Stories when Rock was young

“It’s not something that I grew up knowing I wanted to do – nothing that someone in the family handed down to me, as a witness of the times. It was simply something that from the moment I discovered it, made me want to look further”, Eduardo Morais explains the reasons behind his first film as a director.

“I wanted to take an iconoclastic viewpoint - fill the void that existed. It’s boring always hearing about the same old, same old” (he means the musicians whose names are always trotted out as the fathers of Portuguese rock’n’roll, at the beginning of the 80s…)

“Really, there were many other people involved – perhaps in a more underground, independent way, but they were still very important for this counter-culture, as I like to call it”, he tells.

The young filmmaker explains that the impetus for his documentary came with the “Portuguese Nuggets - A trip to 60’s Portuguese Beat Surf and Garage Rock” collection, brought out in 2007.

“It was from that point that I began getting interested. How come there were so many amazing bands in Portugal in the 60s but no-one seems to have heard of them?”

An example of the groups is the Jets. Even though one of the original band members – writer and journalist João Alves da Costa – is relatively well-known, the group in which he used to play the drums, isn’t. Precursors of “psychadelia” in Portugal, the Jets had the kind of sound that hasn’t been explored since.

According to reports of the time (we’re talking 1965, when the Jets had alreadybeen together for five years), they left audiences in states of total delirium…

For Morais, the whole experience was a journey to another world. “We had huge problems with recordings in the 60s. One of the people talking in the documentary is singer Madalena Iglésias” (at the time frequently dubbed the “Queen of Radio”) – “and she explains that when Portugal mastered 8-track recording, they practically called a national holiday!”

“In terms of conditions, compared with Spain or France, things were really rudimentary here. But in terms of musical quality, I think we had bands with charisma”, he adds.

The beginning of the colonial war, in 1961, affected a generation - in many different ways. “There’s no doubt that the war did away with many bands and groups of the time, as the musicians were all called up to enlist”.

Most of them never returned to music. “Among those that I spoke to for the film, the only figure from the time who is still active today is Filipe Mendes” – the musician whose artistic name is Phil Mendrix. And despite being a veritable wizard of the electric blues guitar, he’s still almost unknown today – unrecognised even by many Portuguese.

There are other forgotten heroes. “Victor Gomes says he feels sorely passed over. He’s the man who was considered the King of Twist in Mozambique in 1957! When he came to Portugal, he gave some fantastic shows” with the band Gatos Negros, between 1963 and 1967. He maintains it was he who brought the rebel spirit to Portugal, American-style – complete with the fad for black leather jackets! Even today, he’s still the musician who had the most concerts at the famous Maxime cabaret house in Lisbon – but, only recently, he opened a stonemason’s workshop in the Algarve…

To help make the film, the young moviemaker had a grant of €2.500 from the municipality of Caldas de Rainha (where he comes from), paid “very late in the day”. He did practically all the work on his own. “The total budget – I can’t say for sure, but the last time I totted things up - just in travel expenses, came to more than €3.000”, he said.

During pre-production, “I spent many hours in the municipal magazine archives in Lisbon doing research. There are copies of a cultural magazine called “Plateia” that have recently been turned over to the public domain. For me, this kind of archive material was incredibly important”, he explains.

It’s interesting because although Plateia supported emerging new groups, it also voiced prejudices – particularly to rock’n’roll. “Yes, I have a number of cartoons that say the fan of “yeah, yeah, yeah” is the kind of person who doesn’t like to work, doesn’t take a bath and doesn’t brush his teeth!”

The Salazarist regime also viewed the genre with antipathy. In a decade of innovation and experimentation, many bands tried to copy what they heard on the radio, or what came over via the few records brought from abroad.

“There was a band called the Steamers which, when they played, placed a cloth over the keyboard with the word “Liberty” on it. One night some PIDE (secret police) agents showed up and told them to remove it or they’d all be taken to prison. That was in 1969”.

“I don’t have any videos from the archives as everything that’s pre-April 1974 (the rights of which are still owned by RTP) costs a lot of money. I did have some meetings at Valentim de Carvalho (music publishers/ studios), and they gave me an example that got the wind up me straight away! A piece of music by the Quarteto 1111, if it was used in a documentary like mine, costs around 1000-euros per minute!”

“Obviously, there is a lot of material that hasn’t been included. The idea was always to circumnavigate bureaucracy in these matters. The material I have was all furnished by the artists themselves, by some entities, or by private individuals”, he explains.

“Profit? I go from place to place with a DVD under my arm, and when there’s the chance of doing any DJ work, I use it – to help pay my expenses. I also have a load of discs from various Portuguese publishers with me…”

In Faro last weekend (the first of three screenings in the Algarve), «Meio Metro de Pedra» had its 22nd screening in Portugal in just two-and-a-half months. “This proves people are interested! There’s always a question and answer slot at the end – and it’s clear that the 60s are still an era that lots of people are interested in”, he considers.

He tries to invite former local musicians to every screening. “For example, in Viseu, I invited the Tubarões who were a band from the 60s. In Vila Real, I invited the Rangers – also from the same period. In the Algarve, when I was filming, I tried to get in touch with Miguel Silva, the drummer from Quarteto 1111. He was someone I wanted to interview. I think he lives near Olhão. But he didn’t come because he didn’t have the money”, Morais laments.

As a result of his project, Morais concludes that “we don’t value history very much – which is strange. And we certainly don’t value things that are non-PC (politically correct)!”

As for the future, “if I can get the money together”, he doesn’t exclude the possibility of bringing out a DVD. “I would love it if RTP came onboard, but at the moment it’s showing documentaries like «Estranha Forma de Vida»… I don’t really think they’re interested in my work right now…”

Next project? “It’s all very much in an embryonic stage, but I’d like to do a documentary on people who collect vinyl records. It’s a movement that’s on its way to extinction, but still involves a lot of people”.