Pop music and freedom: Biagio Antonacci interviews Giorgio then

Biagio Antonacci studied. All the lyrics of the nine songs contained in “Schegge”, Giorgio’s new album then: he underlined with the pen the passages that hit him the most, as a professor who reads with curiosity the theme of one of his students, was printed one by one. And there are even votes. “There are Mogoliane sentences: Mogol was the great revolution of Italian music,” he says. But unlike a professor, Antonacci does not have a judging attitude. He is authentically intrigued by the reference imagination of Giorgio then, who follows and esteemed since unsuspected times: in 2023 after meeting the singer -songwriter, Novarese of birth, Roman of growth, Bolognese by adoption, asked him to write for him the text of “The beginning”, the title track of his latest album with which he told the birth of his third son, Carlo. “We talked about that event in a restaurant in Bologna. I wondered to tell that moment of mine because if I had done it I would have come out a little lucid thing,” he tells him. After two years, the author of “If I, if she”, “if it is true that you are there”, “how much time still” and “Iris” is not in the skin at the idea of ​​interviewing for Rockol Giorgio then on the occasion of the release of his new album, who arrived in the shops and on the platforms last Friday.
(Claudio Cabona and Mattia Marzi)

Giorgio, the song that struck me the most is the first, “legs”. I have known you for five years, you have lived in Bologna and I met you here. I attended you in various stages of your life and I fell in love with your personality. The album opens with a Mogolian phrase: “I turn with the finger on the scotch tape”. In the song, you talk about being at home: “At home I don’t go back to us anymore”. Maybe why did you want to get out of yourself?

Yes. Until that period I had been a lot around, between tours and various commitments. What I’m talking about is a figured house. I don’t really feel like me. There is an identity crisis and the story: the theme returns here and there in the songs.

There is a piece in which you say you try to recognize you.

Yes, in “Men against insects”: “I look at the mirror before I get out. Yes, it’s me”. He also returns to “Les Jeux Sons Faits”.

The awareness of recognizing it for me is fantastic: it means being aware of who we are. But let’s go back to “leg games”: there is the figure of your father who says he will have a protection towards you. It is the first album you do after the loss of your dad. As happened to me in 2014.
In the song that opens the disc he quotes the loss as a form of inspiration. Suddenly it is no longer outside, but inside. It was a central event in the writing of the disc.

In the verse of that song you say: “Little petrol in the tanks/I put my eyes inside your/how do you not see me? I’m here/are at least half”. It reminds me of the nights of my adolescence in the suburbs, in Rozzano. It reminds me of the province. Is it an image that I created, interpreting the song in my own way, or is it real?

Yes, it’s yours, but it is still beautiful that everyone sees us what they want. I had understood petrol as energy. You have seen a literal interpretation, an image of your life. It is the beauty of the songs, which when they detach from you are no longer yours: they become of all.

You wrote and produced the disc yourself, also playing the tools. What leads you to produce a song, from a simple harmony, and then to want to end it and to close it alone?

I have always worked like this, in truth. Initially I did it out of necessity. Then when I learned to do it, I continued.

Do you remember the first time you did it?

Yes. I was in London, in that period of my life. But I had not yet organized myself as it should (laughs, ed). I bought a pair of speakers, the microphones, the sound card.

The most beautiful thing that an artist may have is independence.

This is the case: it’s nice not to depend on anyone.

The beauty of this album is that it has a characteristic sound: it is mature. Winds blow. The battery of “There is no life above the 3000 Kelvin” reminds me of those of the “Trespass” of the Genesis. A masterpiece.

What makes it characteristic is the fact that it is not a beat, but a real part of battery: it is very different.

The sound of the album reminds me, in certain passages, that of the productions of Mauro Malavasi, one of the first real independent producers: a real experimenter. I worked there at the beginning of my career, when I engraved albums such as “Liberate me” and the eponymous “Biagio Antonacci”, those of “I don’t know who to believe” and “if I, if she”. He mixed during the production phase. He did a great job on the sound, with airy reverberations, different from today’s pop that leaves little room for imagination and that lacks breath. There was his hand also in Luca Carboni’s records, Lucio Dalla.

They are records, those, who are part of my childhood ratings. Growing up, then, I started to inevitably listen to different albums and artists than those who listened to mine. But when I went to live abroad at the age of twenty, I reconciled with my origins and with the language of my land. I also wrote a song, “Italian music”.

The album saw the supervision of Laurent Brancowitz of the Phoenix. Do you have an international vision?

Yes. After all, I spent my twenty years abroad and made the Conservatory in London. I was exposed to a way of living and approaching different music. Inevitably there has remained a link with international productions.

But there is also a touch of Italianness. In “Men against insects” the ending is Morricone.

I have listened to him a lot, especially in recent years: I am happy that you see references to his compositions in the songs of this album.

What are the “splinters” for you? I have the feeling that these songs are somehow impregnable and unpredictable.
My feeling is exactly this. In recent years a lot have changed. For a long time I tried to keep everything under control, but then something was changed because there was an explosion inside and around me. There was a devastation … but then a freedom also took over. In destroying yourself, we lighten.

“An adjective, a verb, a word” for me is a ten song.
Thank you very much. I see that you really wrote it close to the lyrics of the song, in your notes. You gave the votes to the songs … (smiles, editor’s note).

Certain. I studied. I remember when we met on the street in Bologna. We lived not far away, but we didn’t know each other. And we laid the foundations for what would have been our collaboration. For me they wrote Paolo Conte, Franco Battiato and you, Giorgio. When you had your family dramas, I tried to stay close to you …
I remember him. Returning here, in Bologna, is always special. I see it brighter, even if in winter it can be very cold.

What is pop for you? For me it is a sound, it is not just a certain way of writing. You are 100%pop.
I haven’t really listened only to pop music. But certainly there can be pop elements in songs that are not totally. Morricone is pop. For me, a piece is “pop” when it is effective. For me it is “pop” what you want to deliver the access keys to the listener of what she is doing. And we must never be ashamed to give those keys. It is not a stylistic discourse, but just for accessibility. Miles Davis who seems to be very distant from pop, in reality, is one who for example the keys has given them, all right.

The story of love and relationships, even if we do it differently, unites us.
You have lived love in an evidently passionate way. You are an explosive, I an implosive. My way of living relationships is constantly updated.