Mateos Is Thinking Ahead

Ask Miguel Mateos about this new, booming musical genre called “rock en espanol,” and he’s likely to laugh sarcastically.

After all, the Argentine singer-songwriter’s first album combining Latin rock and pop was released in 1982.

Mateos, who plays JC Fandango in Anaheim on Sunday and Tuesday, reigned supreme in the 1980s with his band Zas. That was the first generation of rock en espanol, years before groups like Cafe Tacuba, Molotov and Aterciopelados would turn the genre into an international phenomenon.

“I propose a toast to the fact that these bands are getting all this recognition,” Mateos said in a recent telephone interview from a hotel in Colombia. “It’s really great. I remember turning the radio on in Los Angeles a few years ago and thinking how grim things were [for Latin rockers]. Now it’s easier to get some airplay. And we fought very hard for that.”

When the first Zas recording came out, audiences were so shocked by Mateos’ experiments with rock and funk en espanol that they thought the singer was actually doing Spanish versions of American hits.

“From its inception, rock en espanol included a bunch of bands that were stylistically very different. But we all had a goal in common: to sing our music in Spanish. And that brought us all together,” he said.

The band’s live debut was in 1981, opening for Queen in Buenos Aires in front of 60,000 people. “I was so terrified that the emcee had to push me onstage,” Mateos recalled. “Today, of course, you have to push me to get off the stage.”

Among Zas’ subsequent albums was the live release “Rockas Vivas,” which sold hundreds of thousands of copies and made a rock idol out of Mateos.

Those glory days are mostly over for the singer, who decided to go solo in 1989. He moved to Los Angeles for four years, then returned to Argentina where he has focused on reading, raising his son Juan and building a home studio in Belgrano, a charming residential neighborhood.

“I decided to take some time off from the pressure of having to release albums and tour behind them,” he said. “But this profession has an addictive quality to it. As soon as I finished building my studio, I started recording again. And I found myself liberated from the usual promotional considerations that go into making music.”

The music he recorded was darker and unlike anything he had done before, drawing from the deep social and economic problems that have afflicted Argentina.

The result: One song, entitled “Pisanlov,” wasn’t even released in his native country.

“My only independent venture was my biggest commercial failure,” he said of the song. “But I love the record. It has a raw and mystical mood about it.”

Now, Mateos returns with “Bar Imperio,” a tribute to the charms of pure pop that could return him to the epicenter of Latin rock.

“It’s a way of closing the circle, really,” he said. “I told my brother [and drummer] Alejo: ‘Let’s make an album where we can just sing and play.’ And I recorded all the vocals at home, every morning after taking my son to school. I placed the emphasis on melody as an homage to the genre of pop, that I have loved so much.”

Mateos also hopes to move into a more classical realm and tackle subjects he explored during his favorite pastime, reading philosophers such as Aristotle, Nietzsche and Krishnamurti, and writers Marcel Proust and James Joyce.

Such heady readings were fruitful, indeed. Mateos has started work on a rock ‘n’ roll opera, which he hopes Universal will allow him to record.

“I graduated from a music conservatory, and somehow ended up channeling all that into rock ‘n’ roll. But my classical roots have always existed, and are now being expressed. . . . From my little studio at home, I’ve created something that speaks about religion, metaphysics and the passing of time, something that pushed me to read more and investigate the world.”

He adds with a laugh: “I don’t know if it will ever see the light of day, but I will do anything within my power to record it and release it to the world.”

Miguel Mateos at JC Fandango, 1086 N. State College Blvd., Anaheim. Sunday and Tuesday, 10:00 p.m. Tickets: $30. Information: (714) 758-1057.