Los Tres - History

History

In 1982, three guys from Concepción, Álvaro Henríquez, Roberto Titae Lindl, and "Pancho" Molina started a band called Los Dick Stones, whose set list was based on songs by Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and Gene Vincent. They quickly became very popular in universities, bars, and peñas around the southern city of Concepción. Given their ambition, to achieve success in the Chilean mainstream, they decided to move to the capital city of Santiago and changed their name to Los Tres. In 1988, Ángel Parra joined the band, and even though Los Tres is Spanish for "the three", they decided to keep the name.

In 1991, with the alternative Alerce music label, Los Tres recorded their first album, Los Tres. Despite being only a moderately successful album with songs that mixed Rock, Jazz, and Blues, Los Tres nevertheless became an important album in the early nineties. The single Un Amor Violento, and its low-budget music video became very popular in Chile. The lyrics in some songs of this album (like in La Primera Vez and Flores Secas) talk strongly about their opposition to the Pinochet coup and the human rights abuses during the military regime.

The second album of the band was called Se Remata el Siglo. In 1993, now signed with the Sony music label, the band achieved a much better quality LP. This album showed more rock elements, in the singles No sabes que desperdicio tengo en el alma and El Aval, but without straying too far from their blues influences in songs like Soñe que estabas justo sobre mi and the BB King's cover The Thrill is Gone.

La Espada & la Pared (1995) was the third album of the band. This album was very popular and the most important of their career. Singles like Dejate Caer and La Espada & La Pared were popular in all of Latin America, thanks to the diffusion on MTV Latino and became a Gold record in 46 days. One of the popular songs in La Espada & La Pared was the remake of Buddy Richard's cover 1960 rock tune Tu Cariño se me Va, where Buddy himself did some back-up vocals.

The popularity achieved by La Espada y La Pared, was an important motivation for the MTV network, who invited Los Tres to perform an Unplugged session in Miami. This was recorded on 14 September 1995, with the participation of the Chilean musicians and friends of the band Toño Restucci and Cuti Aste. The performance was just a few months after the death of Roberto Parra, an important Chilean folk musician and an inspiration for Álvaro and the band in general. Therefore, the guys decided to dedicate the Unplugged to el tío Roberto memories, and played two cuecas choras, El Arrepentido and La Vida que yo He Pasado, and the popular foxtrot ¿Quién es la que viene allí? composed by him. This was that the first time a Chilean band recorded an Unplugged with MTV.

Unplugged, released in 1996, was such a success in Chile and Latin America. The LP became 4-platinum album in Chile in just three months and the band promoted the LP with unplugged concerts in the Teatro California in Santiago, with guests musicians like Toño Restucci, Pepe Fuentes, Rabanito, Cuti Aste, and Javiera Parra, Ángel's sister.

The following years, Los Tres began a short folk-based era. They performed in February 1996 as a guest band in the Viña del Mar international music festival. The show began with Álvaro imitating the characteristic voice of Antonio Vodanovic, the festival's MC. They played a lot of cuecas by Roberto Parra and received the Gaviota de Plata, an award that is reserved only for the festival's music contest, but the crowd insisted strongly until the band received it.

The band began a new traditional event during the 1996 Chilean national independence holiday, on 18 September, by founding a Fonda called Yein Fonda (a pun on Jane Fonda) in the park Plaza Ñunoa in Santiago, where they performed during several days folk music with friends. The records of this event were released in an LP called La Yein Fonda later that year. During the following years they organized more Fondas, but with time these became more commercial and not as popular as Yein Fonda.

In 1998 the band recorded Peineta, an album with cuecas choras and jazz huachaca, featuring Lalo Parra, brother of Roberto.

After the great success of Los Tres with La Espada & La Pared and Unplugged, the following studio album with new material came only in 1998. Fome (named after a Chilean word that means boring) didn't achieve the popularity of their preceding albums. The lyrics this time were more poetic and with the exception of La Torre de Babel and Restaurant, not so easy to understand.

During these years Parra and Lindl started a parallel jazz project called Ángel Parra Trío, with the jazz drummer Moncho Pérez and Molina started the Jazz band Los Titulares. Both bands started having great popularity into the Chilean Jazz movement, and this summed up to create internal problems in Los Tres because of the directions that Álvaro wanted for the band.

Their last studio album was released in 1999. La Sangre en el Cuerpo, and didn't enjoy great success in Chile. Even though the album is very different from when the band began, great songs like Feria Verdadera, La Sangre en el Cuerpo and the instrumental El Rey del Mariscal showed Álvaro and the band in a great musical moment that, unfortunately, the Chilean mainstream didn't appreciate.

Personal differences, the poor sales of the latest LPs, and the increasing interest in the personal projects of individual members culminated with the band announcing their separation in 2000. They performed several goodbye concerts in Santiago, Concepción, and other Chilean cities. One of these concerts, in Teatro Providencia, the 27 May 2000, was recorded and later that year released as the live album Freno de Mano.