You started singing in public with your older daughter's current age.

Yes, and I find it odd, especially because I see that our concerns were very different: we read Rimas y leyendas by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and we remained open mouthed, and El Quijote... And in Basque, well, look, Kcappo by Pako Aristi and the hidden diary of Leturia by Txillardegi... We talked about existentialism, we wrote verses... And I don’t see that in today’s young people, it impresses more the audiovisuals, the impacts. Everyone has to live according to their time, but not so many years have passed, and the aesthetic concerns we had are not the ones that prevail in society now. However, the concerns that man has always had remain the same, the need for love, the place one occupies in society... We will continue to sing about them, both ourselves and the young people who are starting to sing now. I'd say there's almost no other subject.

You started playing in public when you were 16, you recorded your first demo with 18, your first album with 20, your first baby with 23... hurry to live?

I feel like I did a lot of things in a very short time. From 15 to 30 years I did a lot of things in a very short time. Then I’ve done a lot less from 30 to 40, or at least more slowly. I feel like I lived every moment to the fullest and every moment satisfied me. In the year I made 200 songs in 1990-91-92, there were constant public appearances. It was the war. I went from one place to another and took an intensive course in sociology: I met a lot of people, very different, I sang at the Mueble o Iruri in Zubero, at the Muskiz in Bizkaia, at the Berroeta in Navarra... Everywhere I went, people were waiting for me, singing and taking me to the party and having breakfast and sleeping at someone's house... I received a lot of love. I did this many times in a very short time. And for 23 years, on the one hand, I was starting to get tired of partying and drinking and that march and I thought it was appropriate to have a child at that time. I didn't think he was cutting anything, on the contrary, I can almost say he saved me. Otherwise, I would have gone to self-destruction! And now, on the other hand, I feel the desire to go back to those times again, the children have been cooked, I will do 40 years in October, I have lived a stage and I have the desire to take the guitar again and go down to the trench.

Your most popular songs are those written at the age of 16-17. How are you doing with that?

It has two faces. On the one hand, those songs seem to overshadow everything you do later. You can think, hey, I've been doing better or more mature songs ever since, and people don't value them. Sometimes you may feel that those songs are overshadowing all the other work, and get angry because everyone is asking for Your eyes. But I think this is a very selfish thought, because it starts from our navel: I want everyone else to value what I do as I want, something like that. But if some of the songs are more important than what you do today... as they say, damn it! I feel like the songs are more important than us. That we are more ephemeral than our songs, and that we cannot put ourselves above them. Who are we to say that a song overshadows us? So instead of whispering, we should try to make more important songs and let them make their way. Juan Karlos Pérez also tells the same story with Cuatro Teatros, which ended up finishing up to the coconut. Because it’s not just that it overshadows other songs, it’s not easy to defend the one you wrote at the age of 16-17, maybe you don’t identify with it anymore, but if we’re not selfish we have to distance ourselves from the songs. I play some of my songs from a long distance as if they were a whole, I no longer hear literally what the song says, I don’t think if I agree or not, I hear the song as a pack, as a whole, as a color. You take the song as it is, and you sing that color. I wouldn't get my hands on an old song, it doesn't make sense. Of course, from the present perspective I would have made another song, but that is not the point: because what is important is the song, not to explain to people what I would do now.

The era of Basque Radical Rock caught you in full swing. Did that move affect you?

It affected me terribly. I can start and finish these songs: “escupe siempre que puedas, escupe con acierto, en todos los lugares que pisan los moderno. I have a tattoo of “I can always go, if you don’t go to shit...” La Polla Records, Escorbuto, Hertzaines, Cicatriz... These were all the ones I took with the bottle, like Benito Lertxundi, Silvio Rodriguez, Atahualpa Yupanqui or Concierto Rococó for violonchelo and orchestra. Everything has been heard in our house: one brother one, the other brother the other, the parents the other... I've been a sponge, but I sucked a lot of radical rock. I'm from Renteria! I was pouring into the alameda there, my social life was there, how could it not affect me?

But you kept up with the songwriters. For what reason?

Even a rock band that I could have created back then, it could have been, but it wasn't. Maybe if I had started studying the electric guitar, this aesthetic would probably have led me to another, but in our house there was a Spanish guitar with which I started at the age of 15. It was not a conscious choice, as it always happens, the environment and the choices made in an instant take you down a path. If there had been an electric guitar and an amplifier in our house I would have made a rock band, but there was a Spanish guitar. And I really liked that aesthetic of Silvio Rodríguez, and I was taking them out as the son of a Xabier Let Worker... I learned with those songs. I learned to play sol maior, do maior and re maior with the Introductions of Benito Lertxundi.

If your musical references are not more in South American singer-songwriters than Ez Dok Amairun...

