Legião Urbana’s legacy is more alive than ever. The musicians Dado Villa-Lobos, 57, and Marcelo Bonfá, 58, are organizing a musical tribute to the band on the tour they start next month, suggestively named “As V Estações”. 48.
The sequence of shows across the country will revisit the repertoire of two of the most emblematic albums of the extinct group: “As Quatro Estações” (1989) and “V” (1991). For Frateschi, the name of the tour symbolizes not only the union of the albums in question, but dialogues with the current political moment in the country.
“We’re in a kind of rebirth, coming out of the darkness. What’s next? It’s a happy coincidence of moments”, he defines, in a chat with Zeca Camargo on the program Splash Interview.
A Legião fan since childhood, Frateschi believes that the launch of “As Quatro Estações” marked a watershed in the band’s trajectory.
“There is a thematic maturation of the band, a significant change, even more adult. It goes from the punk thing to a spiritual search – what are we doing in the world? These two albums for me sum up this search”, he analyzes.
Dado Villa-Lobos, who also participated in the conversation with Zeca, was part of the original formation of Legião Urbana and brings back great memories of the period in which ‘As Quatro Estações’ was recorded.
“We came from the success of ‘Que País é Esse?’, which was nothing more than a rescue of the repertoire of Aborto Elétrico [banda anterior de Renato Russo]. We were really four seasons there doing what would be ‘The Four Seasons’. It took a while, but it was amazing,” he recalls.
‘Legionnaire’ from the cradle
Although many don’t know it, André Frateschi’s story with Legião Urbana begins long before 2015, when he participated in a first tribute to the band. Thanks to a little push from his mother, actress Denise Del Vecchio, he had the chance to meet idols as a child, visiting them in the backstage dressing room of a show.
“That was the epiphany of my life! When I first watched these guys I was 11 and I figured out what I wanted to do with my life. [Por isso] my memory of that time is so strong”, André is moved.
Dado Villa-Lobos also fondly remembers that first contact with André and sees with emotion that, today, they are together in this tribute to the Legion. “It was a great 30-year reunion.”
Replace Renato Russo
Precisely because of the respect he has for Legião’s classical repertoire, André Frateschi has always viewed the challenge of lending his voice to songs composed and performed by the late Renato Russo (1960-1996) with extreme responsibility and caution.
“The first thing I faced when I decided to accept this mission is that Renato is irreplaceable. I understood that I had to take what these songs meant throughout my life, and translate it, with my characteristics, without trying to emulate anything from the Renato – neither in gestures, nor in timbre, nor in mannerisms. I think it would be disrespectful and innocuous, something that would come to nothing”, he analyzes.
For Dado Villa-Lobos, André’s artistic authenticity matched perfectly with what he and the other members were looking for in honoring the band’s 30th anniversary, eight years ago. “We didn’t want a kind of clone that would emulate Renato. We wanted a person who had exactly André’s profile.”
unquestionable legacy
The legacy left by Renato Russo, by the way, is something that not only André and Dado, but all fans and former members of Legião Urbana see with the utmost respect.
“Renato was this guy who always wanted to do something epic. He always said: ‘What we’re going to do here is catalog music’. He always wanted to release a double album, but we never managed to”, laments Dado.
“The feeling I had is that he was always looking at everything that could be seen. If there was a guy with a mission, it was Renato. He had that mission and he spent a lot of his life in order to fulfill that mission. these songs are still relevant today”, believes André.
