the hum / By Bob Doran

The Wolves Return

(Feb. 8, 2007)  Not long after Los Lobos’ Louie Perez called me last week, we got to talking about our kids. He has several, and spoke of his oldest son who, when he graduated from high school, announced that he was moving out of the house. His plan was to spend a couple of years “concentrating on the band.”

“He had a band with the other Los Lobos kids,” Louis recalled. “I gave him a counter-proposal: ‘If you go to school I’ll pay tuition, get you some wheels and pay your rent.’”

The proud dad noted that his son chose college and ended up class valedictorian. I had to point out that Louie made a quite different choice when he got out of high school.

“I ended up devoting my whole life to being a musician. I’m not exactly proud to say it, but I have the distinction of never having a job. When you tell people you’re a musician, everybody looks at you and says, ‘But what’s your real job?’

“Sure, we went through that whole period of struggling. We formed the band in 1973, well before any of us had wives or children. The girls knew what they were getting into, and they supported us and we stayed with it through a lot of hills and valleys. There were tough times, but we all believed in what we were doing; we were young and full of piss and vinegar and we all held in there and struggled.”

In the beginning the band played rock ‘n’ roll, but began a lifelong exploration of traditional Mexican music on the side.

“In high school I had a band with David [Hidalgo]. Cesar [Rosas] had a big soul band. Conrad [Lozano] had this power trio, a Blue Cheer kind of thing. We were all friends and hung out together. After high school we got this crazy idea to learn a Mexican song to play for one of our moms on her birthday, a mañanitas kind of thing, a serenade you do to wake up people on their birthday. When we went to learn it, we thought, ‘This is pretty cool shit,’ and started to explore more.

“We soon realized how challenging the music was, and we dove right in. It wasn’t something that was really popular among our peers. Everybody was trying to learn American rock songs to play in Top-40 clubs, or to play in backyard parties that got busted by the cops. Playing that old music wasn’t cool. Most minority kids like us growing up in the hood were all about homogenizing and becoming part of mainstream. We wanted something different.”

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