No Dok Amairu has influenced me because they are from the same culture as me, because they sing in the same language as me. No Dok Amairu was a school that has not yet been exhausted. With Benito I have commented many times that I also feel part of Ez Dok Amairu, because Ez Dok Amairu was not just a moment and a concrete group, all of us who have come since then also go along the path that they created. If they hadn't been there, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing now. Silvio and these were also known in Cuba as La Nueva Trova, followed by La Novisima Trova, and then... The new generations have been on the same line, and I feel the same way in my case. On the one hand, they worked on popular songs; on the other hand, they sang texts by contemporary poets: The ones from Arce, the ones from the... And the third way that the Ez Dok Amairuco approached was that of experimentation: they did special things, strange performances, they got their applause out of the darkness. All of us who have come since then have combined all of this in a natural way in our song. If you look outside, this is not so common. For example, Joaquín Sabina only sings his songs, he does not sing popular songs. Outside, the lines tend to be much more differentiated, because they naturally start from an elaborate culture. The specialization is much higher, but we have made the mix, all of us, all of us who have come since then. And Cuban music, Venezuelan music, Argentine music... brought the social atmosphere of the left. An aesthetic, a worldview, a way of positioning ourselves in the world and in the song: the song for what, how, why... I identified with it a lot and I still identify with it.

The most prestigious singer-songwriters are still those of Ez Dok Amairu, dead and alive. How do the following generations fit into the song?

Although some young people do not even know us, they know some of our songs, and that is the most important thing. There's a lot of work to be done on the transmission. But the young people of today have it even more difficult than we do, there are great difficulties for the dissemination of the CD and the phonographic support. A young man has greater difficulties to make his work known today than we had in our time. I made my first album in 1991, and that year I would have released a maximum of ten albums in Basque. Each album had a greater impact, and the spins per hour were thousands of copies, because it was known that this would be sold. But it's been getting harder. For example, I was a spectator in the last singing tournament, which was won by Josune Marin of Hernani. I see this girl as when I was her age: making songs, explaining her feelings with the guitar. But I know it's going to be a lot harder to walk today. If he pulls out a record, with his will come out 100 more records, and how to make a little place? We are lucky, if we have the icecore and what we do always has a minimal impact. But something should be articulated to promote the new song, because we need new Basque singers. Times have also changed for us, and every record is selectivity. The fact that it peaked in the 1990s does not mean that we can now or ten years from now live from making and singing songs. We are always doing selectivity, that is the reality that has touched us, and that should make us put the batteries. Every album we make can’t be a wrong album, in order to continue there we have to do things right every time. But it helps me a lot that the bizpairo song is incredibly popular to reach new generations. So in this sense we are in a privileged situation, but we cannot fall asleep.

“From the moment I started to the sixth album I have performed almost without interruption. I saw myself lost in a moment. I didn’t know why, for whom, I was singing.” Hey, what happened?

It was a tiredness. In ’99 I didn’t want to go out in front of people anymore. I felt like I had nothing to say, I felt breathless. And I thought I'd leave it, for a while, until it's strengthened again, and if necessary, forever. But I didn't feel like going on stage and saying things to people. I felt lost. I didn't know who, I didn't know why, I didn't know how... I had a crisis in every way. I spent five or six years without giving a concert, and the desire to do songs came back to me, I started again, I prepared a new performance with Pako Aristi, where I regained the point and the taste, and now I am in the best, full of strength and enthusiasm. It was all due to fatigue, the tiredness of being constantly in front of people and the tiredness of going everywhere. But now that I've recovered a little, I'm excited again.

When did the symbiosis between Pako Aristi and the two arise?

That's how I met Pako, coming in for an interview like you. I had just released the first model, I was seventeen years old, and Paco was doing interviews for El Diario Vasco back then, he came from there. I had already read his books, and coming to interview one of my favorite writers was a big deal. That’s how we met and since then we have been together in a thousand places, we travel to Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba... We've done over 200 shows together. We are best friends today.

It can be said that you went from love songs to erotic songs and from there to social criticism. When did your songs begin to confuse the inner world with social reality?

There was concern from the beginning, but by the age of 18, the scales were tilting towards the inner world. As I sat down a little, I opened my eyes by taking my head a little off league issues and other concerns prevailed over me. Flirting was very important to me! We played through our songs, and I’m not going to lie, it was one of the goals. We know the importance of sex drive in our lives and what you’ll do when you’re 18! Then it was one of the goals and the love songs helped, but then life takes you from other places and social reality takes more weight. Ironically or caricature, becoming a serious man has such things.

To the romantic and social world also the spiritual world joins, therefore, in you.

I’ve never been to church, I’m not a fan of religion, I don’t believe in religions, but I believe in the spirit, in something that transcends our flesh. I feel like we're all one, I think I'm one with the dog walking down the street, with you or an Eskimo on the other side of the world. And why do I feel one? Because, in my opinion, there is intelligence, soul, energy that is above us... Call it whatever you want, but there's something that ties us together. I think we are going around in this world, now in the form of Basque singers and the next, who knows, but here we are going around, learning.

Benito Lertxundi, Pako Aristi and the three of you seem to get together for dinner from time to time. How much do these dinners have of the romantic, social and spiritual?

We do a lot of things at these dinners. We talk a lot about the Basque conflict, about the exits and entrances of our Basque world; about religion and transcendence, and sometimes I throw cards at them; about sex; about art and creation. But we also talk about playful things, don’t think about it. We talk the same about football or rowing.

What are you doing now?

I am creating new songs and if nothing is wrong, I want to make a new album for this fall with guitar and vocals only. And there I am, I have a lot of songs, I would like to do more until June, and I will release the album in September or October, coinciding with the 40s. And then I want to perform, again only with the guitar, as a singer-songwriter, without any shields, in the trench, and I will be working on it at the end of 2011 and throughout 2012.