Musician Robe Iniesta, leader of Extremoduro, dies at age 63

BarcelonaRobe Iniesta, the Extremaduran musician and leader of the band Extremoduro, died this Wednesday at the age of 63. His management agency announced his death in a statement that did not specify the cause. "Today we say goodbye to the last great philosopher, the last great contemporary humanist and writer in the Spanish language, and to the singer whose melodies have impacted generations. But above all, today we say goodbye to the master of masters," the statement reads. A year ago he suffered a pulmonary embolism that forced him to cancel some concerts from the album tour We can't breathe, one of the best albums of 2023 according to the ARAIt was the same album he had presented to 23,000 people at the Parc del Fòrum. in a triumphant concert This effectively demonstrated that both Extremoduro's songs and those he released under his own name reached a generationally diverse audience. Roberto Iniesta Ojea, Robe, born in Plasencia on May 16, 1962, connected with many people, and how!

Robe Iniesta was a poet with a raspy voice and strangely tender, sing-song rhymes, rock of extremely high emotional intensity where a verse inflamed with profanity would suddenly appear. He was, in fact, one of the great lyricists of love, of the desire that explodes in his sex. Prometheusof the most transparent and the most cryptic love, of the inconsolable longing for Go out and of love as nourishment, which he described in Nothing to lose, the monumental song from his latest album; a song that among the riffs The hard-hitting guitar and violin pillow is now interpreted as the final self-portrait of an extraordinary artist, arguably the most influential figure in Spanish-language rock, a reference point for Estopa and Albert Pla, for example. "Extremoduro is the best band that has ever existed," said Albert Pla. "Robe inspires me because he's sixty years old and his inspiration hasn't run out. There are people who have written amazing songs, but they've dried up. And he hasn't," explained David Muñoz of Estopa, who added: "The other day I almost cried listening to it Nothing to loseMy son said to me, "Dad, why are you crying?" No, no. It's a song that I love:I would return to my addictions if necessary [...] I would do it again for love, if necessary»".

Robe Iniesta's musical biography begins while he's working in his father's mechanic shop. It was during this time that he rehearsed in a venue near Plasencia Cathedral, influenced by Leño and Rory Gallagher. His first concert was in 1983 at a festival for up-and-coming bands in a football field, and the setlist already included a couple of his own songs; he played guitar. Under the name Dosis Letal, they recorded a demo, and soon after, Iniesta decided he would also be the vocalist. Making decisions and changing the band's musicians would be a constant during that period. Finally, in 1987, Extremoduro was born.

However, a couple more years would pass before the demo was released. Transgressive rock (1989), which included Jesus Christ Garciawhich would become one of the most popular pieces in Robe Iniesta's songbook. The song mixes autobiographical fragments with verses that show a special lyrical talent for combining desperate love ("I vomited my soul into every verse I gave you"), the guilt ("I ruined your life by putting her next to me"), addiction ("Because I wanted to know how many people are marginalized, one day I got hooked on heroin.") and fatalistic sarcasm ("I came back to life on the third day in the psychiatric hospital. Absurd invention."). Jesus Christ Garcia It is the song from which the cult of Extremoduro grows, the song that marks Iniesta's style and that later will allow him to reach the heights of rock in Spanish such as the albums Agila (1996) and The innate law (2008), both by Extremoduro, or Destrozares, songs for the end of times (2016) and We can't breathe (2023), by Robe Iniesta.

Early Extremoduro carved out a niche for themselves in bars where the police searched pockets for drugs and checked IDs for criminal records, but also among a less marginalized youth barely out of adolescence who found in those songs what wasn't played on commercial radio stations. As had happened with Basque punk-rock in the eighties, this transgressive rock spread by word of mouth, especially in working-class neighborhoods.

Iniesta's temperament and drug addictions didn't make dealings with the music industry any easier, although the band's productivity was high enough. The band's profile took a significant leap forward after signing with Warner and releasing their albums. Deltoya (1991) and Where are my friends? (1993). But the artistic turning point came with Pedrá (1995) and Agila (1996) and the addition of Iñaki as producer and guitarist Uoho Anton, who came from the Basque group Platero y Tú. As Antón recalled, Iniesta himself realized as soon as the tandem would work"We started working on songs around 1993. And with Pedrá We saw that sparks were flying between Robe and me, and things were happening. Then he asked me to help him fix the Transgressive rock and we immediately got involved with Agila"Antón said. Both knew how to order the chaos without losing the forcefulness, neither the sound nor the poetry.

Iniesta and Antón enriched the musical universe of the songs. For example, with string arrangements Forbidden songs (1998) and especially I, an absolute minority (2002), and with the incorporation of the violin as an almost structural element in The innate law (2008) and Defective material (2011), a violin played by Ara Malikian. By the late nineties, established as an undisputed icon, Iniesta found a safe haven to unleash his ambitions in conceptual works and increasingly complex compositions that, nevertheless, never lost the essence of Extremoduro. There came a point when Iniesta began releasing albums independently of the band, but just as in their concerts, it was difficult to discern where Extremoduro ended and Robe began. Ultimately, everything bore the mark of the Extremaduran musician, one of the greatest figures in Spanish-language rock.