-That song, Mas que Nada, is magical. I told Jorge Ben the other day I saw him in LA. And I thank him for writing that song because there's not many songs like that. I mean a song that everybody can sing along with. And it's so simply and it's so catchy. It's like, er,...And it's all over the world. You go to Japan. I go to Japan every year and I play, you know, Mas que Nada is like the national anthem.

 

Music

 

Mas que Nada has been re-recorded over 200 times. It's been used as a football anthem though the lyrics have nothing to do with football. And it's been given a hip hop treatment by The Black Eyed Peas.

 

Sergio Mendes remained in America, to become Brazil's most commercially successful musician of the 60s. When the fashion for bossa nova finally ended, giving way to the English invasion led by the Beatles, he notched up another hit single with his own easy listening version of the Beatles'  Fool On The Hill, which he performed on The Andy Williams TV Show.