El Vez
Robert Alan Lopez, better known by his stage name El Vez, is an American singer-songwriter and musician, who performs and records original material and covers classic rock songs. Mixing the styles of Elvis Presley and many other American rock artists with his own Latin-American heritage and music, he is known for expressing revolutionary views through the satire and humor in his songs.
Early life
Lopez was born in Chula Vista, California in 1960. His family "floated somewhere between middle and lower-middle class. Our diet included government cheese and something we called 'poor people's chop suey' a few times a week." He later described himself as a misfit in his youth, saying that he cried easily, did not have many friends, and "was a very, very chubby kid who had found his nest of salt in Warhol, Dalí, and the arts. I would spend my lunchtimes in the school library." His mother, Gina, recalled that "He was always artistic. He was first on his block to have platform shoes. They were about a foot high."His family was highly political, including an uncle who was in the militant Chicano group the Brown Berets. His grandparents were born in Mexico, and he frequently traveled there as a youth, visiting its museums and Mesoamerican pyramids, experiences which would influence his later musical work. He would become more conscious and appreciative of his Mexican heritage later in life, but did not learn any Spanish until he took a few classes while attending Chula Vista High School.
Lopez attended his first concert in 1974, a performance by Led Zeppelin. His second concert was the New York Dolls, whom he much preferred. He became interested in rock music, reading Creem and Rock Scene magazines, but could only imagine what the bands sounded like. His first exposure to punk rock came from watching PBS, on which he saw Iggy Pop perform, and from his older sister Rhoda. The PBS series An American Family was also an early influence on both his musical tastes and sexual identity: "That is where I was introduced to Lance Loud and Kristian Hoffman. They too were Southern California guys who loved rock music and Warhol and knew that New York was the place to be. In 1975 they would be my first gay role models from watching television. They would become my friends the next year."
Career
The Zeros (1976–1978)
In 1976, at age 16, Lopez started a band with classmate Javier Escovedo; Lopez played guitar, while Escovedo played guitar and sang. Called the Main Street Brats, the group played their first show at a quinceañera in Mexico's Rosarito Beach. The lineup then changed; Lopez recruited his cousin Karton "Baba" Chanelle to play drums, and Chanelle's Sweetwater High School classmate Hector Penalosa to play bass, and they changed their name to the Zeros. As the first genuine punk rock band in San Diego, they had difficulty finding places to perform, so they frequently traveled north to Los Angeles which had a thriving punk scene. Their first L.A. performance, at the Orpheum Theatre, was also the debut performance by the Germs, and was headlined by the Weirdos. Though only teenagers, the Zeros became regulars on the L.A. club scene, playing shows with bands such as the Dils, the Avengers, X, the Plugz, the Nerves, the Wipers, the Germs, Devo, and the Damned. They performed in the area so frequently that they were often mistaken for an L.A. band; one magazine even included them in a photo-essay of East L.A. acts. "Those early shows were pretty inspiring", Lopez wrote forty years later; "I felt part of a movement, or something at least. Part of a music scene. It was a great feeling after years of misfitdom." He was drawn to the inclusiveness of the scene, which included girls, people of color, gays, and people who did not look or dress like stereotypical "punks". He became a fan of the art of Gary Panter, the writings of Claude Bessy in Slash magazine and Craig Lee in LA Weekly, and performance artists such as the Kipper Kids and Johanna Went, and idolized Tomata du Plenty and his band the Screamers.The Zeros' Mexican American heritage earned them the nickname "the Mexican Ramones", coined by a friend and solidified when it was used in a Los Angeles Times article. "I loved the Ramones, so I didn't mind the title", Lopez later recalled; "But we thought our style was more New York Dolls and Velvet Underground; after all, we had guitar solos. Yeah, we were Mexicans—so what? It wasn't our calling card. Funny enough, that would become my raison d'être for my later performing—always a 'Mexican' something."
Lopez played on the Zeros' first two singles, "Don't Push Me Around" backed with "Wimp" and "Wild Weekend" backed with "Beat Your Heart Out", both released on Bomp! Records. By mid-1978, however, the band was beginning to fracture: "Javier was complaining that Hector was playing in too many different bands", recalled Lopez in 2016; "That seemed to be the main complaint, though there were others." By that August, Penalosa had moved to Los Angeles and was replaced on bass by Lopez's younger brother Guy. Both Lopez brothers soon quit the band, also to move to Los Angeles, and the Zeros briefly disbanded. "I suppose I was ready for a change", said Lopez; "They re-formed the next week without me and then moved to San Francisco. I don't remember being too broken up about it."
