“It doesn’t hurt as much anymore. We can talkwe have worked on it.” In August 2016, the life of José, Pope, Jaime and Juancabetter known as Supersubmarine , it is over as they, their families and all their followers knew it. The band was returning from a performance at a festival in Cullera when they suffered a brutal traffic accident. It occurred at kilometer 168 of the N-322 highway. The gray Seat Alhambra in which the group was traveling collided with a white Mercedes Sprinter in a front-to-side collision. The group’s vehicle ended up crashing on the side of the ditch.
Was a fade to black to a musical career in full swing, a collective trauma from which they emerged alive against all odds. Now, eight years later, They return to tell their storyhave decided to speak and continue moving forward.
They do it in the form of book: ‘Something that serves as light’. In the words of journalist Fernando Navarro, those from Baeza and everyone around them explain the hard road they went through (and continue to go through). A hard book, which does not romanticize history or its consequences (physical and emotional), but necessary to understand the silences, to accompany them in their present. “There are mixed feelings. This is the book I never wanted to publish, but it’s the one we have. It’s a book full of light, full of hope. It is the story of four friends that will make those who don’t know them love them,” explains the book’s editor.
“And dancing with death is not a good plan…” (LN Granada Song)
José, Pope, Jaime and Juanca were admitted to the hospital with serious injuries and breaks in his body. Juanca (drums of the group) would be the last to leave the ICU after 47 days admitted. When he woke up from the induced coma he believed that the accident had taken place at his bachelor party (since he was getting married on September 23). In fact, he apologized to his family and his girlfriend because “the farewell got out of hand.” An ‘anecdote’ that shows the brutality of the impact. During this time, Jaime (guitarist) has undergone more than 40 operations to save his leg. Thus, the trips to the operating room and the pain became part of her routine. “Now I can walk well, in fact I have a leg. It’s not perfect, but it allows me to do what I want. I can’t complain, she has touched me.” During his recovery, the guitarist also suffered severe depression that made him think about suicide.
“After the accident a beep remains, a beep that does not go away. You are sleeping and you keep hearing it. Only those who lived through it know,” he explains. Pope (bassist and the person who was driving at the time). He was the first to receive the medical discharge, although to this day his feeling of guilt does not completely leave him. “He always had it in his head that I was the one driving, the one who had stopped everything. I had the responsibility and I didn’t know how they were until a while later,” recalls the musician. “They never had a bad reaction towards me,” he adds. But, Pope cannot finish the sentence, Jaime interrupts him: “You were not to blame for anything. We are a group and it happened to us. You don’t have to bear that”.
José, better known as ‘Chino’, suffered the most severe injuries in the accident. His recovery has been amazing and he has been breaking medical prognoses over the years. However, he is the only one who He cannot remember anything about the tragedy or the eight years before the accident. His memory is a black hole, the group’s composer He doesn’t remember what it was like to get on stage.
“It doesn’t hurt as much anymore and we can talk”
“I don’t want tears, I don’t want to see you sad. We deserved to see the people who love us and share some time with them,” says Juanca excitedly. He is the first to speak on stage after a several-minute ovation. In the Pavón Theater in Madrid There are almost 600 people (including media, family and followers) and the excitement can be felt from the entrance to the room. It has been the scenario chosen for that reunion, I won’t return. And Supersubmarina never left, everything built remains. “We are all here, if anyone had stayed there, I don’t even want to imagine it,” adds Jaime, who explains that, during the recovery process, these four friends came to “lose contact, really telling us how we were.”
For José, composer and leader of the band, is his first time on stage. The first time he will remember. His concern before leaving: “let’s see if I’m going to trip over the cables…”. ‘Chino’ is happy and very excited, “Supersubmarina is the most beautiful and important thing that has happened to him in his life.” He acknowledges that they have been “very hard” years of recovery and rehabilitation from the brain damage he suffered, but he is optimistic (he always does) with his progress: “I have little left.”
Supersubmarina returns to the public scene and they do so without presenting or releasing a new song. “It is the first band that is going to communicate with its audience with a book, with a story about their friendship,” says the author. But why now? “Because It doesn’t hurt so much anymore, we can talk. We have worked on it and normalized it after remembering it again and again. Now I remember the accident in the most objective way possible,” says Jaime, who does not hesitate to mention and thank the doctors who saved his leg. A recognition of public health also present in the book, this time in the mouth of Leni, Juanca’s mother.
“Send a signal to serve as a light”
Supersubmarina is clear: “Now it’s time to reinvent yourself, always keeping music in mind. life is change and it can lead us to good things.” In a few days, together with the book that was published this Thursday, Those from Baeza publish the model that opened the doors of Sony to them at just 20 years old. A demo that was followed by almost 10 years of success on the music scene. “The model is the essence, the basis of the group. It’s what we were before anything and you can see evolution,” explains Jaime.
This is also important, it shows their reconciliation with what they were. And Pope, for example, took years to listen to the group’s songs again. “It hurt me to listen to us“I used to leave the pubs when one of our songs was playing,” he confesses. Currently, Pope works as a photographer and hasn’t played the bass for years. In fact, the group’s first amplifier (which was his) was given to Andrés a long time ago. , José’s nephew. “He wants to use it for a musical project he wants to undertake. Let’s hope it means the same to him as it has to us. He has the talisman.” For Juanca, “the blow of reality came later”. For this reason, and during his stay in the hospital, he continued listening to his songs and was convinced that after being discharged from the hospital everything would return to normal. “I was on fentanyl in the hospital and in ‘happy’ mode. For me in 2017 we were already on our way.”
And after the model, what comes? “We want to be well and do things together. With no other intentions than to move forward, without pressure. We are going to continue contributing things outside of what is the development of a normal band (concerts, album release and so on),” explains Juanca. ‘Chinese’for his part, insists on the new album in the future: “Sure, very sure. I’m very stubborn”. But, for now, this is not the story of a return, of a return to concerts. This is the portrait of a friendship, of a collective trauma, of a recovery process yet to be completed. This is the story of four friends from Baeza who are still alive.
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Source: Lasexta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
