," a track from the album El jardín de los presentes during his tenure with Invisible.

In 1969, Spinetta's band, Almendra, recorded their self-titled first album. They started recording and playing intensively, becoming successful almost overnight. Almendra composed their own songs and their lyrics were written in Spanish, something which was still new for Argentine rock music. After two albums that were received with critical acclaim and continuous radio exposure, the band split.

After a lengthy stay in Europe, Spinetta returned to Argentina and afterwards formed a new band, named Pescado Rabioso. With a far more powerful sound and expressing through their songs the tension of the streets in an increasingly violent Argentina, Pescado made their album debut in 1972. It was both a continuation of the creative stream of Spinetta and a drastic change in the style of his own music and lyrics. Later, the band recorded a second album named Pescado 2. Although a third album, released in 1973 and called Artaud, carried the band's name, the band had actually already dissolved. Therefore, it was mostly a solo album by Spinetta himself. Partly inspired by the writings of Theatre of Cruelty creator Antonin Artaud, particularly his essays Van Gogh, le suicidé de la société ("Van Gogh, the suicide by society") and Héliogabale ou l'Anarchiste couronné ("Heliogabalus, or the anarchist crowned"), Spinetta exorcised many of the demons of his past in this album. He simultaneously released a manifesto entitled Rock: música dura, la suicidada por la sociedad ("Rock: tough music, suicided by society"), a reference to Artaud's essay, in which he denounced the nihilistic hedonism and commercialisation he saw as having corrupted rock music. This process would open the door to a new era in his music.