This interview was originally published in LA CAÑA ( Nº 3 ) June 1992.

Some say that flamenco people do not have a biography, that they live from hand to mouth and that their moment is the present time. But we know that Francisco Sánchez Gómez was born on December 21^st, 1947 in Algeciras. We also know that his mother, Mrs. Lucía Gómez, was a hard working house wife, and that his father, Mr. Antonio Sánchez, was specialized, like all workers of the post Spanish civil war period, in making a living: he sold cloth and was a guitar player, although he used to play the bandurria in popular balls. Don Antonio, head of a poor and big family, had the innate conservation instinct of those who love music and he wanted to give his sons a guitar training, which at that time was useless. Due to that folly wish, Ramón became a great escort of cantaores and Pepe became a good cantaor himself. Only Antonio left guitar aside to learn languages. Paco started studying guitar when he was six. Somehow, the guitar was the main thread of a deep dialogue between father and son. «I owe everything to my father. He forced me to play when I was a child, when you don´t have the capacity to decide what you want to do in life. That´s when you need someone to push you, to show you the way. That´s what my father did, among other things, since he could not send me to school because there was no money at home. I had to find a job and take home a salary».

- Do you have complexes because you did not go to school?

- Are there arts whose incentive is hunger?

When he is thirteen, Paco de Lucía travels for the first time to North America as the third guitar player of the "Compañía de ballet clásico-español de José Greco" ("Classical-Spanish Ballet Company of José Greco"). At that time, when Paco used to put his hands on the guitar, he found them full of fingers of other artists, especially of Niño Ricardo, the most brilliant guitar player of that time and a very close friend of his father. In America he meets Sabicas and Mario Escudero, who advise him to find his own style. Paco is still a child, and style is not a starting point but an outcome, and above all, he says today «It's the individual personality». For some people it is a complex way to express the simplest things, for others it is a very simple way to express complex things.

- Does you imagination go against common sense?

- Sabicas used to say that there is more enthusiasm for flamenco guitar in the United States than in Spain.

If we accept that the spirit of creation is the highest form of the spirit of contradicts -since a new form of art necessarily contradicts another one- disobedience must be the only true resilience if youth. Audacity and heroism can only be expressed through the disobedience to habits and old laws. Twenty one years after the first encounter and after a respectful and affectionate relationship, Paco de Lucía travels to New York to attend an homage to Sabicas. During a press conference, with his peculiar sarcasm, the old maestro sententiously states that «in guitar playing, only the fingers have evolved». Paco was no angry about that comment. «I was there and he was saying things against me while I was complimenting him because I had to. He had been lazy all his life and, although he still had loyal followers, he suddenly realized that his style was outdated, he could not admit that, it would have been like admitting that what he was doing was no longer valid. He had to justify himself».

Maybe the Maestro had not understood that there is no such thing like forerunners, there are only straggles, and that the genius, even if it can surprise us, is punctual and, when its time comes, all clocks in the world immediately slow down. Sabicas died in 1990, Paco believes that «friendship is the only feeling that does not re quire explanations» and in one of his last recordings, "Zyryab", Paco dedicates to Sabicas a Taranta «the most moving theme of the record».

- Is flamenco the patrimony of gypsies?

- Does dogmatism hinder the evolution of flamenco?