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The city of Charly Garcia

The city of Charly Garcia

Caballito, the native land

On the fifth floor of José María Moreno 63, Charly García lived during the first stage of his life, together with his mother Carmen Moreno and his father Carlos García Lange. The family nucleus was also made up of his three younger brothers: Enrique, Daniel and Carmen Inés García.

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José María Moreno 63.[/caption]

The place is in the Caballito neighborhood, towards the west side of Buenos Aires, very close to the train station. The avenue has a lot of movement and noise pollution, a lot of traffic and a significant number of people circulating through the sector. There are restaurants, kiosks, clothing stores, shoes and galleries that offer all kinds of products. Definitely, the place where Charly heard the first sounds of his life...

…a noise hinders the first conclusions. At the corner of Rivadavia and Moreno there is an accident: a car happens to carry a woman who crosses the street with a child by the hand and a car. The woman's face bleeds and the child cries. Luckily they are unharmed, but there is tension, chaos, ambulances, sirens, beacons, horns. People crowd. From the comments and gestures of the people, it can be seen that everyone is upset about what just happened.

Stop in front of the great door of the building where the father of Argentine rock lived and in the midst of chaos, began the route through the world of Charly García.

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Charly's childhood home.[/caption]

After the accident, a neighbor opens the front door of the building. It is old, the huge door, made of solid wood and glass sections. Inside, a dark corridor leads to the doors of some apartments. The finishes are made of wood and bronze, raw materials with which they built in other times.

https://culto.latercera.com/2017/10/23/carlitos-charly-oido-absoluto-garcia/

While there, the first image that comes across is that of little Charly, running through the halls, laughing, playing with his brothers, going shopping with his mother, entering his house, playing the keys of his toy piano ; that as the story goes, he was the one who brought out the musical talents of the little boy prodigy. Immediately afterwards, they take him to the apartment of neighbors who live on the sixth floor and who have a piano: Carlitos, four years old, has perfect pitch. The first notes of the score of his life begin to be written.

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Souvenirs in Gregoria Pérez street.[/caption]

El Borgward Isabella

Roberto Cerbo is an antiques collector and lives in Villa Ortúzar, the same neighborhood that welcomed Gustavo Cerati as a child in Buenos Aires. He has a space set up in a garage on Gregoria Pérez street, where he gives life to a place that exhibits relics, curiosities and objects that were used between the 50s and 70s: irons, bottles, watches, signs, toys, product containers and a endless list of memories of bygone eras.

But Roberto also has cars, including a 1962 Borgward Isabella, coincidentally, the same one that Charly's father once had when he was a child.

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Roberto's Borgward Isabella.[/caption]

The car is a two-door sedan. It is gray on the outside and the roof is a flawless cream color. The steering wheel and dashboard are black, while the red rubber floor highlights the characteristics of the car and gives it an elegant touch. On the other hand, the seats are upholstered in dark gray leatherette and the bumper bears the rhombus that characterizes the Borgward Isabella, hallmark of the model par excellence.

Sitting at a table, around a mate and cookies in "La Gregoria" —as Roberto calls his place— he begins to narrate his story.

Charly's 65th birthday was approaching and the production that works with him organizes a surprise party for him, which contemplates the mobilization of the musician in a car similar to the one he had had in his childhood. They located Roberto to take "a famous person" from his house to Puerto Maderos: "I never imagined it could be him. There was always secrecy. When they tell me 'it's to take Charly García', I was surprised, I said 'Wow! Charlie Garcia!'"

"The agreement stipulated that I had to stop by Charly's house at 8:30 p.m. on October 22, 2016 —the night before his birthday— and take him to the Hotel Faena. I stop in Coronel Díaz, where he lives, and I send a message to his manager. He tells me that we were going to have to wait, because he had recently had surgery on his hips." "On the street there were a lot of fans, a lot of young people. Charly was happy with them, he looked at them and greeted them. The boys came up, asked him for photos and tried to pass him things so he could sign."

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The city of Charly García

Charly at the Borgward Isabella.[/caption]

While driving, Roberto was able to chat a bit with Charly: "what was your old man's Borgward like?" He asked him, proud to have the exact car in which the Argentine moved during the first years of his life. Charly tells him: "It was a 61 model, with a black and blue roof. We used to go out with my mom when Avenida Gaona was dirt." Today —clarifies the collector— that street is a highway.

For the day he would serve, Roberto prepared a small present for Charly: he had a jockey from the Borgwards group, which he thought would be the ideal gift for the occasion: "look, I have a present for you" he said, but Charly lowered the glass and tried to throw it into the street. The manager intervened in the situation: "stop fucking around Charly, how are you going to throw it away?", rescues the jockey and tells Roberto that he will keep it. At one point during the trip, they ask him if he likes the avenue where they are going. Charly notices that Macri built it, grumbles and whores the Argentine leader.

When they arrived at the hotel, they entered through the back. Roberto concludes: "They came to receive him with two guards. It was all in darkness, very dark. The last image I remember is when he entered and I thought: 'I took the God of national rock in my car."

