Reunited Soda Stereo finds that the fizz is still there

It was 3 p.m. in Mexico City and singer Gustavo Cerati had just gotten up at his hotel to start another day on the road. Time gets turned around for musicians on tour and the veteran Argentine rocker still sounded a little groggy when he came to the phone to talk about the reunion of his old band, Soda Stereo, one of the most popular and influential groups in the history of rock en espanol.

The original members of the 1980s alt-Latino trio -- bassist Zeta Bosio, drummer Charly Alberti and Cerati, the main songwriter -- had been storming through Latin American capitals since Oct. 19, when the reunion tour blasted off in Buenos Aires, selling out five shows at the 70,000-capacity River Plate Stadium, then adding a sixth to break the venue’s previous attendance record set by the Rolling Stones.

And that was just for openers. The band went on to sell out shows in Peru, Chile, Panama and three cities in Mexico. In Ecuador, so many Soda-heads converged on the port city of Guayaquil that flights and hotel rooms were completely booked, forcing fans to create their own accommodations outside Modelo Alberto Spencer Stadium. In its only West Coast stop, the band performs tonight at Home Depot Center, home of the Galaxy soccer team in Carson.

Cerati, the one with the most successful solo career, was the last to embrace the idea of a reunion. It was Andy Summers of the Police, he recalls, who once told him that as soon as bands get back together, the problems start all over again. So Cerati was reluctant to risk dredging up the acrimony and resentments that caused the band to break up 10 years ago.

“I realized that if we did a reunion we would have to enjoy it,” says the singer, soon sounding wide awake. “Of course, the money was there and the fans wanted it. But the truth is, if we could not relish it musically and personally, travel together and share life together like we did back in the day, then sincerely, you couldn’t pay me enough money to do it.”

It turns out the time was right. The three musicians have rekindled old friendships and recaptured the old energy of performing together. Cerati says he’s “48 and ready to rock.”

The phenomenal response to the reunion comes at a time when the aesthetic and commercial promise of rock en tu idioma (rock in your own language) has faded. Few new bands on the scene today can even aspire to the status of Soda Stereo, one of the first acts in the genre to break down national barriers and find mass acceptance across the Latin American continent.

The stunning box-office success of the reunion tour, Cerati says, shows that fans still yearn for a time when music was less a function of marketing. Older fans are trying to recapture a moment when they truly felt part of a musical movement. And younger ones, those who weren’t even born in Soda’s heyday, are trying to connect with that mystique before it’s gone forever.

By the time the tour closes next month back in Buenos Aires, more than 1 million fans will have seen the show that packs 15 years of Soda history into 150 minutes. For Cerati, who once said that he doesn’t like to dwell on the past, the experience has compelled a reassessment. This tour has given him a new perspective on the band’s body of work as a continuum.

“Life passes one by quickly and there’s no time to be looking backward,” he says, speaking with the distinctive accent of Argentine Spanish. “I’m not one of those people who has a lot of nostalgia, truthfully. But this process has made me discover a lot of the things we accomplished together which I had forgotten. It has allowed me to see what was left behind, and given me the chance to retrieve it. I like that because it does justice to those things that have remained more in the shadows.”

Soda Stereo emerged in the early 1980s, part of a wave of homegrown rock that arose in Argentina after the fall of the brutal military regime responsible for the so-called dirty war. The band was born as the country was waking from its collective nightmare, but as its name suggests, its members were more interested in pop culture than politics, more Andy Warhol than Che Guevara.

“There was a whole movement that was more about, ‘Enough with politics! Let’s go out and dance a little and enjoy ourselves while we’re still young,’ ” he says. “In the final stages of the dictatorship, rock had become, naturally and with good reason, a declaration about everything that had happened. But that was at the detriment of entertainment, of being able to have a good time, of freeing oneself a bit. So that’s what we did and, of course, we were roundly criticized for being too plastic and shallow, et cetera. But that never bothered us.”

The group went on to record seven studio albums, selling more than 7 million records and gaining increased critical respect as its music evolved from a lightweight Latin version of British New Wave bands such as XTC to a complex and artful style steeped in the ethereal moods and sonic textures of electronica. Through it all ran Cerati’s lyrics, at times sly and satirical, at times poetic and evocative.

The band was also known for putting on a good show. But Cerati says this tour tops them all. With a set design by Britain’s Martin Philips (U2, Nine Inch Nails), the Soda road show requires 50 support staff and almost 30 tons of gear, says Roberto Costa of Pop Art, co-producers with Triple Producciones, both based in Buenos Aires.

The trio is playing better than ever too, if Cerati does say so himself.

“This has been a fantastic step for us,” he says, though there are no plans for the band to continue beyond the tour.

“We feel very close to each other, and it’s wonderful to feel the vibe of what happens between us. It’s much better than during the final years of Soda. . . . In fact, if it had been this good before, we would never have broken up.”

agustin.gurza@latimes.com