AAt 10:35 pm on May 8, 2023, Rita Lee stopped breathing. “It was really difficult to see the person I loved most fall apart, you can’t imagine”, says musician Roberto de Carvalho to Julio Maria, in this month’s edition of Piauí. Rita and Carvalho lived together for 47 years.
The singer gave her husband a natural routine. Without Rita, his schedule became liquid and flexible, confusing night with day. Carvalho goes to bed between 10pm and 1am, or “when he feels like it”, as he says. He wakes up around 4:30 am, tosses and turns visiting memories and goes back to sleep until he wakes up again sometime between 9 am and 1 pm. He has been reading more recently, especially psychology books, since he started attending therapy sessions in February. “There’s a big battle inside me,” he explains. “It’s the libido versus the dead, the desire for life versus the desire for death. What will come out of this? I have no idea, because both things can manifest themselves very clearly.”
At the end of last year, Carvalho was invited by Marisa Monte to participate in a show she did at the Primavera Sound festival, in São Paulo. “I’ve never been so applauded,” he says. He played Sweet vampire It is Mania for youfrom Rita’s repertoire, and I already know how to date, of the Tribalists. “I would raise my hand to the sky and connect with Rita in a calm way.” Marisa Monte invited him to two other shows on the Portas tour, in Rio, and Carvalho plans to compose some songs with her. They will be their first partnerships after Rita’s departure. “Having Roberto around, talking, learning, listening to his guitar and singing with him is inspiring,” says Marisa.
Carvalho has in his hands a series of lyrics left by Erasmo Carlos, given to him by Leonardo Esteves, the composer’s son. And he continues as Rita Lee’s partner, setting the singer’s new lyrics to music. “I’m still figuring out what she left behind. She has a lot of things. The other day, I found a notebook full of them,” he says. One of the first lyrics that should become a song is Egopublished in Rita Lee: an autobiography (2016), but never set to music.
There are also numerous unofficial recordings by Rita, such as leftovers and rehearsals on demo tapes that were never shown, among other unreleased materials. Three songs were recorded for a project called Bossa’n’movies, which did not go forward. She voiced two of them. One of the songs will be released this May, one year since the singer’s death. “Things will come together, but I’m still in this rollercoaster process,” says Carvalho. “At the same time that I know that I have to do these things, that the shows will do me good, I may not be able to decide whether or not I should leave the room.”
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