In his first important interview after the singer’s death, Gal’s former personal assistant recounts the routine he has had for nearly thirty years by his side and shares for the first time the notes he received from the artist
Amin Khader still remembers what Gal Costa loved to eat for breakfast in the presidential suites of hotels around the world: two soft-boiled eggs – boiled for 18 seconds -, a slice of papaya, a banana, three slices of cheese and milk without cream. “Many times I’d take off the cream without her seeing it,” he says.
Amin, now 67, worked for nearly 30 years as Gal’s private secretary before making a name for himself as a television journalist and gossip columnist. He even had a record autographed by the singer in his work permit, which he proudly keeps to this day. I was responsible for satisfying the most diverse requests of a real star: filtering phone calls, organizing trips, paying employees, solving bank problems, among other requests.
During the shows he remained backstage, attentive to everything that happened on stage. If Gal needed anything, Amin was there. When the singer left the stage, he greeted her as he made his way to the dressing room. Amin saw the peak of Gal’s popularity in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
“Gal was an Ivete Sangalo. A star, folks,” he says when measuring the singer’s success to those who didn’t live through that time.
Of the controversies involving the name of Gal in recent times, with accusations against his widow, the entrepreneur Wilma Petrillo, Amin does not want to speak. “It’s a shame what they’re doing to Brazil’s greatest singer. Forget Gal,” he says succinctly.
In the conversation he had with the journalist of the Stadium, on the phone, Amin preferred to recall the good times he had with the singer, of whom he had been a fan since he was a teenager. There were also many setbacks. But, now, they appear resigned in Amin’s memory, with a mixture of nostalgia and humour.
Amin, for the first time, shows the affectionate notes he received from Gal (see them throughout the report), which he almost always signed as “his star”. Life next to the singer looked like a party.
She doesn’t like me anymore
Carioca from the Lins de Vasconcelos neighborhood in the north of Rio de Janeiro, Amin, still a teenager, took three buses to get to Gal’s house in the south of the city. He rang the bell of his muse’s house and asked to speak to the singer. Dona Mariah, Gal’s mother, said her daughter was not there. “It’s a lie, the bedroom window is closed. She’s sleeping, the car is in the garage,” Amin retorted, who knew his routine perfectly.
Gal didn’t mind the fan Amin and the other four or five high school friends he brought on the almost daily pilgrimage to the singer’s address. He threw cigarette butts at the crowd in front of his gate. Since the butts were marked by the lipstick he wore, Amin kept them or traded them for a sandwich at school.
To get attention, he and his friends sang a hit of Gal at the time, the song What a pityIn Jorge Ben Jor. “She doesn’t like me anymore, but I like her anyway,” they repeated, sitting on a low wall on Estrada do Tambá, in Morro do Vidigal, where Gal lived in a two-family house overlooking Leblon.
Gal drove by in a red Fiat convertible, an imported model. “She was terrified of me. Who likes a fan?” Asks the former secretary.
artist’s life
The definitive approach of the fan to the idol happened indirectly. Amin was hired to put up posters for a show that singer Caetano Veloso was going to do at the Teatro Tereza Rachel. Businessman Guilherme Araújo, who steered Gal’s career, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil AND Mary Bethanyimpressed by the publicity, he wanted to meet the young man.
Amin became an employee of GAPA, Guilherme Araújo Produções Artísticas. When Gal needed a new secretary, Araújo didn’t think twice about assigning him the job. It was show time Singfrom 1974, directed by Caetano and featuring John Donato on the piano.
“When Gal saw me, she said: no! It took me five years to win her over,” says Amin. Over time, the singer even entrusted the bank passwords to the secretary. They also had a joint account.
“Gal was very rich, but also very cheap. I didn’t skimp on her. I always bought the best notebook, the most modern mobile phone,” says Amin.
Amin especially remembers the number of suitcases with which the singer traveled: five. Gal decided, for a while, to bring a guitar. “He has never played, but he wanted to take it,” says Amin.
In hotel rooms, in addition to ordering breakfast, Amin refused phone calls and dodged waiters and waitresses who knocked on the door more than once a day. Everyone wanted to meet Gal. He was as protective of him as possible. “No one saw Gal”.
He jokes that, in all, he served the singer two million seven hundred and twenty eight thousand three hundred and fifteen coffees, with seven drops of sweetener.
it was a rose
Amin’s memories wander through many other stories. It tells of the day when, in charge of paying the employees of a farm that the singer had in Estrada da Posse, in Rio, next to Jô Soares, he came across a big party in the establishment organized by the caretaker. By telephone, from São Paulo, Gal ordered: “Call the police, Amin!”
In 1985, Amin was brought in by businessman Roberto Medina to command the dressing rooms for the initial Rock in Rio. A challenge. It was the first time that a major festival was held in the country. In the lineup international stars such as Rod Stewart, James Taylor, Nina Hagen and the bands Yes, Queen and Iron Maiden.
Gal made it a mystery whether he was going to release his student for work. He ended up giving in. Amin made the first three editions of the festival. “She liked my success at Rock in Rio,” he says. At the time, Gal was charting with songs One day on Sunday AND Fortune.
Amin gained fame. He went PR for a concert hall in Rio and got into television. Through Gal, he met Roberto Carlos. It was Dody Sirena, the singer’s manager at the time, who took him to breakfast with Donna Summer, his other great musical idol, in a luxury hotel in São Paulo.
“Gal always told me: you like Donna Summer more than me. Donna found it strange that I was working with such a powerful singer in Brazil and that I was a fan of another,” she says.
In 2003, Amin was still seen backstage at the show. All things and me, with Gal. Gradually, she says, she stopped working with the singer. Already as a reporter for TV Record, you interviewed the former boss. “He said that I had been his faithful squire to him,” she says proudly.
One day, he received an email from Gal. “Amin, you always wanted to be famous, that’s why you leave me.”
Between moments that will never be repeated and a collection of notes received by the singer over the years, Amin defines Gal: “My mother, my sister, my wife, my partner. Gal was a very intelligent woman”.
Source: Terra
Earl Johnson is a music writer at Gossipify, known for his in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the industry. A graduate of USC with a degree in Music, he brings years of experience and passion to his writing. He covers the latest releases and trends, always on the lookout for the next big thing in music.
