Hector Sepulveda - London 69 (2018)

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Hector Sepulveda - London 69 (2018)

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Two frustrations determine the beginning of the journey that would settle on this record. First, Héctor Sepúlveda was not satisfied with the result of Fictions, the recent LP published by Vidrios Quebrados. It was barely twelve hours of recording with most of the tracks completed in one shot. The errors were evident and this went against the obsessive perfectionism of the guitarist. Second, the tenor of the songs. Hector would have preferred to include more rude subjects that more accurately represented his recent hallucination: Eric Clapton. One afternoon in late '67 with Eduardo Gatti in Viña del Mar, they listen to John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers, with Clapton on first guitar. The strength and drama of that guitar, its unpublished volume, changed the perspective of the leader of ‘Los Vidrios Quebrados’. However, the rest of the group members did not empathize with a possible change of style. The diaspora is imminent. The pressures to abandon "the hobby of music" to settle down and opt for a respectable and traditional way precipitate the break of the band. Once consummated, Hector decides to head towards Europe. "I had to go to England, there were the sources of everything I liked. Also, we always talked to each other that we would travel to Europe sometime. Then, I was just keeping my word” he declared.

Selling his amplifier and his guitar to Eduardo Gatti, Sepúlveda leaves for Ecuador in March 1968 along with his girlfriend at the time, Consuelo. With just twenty dollars in his pocket, he buys a wooden guitar from a dock in Guayaquil, which will accompany him on his Atlantic boat adventure. His first European stop is on the Spanish Costa Brava where he meets with Juan Enrique Garcés, former drummer of the Vidrios Quebrados. Then, hitchhiking, arrives in Paris. With no money to fall back on, Hector decides to bet on a corner and start playing. What he has earned allows him to pay for accommodation in a simple Parisian hotel and eat with his partner. The revolution of May of '68 surprises him and the declaration Siege suddenly cuts off his source of work. Again, bags ready he takes a trip to Rome. There he gets better job prospects ‐ playing every night in a club in the capital ‐ which allows him to save enough to tackle his final destination: London. In England, his first arrival is in Reading, where he is hosted by a couple of

English with whom he had become friends in Italy. Shortly after a month, his friends take him to London, specifically to the Electric Cinema, located in the then countercultural area of Notting Hill. This was a place that by day housed a conventional movie theater. At night, instead, the place was leased by underground groups that organized parties and concerts. It is here where during two consecutive Saturdays Héctor Sepúlveda acts in front of a packed auditorium. Héctor's repertoire is based on improvisations, in which he mixes through open Indian tunings ragas and blues, mainly. His virtuosity and the particularity of his bet earn him several additional concerts. In one of them, in the mythical Marquee, Héctor supports the psychedelic band Family who even lend him an amplifier.

Weeks later, a friend of his puts him in contact with Pat Boland, a young man who made his first weapons in the record business, specifically on the Decca label, under his subsidiary Deram. One afternoon, Boland sees Héctor play and decides immediately to take him to the offices of the record label. In a couple of days, Sepúlveda will have a record contract and a work visa in his pocket. In short, he starts his recording sessions under the supervision of producer Neil Slaven, who was then behind the works of bands like Savoy Brown or Pink Fairies. Halfway through the process, Slaven is replaced by Pete Swettenham, who became a producer after being a guitarist for the psychedelic band Grapefruit.

Héctor Sepúlveda records three instrumental‐experimental songs, barely accompanied by the percussion of a tambourine and the use of inverted tapes. When the photographic session that would illustrate the album's graphic art began, Swettenham told Hector that Decca had decided to change its publication policy, closing the Deram subsidiary to dedicate itself exclusively to music with commercial possibilities. The producer gives the Chilean guitarist a copy of the master of the recording. These tapes, kept in a battered cardboard box, accompanied the leader of the Vidrios Quebrados for almost half a century.

The London tour of Héctor Sepúlveda will continue for a while longer. He records two albums accompanying composer Tim Hollier on electric guitar. He also devotes a not less time to deepen his studies of astrology at the Faculty of Astrological Studies in London. In 1972, alone, he decides to return to Chile.

London '69, the name that Héctor Sepúlveda had conceived for that work recorded in England, returns just at a particularly sensitive time for the legacy of the guitarist. At the beginning of 2017, victim of renal failure Héctor dies in his home in Las Condes (Santiago, Chile). It is also in September of that year that half a century of Fictions was commemorated, the only LP published by Los Vidrios Quebrados. Finally, in 2017 Héctor decided to finally deliver the historical tapes of his London record for publication.

It is not very difficult to fit the album that merits these lines as one of the most legendary unpublished pieces ever recorded by a Chilean musician. In full psychedelic hatching, a boy born 23 years ago in a distant Antofagasta, possessor of a huge instrumental and compositional talent, managed to reach one of the most decisive creative poles in the production of popular music. A record contract in Decca, a label where in 1969 artists of the draft of Rolling Stones or Moody Blues published their music, would do the rest. Congratulations, this piece of memory has been rebuilt. A release that is also an essential tribute to who was probably the greatest rock pioneer in Chile. To paraphrase one of his songs, at last his day came, the sky opened, he stretched out his arms and closed his eyes. Now, he was free.