*Edited version of article originally published in the magazine BIZZ in October 2006.
1.The Brasilia gang
In 1978, Renato Russo formed Aborto Elétrico, alongside the brothers Fê and Flávio Lemos, the first musical fruit of the group of friends from Brasilia called the “Turma da Colina”. With the end of the band, Renato Russo saw that he could shine on his own. And he discovered his power of manipulation.
By Fê Lemos, from Capital Inicial:
“Still in the 80s – when Renato made that statement that ‘to play at Hollywood Rock there are bands like Capital’, saying that Legião would never do that, I asked him about the history of Brasília, of having been so companions, if he looked (backwards), if that had any meaning for him… He said: ‘Did it, that passed, man. It’s over’.
And I was still very attached to that story of ‘the gang’, of companionship, of being united by a goal. Suddenly, he was already very far from it, realizing his role and importance – it was very clear how famous he was and that that story was just part of the past. And it was no use wanting to forge an alliance based on the past because the conditions of the present were different.
Nothing was left to chance (for Renato). He always planned and analyzed everything. Another time I read in BIZZ that he said that a girl had been beaten with an electric baton and lost her son, that’s why the band was called Aborto Elétrico. I met him and asked: ‘Wow, why did you say that? It’s a lie…’ And he said: ‘It doesn’t matter, you have to make it up!’ They are factoids, right? It’s knowing what to say to make an impact.”
2. Punks from Brasília and punks from São Paulo
“Rio seemed like a more family place. São Paulo was a little scary”, said Renato in an interview with BIZZ in 1989. Despite researching how the punk movement could, tearing shirts and dyeing his hair, Renato Russo was shocked when he decided to go to São Paulo with Legião Urbana from de 1982. In interviews, he even confessed that he was “scared to death” of São Paulo punks. Hard drugs and violence were unforeseen ingredients in the recipe of friends from Brasilia.
By Clemente of the Innocents:
“The punk movement, not only for Renato, but for everyone in Brasilia, was a friend thing. In São Paulo, it was a gang thing. I remember that, at the time, Dado Villa-Lobos appeared at the bar in front of (punk bar in São Paulo) Napalm. Dude, everyone stopped talking and looked at him wanting to beat him up. I had to jump in front and say: ‘Calm down, guys, he’s with me!’.
At that time, if you came to São Paulo, you would see punks on one side, metalheads on the other and also new waves. It was really a tribe, there was nothing mixed up. It was bullshit, drugs going around, people biting each other, it was all real. Between us and the people from Brasilia, several differences were clear. When we saw Legião Urbana shows, at that time, there was a certain clash of proposals. All the people who came from Brasilia had a different life, they were people who had already lived outside the country. And we were a bunch of kids from the periphery, sometimes I wouldn’t come home for two weeks, while those people already had more of a family structure. Of course, a lot of people here looked at the Legion with a twisted nose, it couldn’t be any different.”
3. Homosexuality
Despite being hinted at in “Soldados” and “Daniel na Cova dos Leões”, Renato’s homosexuality was only publicly acknowledged in 1990, in a BIZZ interview: “I had wanted to come out for a long time. But there’s that thing, son of a Catholic, ‘you’re sick’ etc. (…) I know I’ve been like this since I was 3, 4 years old”. Interestingly, what was not news to friends and fellow musicians was only made known to the Manfredini family a few months before the public. Dona Maria do Carmo, known as Carminha, maintains that the singer was bisexual (“What is very different from being homosexual”) and that she had never suspected the orientation of her famous son until that remarkable lunch.
By Dona Carminha Manfredini, mother of Renato Russo:
“It was a regular weekday, nothing special, in the late 80s. I remember when they released the album As Quatro Estações [1989]. We were in the kitchen at home, just the two of us, preparing lunch. Junior came, kissed me and said: ‘Mom, I need to talk to you’. I was so happy – I thought he would finally announce his engagement to a girlfriend he had for a long time. But he stated: ‘I will not marry her. I’ll take over. I want to relate to men and women’.”
4. Bullshit with the label
In a rare case in the music industry, all of Legião Urbana’s albums were released by the same company, the British multinational EMI. The perks (like hefty advances and complete studio freedom) were rewarded with fat sales: until 1996, there were almost 5 million copies and, since then, a few million more in posthumous works. However, the relationship soured in 1991 when, with no new material to release, the label conspired to publish a compilation of the group’s hits.
