On his first visit to England in 1985, Los Lobos drummer-guitarist-songwriter Louie Perez explained to British journalist Adam Sweeting that the band’s music, and the pointedly political songs on their new album, How Will The Wolf Survive?, came “directly from the heart of America. The issue of the illegals, that really exists. The government feels they’re taking jobs away from Americans, but at the same time they’re coming over because their government isn’t doing any good for them. It’s a difficult thing—where do you draw the line? America’s always been about helping people. If it wasn’t for illegals, there wouldn’t be America.”
The fact that How Will The Wolf Survive?, released in October 1984, continues to be musically and socially relevant—although Perez would no doubt substitute the word “undocumented” for “illegal” when discussing it nowadays—is a testament to the quality of the 11 tracks it contains and the staying power of a group still going strong 40 years later.
Los Lobos in 1985 (Photo from their Facebook page)
Talking to Rolling Stone, also in ’85, Perez emphasized that their inspiration for bringing the sound of their East L.A. group to international stages was wide-ranging: “People have to remember that rock and roll came from a cross-pollination of a lot of different cultures. The black, the hillbilly, all that rural culture, that’s what rock and roll is all about. I don’t find what we’re doing any different from what Elvis was doing.”
When the band hooked up with producer T Bone Burnett to record their debut long-player for the L.A. label Slash, which had major league distribution through Warner Bros. Records, they had a decade of local live performances under their belts. Their Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles self-released LP contained mostly the type of Mexican folk music they played at dances, block parties, weddings and quinceaneras; a 7-track vinyl EP …And A Time To Dance contained more originals written by Perez and multi-instrumentalists/singers Cesar Rosas and David Hildago.
Bassist Conrad Lozano and Steve Berlin, the saxophonist who’d migrated from local roots-rockers the Blasters to join Los Lobos full-time, rounded out the lineup that used four different L.A. recording studios to sculpt their most ambitious work to date.
From radio shows on KGFJ-AM, Rosas had picked up on Steve Cropper’s guitar style from Otis Redding and Sam and Dave records, and KPPC-FM opened Hidalgo’s mind to Albert Collins, Albert King and Jimi Hendrix. Perez told writer Gene Santoro that the group had spent years diving deep into Latino music: “At first, we just ransacked record stores looking for anything, but gradually we narrowed it down to just a few outstanding groups of each regional style.” They found inspiration from Jacinto Gatica, Flaco Jimenez and Los Huracanes del Norte, which Perez called “the Cadillac, Mercedes and BMW of Tex-Mex music.”
Rosas added, “We had to learn a lot of techniques. Like, you know the flamenco Spanish style? Well, the Mexican Indian people adapted that and have a certain way of doing it called the hupbango, that scratch and slap. We had to learn how to do things like that.”
How Will The Wolf Survive? blasts off with “Don’t Worry Baby,” which borrows a Beach Boys title for a rollicking jump blues sung with gusto by Rosas, who trades blistering guitar solos with Hidalgo midway. In the black and white promotional video for the tune, you can see Rosas playing left-handed like Hendrix, sporting his trademark hipster goatee and indoor sunglasses—one journalist called him a “tough-looking softy.”
Perez says “A Matter of Time” was composed with Hidalgo “about a conversation between a husband and wife as he prepares to leave to find work somewhere else. The idea was a Mexican fellow coming across the border with the promise that he’ll come back to his family…it could be about anybody living in any town in America, about an economy that forces people to separate to survive.”
Hidalgo handles the poignant lead vocal (his high tenor makes him sound remarkably like Steve Winwood at times): “Speak softly, don’t wake the baby/Come and hold me once more/Before I have to leave/Because there’s a lot of work out there/Everything will be fine.” Chiming guitar lines, a solid R&B bass and perfectly placed drums and percussion make for a performance of great sympathy.
Rosas’ “Corrido #1” is a delight, prime Tex-Mex with Hidalgo on accordion, fingers flying. It finds its partner in “Serenata Norteña” on side two of the LP, although the latter is sung in Spanish, with a hopeful boy serenading his intended beneath a window, starting with the provocative “Don’t be afraid to dance/To dream of the [12-string Mexican instrument] bajo sexto/to the beat of the double-bass/And the lullaby of the accordion.”
“Our Last Night” is a swinging Texas two-step which Hidalgo and Perez perhaps wrote to answer the question, What would it sound like if Flaco Jimenez was in Bob Wills’ orchestra? Hidalgo, a truly remarkable musician on anything with strings, plays peppy lap steel guitar in addition to accordion, and sings the hell out of it. “The Breakdown” continues the genre variety of the entire album with a song, written by Hidalgo, Perez and Burnett, that could have been a ’50s single by Fats Domino. Berlin’s baritone solos nod to the great New Orleans saxophonist Lee Allen, who often performed with the Blasters.
With songwriting credited to the obscure R&B singer Lil’ Bob Camille, who issued a 45 with his band the Lollipops in 1965, “I Got Loaded” is a hand-clapping, foot-stomping festival in Los Lobos’ hands. Hidalgo conveys the minimal lyrics with enthusiasm, telling us he got drunk yesterday on gin, and whiskey the night before, and probably will choose wine for tonight. But no matter what, he “feels alright,” and it appears that’s the only information he needs to report. Berlin wails on tenor sax.
“Evangeline” is one of Hidalgo and Perez’s most enduring compositions, covered by other artists (a particular favorite of Jerry Garcia) and played at nearly every Los Lobos concert. Berlin multi-tracks an entire saxophone section, and the rhythm duo is really locked in, as they are for the double-time near-mayhem of the polka-on-steroids “I Got to Let You Know,” which follows with Rosas on the helm. He plays bajo sexto, with Lozano on guitarrón, for the brief acoustic interlude “Lil’ King of Everything,” before the album’s title track arrives to close out the short (33-minute) disc.
“All odds are against him/With a family to provide for/But one thing he must keep alive/Will the wolf survive?” The melody is heroic, and one can imagine Bruce Springsteen’s influence filtered through Burnett’s robust production work, in the way the arrangement provides cinematic settings for dramatic lyrical images.
Related: Our Album Rewind of Los Lobos’ Kiko
Perez says the song title was the caption of a National Geographic magazine cover photo. As he told Sweeting in 1985, “We went through all kinds of different ideas for that song and finally decided to use the image of the wolf as a kind of parallel to what we represent. Traveling around America over the past year and a half, the first time for us ’cause we’re just like local guys, to really experience America like that, meeting people and driving around, that’s a lot to do with the song too…It’s a real experience, just to see real people out there, working real hard. That song is about people who are living along that fine line between extinction and…staying alive.”
The last verse reflects Perez and Hidalgo’s emotional connection to the punk rock movement that embraced them, and the community of bands helping each other with gigs, transport and crash pads: “Sounds across the nation/Coming from your hearts and minds/Battered drums and old guitars/Singing songs of passion.”
As a single, “Will The Wolf Survive?” barely scraped into the Billboard Hot 100, but Waylon Jennings had a country hit with the song in 1986. Los Lobos got their only #1 pop record when they cut “La Bamba” for the Ritchie Valens biopic in ’87.
To date, Los Lobos—which still has their original lineup—has received four Grammy Awards, and celebrated their 50th anniversary as a band on November 25, 2023, with a show at their alma mater James Garfield High School. They are currently playing “acoustic with drums” dates on a “Disconnected Tour.” A feature documentary about the group, Native Sons, is due for release later this year. Their albums are available in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here.
Watch Los Lobos perform “Will the Wolf Survive?” live in 2013
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