The Lives And Deaths Of Los Bravos

In the mid-1960s, there was a cross-Atlantic power struggle for dominance of popular music. On one side of the water were the likes of Motown, The Beach Boys, and Phil Spector; on the other were The Beatles and the other Liverpool groups, the mods like The Who, as well as The Kinks, The Hollies, and the occasional female, e.g. Dusty Springfield.

This rivalry was reflected by the charts, the pirate radio stations and Top of the Pops. Every now and then, this national duopoly was assaulted, and thus entered such notable artists as The Singing Nun and Françoise Hardy. Another usurper was a group that had been created in Majorca. The Spanishness of Los Bravos was, in a musical sense, neither here nor there. The group was moulded in a British fashion, the producer of Black is Black having been Ivor Raymonde, who was heavily instrumental in the success of Dusty Springfield and other British acts.

Black is Black and therefore Los Bravos captured a moment - a very strong moment. A summer hit in 1966, Los Bravos were Spanish, and Spain was where people were going on holiday. The success of the song hinted at a possible Spanish invasion. It never materialised. There was no shortage of pop groups, especially in Majorca, but Los Bravos were to prove to be something of a one-off, as indeed was Black is Black. Other songs barely registered outside Spain, although somewhat remarkably perhaps, Bring a Little Lovin' was much, much later to feature in a major US film - Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

None of the group were in fact born in Majorca (the family of Miguel Vicens moved to Santanyi when he was a baby), but it was on the island where they came to be formed. A mixture of Los Sonor and The Runaways, members of the two groups met in a Cala Major nightclub. And it is in Majorca where the new Los Bravos have seen the light of day. Over two nights at Santanyi's Teatre Principal last weekend, Los Bravos were reborn; an international tour could be in the offing.

Two of the original Los Bravos, bassist Miguel Vicens and drummer Pablo Sanllehí, own the name, and it was their idea to create the new Los Bravos. It seems a rather odd idea. It would be like the two surviving members of The Who, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, deciding to form The New Who. Where could they possibly find another Keith Moon?

Mike Kennedy, who as Mike Kögel was the German lead singer with the original group, doesn't just find the idea odd, he has described it as a con. In 2015, he reunited with Miguel Vicens to record a new version of Black is Black under the Los Bravos name. He said in a recent interview on the Marliska Rock show (an online programme hosted by a Spanish DJ, Vicente Romero) that he hadn't been informed of the plan to create the new Los Bravos. Once he did know, he didn't want anything to do with these "supposed new Bravos". "They are kids who have no effing idea. It seems to me like a lack of respect for the fans who knew Los Bravos in their classic form."

Disagreements between group members are nothing unusual, so Kennedy's remarks do perhaps have to be taken as being fairly typical. But in the same interview, he went on to suggest that Miguel and Pablo hadn't played on recorded versions. "They were recorded by professionals." On stage, the songs didn't sound like the discs. It was so bad on one occasion, he claims, that Miguel's bass was unplugged. Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, he had said on a previous occasion, was one of the "professionals".

Still, studio musicians being responsible for recordings wasn't that unusual either, and Miguel refutes the claim that Jimmy Page was on the sessions. He was in the studios but he didn't play on the recordings, and Miguel has also explained that they had to use studio musicians in London because of union rules at that time.

Los Bravos were a legendary group, but quite how legendary is debatable. There were four albums between 1966 and 1969, but it is hard to avoid a conclusion that they were legendary for one song, on which none of them played, only sang. But there were to be factors which disrupted them. Mike Kögel left to pursue a solo career as Mike Kennedy, and in 1968 there was genuine tragedy.

In April of that year, Miguel got married. The group members all attended the wedding. Following the reception in Palma, keyboard player Manuel Fernández and his wife Loti, who was expecting their first child, drove to Valldemossa where they were staying. The car hit a truck. Loti was killed instantaneously.

Miguel and his wife had gone to the Hotel Formentor for their honeymoon. It was there that they received the news. Almost a month later, Manuel shot himself dead.

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