Edgard BernardoExpress Plus 1
Tues & Thurs
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We couldn’t speak about Brazilian rock without talking about Legião Urbana. The Group began in August 1982, after Aborto Elétrico's dissolution, a Brasília’s punk rock group, it became the biggest Brazilian rock band. The Legião Urbana was one of the few bands that survived for almost 20 years without marketing strategies and with rare appearances on TV. This band has possessed passionate fans, that idolize it like a religion. Their music had something that was missing in other bands: poetry and lyrics that "talk to the public". The History of the Legião Urbana remounts at the end of the 70’s, moment in which the scenery of the Brazilian rock was not very defined. In that time the world perspired ideology, with several cultural and social movements. In Brazil, the hippies left the scene and the punks arrived, with their aggressive attitudes and even anarchists. The center of the punk movement was Brasília, and in that they were half young that if they would turn the masters of the rock in the eighties, among them Renato Russo. All of them were part of a big group that met to talk, to drink, and if have fun how they were able to. In that time, practically amusement didn't exist, it remained the groups organized parties where drank and they listened to punk rock. One of those parties that André Pretorius met Renato Russo certainly because of the punk rock. After the encounter between Renato Russo and André Pretorius, the two formed the Aborto Elétrico, the first among the bands punk of Brasília. The trio was formed by Renato Russo, (bass and vocals), André (guitar) and Fê Lemos (drums). The Aborto Elétrico, formed in 79, just lasted up to 1982, because of fights between Renato Russo and Fê Lemos. After one of those fights Renato decided to leave the group and he began to play alone, defining a style more folk, that would be adopted in the repertoire of the Legião later. In this phase, Renato sang more complete music with a storyboard, like Eduardo and Mônica, Faroeste Caboclo, Dado Viciado, among others.
After the success of the Aborto Elétrico, Renato Russo decided to form a new band with Marcelo Bonfá, the Legião Urbana. Renato Russo then invited Eduardo Paraná, considered a good guitarist of Brasília, and Paulo Paulista, keyboard player, that accepted immediately. Surprisingly, the first show of the Legião was not in Brasília, but in Minas Gerais, in the "Party of the Corn", where the promoter had decided to fit in some rock bands among more popular attractions.
The success of the band only came in the third show, in the North Commercial Section, where in spite of the low public, the band was received with great enthusiasm. But, Paraná and Paulo Paulista left de group. Paulo Paulista left as quickly as entered, and Paraná was not fit in in the pattern of music of the band. Renato and Bonfá thought about several alternatives when they remembered another guitarist without band: Dado Villa-Lobos, Heitor Villa-Lobos’s great grandson, that such a good guitarist was shown that assumed the position definitively in the Legion. Besides everything, he learned in a few days everything that the other members in the band had been long weeks to assimilate. The presentation ends up being a success. In that time Paralamas do Sucesso were making a lot of success in Brazil. And for luck of the Legião, Bi Ribeiro, member of the group and former-student of English of Renato Russo gets an opportunity for the band: to record an album for EMI, recording of Paralamas, that end if turning their "godfathers." In the middle of the recordings an outstanding fact happens: Renato Russo cuts the pulses after a fight with the recording because of "Geração Coca-Cola" arrangements. After the incident, Renato is disabled of continuing playing bass, and to solve the problem the recording it puts Renato Rocha, known as Negrete, to play bass, liberating Renato Russo for the vocal ones. The recording throws, in 1985, the first album solemnity-entitled " Legião Urbana." In little time music as it will "Sera" and it is "Ainda é Cedo" were playing in the radios and reaching high audience levels. In the same year, the band joins at studio to begin the recordings of their second disk called"Dois." The disk marks time in the rock and if it turns a mark for the band. In it, the Legion ends up defining it music style, a soft rock, but with hardcore pinches, with deep letters, with critics 'the society and 'the humanity but extremely poetic, that they made to think us, unassuming in the folk-urban music, that also marked a style of Renato Russo to sing and to play. The album becomes quickly a success of sales, and it was also the sold disk of the history of the band. In that time, the first tragedy happens with the band: in a show in December of 1986 in the Brasília’s Poliesportivo gymnasium, a riot finishes with a girl dead and 20 hurt people. That fact collaborated the attitude of the band of they accomplish very few shows during it career. The incident almost finished with the Legião. After two years without manifesting and with the decision of not doing more shows in Brasília, the group gives up the idea of abandoning the career and lance one more new album, the third party of the band, "Que País é Este". This album brought surprises to the public, because instead of they put new compositions, the Legion recorded music of the time of the Aborto Elétrico and of the beginning