By Jorge Davidson, former director of EMI:
“EMI needed to release something from the band. And I wanted to make a compilation, a greatest hits collection. So we held a late night meeting at the company’s headquarters in Botafogo to try to seal the peace. Everything seemed fine in the end, but they got out of there graffitiing the walls, from the presidential office to the stairs…
They were very distrustful. From the moment I signed with the band, in 1984, I was always counting on the possibility of them doing like the Sex Pistols and terminating the contract before even debuting on record… But, come to think of it, until my experience with them was very pleasant, with the exception of this incident. Renato has always been respectful towards EMI. It was Bonfá who pushed him to be naughty.
Renato Russo was the most important artist of his generation. When Paralamas were recording their first album, Cinema Mudo (1983), I was loving the song ‘Química’ and asked Herbert: ‘Is this yours too?’ And he told me: ‘No, this is Renato’s. He’s everything I’d like to be.’ Man, the guy was cool and wanted to be the other one!
5. The comedy side
Renato could talk for hours about poetry, cinema, painting and rock classics. What only his closest friends knew was his trashy sense of humor and his cheesy side (this one, a little more famous thanks to the covers of Menudo and the album Equilibrio Distante). One of these friends was the actor Maurício Branco.
By Maurício Branco, actor:
“Renato was my best friend – and a guy who was very concerned about his friends. Renato was very sensitive to everything that happened in the world. The worst was when the magazines reported that Xuxa was depressed. He turned to me and said: ‘I’m so upset, Maurício…’ I couldn’t stand it and had to say: ‘And what do you have to do with that?’ (laughter).
When he was in a good mood, Renato was great. He was very fond of laughing. In the parties he promoted at home, it was very common for him to play a character, a suburban woman… It was very funny to see him talking like a washerwoman! Besides, he liked playing a Brazilian slutty movie and listening to me singing Madonna’s ‘Justify my Love’ in my broken English.”
6.Aids
Renato came out as homosexual during a trip to the US in November 1989 – when he got to know the American gay circuit, such as Christopher Street in New York and Clube Castro in San Francisco. In New York, he began his most lasting relationship, with the American Robert Scott Hickmon (“blond, docker face”, “a card-carrying gay”, as he explained to the extinct gay magazine Sui Generis). With him, he entered his heroin phase. On the same trip, he also reconnected with an old friend, Leonice Coimbra. She would be one of the first to find out, a few months later, that the artist had contracted the AIDS virus.
By Leonice Coimbra, visual artist:
“I remember exactly the day Renato told me he had HIV. We were in Brasilia, in 1990. He came to my house. I opened the door, he hugged me and told me he was positive, that he had AIDS. I knew from the start, he had the exam in hand. It was a complex situation, a shock for him and for anyone else, because it was as if Renato, at that moment, discovered that his days were numbered. At the time, I just thought about how I could help him.
Shortly before he found out he had the virus, we met in New York at the end of 1989. My husband had gone to a general assembly at the OAS (Organization of American States) in Washington. I went along and we decided to stay another three months. My husband and I rented an apartment and, soon after, Renato went there and asked to live with us. We took a lot of walks, we walked in Central Park, we went to bookstores.
I remember it was winter in New York, horribly cold. There was a day when we were on the West Side, walking down one of those little streets and, suddenly, we met a beggar in a square. He had a sign that read that he had lost his job, home, family, lived on the streets and had AIDS. At the time, there was no such ghost in Renato’s life. Still, he was very moved, he went there and gave the beggar $100.
At that time, Renato got involved with Robert Scott Hickmon, whom I never got to know – he showed up after we went to Washington and when Renato went to Rio. I don’t remember if he told me if he caught HIV from Scott or not (in published articles in the press, Leonice was attributed with the statement that ‘Renato was sure he had caught HIV from Scott’ and that the American’s previous boyfriend was terminally ill with AIDS and that Renato would have gotten involved with him knowing that). If I have a friend who has this kind of problem, it’s not important at the time. I just thought I’d help him, no matter who he got the virus from.”
7. The last fight
When The storm (Or the Book of Days) was released, in September 1996, the rumor was already spreading that Renato was ill. It was said that the climate in the studio had been so heavy that the recordings were finished only by Dado Villa-Lobos. “It was a musical issue that ended up being personal”, he explained at the time. “Renato sometimes doesn’t know how to deal with people.”
By Dado Villa-Lobos
“We entered the studio for the last time in March 1996. Renato was a little anxious and eager to get everything out there. So much so that we planned to release a double album (the second part would come out in 1997, as Uma Outra Estação). We went until June, recording every day. I was producing, so I had to coordinate people and schedules.
Renato’s voice was weakening, but he was fine, communicative – it was good for him to be in the studio. Towards the end, he was getting fed up, the mood swings were too wide. His poor health made him very uncomfortable.
Everything was in the scheme until we had a fight. He with Italian blood, so did I… He had been questioning my mixing methods… Until…