Enrico Ruggeri: “I have never been a “hit maker””

Three years after the previous album “The revolution”, Enrico Ruggeri, singer-songwriter, writer and television presenter, releases a new album entitled “Plato’s cave”, with reference to a rhetorical figure of the Greek philosopher.

The new work, in which Ruggeri strongly underlines the absence of autotune, is an album of depth, both from a musical point of view but also from a conceptual one, with burning themes treated explicitly and “without discounts”.

“Plato’s Cave” puts on the table an analysis of the present, acceptable or not, made with clarity, but it also looks at history, society and little at the Self. With the album Ruggeri goes beyond his own navel as he musically explores and reworks all his passions, which come from afar.

Here’s what he said.

This album has a “high” title, particular, which is not very pop and not even clear at first reading. Where does it come from?

I’m aware of it but it has a reason. Plato’s cave is a rhetorical figuration in which the Greek philosopher imagines characters born and always closed inside a cave, held captive, who therefore do not know what reality is and think that this is what is projected to them from the outside. At a certain point they are let out, they feel uncomfortable, they see too much light, they ask to return, that is, the world they prefer is that of the cave. Obviously it was too strong a temptation, because without knowing it Plato told the story of our times.

You start from a philosophical concept, therefore somewhat abstract, to arrive instead at a very concrete world which is what you tell in these songs. How does this transition happen and above all what do you want to tell?
One begins to write the songs first, the ones that seem most interesting to him he keeps, the others he throws away. There are some among those I have kept that talk about war, that talk about challenging topics. Evidently, at least in my opinion, I was more inspired by these songs, the ones I threw away they were less substantial, but, as Goethe said, “chance is the driver of art”, and it is also a bit like this.

There is also a strong poetic streak.
That we try, yes. One writes songs about the things that upset him. When you’re twenty you write more love songs, more songs about relationships, while as you get older you get upset even opening a newspaper or turning on the television. Today are very special times, because, moreover, the war comes home. We children saw the conflict coming from Vietnam, from South-East Asia, from places we didn’t even know where they were. It came with a black-and-white television, it was a fairy tale, ugly but a fairy tale. Now you turn on your phone and see war, so it really becomes a daily topic.

What is the role of an artist right now? That is, do you feel more like an intellectual or something else? And must the role of an artist be that of an intellectual?
Well then: in the meantime, today don’t get the subjunctives wrong, it already places you in the upper sphere, intellectuals were once different. Let’s say that obviously there are many ways of making music. The one most similar to my characteristics, the one I do best, is this. I have never been a “hit maker”, even when it happened it was due to alignments of planets, never voluntary. So very modestly I do what I do best and, in my opinion, the thing that I do best is to make this type of song, a little out of time, for better or for worse.

But do you feel you have a role with these songs, beyond its merely musical impact?
Maybe yes, because today there is someone who makes poetic reflections in the enormous chessboard of Italian music. I have that role, I gladly fit into that box.

How distant is your musical world and beyond from the rest of the current panorama?
Well, at the moment quite a lot, I already believe that there are more guitars on this album than the entire production this year, so yes, I do special things. I’m lucky enough to have my own studio, so I go when I want, try out the pieces, we play them, we resound them, we keep them there, a month later we listen to them again and decide to do them again… a way of working that no longer exists today.

Is there anything you like about the new way of working? Or at least in young people?
There are a lot of guys, in fact it annoyed me when the title on Ruggeri / Tony Effe has been released. The thing that saddened me the most were those who wrote “you don’t give space to young people because you are old”. I’m doing a television show and I’m calling young artists, one or two per episode, from Mircoeilcane to Fulminacci to Mille, the next episode is FrancaMente who is a very good girl, Roberta Giallo was there. There are a lot of guys doing interesting things. Naturally they are not the ones you hear on the radio, that you see on television, in those programs where there are always the same 20-25.

Did the experience of returning to Decibel influence this album in any way?
Yes, that was a turning point. The albums I’m most proud of are those from 2017 onwards, therefore from the reunion with Decibel, because I found the desire to go to the studio again, to not care about everything. When I entered the recording room with Decibel, they hadn’t done it for 30 years, something technical happened but it says a lot. There was a piece where Silvio wondered: “shall I put the Hammond or the Wurlitzer, shall I put the Mini Moog or the Mellotron?”, that is, we didn’t go and look at the Plugins with the sounds, so we went back to making records exactly like we did in ’80, in ’81 and so from there it was really a turning point in my life.

For “Gorla’s little girl” is there any reference to a specific person who told you about the dramatic episode?
I digested Gorla’s story because my mother taught in that school on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, while she taught in another on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The bomb fell on a Friday. Meanwhile, I might never have been born, but above all my mother told me about her children, her colleagues, her teachers. It was a story I knew well and It seems strange to me That This song just came out to me now. The little girl who tells the story doesn’t necessarily have a name, there are survivors who I later met, but in the song I imagine this little girl who manages to get out and meets up with the flow of parents who were instead running towards the school.

