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Everybody thought they knew everything that
was happening [in L.A.’s music scene], and here’s
this band from just over the river that no one
had ever heard of, blowing everybody’s mind.
“
”
–Steve Berlin recalling Los Lobos’
early days in east L.A.
outright stole a nascent Los Lobos song,
which became “All Around the World or
the Myth of Fingerprints.”
en came
La Bamba
, the biopic
about rock prodigy Ritchie Valens,
whose life ended on the infamous “Day
the Music Died”—the small-plane crash
in February
that took the lives of
all four men on board, also including
Buddy Holly. Valens was just . e
lm about Valens’s sudden fame
and early death is named, of course,
a er his huge hit of the same title, which
he adapted from a Mexican folk song.
With Berlin producing, Los Lobos pro-
vided the lion’s—er,
wolf ’s
share of the
double-platinum soundtrack, comprised
largely of the band’s covers of Valens
songs, from “La Bamba” to “Come On,
Let’s Go!”
“When we went into the whole
La
Bamba
experience, we had no expecta-
tions,” Berlin re ects. “It had a rst-time
director and people [in the cast] who
had never been in anything before. It
was about a kid who died at , who’d
written a total of songs in his whole
life. So none of that screamed ‘interna-
tional blockbuster’ to any of us. When
you think about it, it’s amazing it hap-
pened. We never thought it was going to
be a big deal.”
But the lm was a surprise hit, and
Los Lobos’ version of the title song
began ying up the charts. Ironically,
the band was on tour in Europe at the
time, missing the
Bamba
fever as it
kept climbing in the States. “ is was
pre-internet, and phone calls were really
expensive,” Berlin says. “So we’re hear-
ing, ‘You’re top
,’ ‘top ,’ ‘top ,’ and
we’re like, ‘ at’s bullshit. How could
that really be?’ Seriously, we did not
believe it. By the time we came home,
we were in the top or something like
that. e whole thing was surreal.”
It probably seemed almost as impos-
sible for a Spanish-language song to soar
up the US charts in
as it did three
decades earlier. But when the single
eventually hit the top spot, Valens was
posthumously credited with a num-
ber-one songwriting hit. Suddenly Los
Lobos had a much higher pro le, which
led to some strange bedfellows on the
road.
ey opened for U during that
band’s
Joshua Tree
heyday, an experience
that somewhat recalled the band’s ex-
perience years earlier at the Olympic
Auditorium. e U crowds were o en
rude, Berlin says. “It was remarkable,
how stupid their fans could be. We were
doing what we do, playing our combina-
tion of rock with this and that, but those
people just wanted to hear U . I can’t
say it’s that unusual. Opening for ZZ
Top wasn’t too dissimilar.”
One place they’ve never had any
trouble is Chicago, which Berlin refers
to as “more home than home. It’s our
best market by far, beyond a shadow of a
doubt. WXRT is a big part of it, frankly;
they’ve always been in our corner. And
we’ve had some remarkably cool shows
in the city, at Navy Pier and various
festivals, and of course at Ravinia too.
Chicago just brings the best out of us.”
Pressed for other hotspots, Berlin cites
the San Francisco Bay Area, but adds,
“We’re lucky. We can go anywhere and
people kind of like it.”
ey’ve won plenty of fans among
their peers as well. Los Lobos has a long
list of collaborations—one of its most
recent is an EP made with e Shins for
Record Store Day (released April ).
And they’re just about to sign with the
label created by Dan Auerbach (best
known as guitarist and vocalist of e
Black Keys), with an aim to record in
the studio sometime in June.
Asked whom the band might still
want to work with that they haven’t,
Berlin allows, “ at’s a tough one.
We’ve crossed most of them o already.”
For him, Los Lobos’ th-anniversary
celebration,
The Ride
, is responsible for
ticking many of those boxes. It mixed
original tracks with new recordings of
early Lobos songs—and a top-drawer
list of guest musicians, including Rubén
Blades and Elvis Costello. “If you had
a magic wand and could say who you’d
want to work with, that record was
The
Ride
,” he observes. “Bobby Womack,
Tom Waits, Mavis Staples—I mean,
everybody who was on that thing was
someone we really, really wanted to
work with. at whole experience was
pretty great.”
Looking back over the course of
a lifelong career, is there any advice
today’s Steve Berlin would give to his
younger self? “Be nicer,” he chuckles. “I
was kind of an asshole for a few decades
there. If I wasn’t so full of myself, I’d
probably have more friends. … And I’d
probably have gotten a written con-
tract from Paul Simon before we did
Graceland
, that’d be one thing I’d go
back and change!”
But in a split second, he adjusts
perspective. “Seriously, I’ve been very
lucky,” Berlin says. “I’ve had a very rich
life and career, doing pretty much ex-
actly what I want to be doing. We’ve had
our ups and downs, but the simple fact
that we’ve persevered this long means
we’re doing something right.”
Web Behrens covers arts, culture, and travel for the
Chicago Tribune
and
Crain’s Chicago Business
.
He’s also worked as an editor and contributor for
Time Out Chicago
and the
Chicago Reader
.
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