CHAPTER II

interviewed by
Luiz Roberto Oliveira

english translation: Jerry Lombardi
photos: Eduardo Pires Ferreira





Jealousy

LR: When did you meet Tom personally?
CB: It was much later. I was taken to his house by Aloisio de Oliveira. His house in Ipanema, on the rua Nascimento Silva. Aloisio made me sing "Pedro Pedreiro", which was the first song I recorded. In fact I still hadn't recorded it, so it must have been between '64 and '65, around there. Tom was very "simpático", very receptive and so on...
LR: Did he already know about you?
CB: No, that was the first time he'd heard about me.
LR: But he'd heard songs of yours?
CB: No, I still hadn't recorded anything at all, and Aloisio...maybe I was going to record for the Elenco label and I wound up recording for RGE. So I played that tune of mine, maybe some others too... anyway, I played because he told me to play, but I'd gone there to meet Tom. And that's it, it was a quick thing and then Tom went to the U.S., as I recall... and we only got back in touch again after he'd returned from the States, which was already in '67.
CB: At that time I was living on the rua Dias Ferreira in Leblon, close to his house, and he lived on the rua Codajás. In other words you could get there on foot. So I went to his house a lot, got to know the house well, I could tell you a thousand stories. When I bought a piano it was Tom who went with me, he took me to this place in Lapa and he chose the instrument himself, personally. Because I had no knowledge of musical theory at all, I played by ear, and my first partnership with him dates back to that time: "Retrato em Branco e Preto" (Portrait in Black and White). And it was also Vinicius who brought us together a little bit.
LR: With no jealousy?
CB: He pretended he wasn't jealous. He was tremendously jealous and pretended he wasn't.
LR: How was that? He was jealous but he brought the two of you together.
CB: It was Tom who was dying of jealousy of Vinicius (imitating Tom): "Ah, Vinicius writes lyrics for everybody and anybody..." (laughter) "He met this guy from Juiz de Fora and already he's writing lyrics for him..." (laughter). There was an undertone of really serious jealousy there... Vinicius was always very considerate towards me, including because of the family relation. Whenever he went to São Paulo he would frequently go to the family house on the Rua Buri, and also at that time I remember Vinicius being a lot with Baden and with Alaíde Costa; I remember Baden singing the things he co-wrote with Vinicius for the first time there in the house, "O samba da benção", and so on... And I still didn't know Tom - Vinicius was very generous in later presenting me to him.
LR: But did he in any way stimulate or encourage you to collaborate with Tom, or did that happen naturally?
CB: He knew what was going on... I don't know exactly how to answer because after a certain point Vinicius just stopped writing songs with Tom. They continued to be friends to the end. Super-friends. Vinicius wrote songs with Carlos Lyra, with Baden Powell, with everybody. With all the big names, you know ?
LR: And with some little ones too, lots of 'em...
CB: And with lots of unknowns. And he stopped writing songs with Tom - I never heard about any problem between them; on the contrary, they got together all the time, they used to go to Antonio's where they would drink a lot and so on... at Antonio's it was Vinicius, Tom, myself and a bunch of other people. Always great friends, they never explained it to me, I don't know what happened.


The first partnership
LR: Chico, How was it to write your first lyrics for him? Was it hard? Was it emotional, was it special for you? How was it to do "Retrato em branco e preto", which was formerly called "Zíngaro"?
CB: When Tom gave me that tune for me to write the lyrics...the funny thing is that back there in the beginning I don't know if this is just my impression or if it was really so, but I had the impression that he was sort of lending me a hand, giving me a break, he insisted that I do the lyrics, but comparing this to other tunes he did later, when there was already a stronger friendship between us, it was more difficult to write lyrics for Tom because he interfered all the time. But this time he didn't interfere at all. He was like, "It's great, it's great, it's great." Like he was going out of his way or even patronizing me a little bit, I don't know, because we still didn't have a really close relationship, I was still acting respectful towards him.
CB: So there was a certain formality. I don't recall there being any problem, I don't remember any story like that. He handed me the music, which had already been recorded under the title "Zíngaro" and so on...and I did the lyrics at home and showed them to him: "Great, great, great", and that was it. And for me it was a great challenge because I wasn't a lyricist at the time, I mean I was a lyricist but only for my own songs.