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Omar's workshop.[/caption]

Omar's workshop

It's an autumn afternoon, I'm at Fitz Roy 1245, Palermo. The door of Omar's Workshop is closed. A woman and a girl are waiting outside, the little girl is going to ballet classes. They ring the bell. She goes out to receive a person in charge, leaves it open so that the other students can enter: the course is about to start.

Crossing the threshold of the front door —which is painted red—, there is a second door inside, and then, to the right, a small cafe that welcomes the workshop owners. The menu includes various types of coffee, and to eat, pieces of cake sprinkled with icing sugar. Other mothers arrive along with other daughters, they all sit down to wait next to the tables that are on the side of the bar.

But the place was not always a cultural center: between 1989 and 2006 it was owned by Charly García, it was used as a rehearsal room, being baptized by him as Dream Factory.

https://youtu.be/MYw1v1vtU4s

Sergio Marchi, an Argentine music journalist, describes the house in his book Don't say anything in full force: "Everything was different in 1993. In the living room, visitors waited for the passport that would allow them to enter the interior Cecilia —who would leave soon after— and Laura —who would last until 1995—, the artist's secretaries, were always there to welcome people, they were like a feminine and gentle custom that acted as a filter so that García could create in peace. It was a sober place, with a touch of elegance that was reflected in the frame and the glass that protected the face of Miles Davis, photographed by Anton Corbijn.The two front rooms were offices: the smaller one was occupied by Laura and Cecilia and the one facing the street, quite wide, was Charly's office. In the background there is a swimming pool. The place is crying out for a coat of paint. Upstairs there is a large and currently empty room that could have been occupied by Charlie. At least, that was an idea that ran around for a while: that Charly lived there, in his rehearsal room."

Dante Lotito has been in charge of the cultural center since 2017. He says that the previous owner, Omar Lotito, was his uncle: "He was a plastic artist and he bought the house from Charly. Then he dies, we are left in charge of the nephews and we transformed it into a cultural center, because it is related to music, painting, art and culture".

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The pool that appears in Exist without you.[/caption]

More about Charly García

The vision of Dante and his family has all coherence, because during the almost two decades that Charly was there, great works of his were developed: The daughter of the tear, How to get girls, Cheap philosophy and rubber shoes and Say no more. In addition, many musicians from the bands he formed or musicians with whom he played passed by: Fito Páez, Mercedes Sosa, María Gabriela Epumer, Fernando Samalea, Andrés Calamaro. "The phrase 'entrance is free and we see the exit' is from this house, because they entered on a Friday and just left on Sunday. They were playing all weekend." Dante tells with confidence. It shows that he has dedicated time to investigate detail the place where he built his cultural center.

While Lotito tells what he knows, he does not stop attending to the mothers who arrive with their daughters to class. The teacher waits in the classroom and some girls begin to enter. The tables where the other girls play are actually the old doors of the house and the paintings that decorate the place were closet doors, both intervened by Charly's hand with graffiti. At the top of the room rest a series of broken instruments or pieces of them, displayed as museum pieces.

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The workshop.[/caption]

In the entrance to the room where the ballet classes are given, part of the scenery used in the concerts of the Say no more album hangs on the wall. "In the recitals of that time there were these posters, it is made of cardboard, they have humidity and the passage of time," says Dante, while explaining that the rescue of the objects was an initiative of his family. "Things were thrown away here. My uncle, my father, my sister and I knew about Charly, about his story. As fans we kept everything, and when we opened the place two years ago, we exposed it," he adds.

On the left side, a door leads to the backyard, where a long hallway leads to a swimming pool. "I have heard that the pool was filled with the fire hose, Charly must have given them some twine." "He would dive from the balcony" says Dante, making it impossible not to associate what he says with the mythical jump from the ninth floor of the Mendoza hotel.

https://culto.latercera.com/2017/10/23/cuando-charly-se-tiro/

The Factory Dream also appears in the documentary Existir sin vos: una noche con Charly García, by Alejandro Chomski, an audiovisual piece that recorded rehearsals for the album La hija de la lágrima for six months in 1994, but which specifically addresses the process of creation and recording of a song that remained unpublished: "Existir sin vos".

In this material, numerous moments lived inside the house were recorded: Charly in the bathtub, María Gabriela Epumer reading a book, teamwork, Charly jumping into the pool on a bicycle.

https://culto.latercera.com/2017/10/23/existir-sin-vos-charly-maria-epumer/

The book 100 times Charly by Fernando García (2016), compiles a hundred stories linked to the Argentine rock icon. Testimony number 50, is told by Carlos Goldsack, assistant to Charly's manager during those years:

Today, the reality of space is different: there are children, mothers, coffee and cakes sprinkled with sugar. Everything revolves around children's theater workshops, milonga classes on Sundays, film exhibitions, gigs, photography and design workshops.

But the scene is still paradoxical: the same place where —for sure— all the possibilities that money and debauchery allow were lived —thanks to the fact that we know the way of life that Charly adopted in those years— in parallel to one of the most productive stages of his discography, today he receives little aspiring ballet dancers, who circulate through the house where Rock & Roll at its best, keeping stories that your walls will never reveal.

