Tony Bellotto
Encyclopedia
Antonio Carlos Liberalli Bellotto (ˈtɔni beˈlotu, born on June 30, 1960) is a Brazil
ian musician
and writer
, best known as the guitarist of Brazilian rock
band Titãs
. He has also written and released several books. Tony keeps a column
called "Cenas Urbanas" ("Urban Scenes") at Brazilian magazine Veja
.
's first albums, he composed his first songs on the guitar, while he explored other notable guitarists, like Keith Richards
, Jimmy Page
and Eric Clapton
.
He also had a passion for books. He explored writers like Rubem Fonseca
, Jorge Amado
, Ernest Hemingway
, Herman Melville
and his famous Moby-Dick
.
When he was 14 years old, he was given his first guitar. Although very interested in Jovem Guarda
and Yellow Submarine
from The Beatles
, Bellotto only entered deeply in the rock music one year later, on a trip to the United States
. When he returned to Brazil, he started living in the city of Assis
, São Paulo
. In his baggage, he brought albums from Muddy Waters
and Robert Johnson. These influences, together with Caetano Veloso
, João Gilberto
and Luiz Melodia
, some of his idols, contributed for his wide knowledge of music.
names, like Jorge Mautner
. With the help of Carlos Barmack, he got to know Branco Mello
and Marcelo Fromer
. The three formed the group Trio Mamão. At that time, Bellotto attempted to enter an architecture
course at a college in Santos
, but he quit it to dedicate his life only to music and writing. In 1982, little before the first performances with Titãs do Iê-Iê, his first daughter, Nina, was born to him and his wife Ana Paula Silveira.
And as for the books, in 1994, during one of the breaks of the band, Bellotto wrote and released for the publishing company Cia. Das Letras his book Bellini e a Esfinge (Bellini and The Sphinx), the story of a detective who lives in the suburbs of São Paulo
. Two years later, Bellini reappeared in the second book, Bellini e o Demônio (Bellini and The Evil). In 2001, he released two more books: "BR 163 – Duas História na Estrada" (BR 163 – Two Stories on The Road) and "O Livro do Guitarrista" (The Book of The Guitarist), with clues, discographies and curiosities of the history of the rock. In 2002, the first adventure of Bellini was adapted for the movies, starring Fábio Assunção
as the main character. On the television, he began to appear in 1999, on the TV Futura, on the program Afinando a Língua (Tuning the language), an informal electronic class of Portuguese
.
, Tony Bellotto had with her two more sons, João (born in 1995) and Antônio (born in 1997). All of them live in Rio de Janeiro
.
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, best known as the guitarist of Brazilian rock
Brazilian rock
Brazilian rock refers to rock music produced in Brazil and usually sung in Portuguese.-Overview:Rock entered the Brazilian music scene in 1956, with the screening of the film The Blackboard Jungle, featuring Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock", which would later be covered in Portuguese by Nora...
band Titãs
Titãs
Titãs are a rock band from São Paulo, Brazil. Their best-known line up is the one in the album Cabeça Dinossauro : Nando Reis , Branco Mello , Marcelo Fromer , Arnaldo Antunes , Tony Bellotto , Paulo Miklos , Charles Gavin and Sérgio Britto...
. He has also written and released several books. Tony keeps a column
Column
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a vertical structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. For the purpose of wind or earthquake engineering, columns may be designed to resist lateral forces...
called "Cenas Urbanas" ("Urban Scenes") at Brazilian magazine Veja
Veja (magazine)
Veja is a Brazilian weekly newsmagazine published in São Paulo and distributed throughout the country by the media conglomerate Grupo Abril. It is the leading weekly publication in the country, and one of the most influential outlets of the Brazilian press...
.
Childhood
Bellotto decided to be a rock guitarist when he was a child. After exploring Jimi HendrixJimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
's first albums, he composed his first songs on the guitar, while he explored other notable guitarists, like Keith Richards
Keith Richards
Keith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards had created "rock's greatest single body of riffs", and placed him as the "10th greatest guitarist of all time." Fourteen songs written by Richards and songwriting...
, Jimmy Page
Jimmy Page
James Patrick "Jimmy" Page, OBE is an English multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. He began his career as a studio session guitarist in London and was subsequently a member of The Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968, after which he founded the English rock band Led Zeppelin.Jimmy Page...
and Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton
Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...
.
He also had a passion for books. He explored writers like Rubem Fonseca
Rubem Fonseca
Rubem Fonseca is a Brazilian writer.He was born in Juiz de Fora, in the state of Minas Gerais, but he has lived most of his life in Rio de Janeiro. In 1952, he started his career as a low-level cop and, later became a police commissioner, one of the highest ranks in the civil police of Brazil...
, Jorge Amado
Jorge Amado
Jorge Leal Amado de Faria was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 49 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands in 1978...
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
and his famous Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
.
