Maneskin wouldn’t be the same without Thomas Raggi

The last one to join his fan club was Patti Smith. Yesterday evening, on the occasion of his concert at the Roman Theatre of Ostia Antica, in Rome, The Priestess of Rock called the 23-year-old guitarist on stage and asked him to accompany her on the guitar on the notes of one of her most iconic songs, “People have the power”sending the audience into a frenzy. Before the American singer-songwriter had wanted the talented musician at her side on a stage too Tom Morellowho has been a member of the fan club for quite some time (it was January 2023 when Maneskin released “Gossip”, the song resulting from the meeting with Morello): “

That boy loves his instrument and I love the fact that in 2024 a young Italian guitarist inspires others in the world”, said the Rage Against the Machine guitarist speaking about his colleague. He doesn’t push, he doesn’t push, he doesn’t want to be the center of attention.: Damiano David and Victoria De Angelis take care of that. But in these years Thomas Raysthe guitarist of Maneskin, together with his instrument he has earned considerable credibility on the field, as demonstrated by the endorsements of these rock giants. Gaining more and more centrality even within the group.

What then? He was the one who founded the band, during high school, together with his classmate Victoria De Angelis. Damiano came later. Victoria had already had dealings with the singer in another band: she had kicked him out because “he was too pop”, while she wanted to play metal music, hard and edgy. About Thomas, who was just 16 when Maneskin found themselves from the sidewalk of Via del Corso to the stage of X Factor in 2017, the singer said: “Thomas has the imagination of a child. He is the smallest and the super creative. He is the type that if you give him a guitar in his hand, after five days you will still find him there in the same position playing”.

During the concerts of the band’s latest tour, the one that started with the release of the album “Rush!” and ended a few days ago in Paris, before the break that the band decided to take (Victoria has already released her official debut single as a DJ, “Get up bitch! Shake ya ass”; Damiano should soon release an entire album written with hitmakers such as Jason Evigan, Ryan Daly, Conor McDonough, who has previously worked alongside Madonna, Maroon 5, Demi Lovato), he carved out more space for himself than in the group’s previous live shows, even allowing himself very long ones.solos: “He always wants to do so many,” jokes Victoria. It was she who gave him, during the X Factor days, the nickname of “Er Cobra”. Regarding the meaning, the bassist glosses over it: “It’s exactly what each of us is maliciously imagining at this very moment.”

“I find it quite interesting that he uses a loop station, one of those pedals that allow you to record a small part, in this case two chords, and just play them. It’s not something new, it’s certainly been done by other guitarists. However compared to the classic guitar solo where only the guitar remains or there is a base, such a spartan solution is interesting. It’s a clear desire to recall a certain classic world of rock”, he says Claudio Cicolin, owner of the largest Italian YouTube channel dedicated to guitar teaching, which has 270 thousand subscribers and 58 million total views, analyzing a solo by the guitarist during a concert in San Francisco in November 2022.

“Thomas touches on a B flat here. In A minor, the B flat is the most delicate, the most critical of all the notes we can choose. It is dissonant. When he first touched it, it made me think it was a mistake. But then he returns to it several times and this made me think it was a stylistic choice. .It seems pretty obvious to me that it’s a solo inspired by Jack Frusciante’s crooked and slanted style, so I think it was a deliberate choice.”, says the musician.

“I love my instrument, I’ve been studying guitar since I was a child, first classical and then electric. And I’ve been playing in a band since I was 12,” Thomas said in an interview with Cosmopolitan. He inherited his passion for rock from his father, who worked as a photographer for the magazine Metal Shock.: “He was the one who passed on to me the passion for music through vinyl, CDs and concerts, from Iron Maiden to Anthrax, passing through Metallica”. He says he draws inspiration from Jimmy Page and Slash: “But I also loved Jimi Hendrix a lot, the way he composed his songs was absolutely incredible.

.And one of my biggest influences is John Frusciante from the Red Hot Chili Peppers – he told Guitar World, one of the most widely read magazines in the world by fans of the six strings, which interviewed him – I paid a lot of attention to the way he could play, with so much sensitivity and creativity. I also really like Joe Bonamassa, but his style is very different from everything I do”. In almost all of Maneskin’s songs there is a lot of Thomas’s work, from that “Zitti e buoni” which in 2021, after the victory at the Sanremo Festival and Eurovision, catapulted the rock band to the top of the world charts, to ballads like “Timezone” (embellished with his clean arpeggios) and “The loneliest”.

Speaking about her role among Damiano, Victoria and drummer Ethan Torchio, Raggi says: “When you’re the only guitarist, you have a lot of responsibility because you’re the most harmonious instrument in the band.. You have to build songs and hold the music together, but you also have to throw in fills, riffs and solos. That’s an important role. Someone like Frusciante gave me a lot of ideas on how to handle my job as the only guitarist in a band.”.

Among the guitars he plays most often on stage is the Fender Relic Strat: “But my main guitar is a Squier, not a Strat. It’s one of the oldest in Japan. I used to only play Fender Strats. For me, the Stratocaster is a complete instrument: you can play funk, rock, metal. I’ve also experimented with other types of guitars, though.” And speaking of the group’s success, he explains: “Now electronic music and rap are all the rage. And then we get on stage and play. It’s a strange thing for kids our age.But at our live shows there are also many grown-ups: to them we perhaps remind you of old rock bands that make a mess on stage. We unite generations. And it’s beautiful to see 18-year-old kids with their dads at our concerts.”