What is happening with Roberto Carlos?

Hysterical fans are nothing new in the long career of Roberto Carlos, 81. Screams of “Marry me!” and excited audience interactions have literally been a part of the singer’s concerts for at least 40 years. But on the 13th, at the Qualistage concert hall, in Rio, the “King” left his majesty aside and reacted in a surprising way when he heard the insistent screams of a fan, in the gargle line. “Shut up!”, growled Roberto, engaging in expletives.

What was there? Why did he react like that? Watching the longer versions of the video published on the networks, it’s not difficult to conclude that, really, man, there were people who screamed so much that they deserved a come on. There was an inconvenient and disrespectful mob, yes, but nothing Roberto had ever experienced. According to Paulo Cesar de Araújo, an unauthorized researcher, writer and biographer of the singer, what led him to lose his temper in this way was a mix of off-stage factors. The most impactful of them, psychologically speaking, was the date of the show. “It couldn’t be worse,” he says.

Initially scheduled for July 6, it was rescheduled for a week later, right on the 13th. Yes, that one day of every month when Roberto doesn’t usually make professional appointments, due to superstition and OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) . “As he is a maniac of repetition, everything has a ritual. The change of date, especially for a day like this, has already distracted him a lot”, says Araújo.

Add to that the recent recovery from Covid, which has always terrified him (and was the reason for the postponement of the previous week’s presentation). Roberto, even vaccinated, was contaminated and took a long time to be discharged from a disease that he avoids even mentioning the name. There is also the issue of prolonged mourning: in just over a year, Roberto lost his older brother, Lauro [em março de 2021] and son, Dudu Braga [em setembro]. “He goes through a complicated life phase”, summarizes Araújo.

All this off-stage context helps explain why he acted this way, but it wasn’t the first time the singer lost his temper with more abusive fans. At the time of the Jovem Guarda, the height of the hysteria and euphoria of the “Robertetes”, behold, a little bud, vráu!, pulls Roberto’s hair at the end of a show. The reaction was immediate: “You son of a bitch!”, cursed the idol, who never hid it from anyone: I gave her to mess with the curls (now mullets) in her hair.

Roberto resorts to profanity with a certain frequency and his musicians hear hairy words when he, a perfectionist to the extreme like his teenage friend Tim Maia, gets annoyed during rehearsals and sound checks. Or even during shows. “That sound is shit!”, he complains, with the lights off, out of the spotlight. Dies there, no one sees Or finds out. “The thing is that he has the biggest reputation for being straight, which he is not; so, a swear word filmed and said to someone in the front row takes on all that weight”, analyzes Araújo.

The shut-up that went viral on the networks entered the history of the singer’s career, so much so that the episode will be told in not-so-small details in the second and final volume of “Roberto Carlos Outra Vez”, a musical biography that Paulo Cesar is preparing to be released in 2023. The first book spanned the period from the beginning of his career to 1971; this covers that year to the present day. “In the case of Roberto Carlos, what happened in this show on the 13th was a very important event both for its uniqueness and for its repercussion”, says the writer.