Joaquín Sabina’s secrets to doing a world tour of 56 concerts in 12 countries at age 74

Joaquin Sabina He greeted the stages with a party and “a few drops of melancholy” in front of the Madrid public in an impressive concert in front of 13 thousand people. She was at the Wizink Center, a stadium that served as the finale of her “tumultuous and magical” tour called “Against All Odds.”

“I hope we will see each other again. I hope…”, he said in front of a dedicated audience who for more than two hours sang and recited Sabine hymns such as And they got tenWith which He concluded a tour that began last February which took him throughout Spain, America and part of Europe..

This latest recital, last week, showed a 74-year-old Sabina with an even raspier voice and singing while sitting on a stool wearing a bowler hat and jacket.

“Against all odds we arrived alive and well at this last concert of the tour, the most tumultuous and magical of our lives,” he said, assuring that none of the places he visited in recent months – including London, Paris or New York York – They made his heart beat faster and his legs tremble like in the city where he moved at a very young age from his native Ubeda (Jaén).

Are you retiring or not?

with this concert He said goodbye to the stage, at least until nowfrom next year he plans to dedicate himself to composing and recording a new album.

Will he really retire? We’ve been talking about it since 2014. Sabina herself feeds the species. Ten years ago he declared: “The truth is that I can live perfectly without going on stage again: we have to leave that to the kids. My new songs are about deterioration, both social and personal. They could be the perfect excuse for a farewell tour , a true goodbye.”

Will it be true? Or is this another one of those nostalgic marketing ploys? After all, he’s announcing a new album now.

The truth is that this time There were 56 concerts on 34 stages in 12 countries, in front of half a million spectatorswith twenty songs and emotions plus an uncertainty gracefully reflected in the tour name: “Against All Odds.”

From the accident to the return

In February 2020, Sabina fell from the stage during a concert with Joan Manuel Serrat in Madrid, at the Wizink Center, the same place where he decided to end the 2023 tour.

He was walking while speaking to the audience and lost his balance. The event reminded our country of the fall of Sergio Denis while he offered a show in March 2019 in Tucumán.

The Spanish musician was taken on a stretcher to a nearby clinic and He had to undergo surgery for an intracranial hematoma caused by a blow to the head. The fall also caused him a shoulder injury.

“It is true that survivors, as survivors, are left very alone,” Sabina said at one point in the last show, before reminding her “admired colleagues” Javier Krahe, Luis Eduardo Aute and Pablo Milanés “that it was my brother,” he said. “And as if that wasn’t enough, Serrat retires, who knows why”, she observed.

“As a performer I am what you feel, there is nothing more. But as a singer-songwriter, my true vocation, I am much more daring”, he confessed in a passage of his last recital, at times moved and almost surprised by the applause and chants of “bullfighter, bullfighter” from the standing stadium. “You are the best crowd in the world”, he concluded playing at home.

The tour began on February 25, 2023 in San José, Costa Rica, then crossed Colombia, Chile, Peru, Argentina and Uruguay. In Buenos Aires he held five concerts. On April 20, the Spanish part began in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, passing through his native Ubeda, and then Málaga, Alicante, Madrid, Valencia, Bilbao, A Coruña, Seville, Granada, Barcelona or Zaragoza.

All with international trips to London (19 May), Paris (23 September), San Juan de Puerto Rico (20 October) and five other concerts in Mexico between October and November. Then came New York, Miami and Los Angeles to return to Madrid and close the trip.

The secrets to not burning out

At 74 years old, one of Joaquín Sabina’s secrets to being fit for the tour was to face the previous tests with great responsibility, after three years without singing live.

“He came to rehearsal scared. And that fear passed on to us. But he has wisdom within himself, it was enough to oil the machine”, explained his musician Antonio García de Diego. “We were afraid to see him scared, but he didn’t miss a single rehearsal and this reassured us a lot”, added guitarist Jaime Asúa in an interview with the newspaper El País.

Also I decided to spend more time sitting at shows and He put together a repertoire of only one hour and 50 minuteschoosing the songs in which he felt most comfortable, but without leaving out big hits like With you, 19 days and 500 nights OR Along the avenue of broken dreams.

Moreover, Before the debut they did three dress rehearsals with the same lighting, sound and scenery as the tour shows.

According to his manager José “Berry” Navarro, They left more distance between one concert and another, there was a month and a half of vacation in between and the singer gave a lesson in professionalism. “He didn’t go out either for lunch or dinner, between one concert and another he locked himself inside. There were days in which he even communicated through a blackboard”, he said.