The creator of the legendary Radio 3 program recalls 11,353 broadcasts, unforgettable interviews, and radio adventures experienced both in Spain and abroad.
By Susan Villa
José Miguel López has spent more than half a century telling the story of music through curiosity, rigor, and a perspective far removed from conventional formulas. His journalistic vocation was born during childhood, with small newsletters produced using a little printing press, and was consolidated in media outlets such as Informaciones, Diario Vasco, and Ritmo magazine, before culminating at Radio Nacional de España.
At the helm of Discópolis, broadcast on Radio 3 between 1987 and 2021, he reached 11,353 programs and brought listeners sounds, artists, and musical scenes that rarely found a place within commercial circuits. Throughout that career, he interviewed figures such as Count Basie, Ennio Morricone, Robert Fripp, and John Paul Jones, broadcast international festivals, and worked at the legendary Abbey Road Studios alongside Alan Parsons.
Now he brings together many of those experiences in Discópolis Trip, his seventh book and the first installment of his memoirs. In this interview, he recalls his beginnings, some of the conversations that shaped his understanding of the profession, and the stories that have accompanied a life devoted to radio and music journalism.
1. Your relationship with journalism began by writing handwritten newsletters at school, before collaborating with media outlets such as Informaciones, Diario Vasco, and Ritmo magazine. When did you discover that you wanted to dedicate your life to radio and music journalism?
My journalistic vocation began very early. I have no precedent whatsoever in my family or in my immediate surroundings. It still surprises me that at just 11 years old I already wanted to become a journalist. I have no idea where that desire came from. What I do know is that at that age I asked the Three Kings for a little printing press, with which I produced my first modest publications. It was called “Imprentilla Junior,” and I still have some of the pieces.
2. One of your first experiences as an intern was interviewing Montserrat Caballé in a conversation scheduled to last ten minutes that ended up lasting two hours. What do you remember about that encounter, and what did you learn from it as an interviewer?
That you have to look the interviewee in the eyes, because then the questionnaire you have prepared is useless. The interviewee is the protagonist. I learned that if you touch their emotional core, they give themselves completely. Mrs. Caballé realized that and opened up completely. I took note of that. It happened to me again years later with Count Basie, one of the legends of classic jazz. I interviewed him backstage and he told me that we should talk over a coffee so that he could answer my questions. I wasn't able to have coffee with him, but I did with Ennio Morricone, and it was much better.
3. Discópolis remained on the air on Radio 3 from 1987 to 2021 and reached 11,353 broadcasts. How did you manage to maintain the program's identity for more than three decades while also adapting it to the evolution of music, radio, and its listeners?
I have only reflected what was happening. Without rejecting it, I have never given priority to hits or number-one songs. I have told stories about and given a voice to what was interesting, to what could increase our cultural knowledge, and to what could expand our sensations by allowing us to enjoy ourselves.
4. Your broadcasts from international events such as MIDEM Cannes, Popkomm, and MIDEM Americas required taking the program outside its usual studios. What technical and journalistic difficulties did those broadcasts involve, and which one do you remember as the most complex?
The most complex experience was broadcasting for three consecutive days from Miami, because the technical limitations in 1999 were significant. We had an excellent sound technician, who spent the entire flight reading a complicated instruction manual and knew how to apply it perfectly. To demonstrate that we were broadcasting live from Florida, I used a sports radio attached to my arm, the kind we use when running. I brought the microphone close to the headphones to demonstrate that the broadcast was coming from the United States, that it wasn't staged, and that we really were live, without tricks. I scanned the stations; we were broadcasting on 88.2. I went through the entire dial and stations of all kinds appeared: Latin stations in Spanish, others in English, music stations and news stations... everything. With that detail, which came to me spontaneously at that moment, we demonstrated, by scanning the dial, that we were there.
The broadcasts from MIDEM in Cannes, Popkomm in Cologne, and others were done on site through agreements with the EBU, the European Broadcasting Union, where I served as RNE's delegate from 1984 until my retirement.
