The one of Coke Mesh It is the story of an epic comeback. Teenage and foul-mouthed Spanish rock star of the 80s with The Ronaldos, One day he decided that something had changed and that finding himself as an artist was worth blowing everything up. It’s not like he exploded and slammed the door that breaks glass. Jorge simply took the natural path of someone who starts too young.
He was barely 16 years old when he started his adventure in the popular rock band. But after 11 years and 6 albums, he felt that he had to tell other types of things and embark on a new path. “It was very sad, very hard, but it was the result of a lot of personal searching.“he confesses in the documentary Jorge, a Coke Malla journeythe new Essentials which broadcasts La 2 this Sunday and can be seen on RTVE Play.
Directed by Cristina and Maria José Martín Barcelona, founders of the production company Lasdelcine, The documentary covers, together with the artist, the rise, fall and resurrection of one of the singers and composers with the longest career in our country, the last winner of the Ondas Award. Dani Martín, Iván Ferreiro, Leonor Watling, Leiva either Ray Loriga They help to gauge the faith, tenacity, ambition and curiosity that kept this artist going who one day jumped into the void alone.
An astronaut jumping into the void
That step forward marked a before and after in his career, but also the fall into one of the darkest stages of his life. For his first solo album, the Madrid musician He did not have the support of any record company, he used his own savings and even sold his house. His first album brought together part of the songs that he had composed in the final stage of Los Ronaldos, but that he knew did not fit with the band’s style. Topics like The woman without a keythe first single from I’m just another astronaut (1999), his solo debut, published in 1999.
“It was a song that perfectly described my moment of crisis in those years“recalls Coque Malla. He came from a period of almost silence, the media seemed to have forgotten about him. “It was a very hard stage, very sad, everything that was holding me went up in the air.“, Coque recalls in the documentary. Emotional conditions not very conducive to carrying out an incipient musical career.
Coke Malla in the documentary ‘Jorque, a journey of Coque Malla’ by Imprescindibles
Seedy motels and “the rock military”
With hardly any media impact, I’m just another astronaut He went almost unnoticed and, after having even lost his house, money began to run out. This is when he considers changing the format of his live shows and reducing them. Coque Malla can no longer afford a band and begins to tour with who until now had been his pipe (the waiter who carries and brings and leaves the guitars ready), Alex Olmedo. A lesson in humility that made him start again from scratch, but at the same time “the rock soldier”as music journalist Arancha Moreno says in the documentary, to be able to trace his path again and learn again to conquer the top.
Playing in seedy bars, sleeping in third-rate motels, trusting that people who barely paid attention to him live would listen to him. “It was a brutal school, because you had to earn people’s silence with every note. and get people to shut up by generating emotion and giving weight to the emotion. “It’s the stage in which I learned to do that,” says the musician. After years of learning, in 2004 he launched Dreamsan album in which his rebirth is outlined very well and in which he draws a dethroned king, describing how hard it was to go from light and focus to darkness.
‘Even though we are dead’ is the name of Coque Malla’s last tour in 2024
And Macarena arrived: a crush and a love
With an air of Brigitte Bardot with a copper color and a full and luminous look, Macarena Cabo, Coque Malla’s partner, with whom he has been in a relationship for fourteen years and has two children together, appears in the documentary to tell their love story, which arose from a movie crush. Their chance meeting occurred in 2010, after a Coque Malla concert in Avilés.. She wasn’t a fan, but she knew him and had gone to see him with her husband at the time. “It was before she hit the hit “I can’t live without you.” At the end of the concert we went out for a drink and Coque appeared at the bar we were in. We looked at each other for a second. It was very fast, we looked at each other, I don’t know what happened, when I got home, I told my partner that I wanted to separate.“, remember.
Their relationship was going through one of its worst moments and the fact that a person noticed her just by looking at her, as she says in the documentary, stirred many things in her. “I realized that my life had no meaning“. It was then that he began to locate him in every way until he found him. “I realized that that connection I had felt was real and that it had not just happened to me.”
Macarena Cabo
A storm Thermonuclear
Meeting Macarena was a personal and professional turning point for Coque Malla. “That time was the perfect storm. She It greatly influenced me as an author and the person I am now, I even changed the way I went on stage.“, he remembers. A creative stage that led him to another stroke of luck, a reunion and an album that would change everything.
On March 12, 2007, The Ronaldoswhose friendship was always maintained, decided to offer a concert at the Joy Eslava hall in Madrid on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of their first album from which the compilation came The extra ball with all his emblematic songs. Those in the industry who had lost track of Coke Malla regained contact with him. It is then that he begins to open up to new recording projects. Under the production of José Nortes, it is published The hour of the giantsfrom 2010, an album with which he would give the definitive bang thanks to “I can not live without you“, an absolute success that opened the definitive door to recognition.
Poster ‘Jorge, a Coke Malla journey’
The king has dreamed again
In the last ten years, albums like Thermonuclear, Women, The last man on Earth either The giant astronaut They have forged a solid and comforting path, finally, for Coque Malla. He is no longer an astronaut in the musical universe, he has created his own galaxy system, armed with very powerful symphonies, heartbreaking, intense songs made without fear of jumping into the void. The safety net has long been incontestable. Maintaining the lifelong parish, that of those who saw him in the seedy bars, and that of those who now join in to sing his songs in the great palaces of music. The king has dreamed again.
