Audio By Carbonatix
Since first forming 22 years ago, Brazilian rock band Os Paralamas do Sucesso (the Fenders of Success) has had its share of success after emerging in the mid-Eighties as one of South America’s hottest exports. But on February 4, 2001, the trio nearly disintegrated, its heart broken.
While flying his ultralight plane over the ocean in Rio de Janeiro, Herbert Vianna, the band’s lead singer and main songwriter, ended up in a horrible accident that claimed the life of his wife, British journalist Lucy Needhan-Vianna. Specialists and doctors from all over Brazil predicted that he wouldn’t overcome his injuries, and with a grieving country following the news, bets on his chances of survival were ten to one. But against those odds, Vianna left the hospital in a wheelchair 45 days after the crash, conscious and lucid.
Eight months later Os Paralamas do Sucesso was performing on Fantastico, the top show on the Brazilian TV network Rede Globo. Using that program as a launching pad toward an uncertain future, the three musicians went back to the studio to complete the work they had begun before the accident. In a country where bootlegging can claim more than 60 percent of an album’s potential sales, Longo Caminho (Long Road) sold more than 300,000 legal copies in 2003, and the band earned its second Latin Grammy in the Brazilian rock album category (after winning a 1999 award for Acústico MTV).
“By the time of the accident we were in the middle of the recording process. We had a lot of things ready and rehearsed,” explains bassist Felipe “Bi” Ribeiro over the phone from Rio de Janeiro. “When Herbert started to play again he still had that in mind, so we took over from the point we had stopped and started to rehearse again, as a therapy for the three of us. And it ended up helping him to improve his condition a lot, it was a big relief.”
Drummer João Barone calls his friend’s recovery “a miracle,” and the band’s subsequent twentieth anniversary in 2002, which it celebrated with Longo Caminho and a national tour playing to packed houses, “a total rebirth.” Both he and Ribeiro are now sharing PR responsibilities that were once left up to Vianna. Barone jokes that a quote from him and Ribeiro combined equals “almost one of Herbert’s,” since the leader was given to witty discussions on the state of rock as well as human rights and social issues. But Vianna has only given a handful of interviews since late 2001, and, understandably, remains mostly inaccessible.
“A lot of people wanted to see … were curious about what the band would be like after the accident,” says Ribeiro, laughing at the morbid impulse that tends to create commercial success out of a tragedy. Vianna didn’t die, and Paralamas didn’t break up. But everybody in Brazil wanted to show their appreciation for the band. “I know that it has really helped to sell records, and that it’s a totally valid argument, so it doesn’t bother me at all,” he concludes.
Ribeiro and Vianna, who have been friends since childhood, first discussed forming Paralamas while attending Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro. The two of them put their careers aside in favor of the rock and roll dream in 1981; drummer Barone, who also attended the university, joined them the following year. Within a few years, they had landed a couple of singles on the radio (“Oculos,” “Meu Erro”); played at the inaugural Rock in Rio Festival in 1985; and embarked upon their first tour throughout South America and European cities such as Paris. In the Nineties, Portuguese and Spanish releases of their albums (the greatest-hits compilation Paralamas, Severino) helped them develop a big international following, and their reggae-tinged rock, reminiscent of the Police (but with Brazilian blood pumping in its veins), achieved an increasingly higher profile.
For those who saw Paralamas perform before the accident and remember how active and intense Vianna was, it is heartbreaking to see him sitting in a wheelchair, playing his electric guitar and singing. But it’s also worth thinking about the difficulties paraplegic people have to deal with on a daily basis, and how inspiring an example he’s setting. Just after the plane wreck he couldn’t move his hands, think clearly, or remember faces or names. Today he’s performing again. It’s so moving that you have to smile and take a bow before him.
The death of Vianna’s wife left him in charge of their three children: Luca, who is now eleven; Phoebe, eight; and Hope, five. In an exclusive interview printed in the newspaper Correio Braziliense last July, he spoke emotionally about his new life. “I try to talk to Lucy in a positive way. I used to say ‘God, my princess, I need your help to take care of the children,’ but I’ve changed that attitude now. She has evolved; she’s in a higher level where these kind of domestic problems don’t apply. [But] by thinking and talking to her I’ve been able to recover the joy I need to do what our precious children need me to do. In the end, I know that if I didn’t go away to some other place, it must be because I still have things to do here.”
