The death of Indio Solari caused the networks to recover a video that few would like to remember: the monologue that Roberto Pettinato dedicated to him on his C5N program, The imperial antdays after the tragedy that left two dead at the Olavarría recital, in March 2017. Twenty minutes of devastating editorial which, at the time, generated both rejection and debate, and which today are circulating again with renewed discomfort.
Pettinato, who was also a member of Sumo along with Luca Prodan, did not save ammunition. He questioned that El Indio had not made a concrete gesture towards the families of the victims – Javier León (42) and Juan Francisco Bulacio (36) -, questioned whether he suffered from Parkinson’s, and took aim at his mythical construction. He accused him of moving around in shopping malls with a cap and wig so as not to be recognized, and claimed that he was not comparable to Roger Waters, Paul McCartney or John Lennon. “For people from the outside you come to be a semi-God, but you know very well that is not what is happening with you. It is not Parkinson’s: it is your records”he came to say.
He also attacked the secrecy that surrounded the singer, against the statements that the inner circle published on the page Virumancyand even recovered scenes from the shared past: “I remember that two weeks after Luca died you peeled yourself off and put on dark glasses to see if you would attract a little more audience.”he maintained, pointing to Solari’s link with Sumo’s legacy.
The musician responded months later, in August 2017, in an interview with FM La Patriada. Without naming too much, he made it clear what he thought. “I saw my friend Pettinato twice in my life. That he jumps like that to bite your neck surprises me. And that makes you want to send everything to hell”said. He also spoke of having felt a resentment that he did not expect: “I have felt overwhelmed by a certain resentment that I did not know existed,” he confessed, and described his critics as “resentful scoundrels.”
The video of Pettinato’s editorial is circulating again. And what in 2017 sounded like a settling of accounts between two figures of Argentine rock, today, with El Indio already dead, has a different register.