Coronel Díaz and Santa Fe: his home 4 decades ago

Charly García lives today in Coronel Díaz with Santa Fe, in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Since his arrival, the corner has become an iconic place, due to the multiple situations experienced inside and outside the building over the past 38 years. Interviews, music, creation, laughter, fights and excesses. Remembered are the blows he gave a journalist outside the building, or his own apartment full of graffiti occupied as the perfect setting to interview him, as well as the acts of violence that he experienced with his son Migue, who lives on the fifth floor.

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Colonel Diaz.[/caption]

The building is old and is on the corner of two busy avenues. Down on the street, a street vendor of chocolates doesn't know that Charly lives there. Telling him is not too surprised.

Although in recent years he has stayed for some periods in the "fifth" of the Argentine Nueva Ola singer, Palito Ortega —who supported Charly in his rehabilitation process, offering him his house, which became his center detoxification and home, while his Coronel Díaz apartment was restored to receive him in his new life, far from alcohol and drugs—, the place has been the musician's refuge all these years, and has adapted to his different stages.

https://culto.latercera.com/2019/09/12/palito-ortega-charly-pacto/

The entrance to the building begins with a glass door with bars, which if you look closely contains some manuscripts addressed to Charly, including the walls facing the street: "I love you Charly", "SNM", they are legends that are repeated somewhat blurry and recall the devotion to one of the first rockstars in Latin America.

As a result of the profitable first business foray of the musician —who had formed the production company SG Discos in 1980— it was possible for him to buy an apartment on the seventh floor of Calle Coronel Díaz 1905 in the middle of that year. "'We never had so much little like now, because nobody has an interest in you like yourself,' he explained to the journalists from the Expreso Imaginario magazine who reported that they were in the brand new house of the García Family", quotes the Argentine journalist Roque Di Pietro in his book Esta noche plays Charly, (2017) referring to how striking the musician's real estate acquisition was for public opinion at that time.

In his book, Di Pietro incorporates mentions of Argentine rock figures regarding that house: "The scene of the new Argentine rock was a very bubbly thing. It went from basement rock to a rock where there was freedom, glamor and twine. Charly's house was very modern and different from the ones I knew from Argentine musicians. The rest lived in more conventional houses, in the neighborhood. Charly was different even in that," says Argentine musician and journalist Claudio Kleiman in the book.

https://culto.latercera.com/2017/10/23/rezo-por-vos-charly-spinetta/

In 1984, Charly formed a duo with Luis Alberto Spinetta, and in mid-1985 they appeared on television to publicize "Rezo por vos", their first joint work.

The song says at one point "And I burned the curtains and I was on fire with love!". Paradoxically, while they were on the air, Charly was informed that his apartment was on fire, as a result of a short circuit in the VHS equipment where he had left the program recording.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1u7RRIR7hk

In a video made for the N Millimetros program, Chilean host Cecilia Amenábar —then Gustavo Cerati's wife— visited the musician's house to see some tricks that García did with the photos from his Polaroid camera.

In the path that the camera makes, you can see the access and interior of the apartment in those years, including the view of the balcony and its classic graffiti that was all over the apartment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B5HPSeTtKQ

The Coronel Díaz y Santa Fe department has witnessed the passage of time and the changes that the place has undergone in complete communion with the twists and turns in Charly's life. Today you can see the interior of the place in the NatGeo documentary Bios, where, interviewed by the Mexican singer Julieta Venegas, Charly shows off white walls and a calm atmosphere, although his piano covered in paint can be seen, a memory of his years of distortion and maximum creativity.

Sergio Marchi says in his book Don't say anything: "It's practically impossible for him to decide to leave his apartment on Coronel Díaz and Santa Fe: 'I like the noise and having the mall in front of it,' he would say to anyone who proposed to move. After living on that corner for so long, he came to the conclusion that 80% of the speakers are in tune with each other."

Indeed, Charly has lived in that place for so long that a few years ago a group launched a campaign on Facebook to change the name of the avenue to that of the musician.

https://culto.latercera.com/2019/04/09/charly-garcia-docuserie-bios-natgeo/

It is September 2019. The street is hectic, cars, motorcycles, taxis, Uber, buses, and bicycles circulate along the large avenues of the sector. People walk everywhere and to all sides. Commerce is active, nearby restaurants and cafes receive diners.

It is a fact: Coronel Díaz's apartment is connected to the beginning, with his house on José María Moreno street in Caballito. There was probably a search - unconscious or not - when choosing this place to live: high up, in an old building, in a busy neighborhood, full of horns and action everywhere you look. All of this is —probably— part of the magma of Charly's identity, they are the attributes of space and place that he needed to live as a contemporary genius, and perhaps, to save himself from his own chaos, where loneliness howls between people's footsteps and it is not heard between the tuned horns themselves.

*Acknowledgments: Roque di Pietro, Maria Clementina Durisi, Dante Lotito, Roberto Cerbo and Sylvia Michou.

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