Luis Alberto Spinetta: Google doodle on father of Spanish-language rock on 70th birthday

Happy Birthday Luis Alberto Spinetta!!!

Google celebrates the 70^th birthday of Luis Alberto Spinetta, the great Argentine singer, guitarist, composer and poet with a dazzling doodle.

Luis Alberto Spinetta was born on January 23, 1950 in Buenos Aires in Argentina. Also known as El Flaco (Skinny), he is often regarded as the father of Spanish-language rock and roll and a Latin American music icon.

Luis Alberto Spinetta learned how to play guitar and sing at a young age. He continued to develop his musical skills, and at age 17 Spinetta formed one of the most influential rock bands in Argentine history, named Almendra, with two of his former high school classmates. Almendra's self-titled debut studio album revolutionized the genre as the first band to combine Spanish-language lyrics with progressive rock.

Luis Alberto Spinetta devoted himself fully to his own music. In his lyrics, there are influences of multiple writers, poets and artists like Arthur Rimbaud, Vincent van Gogh, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Carlos Castaneda and Antonin Artaud, who has his name in the album Artaud.

During the 1970s and 80s, Luis Alberto Spinetta formed and led several impactful bands that inspired the international Rock en Español movement, including Pescado Rabioso, Invisible, and Spinetta Jade. In addition to these group projects, he released over twenty albums as a solo artist. In 2016, his latest record Los Amigo won one of the highest honors in Argentinian music, the Gold Gardel Album of the Year award.

On 23 December 2011 Luis Alberto Spinetta published on the Twitter account of his son Dante that he was facing lung cancer. He died on February 8, 2012, in his native Argentina, at the age of 62. His ashes were scattered in the waters of the Río de la Plata, according to his last wish, next to the Memory Park built to remember the desaparecidos of the National Reorganization Process.

Google pays tribute to the father of Spanish-language rock on his 70^th birthday with a beautiful doodle.