Los Lobos has been together for a whopping 35 years — since its members were high-school students in East Los Angeles. Even now, they still play about 100 live performances a year.
"You know, it's a family," says Steve Berlin, saxophonist and keyboard player. "You know, it's exactly like everything in everybody's family; you love 'em, you hate 'em. Yeah, we're still best friends and stories never change –- they just get older."
Los Lobos loves to jam and mash together musical styles — putting a new twist on Mexican folk music, sometimes combining it with rock 'n' roll.
In the band's early days, Los Lobos did some amateur musical sleuthing. Tired of playing in rock and cover bands, core members David Hidalgo, Louie Perez, Cesar Rojas, and Conrad Lozaron learned folk songs from musicians in East L.A., and took trips to Mexico to do research.
"Much like The Rolling Stones went in search of blues guys through the Delta, I mean, these guys did their own personal journey as well," Berlin says. "They really went hard after it, once they sort of got the bug. ... And probably commerce and being successful and winning Grammys was about the furthest possible thing from their minds, I can tell you that."
Los Lobos hit it big in 1987, recording the soundtrack to La Bamba, the film starring Lou Diamond Phillips as rock star Richie Valens. The group's single of the title tune -– a rock 'n' roll version of a Mexican folk song — topped the charts, and the band has never looked back.
In 2006, Los Lobos recorded a concept album called The Town and the City. On the CD, the band explored in poignant detail what it's like to be an immigrant in America. Los Lobos plays songs from that album — and a whole lot of dance music — in this live performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
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