Pedro Gonçalves. The silent mobster who gave sound to a new Portugal
I could play double bass, guitar, kazoo, melodic, piano, marimba or mellotron. Pedro Gonçalves, a Portuguese musician, died this Saturday, in Lisbon, aged 51, from a cancer that had accompanied him for years. He formed with Tó Trips the Dead Combo and will be remembered as one of the most talented and influential Portuguese musicians of the present century, but also one of the coolest.
“It seems strange and, at the same time, terrible to talk about Pedro in the past. Pedro was good and generous, Pedro was an excellent musician, daring and original, Pedro lived his life, even in his illness, with a kind of semi-smile, open to the present and the possible future. And the verbs of the future have overcome him too quickly”, wrote Sérgio Godinho on Facebook, with whom Pedro Gonçalves collaborated on the albums sunday in the world (1997) and Magnifying glass (2000).
“I always remember the time he played with me and the band, and our common memories were fertile ground for the perennial plants of friendship. ‘Perennial’ is now an almost cruel word, dear to everything he has given us all. A lot of people will be missed, and others will know it better”, confessed the musician.
Pedro Gonçalves was born in 1970 and trained as a musician at the Hot Clube de Portugal Jazz School. Between the late 1990s and the turn of the century, the musician formed a musical quintet and collaborated on records for some of the greatest national projects, from the aforementioned Sérgio Godinho, to Xutos e Pontapés, GNR, Tiago Bettencourt, Legendary Tigerman, Aldina Duarte, Rita Redshoes or Mazgani.
However, his name would be immortalized in the annals of Portuguese music, as well as his posture and style, tall, slender and the inseparable sunglasses, in 2003, when, together with Tó Trips, they created Dead Combo.
It all happened after a concert by the American Howe Gelb, the two musicians were walking home together and Tó Trips, who had been invited by radio host Henrique Amaro to pay homage to legendary guitarist Carlos Paredes, asked Pedro Gonçalves if he didn’t like to “lend” their skills in the double bass to this project, putting together the first pieces of the puzzle that would form the Dead Combo.
Together, inspired by their participation in the film Sudwestern, by Edgar Pêra, the two musicians adopted mysterious characters that seem to be seen from an American film noir, Pedro Gonçalves a mobster and Tó Trips a cangalheiro, and recorded Vol. 1 (2004), When the Soul Isn’t Small Vol. II (2006), Lusitania Playboys (2008), Lisbon Mulata (2011), a lot of boys (2014) and Odeon Hotel (2018), which has one of the most influential voices of the grunge movement, Mark Lanegan, who was part of bands such as Screaming Trees or the Queens of the Stone Age, and who even performed with the group at the Paredes de Coura Festival, in 2018.
The double bass player had been battling cancer for about three years, prompting the band to announce its disbandment in 2019, which deviated from being celebrated with a tour of several concerts, however, last month, the band canceled the 15 concerts farewell that had been scheduled due to the worsening health of the bass player.
Dead Combo leave a deep legacy in modern Portuguese music, with a language that, through the mixture of Portuguese styles, such as fado, with international languages, ranging from western music, blues, jazz, tango, morna, funaná or rumba , offers a unique identity, which not only illustrates its city, Lisbon, and nationality, but above all identifies the inimitable sound of the group created by Pedro Gonçalves and Tó Trips.