Val Santos spoke about his regret at not having invited Andre Matos earlier to participate in the album 1986 , the guitarist's first solo album, during a conversation on the show The Wikimetal Happy Hour .
A longtime friend of the Maestro of Rock , the musician had envisioned the song "Miracle" for Andre's voice, but the collaboration didn't materialize in time. "I took too long, man, that was a stupid thing I did. I took too long to call Andre, I thought [that] the time had to be right to call him," he explained. "You never expect something like this to happen, I was going to write the songs and call him, and then it happens. Unbelievable, the guy's gone... To this day I can't properly talk about Andre's things."
With the tragic death of Andre Matos in 2019, the singer chosen to fill his place was Bruno Sutter . “I called Bruno, I knew he really liked Andre and Andre really liked Bruno too, they were friends,” Val Santos recounted. “I said, ‘There’s no one else to record this song, you’re the right guy, Andre adored you’ (…) He sang, he got emotional and so did I.”
Invited to The Wikimetal Happy Hour a few weeks prior, Sutter expressed gratitude for the opportunity to sing a track that would have been by his friend and idol, and reminisced about a duet with Matos, see here .
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