The word that comes back the most, in this chat with Mottait is “freedom”. For heaven’s sake, it’s a decoy, one of those bogeymen that artists come up with every three or two, so you can almost never believe it. But the album he releases this Friday, Ring! vol. 1it really is free: apart from one unreleased piece, he radically rearranges some of the columns from his repertoire, with surprising solutions. «There’s a piece to which we added a coda that reaches eight minutes, I’d say it’s a big risk with today’s attention spans», jokes the 38-year-old Tuscan singer-songwriter, whose name is Francesco, and makes popular music. an author with a working-class attitude, he was in Sanremo in 2019 and here he called around him some totems of the alternative, such as Roberta Sammarelli of Verdena and Teho Teardo. When we all got back into the studio together, starting from ideas born during the last tour, an album came out that «if it weren’t for the lyrics it would be unreleased», given how much the original songs have changed. So much so that, when in doubt, he decided to publish it himself, with the label he just founded, Sona Music Records. «I don’t rule out releasing my records on other labels again in the future», he says. «This is a moment, there will also be a second volume. I wanted to feel a little dizzy.”
Meaning what?
«The album was born on stage, during the last tour, in which I was supported by extraordinary musicians – even if in reality I have always had them around, it’s my luck. We wanted to destroy the pieces of the past, review the agreements and arrangements, first of all make me lack a bit of certainty. It is a radical re-foundation, which comes from the desire to play and get involved.”
Hasn’t it always been this way?
«More or less, but I wanted to reconnect with who I was. I regenerated myself and the songs.”
What effect does it have?
«They have improved, but simply because so much time has passed. I also covered a piece from my first band, the Criminal Jokers. They are songs that I wrote a lifetime ago, but that I only understood now. Music takes time, but you can’t wait ten years, perhaps, to release a piece.”
Speaking of emergencies: those who shouted “Ring!” where did you get the title from?
“Whoever. (He laughsed.) The provinces in which I grew up, Pisa and Livorno, when I was a boy were those with the highest density of bands and musicians in Italy. It was always played, everywhere. If they didn’t give us a place, on the street. But the point is that we often played, necessarily, in front of other musicians. There was a lot of tension: there was a mutual hunt for error, but also the need to give a strong meaning to what was being done. So perhaps it happened that we took a long time to present a piece, and the audience promptly shouted: “Play!”. Songs don’t need words outside of lyrics, and the lyrics themselves don’t work explain. The message counts, what is transmitted counts. And playing is the most important thing.”
But from here to saying that the singer in question should “just play”, i.e. keep quiet, and not take a political position, we can’t go far.
«Yes, that’s another matter. I never held back there, on the contrary. But not as a musician, just as a private citizen I feel I have to take a position on the things I believe in, on those that are close to my heart. Otherwise nothing is worth it.”
And what is the price of this?
“High. I’m not particularly disturbing and I don’t belong to certain “high” groups. But at certain levels, and we have seen it, when faced with utterances of this kind we respond with censorship. The price is heavy. But music serves to go a little further than slogans or silence.”
Do you remember the first time you went on stage?
«I sang in the children’s choir of the church near my house. Mine still have the video. In the end, a friend of mine pointed out to me that I had read the score backwards.”
Emblematic.
«Everything happens on stage. Another time, with the Criminal Jokers, we played in a venue so small that there was no room for the drums. The others gave me a snare drum and told me to cover the drummer, who was the most talented of us, but they didn’t know where to put it.”
A school of life.
“Yes. Consider that I have been doing this job since I was still in school, one day they gave me permission to leave class three hours early because I had to give a concert. At that moment I felt like David Bowie: not only was I doing what I loved, I was even able to leave school early to do it. There were no side effects.”
Not even to add up?
«I didn’t think about it. It was a dream, for years I lived on the road, on tour. With my group, as a session musician for Nada, first, and Giovanni Truppi, then. As sound engineer for Zen Circus. I was fine like that. My parents always supported me, but I earned very little, despite a lot of work. And then, I told her, I learned a lot: when I played on the street, I understood what was the right attitude to have to get noticed, to capture the public’s attention. It takes nerve, it’s not easy. You almost have to be “violent”.
But it was a leap into the void.
«I didn’t think about it until I was thirty, success wasn’t a priority. I was going so fast that I didn’t even have time to stop and be afraid. I stopped right at the threshold of thirty, when I wrote my first solo album, The end of the twenties. There I was really afraid, what those years had left me around – including, in fact, fear and a sense of emptiness, in addition to the lessons and satisfactions – ended up inside. And a new phase began, it went well.”
What did you learn from that experience?
«To transform crises into stimuli. It often happens that young guys come to work in my studio, I help them out as much as I can. Sometimes I find them disorientated, terrified. They are certain that it is make or break, that they are either successful at that moment or they will never be successful again. I don’t know if this is really the case, my job itself is a continuous leap into the void. But that look, the one that trembles, well, I would like to tell them that it is the most precious thing they have to rely on. For me that anguish and that sense of loneliness were a salvation.”
It takes courage.
«Yes, also because Italy doesn’t pamper entertainment workers. Furthermore, the places where I trained are disappearing. And today playing live matters less than in the past. I would like to tell the kids to do it anywhere, at any cost and at any price, just to gain experience. But the truth is that there are no more places. And it’s paradoxical, because the live industry has grown a lot anyway. But it went in one direction: that of large concerts, where sometimes enormous productions give more of the sense of a show than of a real concert. There, the artist’s talent is lost, it is disguised. It’s not the music that counts, but our presence, our taking a selfie in the audience to tell everyone be there. By doing this we perhaps give up spending money on a live show in a small venue.”
Do you feel more alternative or more old school?
“Both”.
Is the alternative old school?
«No, I think there is still an alternative way of making music compared to what is popular. Many of my choices testify to this.”
Including this one Ring!I imagine.
«It’s the freest record I’ve ever made, a concession of freedom that I’ve taken and built over the years. With work and credibility, but also with the support of all the people who have been close to me, including the labels that have published my works.”
But to publish it he opened his own. Would no one else have posted it to him?
«Let’s say that, in terms of format, it’s not what labels are tearing their hair out over today. (He laughsed.) But it’s not a revolutionary act, just a way to tune back into my needs. I asked myself: why do I want to continue making music? Answer: because it gives me pleasure, because I like it. And then I do it as I say, without answering to anyone.”
Did he support any compromises?
«Very few. Yes, I was in Sanremo and I published pieces in a bit of a hurry, because it had to be done. But the labels I worked with always left me free. But I understood that I can only achieve musical freedom by responding to myself, and that’s it. But it’s not a selfish question, the three of us produced the album and there are many musicians who had their part. It’s a question of approach. And I don’t want to be a hero: Nada, for example, was independent thirty years ago, when without major labels it was difficult to even get your albums into stores. Today, with digital, it is easier. I simply needed to make an eight-minute piece, to destroy my songs. But not to deny the past: I concentrated on those that I considered suitable, not on those – and there are – that I would have liked to write differently, correct”.
Source: Vanity Fair
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