LR: Tom was your first partner?
CB: No, I'd done it once before for Toquinho. A song called "Lua cheia" (Full Moon) around '65, so I hadn't much practice and I didn't know exactly how he'd accept the lyrics -- approve them right off the bat, for me it was great: I wasn't feeling very secure about it at all, because I'd learned to write lyrics by just doing it, including working with Tom. By trying to come to grips with your partner's music, enter into it, do the lyrics that you imagine the guy wants to hear with that music and so on. I was still too green to be Tom's partner at the time, and later on -- ten, twenty years later -- when I was already much more conscious of what I was doing, I had to argue with Tom all the time because...

Piano on Mangueira

LR: Why?
CB: Because Tom kept sticking his nose into this business of writing lyrics, I had to argue with him and convince him, because he never got me to give in - actually I was already certain about what I wanted, see? He would fool around and he had that thing of his...
LR: "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday"... did that really happen?
CB: Oh yeah...
LR: "Mandei subir" (bilingual play on words between "Monday" and "mandei")...
CB: Yeah, I'd win the argument but he would act like a petulant child, doing things just to annoy me, and so later on he had the nerve to record "Mandei subir o piano pra Mangueira" himself...
LR: he adapted the lyric himself....
CB: But at the time he (singing) "Já mandei..." and would fool around with the lyric: "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday..." and so on. I caught him on that one and I told him: Hey, Tom,it's "já MANdei" because the piano is being moved up the hillside, pulled by these ropes, and it's going up totally crooked so it's gonna fall apart, so you have to sing the stressed syllable in the wrong place: "já MANdei subir"... And it looked like he agreed: "I think you're right." And later, while we were recording, what he sang was "manDEI subir o piano"... And with that song there are several stories: he composed the music, sent it to me, and I did the lyrics so they'd respect the placement of each note, each movement, trying to be as faithful as possible and as precise and polished as possible. Sometimes it happened, including with that song, "Piano na Mangueira" (Piano on Mango Tree Hill), that when I was done with the lyrics he'd listen to them, maybe make a few jokes and so on, but I was all business, ready to defend my point of view, and then sometimes you know what he did? He'd change the music! After the lyrics were all ready, with me having written them to fit the music perfectly the way it was.

LR: In exact time with the meter of the music...
CB: And then he'd go and change the tune to match the lyrics. I used to get slightly pissed off, and I'd think: "So I took so much trouble to do the lyrics for this tune, and he goes and writes a different tune for my lyrics." That happened with "Piano na Mangueira" - there's a part (of the melody) at the end which he changed, it ended up having neither the original melody nor the lyrics that I had written.
LR: Really?
CB: It didn't have this thing... (humming) "onde a cabrocha pendura a saia no amanhecer da quarta-feira..." ("where the black girl hangs out her skirt to dry in Wednesday's dawn"). He did that later...
LR: And that sharped phrase at the end ("...no amanhecer da quarta-feira"), could it be that that was to give it a certain climax, a melodic resolution?
CB: Sure, but he musicalized the lyric! I made sure to write lyrics that were right for his music and he turned it around, in reality.
LR: And it wound up that way, "mandei subir o piano pra Mangueira".
CB: The "meu piano" part was another thing I argued about with him: "Hey, Tom, it's supposed to be THE piano, not MY piano..." Actually, I brought the lyrics all ready, and then he started singing them, singing them, and he started changing them as if he were making a mistake. "Mandei subir meu piano pra..." and the way it's written is: "...o piano pra Mangueira". And I thought, Okay, he read it wrong, this time he'll get it right, so I said to him, "Tom, it's not my piano, it's the piano, it's more vague, okay?" And he would say, "Oh, okay, fine". And the next time he'd sing it "meu piano"...
CB: It's nice that way, "the piano" without having to say "my", because in French, where everything is in the possessive (I'm having that experience now because I'm translating a book), it has to be "my piano" or "your piano", his piano or her piano. I remember saying this to Tom, that in Portuguese it's beautiful: "mandei subir o piano"... 

In the next installment:
Who did what in their collaborations.
Ligia, Sabiá, and the partnerships that never were.

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