Having graduated high school early that year, and turned 18 by that summer, Lopez moved to Hollywood on September 28, 1978. Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go's had just moved out of the Canterbury Apartments, a 1920s apartment building on Hollywood Boulevard inhabited by a number of L.A. punk musicians and located across the street from punk club the Masque, and left her apartment to Lopez. He supported himself with a job at a nearby Pizza Hut. That winter, he and Margot Olavarria, who had recently been dismissed from the Go-Go's, traveled to New York City, where Lopez stayed for a few months with friends who had transplanted from Los Angeles. There he met various local punk performers; attended shows at clubs such as CBGB, Max's Kansas City, and the Mudd Club; and went to Studio 54 "to pick fights with Steve Rubell." On his return to Los Angeles, he moved into an apartment just west of La Brea Avenue vacated by Screamers lyricist Gorilla Rose, and worked as a cashier at El Coyote Cafe.
Catholic Discipline (1979–1980)
Settling into Los Angeles, Lopez joined a band called the Johnnies as well as the short-lived group Catholic Discipline, in which he played a Farfisa Combo Compact keyboard. Consisting of personalities from the L.A. punk scene, Catholic Discipline was fronted by Slash magazine editor Claude "Kickboy Face" Bessy and also included Phranc of Nervous Gender as well as Craig Lee, music writer for LA Weekly and guitarist in the Bags. "I think we saw Catholic Discipline as a 'postpunk' band", said Lopez in 2016. He appeared with the group in the documentary film The Decline of Western Civilization, and his recordings with them appear on the film's soundtrack album and on their posthumous compilation album Underground Babylon.In subsequent years Lopez worked at the Continental Hyatt House hotel on the Sunset Strip; there, he frequently brought room service orders to rock and roll legend Little Richard, a longtime resident of the hotel. "He was a nice guy and a good tipper", recalled Lopez in 2014.
Developing El Vez (1988–1990)
For much of the 1980s Lopez channeled his creative energies toward art. In 1988 he was curating La Luz de Jesus, a folk art gallery where he showcased campy religious art imported from Mexico and Central America. The gallery presented a show of Elvis Presley-themed works; Lopez hired an Elvis impersonator to appear at the opening, and dressed himself up as Elvis' manager, Colonel Tom Parker. He was unimpressed with the impersonator's performance, however, and felt that he could do better. "I kept critiquing him. 'Swing your hips more, he later recalled. Conceiving the idea for a cultural mash-up between Elvis and Chicano culture, he traveled to Memphis, Tennessee that August for "Elvis Week", an annual event commemorating Presley's death, purchased karaoke cassettes of Elvis songs at Graceland, and performed a set as "El Vez, the Mexican Elvis" at a roadhouse specializing in Elvis impersonators. Wearing gold lamé pants and an oversize gold sombrero, he sang along to the cassettes while giving the lyrics a Hispanic twist: "That's All Right Mama" became "Esta Bien Mamacita", "Blue Suede Shoes" became "Huaraches Azules", "Hound Dog" became "You Ain't Nothing But a Chihuahua", and so on. "I just dared myself to go," he recalled, "and I said, okay, I can make a fool of myself since I don't know anyone there. I rewrote some words on the plane, and practiced my dance moves in the hotel room."The performance was well-received, and Lopez brought the act back to Los Angeles. "I had meant to do it just once, and it kind of backfired", he later recalled. "It got a mention in the Los Angeles Times. And then I got a call from an NBC TV show called 2 Hip 4 TV. So I was doing national TV before I'd even done my first show in L.A. Then my very first show in L.A. got pick-of-the-week in both papers, and no one had even seen it yet. So I was really on a con roll. It was like, how much can I get away with?" Initially his repertoire consisted merely of cover versions of Elvis songs with new lyrics, and the performances were, in Lopez's words, "very guerrilla theatre". The act was mostly silly and kitsch, presenting El Vez as "the love child between Elvis and Charo", complete with a fake Spanish accent. He used the marketing skills he had developed promoting artists and shows for the gallery to promote his new act. "That first year was really great", he later said. "I was just making it up. It was a con. Everyone thought I knew what I was doing, but I was having fun and I had that punk rock 'Do It Yourself' attitude."
A turning point came when he reworked the Elvis song "In the Ghetto" into "En el Barrio", realizing that he could use his humorous act to make social commentary about the Mexican American experience: "The first stuff was just really silly ditties, like 'You Ain't Nothing but a Chihuahua'. Then with 'En el Barrio', I realized that this guy can put some messages out there." As he developed a cult following in Los Angeles, he assembled a full backing band, added a team of female backing vocalists, incorporated increasingly elaborate costuming and staging, and developed songs that mixed politics and cultural commentary with tropes from rock and roll and pop music: "I took on the banner of heralding the Chicano experience, and once I got an agenda under my El Vez belt, the show kind of changed."