Saulo Oliveira S.: The boy who defeated the devil and became bigger than God
By Olivia Omen, August 4th, 2023
In a recently published article an old conversation about how Saulo Oliveira S. entered this world was revived. Also, there a very interesting episode in his childhood that can help to understand better some crucial facts that shaped the Prince of Rock.
It is said that, in the twilight of a Bastille Day, the heavens burst torrential rain on Saulo’s mother who, burning in pain, fell on the sidewalk in front of The Cavern Club and, feeling the contractions of childbirth, gained the attention of rockers who heard her clamor from the stage and rushed to help.
The following scenes would be filled with dramatic tension. With the help of guitarists who did the asepsis of their hands with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, the one for which presence was so often invoked (Saulo, from the Hebrew shā’ūl, means “the required” or “asked for”) finally came into the world.
He was born without crying and with a fulminating look, in his eyes one could read the indignation of having been awakened from his elysian peace to be forcibly entered into a world to which he did not intend to belong and which, therefore, from that moment on, would be his nemesis. Then, there on the sidewalk, in a large crowd, the rocker-midwife, pressed by the urge to break the umbilical cord, took his metal palette in his hands and, rubbing it against the cord, did no less than break a god’s bond with his temporally human root.
It is also reported that at this moment the rain stopped and the silhouette of a white owl was projected against the moonlight on the face of the rock heir, who then stopped breathing. The owl lunged at the crowd and landed on a tree from where it began to watch him. In tears and distressed, Saulo’s mother is urgently taken to a car in an attempt to reach the nearest hospital. They drive for nearly an hour and, drugged and confused, the rockers end up in Birmingham.
At 14 Lodge Road in Aniston, the car breaks down and the boy is breathing again. That’s the number 14 right on the 14th of July. In fact, if anybody research more closely will see that the number 14 has always been part of Saulo’s trajectory. There is something almost metaphysical in the insistence of these numbers, after all July (7th) and 14th (the day he was born). It’s almost as if they invoke the heretical interpretation that the world may have been created in seven days but the Rock Heir is greater than perfection; twice bigger. Even greater was the astonishment of this realization when it was later discovered that the exact address where the car had broken down was the childhood home of Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of Darkness. The Prince of Rock caught his breath in the innocence of childishness of the original environment of his inspirer. Saulo was taken in at a hospital where he received care and a nurse began to report, during her shift, the punctual visit of a white owl that seriously analyzed the movement from the outside of the window.
Another curious and decisive fact in defining his profile is that, on 06/06/2006, by the age of 12, sitting on the curb at a crossroads, waiting for the school bus, playing his harmonica, Saulo was visited by a mysterious man who many came to believe was the devil. Saulo’s childhood friends who witnessed the scene describe him as “a tall, thin, bald white (albino) man, in black suit, who held a harmonica in his hands”. The man claimed that the harmonica in his hand was from another dimension and would give its possessor unlimited creative and musical powers. He then proposes a challenge to the boy: a solo battle. “Whoever plays the best harmonica solo will have the Elder Harmonica”, said the man, according to witnesses. If Saulo lost he was to give the man his soul. “The devil played first and it was something no one ever heard before”, says a Saulo’s friend via video call.
Saulo played “Man With a Harmonica” from Ennio Morricone. The man in black bowed low and left the Elder Harmonica at Saulo’s feet. The man walked down the street and was never seen again. From that day forward Saulo was called the “boy who defeated the devil and became bigger than God”.