Another significant song is “Das ist wurst” (“It’s not important”) where there is a very specific political stance.
In the end yes, in reality there too we start from afar. When I was a kid they told me that United Europe was a beautiful word of brotherhood, of cultural mixing, Europe has been, from ancient Greece onwards, the beacon of humanity. So it’s a song where monuments are mentioned, Vienna, La Scala, the Bolshoi, Chekhov, Kant, Bach, Monet, then in bulk there are great European names. Now Europe has become something else. One day you take the bottle and you can’t remove the cap, you get wet and say why is there a cap? Because Europe has decided that the cork can no longer be pulled off, and this is stupidity. You buy the car and it doesn’t work anymore, you have to give the house a coat… A series of more or less bizarre rules, made by no one knows who, without any request for people’s opinion. Then the banks, the money, you understand that it’s all a bit dirty stuff, this Europe.

Is there a solution?
No. It is it is clear that today finance governs the world, that is, it is no longer the owner who buys the factory, he has the money and then pays the worker, he pays too little, there is surplus value; a worker makes a car, works 30 hours but to buy the same car he has to spend 80 hours of salary. This is no longer the case, the capitalist is a figure that is disappearing, today it is all a bubble of money, of finance, for which I don’t think there is a solution. And even less so if it comes from a song.

In “Welcome anyone who passes by”, there is your son… How did this collaboration come about, why did you choose this song?
It’s the first time I’ve sung with him. We had written a song together a few years ago called “Like tears in the rain”, which was also the single from his album. He, aka Pico Rama, writes songs for the pleasure of doing it, he’s a freak, a philosopher, a thinker, a shaman, I don’t know how to define him, he’s a person totally detached from reality. So he wrote this song about self-acceptance, very serene, perhaps the most enlightened moment on the record. And so I thought that maybe towards the end of the album it was just a moment of peace with oneself, with the world. I only sang and arranged it because he wrote it, music and words.

Then there is the single “The poet”; very important topics are also discussed there.

The Poet is perhaps a somewhat obsolete figure, like the intellectual mentioned earlier. The key is free thought, which has a price to pay, and this is the case from Socrates to Giordano Bruno who ended up at the stake, to Oscar Wilde, to all the poets and writers such as Bukowski, Burroughs, Ferlinghetti, but also De André, up to Pasolini. People who paid for being “divisive”. Well, one thing that irritates me is that today the word divisive has a negative connotation. In theory what does this mean? That there is a single thought from which one cannot deviate? Be divisive it implies, in a civilized world, that if you think one way and I think another we compare ourselves. So being “divisive” means adding elements to the debate. But it is also true that those who have been divisive in history have paid dearly. I continue to think that perhaps if Pasolini had exposed himself less he would have died in his bed.

Do you feel responsible for something in the world of Italian music? Do you give yourself a role?
Obviously these are things one cannot say about oneself. I did mine, I made 40 records, 3,000 concerts, I was on the streets, I exposed myself. I feel like an integral part of a group of people, not a small group but not a majority either.

This is it the album in which you show off the most from a conceptual point of view?
Maybe yes, in retrospect I realize it too. Looking back at the songs, it’s a very political, very social, very public album. There are two or three personal songs, for which one would have to search the unconscious. At the moment it disturbs me more to read a newspaper than to live my life.

Did you need to do something like this? Was it a necessity or was it accidental?
Both. I need to write, it’s my life, it’s what I have to do, it’s what I like to do and therefore I’m comfortable when I write. I like to tell things, as long as possible. I’m very proud of this record and I have to say it’s the best of the three albums I didn’t make.

Meaning what?
In reality, in the golden days, when supply and demand met, I made a record a year. So three years ago, after the previous album “La revolution” was released, I started writing songs. If we were in the 80s, a record would have been released every year. Today is different, but all in all it’s better this way, because the three albums certainly wouldn’t have been up to the mark.

How does a song pass muster? How do you decide what’s right for the album?
My criterion is to imagine it 40 years later. I avoid strictly temporal references, there are few of them in my songs. I believe, now I swear and go high, that the great authors are those who have no contextualization. Ua song like “La cura” isn’t something you’re blatantly saying is from ’92 or ’85, it’s “La cura”, period. That’s the goal, timeless songs

Is the strength of a song in the lyrics?
No, at least I hope I escaped to this nonsense, I’ve always done everything possible to avoid it. The idea was always: ‘I’ll make a good sounding record then I’ll try to put some good lyrics on it’, in fact the music comes first and then the words.

But this album lives a lot on the lyrics….
Yes, because they are important, but I hope they don’t drown out the music.