When he was 14 years old, he was given his first guitar. Although very interested in Jovem Guarda
Jovem Guarda
Jovem Guarda was primarily a Brazilian musical television show first aired by Rede Record in 1965, though the term soon expanded so as to designate the entire movement and style surrounding it...
and Yellow Submarine
Yellow Submarine
-The Beatles:*"Yellow Submarine" , original song released in 1966*Yellow Submarine , a feature-length animated film featuring The Beatles' music*Yellow Submarine , 1969 album with the soundtrack to the film...
from The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
, Bellotto only entered deeply in the rock music one year later, on a trip to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. When he returned to Brazil, he started living in the city of Assis
Assis
Assis is a municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. In the city, there are many industries, schools, universities, large agriculture production and strong commerce...
, São Paulo
São Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
. In his baggage, he brought albums from Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...
and Robert Johnson. These influences, together with Caetano Veloso
Caetano Veloso
Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso , better known as Caetano Veloso, is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo which encompassed theatre, poetry and music in the 1960s,...
, João Gilberto
João Gilberto
João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Oliveira, known as João Gilberto , is a Brazilian singer and guitarist. His seminal recordings, including many songs by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, established the new musical genre of Bossa nova in the late 1950s.-Biography:From an early age, music...
and Luiz Melodia
Luiz Melodia
Luiz Melodia, born Luiz Carlos dos Santos is a Brazilian composer and singer of MPB.He started his musical career in 1963 with singer Mizinho, and worked as a typographer, salesman and musician in nightclubs. In 1964 he had formed the groupd called "Os Instantâneos", with Manoel, Nazareno and...
, some of his idols, contributed for his wide knowledge of music.
Career
With his guitar, he toured colleges and bars singing and playing, with his own compositions, and opening shows of well known MPBMúsica Popular Brasileira
Música Popular Brasileira or MPB designates a trend in post-Bossa Nova urban popular music. It is not a discrete genre but rather a constellation that combines original songwriting and updated versions of traditional Brazilian urban music styles like samba and samba-canção with contemporary...
names, like Jorge Mautner
Jorge Mautner
Jorge Mautner is a Brazilian writer and singer. He is the creator of the Moviment of Kaos.-Albums:* Revirão - Gege/Warner Music* Eu não peço desculpa * Mitologia do Kaos...
. With the help of Carlos Barmack, he got to know Branco Mello
Branco Mello
Branco Mello is a Brazilian musician and actor, best known as the vocalist and bassist of Brazilian rock band Titãs. He has also played small but significant roles for the movies.- Childhood :...
and Marcelo Fromer
Marcelo Fromer
Marcelo Fromer was the guitarist of Brazilian rock band Titãs. One of the founding members and also the band's manager, he died in 2001, after being hit by a motorcycle while jogging.- Childhood :...
. The three formed the group Trio Mamão. At that time, Bellotto attempted to enter an architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
course at a college in Santos
Santos (São Paulo)
-Sister cities: Shimonoseki, Japan Nagasaki, Japan Funchal, Portugal Trieste, Italy Coimbra, Portugal Ansião, Portugal Arouca, Portugal Ushuaia, Argentina Havana, Cuba Taizhou. China Ningbo. China Constanţa, Romania Ulsan, South Korea Colón, Panama* Cadiz, Spain...
, but he quit it to dedicate his life only to music and writing. In 1982, little before the first performances with Titãs do Iê-Iê, his first daughter, Nina, was born to him and his wife Ana Paula Silveira.
And as for the books, in 1994, during one of the breaks of the band, Bellotto wrote and released for the publishing company Cia. Das Letras his book Bellini e a Esfinge (Bellini and The Sphinx), the story of a detective who lives in the suburbs of São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
. Two years later, Bellini reappeared in the second book, Bellini e o Demônio (Bellini and The Evil). In 2001, he released two more books: "BR 163 – Duas História na Estrada" (BR 163 – Two Stories on The Road) and "O Livro do Guitarrista" (The Book of The Guitarist), with clues, discographies and curiosities of the history of the rock. In 2002, the first adventure of Bellini was adapted for the movies, starring Fábio Assunção
Fábio Assunção
Fábio Assunção Pinto is a Brazilian actor.-Filmography:*Mad Maria - Dr. Richard Finnegan*Celebridade - Renato Mendes*Coração de Estudante - Eduardo Feitosa*Os Maias - Carlos Eduardo da Maia...
as the main character. On the television, he began to appear in 1999, on the TV Futura, on the program Afinando a Língua (Tuning the language), an informal electronic class of Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
.
Personal life
Married since 1990 to the actress Malu MaderMalu Mader
Maria de Lourdes da Silveira Mäder is a Brazilian actress of Lebanese and Portuguese origin. She lives in Ipanema, a rich neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, and is married to Brazilian rock star Tony Bellotto from the band Titãs...
, Tony Bellotto had with her two more sons, João (born in 1995) and Antônio (born in 1997). All of them live in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
.