Gustavo Adrián Cerati Clarke (11 August 1959 – 4 September 2014) was an Argentine musician, singer-songwriter and record producer, who gained international recognition for being the leader, vocalist, composer and guitarist of the rock band Soda Stereo. He is widely considered by critics, specialized press and musicians as one of the most important and influential artists of Latin rock. Rolling Stone magazine ranked Cerati as the 33rd best rock singer of all time.
Influenced by The Beatles and The Police, Cerati joined various groups during his adolescence, and in 1982 he founded the Latin rock band Soda Stereo. Leader and main composer of the group, from Signos (1986) his way of making songs began to mature, and his consolidation reached it at the beginning of the 90s with Canción Animal (1990), in which he returned to the roots of Argentine rock from the 70's. Parallel to his career with the group, in 1992 he published the album Colores Santos as a duet with Daniel Melero, considered one of the first in South America to include electronic music, and the following year he would publish his first as a soloist, Amor Amarillo. His taste for electronic music led him to incorporate it into his latest works with Soda Stereo. After the separation of the band, he released Bocanada (1999) and Siempre es hoy (2002), where he showed his interest in the genre more than he freely manifested in his alternate projects Plan V and Ocio. He returned to the rock style with his fourth album, Ahí vamos (2006), which received acclaim from the public and critics, and which contains some of his greatest solo hits, such as "Crimen" and "Adiós". In 2007, he reunited with Soda Stereo after ten years apart on a tour that brought together more than a million viewers. In 2010, he was left in a coma after suffering a stroke, after finishing a concert in which he promoted his latest album, Fuerza Natural (2009). Four years later, on 4 September 2014, Cerati died of cardiac arrest in Buenos Aires aged 55.
Cerati was a prolific session player, he was a guest guitarist on songs by Caifanes, Babasónicos and Los Brujos, and he collaborated on songs with Charly García, Andrés Calamaro, Fito Páez, Shakira, Andy Summers, Roger Waters and Mercedes Sosa, among others.
Throughout his solo career, he has sold more than 10 million records and won numerous awards, including the Latin Grammy, MTV, Konex, and Gardel. In 2012, Rolling Stone ranked Cerati in seventh place among the 100 best Argentine rock guitarists.
Early Life and Soda Stereo
Cerati was born on 11 August 1959 in Barracas, Buenos Aires, Argentina. He grew up in a middle class household; his paternal family was of Lombard descent and his maternal family was of Irish origin. His father was an accountant and regularly traveled abroad. From his early memories he had an idyllic love of the sun and nature. Cerati's first passion was art and in elementary school he drew comics and created his own comic book characters.
Cerati's parents, Juan José Cerati and Lilian Clarke acquired a guitar for him when he was nine years old, at that point Cerati started to take music seriously, becoming a fanatic of rock and roll:
By the age of 13, he formed a trio and started playing at house parties and in the local Catholic school, where he eventually joined the choir. Cerati was a good student until his third year of junior high school when he met a fellow student who, like himself, was into rock and roll.
After serving compulsory military service in 1979, Cerati entered the university to pursue a marketing degree, something he was not passionate about. His family supported him with his music, "Mi familia me vio tan enloquecido con la música, que pensaron que algo de éxito iba a tener" (My family saw that I was so crazy about music, that they thought I would have some success [with it]). At the Universidad del Salvador, a Jesuit university in Buenos Aires, he met Héctor "Zeta" Bosio, also a marketing student. The two hit it off and decided to form a band. They were fans of The Police, The Beatles, XTC, Elvis Costello, Television, and Talking Heads. In 1982, after various lineup changes that included Richard Coleman, Daniel Melero, and Andrés Calamaro as well as others, Bosio and Cerati recruited Charly Alberti as their drummer, thus forming Soda Stereo.