In an interview with Braba, drummer Charles Gavin reflected on the decision made in 2009 to leave the band that had been part of his artistic life for decades. He said he had thoughts that he considered suicidal.
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“In 2009, we made the album ‘Sacos Plásticos’, the last album I recorded with Titãs. And one thing, even though the band was big, is that we rarely stopped doing shows to record albums. We always did the two things at the same time. I’ve always found this very complicated because recording an album is something that demands a lot from you. It requires a lot of dedication and, basically, concentration. How do you do that when you’re on the road?
The road is to guarantee our daily bread, OK, legitimate. But the album also guarantees our daily bread. With ‘Plastic Bags’, it was no different. We continued with the tour we had at that time, those tours that never end, right? So, it was creative rehearsals, weekends, shows from Friday to Sunday or Thursday to Sunday, returning to São Paulo to do creative rehearsals. I already had two young daughters in 2009. Dora was born in 2002, she was 7 years old; Sofia was born in 2005, she was 4 years old.
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Two young daughters growing up, we were on the road all the time. I barely went back to Rio de Janeiro and when I did it was to change suitcases, suitcases of washed clothes, suitcases of dirty clothes, zero inspiration to create something. It’s disappointing that I have almost no creative participation in this album. I didn’t contribute anything in terms of music, compositions or sound design, nothing. And so, I followed the drummer’s guide, who is there to fulfill his role.
That’s right, I’ve never been a guy in a band who only played the drums. I’ve always been a guy who, when possible, made music with others, even though I didn’t play a string instrument. It was a difficult time, my family was growing. I chose to be a much older father, so fatherhood transformed me into a better being, for sure, much more empathetic, much more understanding, much more mature, I recommend it to everyone, you have to have a child in your life for you to be a better person, among other things.
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So, the family cried out more for the father at home, you know? I thought: ‘I’m not going to delegate the raising of my daughters just to their mother.’ So, there was already this issue. Don’t go off the road, the family is growing, you’re never in Rio and recording an album. I went into a kind of emotional, intellectual and physical outbreak. In 2009, I was exhausted physically, emotionally, intellectually, so much so that I didn’t produce anything worthwhile, you know, despite having recorded the album.
Hey, I arrived at the Titans and said: ‘Look, I need a break. I need a workload reduction. I can’t stand it.’ And inside, my revelation didn’t reverberate. But I was freaking out. I thought I was going to have at least depression, panic, things like that. The last straw was like this: when we arrived from the road, we went to the hotel behind MASP, a hotel frequented by many oriental businesspeople, so there were only Koreans, Chinese and Japanese. The breakfast was completely Japanese. The hotel was good.
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I arrived at the hotel one day so tired, exhausted, and I always asked for a high floor. I always like to stay on a high floor, I like the view, I don’t like having a wall in front of my window, like that, a bit claustrophobic. This hotel had 25 floors, I was on the 24th. So, I arrived that day after the road, tired from a lot of shows like that. The maid forgot the hotel windows open, like that. I entered the room, everything was open, like, you know, on the 24th floor. Then I had an insight: ‘If I take a dip out the window now, everything will be solved’. I was scared by this… It wasn’t even a desire, it was an insight like that, you know?
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Later, this started to happen with some frequency, not only in hotels, but also on planes. I would get on the plane, then, as if it were another voice inside my head saying: ‘What if I go to the end of the plane, open the door and fly out, everything will be resolved.’ It’s interesting the mind, what it’s telling you, right? Solving problems is a flight. What is this, right? Then I went to my therapist and explained that I was worried. I said: ‘Am I suicidal?’ ‘No, man, you’re not suicidal, you don’t have that profile. I’m not going to give you any medicine. You are exhausted. It’s my, my diagnosis is you’re absolutely exhausted.’
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I was asking for help, much like Arnaldo, even after Nando left. The shutdown processes in a band are always critical, right? It is fragmentation, they are difficult to manage. But, the fact is that when someone is asking to go out, it’s not a solo job, there’s no solo work. It was a question… even of life, understand?”
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