The Italian-born Scottish Musician Who Found Home in Argentina
The story of Luca Prodan and his band Sumo.
I'm in love with this modern world
I'm in love with these modern girls
I used to love an English girl
And now I love a little German girl
I used to love an Italian girl
And now i love an Argentinian girl
I used to love this rock 'n roll world,
But now I love that old suicide world
But there's something
Something I can't forget
Because it's in my head
And I think about it when I'm in bed
Do you know what it is? It's Heroin
- Lyrics by Luca Prodan from the song “Heroína” by Sumo. An ode to the Velvet Underground song of the same name.
Luca Prodan was born in 1953 in Italy to Scottish & Italian parents. His parents sent him to the same school King Charles of England attended in Scotland, Gordonstoun (His father was a successful art dealer). There are rumors that Prodan punched the future king of England, in response to bullying for not being English. But this has never been confirmed. Although King Charles was four years older, their paths crossed at the school.
After escaping Gordonstourn a year before graduating (his parents notified INTERPOL), he went to London. Luca worked at the Virgin Records store in the mid-70s and started a band. He was also friends with Sting and the other members of the Police around this time. He developed a heroin addiction that resulted in an overdose and a coma after the suicide of his sister. In 1980, Looking for a way to quit, he accepted an invitation from one of his classmates, Timmy McKern, to visit his family farm in Nono, Cordoba Providence of Argentina. Supposedly, there was no heroin in Argentina at the time.
On the first night in Argentina, his friend set him up at his family home in Hurlingham, a town on the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires. At dinner, he met future Sumo bandmate Germán Daffuchio, who had a guitar. They jammed a bit and decided to form a band. They decamped to Timmy’s Cordoba farm along with Daffuchio’s friend Alejandro Sokol, a bassist. In Cordoba, they began jamming, and the band Sumo emerged. Ricardo Curtet, from a town near Nono in Cordoba, joined shortly after on guitar.
Realizing the band's potential, Prodan returned to London to buy instruments and equipment. While there, he also convinced an old friend, Stephanie Nuttal, to journey to Argentina to join the band. Nuttal was the drummer for the band Manicured, which opened for bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees and XTC.
Sumo relocated to Hurlingham without Curet, who stayed back in Cordoba. They began to play around local clubs until the Falklands War in 1982. This was during the Argentine military dictatorship, and when the Falklands War started, everything English was prohibited or looked down upon. It didn’t bode well for a band whose lyrics were primarily in English. Additionally, frightened by the war, Stephanie Nuttal’s parents requested her return to England. In need of a drummer, bassist Alejandro Sokol took over.
The band started playing around Buenos Aires, and after the military dictatorship ended in 1983, Prodan’s English lyrics weren’t a problem anymore. Their sound crystalized with the addition of saxophonist Roberto Pettinato into the band. In 1984, Sokol left the band, and again, they were without a drummer. Alberto “Superman” Troglio joined on drums, as did Ricardo Mollo on guitar. This would become the final lineup of the group.
With high-energy performances and Prodan’s gift as a maniac frontman, the band's popularity grew among the Argentine youth.
Watch a Sumo live performance:
In 1985, the band released their first album, Divididos por la felicidad, a translation of “Joy Division”. The album is an interesting mix of post-punk, new wave, reggae, and ska. They followed it with two more: Llegando Los Monos in 1985 and After Chabon in 1986. The songs are mainly in English, but a few feature Spanish lyrics, and many of the song titles are in Spanish, even though the lyrics are in English.
While Luca Prodan kicked his heroin habit for a while, he became an alcoholic in Argentina, supposedly downing a bottle of gin daily. His alcohol addiction and rock-and-roll lifestyle caught up with him as his health gradually deteriorated. In December 1987, he died of either a heart attack or cirrhosis at 34. Later on, this cause was disputed, and it was said it was really an overdose of heroin combined with other drugs.
The remaining band members split up and formed two distinct bands, Divididos and Las Pelotas. Both bands are still prominent on the Argentine rock scene today and saw great success in the 1990s.
The story of Luca Prodan and Sumo is being made into a biopic movie by Argentine actor Peter Lanzani, one of the actors in the recently oscar-nominated film Argentina, 1985.
The following is a playlist of some of my favorite Sumo songs. All three albums are worth a listen as well!