5. You have interviewed figures such as Robert Fripp, Jon Anderson, Ritchie Blackmore, Paul Rodgers, and John Paul Jones, and you have also spoken with Spanish and African artists whose stories reveal little-known sides of their lives. What does that direct encounter with artists bring to a music journalist, and what responsibility does it entail to share those voices with the public?
As a fan, being able to speak with those artists fulfills your youthful desire to meet them and share their stories with the public. I'll give you an example: Carmine Appice was the drummer of the New York group Vanilla Fudge. The first LP I ever bought, when I was 15, in 1968, was the first album by that group, which had such a great influence on Los Módulos, among others. Being able to interview him in person, sitting in the studio forty-four years later, was something stratospheric. But so was inviting the Led Zeppelin bassist and seeing how humble he was. Or interviewing Robert Fripp, from King Crimson, although in this case it was to discover that he was a peculiar kind of person. Every artist has a side waiting to be discovered.
The same applies to Spanish artists, such as Fernando Arbex, from Los Brincos, or Maryni Callejo, his producer, who later worked with Fórmula V. Africans are an open book because they tell you everything: from asking you for an affordable shoe store for their family, as Ismaël Lô did—Pedro Almodóvar used his songs—to the problems faced by an albino, such as Salif Keita, whose people would kill them immediately after birth, and how he escaped that curse in Mali. There are dozens of anecdotes of this kind in the book.
6. You also had the opportunity to work at the legendary Abbey Road Studios alongside Alan Parsons, digitizing Spanish folk songs collected by Federico García Lorca. How did that experience come about, and what did it mean to you to work in such an iconic place in music history?
Anecdote: Alan Parsons was in a bad mood because they had cleaned the cobwebs from the legendary Studio 1 at Abbey Road, and it didn't sound the way he liked it to sound with Pink Floyd or other artists. He was a sound engineer and took us to a much smaller studio to digitize Federico García Lorca's shellac records of him playing the piano in 1931. The large studio was identical to Música 2 at Prado del Rey, where I worked for decades. We already said at RNE that they should not even think about cleaning the ceilings because Alan Parsons was looking for fake spiders for a future recording with Paul McCartney.
7. In Discópolis Trip, you bring together experiences with artists such as Count Basie, Miles Davis, and Camarón de la Isla, as well as memories connected to festivals, radio stations, and musical events in different countries. What criteria did you use to select the stories that should be included in this first installment of your memoirs?
I have told my life experiences in chronological order. They have turned out to be part of half a century of Spain's musical history, up to the arrival of the supposedly terrifying Y2K effect. Nothing about hits, but music; other music, from classic rock to jazz, singer-songwriters, the avant-garde, the Club de los Ruidos, or ethnic rhythms. I have been happy and have made many people enjoy themselves.
8. Discópolis Trip covers half a century of music, radio, and journalism and constitutes the first part of your memoirs. What new literary, radio, or musical projects do you plan to develop in the near future?
I am currently writing the second part. It will be my eighth book, in which I will also tell the story of a hilarious film, Pequeños calvarios, by Javier Polo (2025), based on my radio persona.
I will not make any more original radio programs. If anyone wants to hear what I have done, they can tune in to rcfmmerica.com, where on Thursdays, at 8:00 p.m., without a podcast, I recover the one thousand programs I made for the European World Music Night (Berlin, Cologne, Stockholm...), which were never broadcast in Spain. I provide all the details in the book.
In addition, I am digitizing all the cassettes and tapes in various formats, including DAT transcripts, reel-to-reel tapes, magneto-optical media, etc., with the aim of donating them to a public archive or digital library that is interested in them.
With Discópolis Trip, José Miguel López not only brings back anecdotes and unforgettable encounters, but also a way of making radio based on listening, curiosity, and the desire to introduce audiences to music far removed from the most commercial paths. As he moves forward with the second part of his memoirs and works to preserve his sound archive, his legacy remains alive in thousands of broadcasts that constitute a valuable record of the musical culture of recent decades.
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