Red trousers, black t-shirt, scarf tied around the neck and hat. They throw a towel at him. It’s the end of the concert’s final song, La Constant, which is included on his 2017 album Expectaciones. “Thank you Atlanta. An immense pleasure to sing for you, to sing rock with you in Spanish”. He then introduces his band, Los Santos Inocentes, and concludes: “… and Enrique Bunbury. See you forever.” He raises his right arm, palm out, offers the audience a kiss and runs to the side of the stage as the band plays the final coda. The last time Bunbury will be seen in concert ?He didn’t know then, but days later everything points to it.
More information
That was last on May 10th at the Coca-Cola Roxy Theater in Atlanta (Georgia). The next concert was supposed to be in Chicago on May 15, but it didn’t happen. In return, the Zaragoza singer (54) issued a statement: “My throat and breathing problems have increased and returned sharply last night and what I thought was under control is totally beyond my hands and desires. With all the pain in my heart I have to anticipate what I already saw to come. It’s impossible for me to do more concerts.” This was the last tour of his career due to his throat problems. The singer believed that his health would withstand the tour of the United States and the tour he was planning to do in Spain, which would take place in the summer and end in Valencia on September 22, but they will no longer take place.
The one in New York on May 6th and the one in Atlanta are practically the last two concerts of the former leader of the Héroes del Silencio. In both concerts his voice did not break. “Bunbury’s Voice Remains Firm in New York, the First of His Farewell Tour Concerts,” this newspaper headlined of his performance at Brooklyn’s Kings Theater to a crowd of 3,300, most of them Latinos. Audiences with a similar profile fired him in Atlanta, where he revisited his solo career with a memory of Heroes del Silencio through three songs: The stranded mermaid, Undo the world and Damn goblin, which he performed in the penultimate place. The concert opened with The Terms of My Rendition from the album Possible (2020), playing tracks adored by its followers such as May you be lucky, The Foreigner, Lady Blue or The Impossible Club.
All the culture that suits you awaits you here.
Subscribe to
The problems with the singer’s personal voice are not new. Since the times of Heroes del Silencio he has had to miss many concerts, especially in the 90s. This is what Antonio Cardiel writes in the most comprehensive book about the quartet, Heroes of Legend (Penguin Random House, 2021), referring to a tour in the 1990s: “Enrique’s voice gave him another fright. It was a recurring problem, only he knows how many times something similar happened to him during his Heroes of Silence career, or it still happens to him today. Probably much more common than known.”
Here’s how the singer defined his difficulty in a statement last February: “The reality is that my throat is constricting and irritating, and my respiratory system makes even the slightest movement and doing my job difficult.” Bunbury’s retirement from the stage doesn’t mean he hasn’t music will do more. He will continue to “compose songs, record albums and write poetry”.
Recently, on April 26th, his latest recording was released: the song Waiting for a Signal, the main theme of Alexis Morante’s film El Universo de Óliver. Die Konstante will go down in history as his last live song. The text says, “Just because I don’t give details and live like a king, I know how to recognize my Jade Palace.” That temple of meditation and stillness to which Bunbury himself is now en route.