{"id":1208,"date":"1970-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1970-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girovai2.wandcclients.com\/the-long-and-winding-road-2\/"},"modified":"2014-08-19T08:12:44","modified_gmt":"2014-08-19T08:12:44","slug":"the-long-and-winding-road-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/girovai.com\/es\/the-long-and-winding-road-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The long and winding road"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is my story it is about making decisions in pursuing a career, wherever it may take me. I have always had a passion for music, which has led me to where I am today.\u00a0 It turns out that wherever I have found myself in the world, my guitar is with me and it has \u2018played\u2019 a pretty important role in my career.<\/span><\/p>\n

I grew up in Lima, Peru and my musical influences came from my parents \u2013 my dad was a classical music aficionado and there were a couple of Beatles records that my mum loved. I used to play air guitar and rock out to the Beatles like I was John Lennon himself. Fast-forward a decade and the imaginary guitar became an electric guitar and I formed a band. When it started to pick up, my dad was transferred to Bogota, Colombia. When you are 14, this is probably the worst news you can receive.<\/p>\n

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In Bogota I had to start all over again. As the new guy in school, nobody cared that I played rock guitar. Everyone danced to local music genres that as a proud teenage rocker, I hated. One day I just stood up in front of everybody in class, and yelled \u201cDoes anybody play an instrument?\u201d That is how I formed a new band and through the drummer in that band I learned of this famous music school where all the \u2018big\u2019 cats went to: Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

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Gonzalo Pizarro D. (Grupo Rock Las Pira\u00f1as Amaz\u00f3nicas, Bogota Colombia); www.laspiranasamazonicas.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

While I was in Colombia my mum passed away from cancer and then my dad, two months later from what I believe was grief (technically it was a heart attack) so I had to return to my home country, Santiago in Chile. So there I was, 16 years old, starting once again from scratch, with a scar on my heart the size of my ego and my guitar. I formed a couple of bands, performed on the local scene in Santiago with a U2 cover band (that still exists today). After finishing school, I parted ways with my life in Santiago, (friends, family and band) with a new goal in mind: Berklee.<\/p>\n

Berklee was the only college that I applied to and had no backup plan. Once admitted, I went through a couple of bands and one in particular, Locomotive, took me to one of the most beautiful places I have been to:\u00a0 Martha\u2019s Vineyard. We rocked every bar on that island, met a whole bunch of Hollywood celebrities, and had the 3 best summers of my life. I majored in Music Business and Aretha Franklin handed me my degree. Now what?<\/p>\n

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I had gone a whole bunch of times to the fascinating island of Puerto Rico with my Puerto Rican girlfriend, but things were not working out. Honestly, I was still in love with a girl I had met back when I was living in Colombia, so I called her up.\u00a0 I had not seen her or heard from her in 8 years. So there I was, recently graduated, with a plethora of career options. I figured I could start a career in the music business anywhere in the world, as long as I followed my heart. I took a blind step and went for the love of my life. Today we are happily married and have two beautiful little girls.<\/p>\n

In Bogota, I landed a job at a major record company as a Regional Label Manager, an ambitious and aspiring position. There, I met so many artists I couldn\u2019t count them \u2013 this job had me calling Ozzy Osbourne, travelling to Mexico for a meeting with one of AC\/DC\u2019s managers, dinners with the pop opera band Il Divo, legendary guitarist Joe Satriani, just to name a few. Unfortunately, CD sales in Latin America decrease exponentially every year and this major record company had to go through a \u2018major\u2019 downsizing and after three years, I was out.<\/p>\n

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Fortunately, in no time I was working with a major concert promoter who had just fired their Local Tour Manager. The upcoming show was Il Divo, which was great because I had previously worked with them. In this job, I met more artists \u2013 Metallica, Green Day, Shakira, The Killers, Slayer, and have remained friends with many of them.<\/p>\n

I have never forgotten my roots as a rock guitarist, so while I was working as a Tour Manager, I formed yet another band: Las Pira\u00f1as Amaz\u00f3nicas.\u00a0 With this band we had a nationwide hit and it gave me the chance to play my guitar in front of 65,000 people, as an opening act for Aerosmith, a dream come true.<\/p>\n

Music has taken me around the world. So here I am right now, back in Bogota, planning my next step.<\/p>\n

WRITTEN BY GONZALO PIZARRO D.<\/p>\n

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This is my story it is about making decisions in pursuing a career, wherever it may take me. I have always had a passion for music, which has led me to where I am today.  It turns out that wherever I have found myself in the world, my guitar is with me and it has \u2018played\u2019 a pretty important role in my career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-south_america-articles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/girovai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/girovai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/girovai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girovai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girovai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/girovai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girovai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/girovai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girovai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girovai.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}