Legião Urbana


Renato Russo and Felipe Lemos met each other at a party in Brasilia. After some time they formed a band called “Aborto Elétrico”. With this band they wrote several famous songs like Música Urbana and Que país é esse?. As the first punk band they were very well-known around the city, but Renato wanted more. However, Felipe was not in that hurry. That was when they started fighting and that ended up destroying the band.

In the same year, 1983, Felipe joined “Capital Inicial” and Renato formed “Legião Urbana”.
Legião Urbana has recorded more than twelve CDs each one with at least 500 000 copies. Some even sold more than a million!!!

In 1996, the band leader and singer, Renato Russo, died of AIDS. After that, the band continued playing and making concerts for a while. Nowadays, Legião Urbana don’t play anymore, but their songs are still loved by fans and even by very young people who haven’t had the chance of getting to know Renato when he was still alive.

Curiosities

Skin and bone, with 20 kilos less than the 65 habitual ones, long beard, almost not recognizable, Renato Russo, leader of the Legião Urbana, died at 1h15min on October 11th, after abandoning a fight of six years against AIDS. “He gave up” said his mother.

A few minutes before he died, Renato repeated:

“ Mother, I’m not from here”.

In the last weeks of his life, the musician didn’t eat properly and he was kept away from his friend. He was locked in his apartment in Ipanema just with his father, Renato Manfredini, and a nurse.

He gave up taking a cocktail of drugs that could have kept him alive a bit longer. “ When I drink that cocktail, it’s like I’m eating an alive dog. And the dog eats me inside”, Renato told a friend.

Neighbors had noticed that music, always played in high volume in his apartment, had ceased. And the fans had noticed that the phrase: ‘Legio Omnio Vicint’ (Legiao Urbana is a success, in Latin), printed in all records of the band, was absent in the last compact disc , “ A tempestade”.

Project from
Sylvia Milan, Giuliana Bouchabki, Cláudia Pezzuto, Bárbara Albuquerque, Gihed Nassif
Higher 2
Teacher Maria do Carmo

Centro Britânico
Pompéia Branch