of the career of the band, in a type of retrospective of the career. The music of the album showed as well as the group changed of the punk for a lighter rock and elaborated. After a long time without recording, two years, the Legião goes out the studio with a work that would revolutionize their path and the Brazilian rock: the disk " As Quatro Estações ", already without bassoonist Renato Rocha, that separated of the group soon after the end of the recordings of " Que País é Este ", because it didn't get if it adapts to the commitments with shows and recordings. The New album, where Renato and Given if they entrusted of the basses, it is considered by many the high-water mark the history of the band. In their eleven music, among them the heaviest side substituted by beautiful songs like "Há Tempos", "Pais e Filhos", "Feedback Song For A Dying Friend", "Quando O Sol Bater Na Janela Do Teu Quarto", "Eu Era Um Lobisomem Juvenil", "1965 (Duas Tribos)", "Monte Castelo", "Maurício", "Meninos e Meninas", "Sete Cidades" e "Se Fiquei Esperando Meu Amor Passar", with a strong sentimental appeal, and heavier themes as the homosexuality, for instance adopted in their letters. A deep album, it had almost all music transformed in successes in the radios, and one of the sold albums of the band. For middle of that album with more direct letters, the youngest public still identified more with Renato Russo's poetries, it fact contributed with increasing of the number of the band’s fans, that height consolidated as the largest band of Brazilian rock.
Starting from 1990, there was a great turn in the band, more precisely with Renato Russo. The leader and vocalist assumed openly in an interview that was homosexual, and in the same year he discovered that was bearer of the virus of AIDS. To complete, Renato sank in the addiction, consuming a lot of cocaine and heroine. All those changes can be noticed in the disk "V", thrown in 1991. The new album, once again surprised the fans. It was weighed thematically, with sad music and letters that spoke about the addiction in the drugs and of lost passions. In spite of that it possessed beautiful melodies and it had like this music well executed in the radios. In 1992, the recording lance the collection "Musica para Acampamentos", a double album with 20 recordings live and of special for radio and television, where the band shows talent inserting their successes with covers of Beatles and Rolling Stones. Then long other period of two years without recording, the fans were already anxious for new works of the Legion, and in 1993, they are surprised again with the album " O Descobrimento do Brasil ", the sixth of the career of the band. The disk showed a Renato Russo cheerful, happy, recovered of the problem with the drugs and passionate. Three years passed and the fans had few news of the band and they were avid for new works. In this middle time, Renato threw two albums soil, "The Stonewall Celebration Concert", a commemorative album sung in English, that was celebrated the twenty years of a homosexual revolution in the United States. The disk contained music of Bob Dylan and Madonna, among other singers, and it had their profits reverted for hunger campaign against sociologist Herbert de Souza. The other soil album, "Equilíbrio Distante", was an album sung in Italian, that according to Renato, it was done at the request of her family, they would like seeing him singing traditional music in Italian. The disk, was an instantaneous success of sales, with more than 300 thousand copies, and it had the music mainly "Strani Amore" played in radios that never had before played rock or spoken about Legião Urbana. The work was also to call the people's attention on Renato's poetic side, and for the beauty of their compositions. A lot of people that would shudder of listening a rock disk if they turned fans of the Legião after the soil work. The disk also yielded videoclips, an indication for the Video Music Awards Brazil 96 and it took it Reward Sharp of Music in the category "Best Album in Foreign Language."
After the longest interval between an album and another of the Legião, EMI throws the disk in the middle of September of 1996 the "A Tempestade (ou o Livro dos Dias)" .The release was sped up, because Renato was very weakened and sick, and the recording feared that the disk ended up being posthumous. The Work caused, once again, surprise even in the most accustomed fans with the turns of the band. It brought Renato sensibly with the voice weakened by the disease, melodies and sad letters that he spoke about pain, tragedy and farewell. The album brought few commercial appeal music and the first transmitted strip was "A Via Láctea" (the strip, after Renato's death, it was understood finally as his world farewell). That would be the last work of the Legião Urbana.
On October 11, 1996, Brazil, especially the fans of the band, woke up shocked with the news that the poet, musician and the Legião Urbana leader, Renato Russo, whose Christian name was Renato Manfredini Jr, died in the dawn victim of resulting complications of AIDS. It was the end of one era.
The Legião Urbana was that. A group that knew to do music as nobody and to express their feelings and the youths' of an entire nation feelings, making them to think in what happened about arround the world. A band that today does part of the history of the music in Brazil, and that with certainty would be taking it work ahead for many years if Renato was still alive.
