The Day Reyli Barba Borrowed $100,000 From Fher And The Maná Leader Ran Away

Reyli Beard. (Photo by Media and Media / Getty Images)

BY Guillermina Ortiz-. Starting a music career can be difficult. There are times when one has to borrow, as Reyli Barba once did to the leader of Maná.

In an interview with Yordi Rosado, the former vocalist of the band Elefante spoke about his beginnings in music, his love affairs, the problems he faced due to alcoholism, and among other anecdotes he recalled the day he asked Fher for a large sum of money. to record their first album.

It happened around 1990. Elefante had the opportunity to record his first album in Spain and Maná, meanwhile, was enjoying the success of his album ‘Rayando el sol’. Both groups coincided in a hotel where the former worked and the owner hired the band from Jalisco for a private event.

After seeing each other at their rehearsals, Reyli approached Fher when he was alone in the elevator. “Lend me money, I need $100,000 to record my band’s album,” she says she told him. The interpreter of ‘El Puerto de San Blas’, recalled Barba, limited himself to giving him encouragement and fleeing at the first opportunity, possibly before the figure of the Chiapas – his more than 1.90, his long hair and a trench coat that he wore did not go unnoticed. “You can see they’re good, give it a try, I know you’re going to get it,” he told her, and left.

Time passed and with the $65,000 that another partner lent them, Elefante managed to release their debut album and, according to Barba himself, years later Fher recognized them when Alejandro Fernández showed him the album. “They did it, I know that guy,” he would have said. In 2003, Maná invited Elefante to accompany them on their tour in Spain so that they would open for them on five dates.

Reyli Barba in 2020. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Spotify)

The unconditional love of a son

During the almost two-hour interview with Rosado, the singer-songwriter of ‘Since you arrived’ also spoke openly about his addictions and revealed that one of his children helped him contemplate a life free of alcohol. “I behaved badly, I almost finished with me, but I always took care of him (Reyli Jr.) and he took care of me, he took me to internment. When he was 14 years old, he went and put me in internment.”

The composer said that he started drinking at the age of 11 and two years later he had alcohol intoxication. Psychiatric hospitals, jail, annexes “to which I never went by my will (…)”, were some scenarios that the author of ‘That’s Life’ went through due to alcoholism.

“I gave that bad example to Rey (his firstborn), he also marks him and thinks he doesn’t want to go through that and we know that the disease is genetic,” said the interpreter who occasionally points in some direction as if implying that your son is present and listening once again to the story he knows so closely.

He also said that the stress of feeling that he had to take care of others, coupled with the success they were beginning to have with Elefante, increased his dependence on alcohol. Barba recalled that the moment of hitting rock bottom was when she realized that his addiction affected his musical facet. “The truth is that I was very afraid of not being able to continue writing without drinking, I said: ‘if I don’t stop drinking, I don’t stop writing, and when I don’t write it’s because I’m thirsty’; alcohol is a bastard”.

In 2016 he was in a rehabilitation clinic in Chiapas. In those more than 100 days of confinement, Reyli also took the time to compose and filled out three notebooks that “maybe I will sing it, maybe my children will sing it, maybe someone else will sing it. They changed my life, they strengthened me as a human being, as a father, as a friend, as a human being, as a composer, as an entrepreneur, as an artist, as a human being”, he said in an interview on his way out.

Reyli, who turned 50 last April, returned to the music scene on January 1st with her single ‘Contigo Quiero’. The promotional plan is to release a new song every two months for the release of a full album on December 12.