Idolized and reviled, charismatic and disproportionate, elegant and ‘freak’, Enrique Bunbury is a true stage animal who has lived moments of rise and fall and who at 54 is forced to start a new life in which he will not give concerts for his throat problems, although he will continue to devote himself to music, painting and poetry.
Born in Zaragoza (northeast of Spain) in 1967 under the name of Enrique Ortiz de Landázuri Izardui, he took the stage name of "Bunbury"a character in Oscar Wilde’s play "The importance of being Ernesto"imagined by a protagonist of the play to find excuses and get rid of unwanted plans and be able to lead a more libertine life.
A fiction within a fiction that he took as a reference when he immersed himself in music as a teenager and began playing the guitar in a school group at the age of thirteen, at the same time that he went from being a good student to ending up expelled from several schools.
From a wealthy family, he participated in several groups until in 1984 Héroes del Silencio germinated, which since its first album, "The sea does not stop", became one of the most successful on the music scene. with the following, "trails of betrayal" (1990), the fame of the pop-rock band formed in Zaragoza spread through several European and Latin American countries, especially in Germany, where it exploded.
"I have performed in front of 25 people and 250,000"recalls Bunbury in the statement with which he announced today that his last concerts will be those already scheduled in September in different Spanish cities.
From his first live shows, the way this singer acted, excessive, overwhelming, gesticulating and at times almost in a trance, caught our attention, dancing non-stop accompanied by a deep and unique voice on stages that he has dominated since he began to frequent them professionally ago. 35 years.
This histrionic version of his, and which has earned him comparisons with singers like Jim Morrison, Raphael or David Bowie, has aroused passions and also some hatred: "Industry and public see me as a ‘freak’"he remarked in 2005, already when he had a solo career, after the dissolution in 1996 of the Heroes.
The group sold more than 6 million records worldwide and have sometimes been considered unfairly pigeonholed and underappreciated by critics in Spain, as shown in the 2021 documentary "Heroes: Silence and Rock & Roll"by Alexis Morante.
It recounts how Bunbury summoned the rest of the members -Juan Valdivia, Pedro Andreu and Joaquín Cardiel- by surprise after a concert in Tijuana (Mexico) to inform them that the group was dissolving, a traumatic end for the rock group. who were no strangers to drug problems. They got back together for a tour in 2007 before disbanding again for good.
From there, the singer begins to explore sounds as diverse as Latin, electronic, African, Mediterranean or even Balkan rhythms on albums like "The small" (1999), "flamingos" (2002) or "the journey to nowhere" from (2004).
He created a circus universe with El Huracán Ambulante with a group of friends made up of Nacho Vegas, Carlos Ann, Iván Ferreiro, Adriá Puntí and Mercedes Ferrer, an example of his fondness for collaborations throughout his career, with artists such as Atercipelados, Skizoo, Jaime Urrutia, Amaral, Loquillo and Andrés Calamaro, Love of Lesbian, Mikel Erentxun or Amaral.
With his compositions Bunbury has also wanted to establish "a bridge between Latin American music and rock, ensuring that the balance is not tilted towards the more folkloric vision or clichés", in his own words. In 2009 he became the solo Spanish artist with the largest audience in Mexico, singing in front of 90,000 spectators at the legendary Azteca Stadium.
+ Birth of her daughter
The singer has experienced crucial moments, such as the birth of his daughter Asia in 2011: "Having children changes our lives. In particular, it has given me a slightly more revolutionary vision, more desire to find formulas to change this world that obviously does not work."he explained, and summed up his demons in "the pharmaceutical industry, the arms industry, the seed industry, the food industry" and who allows it.
Another situation that "one before and one after" it was the tour of his album "The consequences" (2010) by USA, "a questioning of the vocation" before very small audiences, in very unusual places within the Latin circuit and that were "a slap to the personal ego".
"After that, I accepted again that this career is the one I love with all its consequences. There is no goal, I do not seek to be number one, but to stay on the path"he assured later.
Influenced by the vision of art and life of David Lynch -who, in addition to being known as a filmmaker, is a practitioner and promoter of transcendental meditation- Bunbury lives withdrawn in his Californian residence from the madding crowd and its temptations, so, as he himself says, he has not noticed much the effects of the semi-confinements recommended in the US by covid.
Interested from a very young age in philosophy and reading, he says that now that he is retiring from the stage, but not from creation: "Endless possibilities open up before me, in which creativity, that is, composing songs, recording albums, painting and writing poetry books are part of my goals. I am old enough to make this major change in my life".
