[Always mindful of their cultural history, Los Lobos jumped at the chance to record there, particularly since San Francisco, like their native Los Angeles, supports a sizeable Chicano (Mexican-American) populace.] Well, it's more of a mixed Latino community, ... There's a lot of Mexicans, but there's also people from Latin America - Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Hondurans and so on. There's an area called the Mission District, which is where they all live, that's pretty much the Latin side of town. They've always had a large Latin music scene up there, though it's more like salsa. |
I knew how to get hold of Lalo, ... and Willie G, who used to be with the Midnighters - I gave Ry the numbers, and it worked out great, because Willie ended up writing a lot of the numbers with Ry, and singing a lot of it. And I played a little rhythm guitar on it, but not much. |
It was kind of tongue-in-cheek, a goof-off to surprise our parents, ... But we couldn't play it. It became a challenge. You could compare it to country blues, or bluegrass - there's a tradition of form, a high standard of musicianship. That really attracted us. |
It was the climate, and that's what we wanted to do, ... only when they didn't want us to understand what they were saying. |
To find something comparable to that, but in our own culture, that was refreshing. |
We haven't forgotten that, ... It's something we draw from always. |
We thought it was mainstream, ... We said, do it mainstream. We're American. We grew up here with everybody else. We thought the music would appeal to everyone, not just a certain ethnic group or age group. We thought it was universal. |