GUITAR
 
 

Pasionate career

The toughest moment

A traffic accident separate Rolando saad of the stages

The 24th of July 1994, the artist has a car accident. When he’s being saved, a sad episode happens that demonstrates the close relationship between the guitarist and his guitar and the passion of the musician to his instrument. The accident provokes Rolando 22 fractures, but there was one that couldn’t be assessed and was the one that hurts the most. The guitarist, even though his injuries, was taken out the vehicle in flames and the first thing he asked for was the guitar to be saved, his inseparable partner made by Ignacio Fleta, the friend he said before every concert: “what will you give me today, pretty?”. The only sentence he repeated was his guitar to be saved, and that was maintained him conscious in that moment. When the vehicle burned with his guitar inside, Saad crumbled. “When I came back home in a wheel chair, after 40 days hospitalized, other guitars were prepared for me. But I didn’t find what my guitar gave me in the others and I started crying desperately”.

The artist goes on playing during his recuperation, doing the better he cans just to find the most adequate position because of the injuries he has suffered in his legs. And his fear is losing the agility that had cost him so much, on stage. “Is it as important being an old hand as being on stage”, he points out, “and I couldn’t get on stage in a wheel chair”. Finally, at the end of January 1995 (six months after the accident) there was a concert at the Saragossa’s Auditorium with orchestra. “That was a very important moment as I felt calm; I knew I could feel quiet again on stage. But deeply, although my hand responded correctly, I wasn’t prepared not physically and not mentally to come back”.

In the spring of 1995, Rolando goes on performing with plastic plasters but with a lower speed. And he goes on looking, tireless, for a new partner as the one he had lost in the accident. The 26th of February 1996 he founds another “Fleta”, different from the previous one but at the same level.

In November 1996 in a concert in Almeria he asks himself “What am I doing here?”. And at that moment he understands he has lost motivation, that the fight to go on playing with all the physical problems has worn himself out to much. And that maybe he has already achieved all the aims he marked and it’s time to close this phase.

“During those three years I lived perfectly dreaming, my dreams were my resources, I lived of the experience I had acquired and that closed a period. I continued playing for me but I did not feel the necessity of going on stage again”.

 

 

 

Saad before a concert in Cuenca after his accident