That time Franco Battiato participated in the Eurovision

It is one of the best known episodes among the least known, of Franco Battiato’s career, who left us four years ago. In 1984 the Sicilian singer -songwriter, in the midst of his success after albums such as “The Master’s voice”, “The Ark of Noah” and “Lost horizons” and Hit written for colleagues such as Russian Juni (in 1982 had climbed the charts with his “A summer at the sea”) and Milva (he bears the signature of Battiato “Alexander Platz”), he agrees to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest, representing on the stage of the international event, Italy in duet with another of its muses, Alice (who had won the Sanremo Festival, three years earlier, with “For Elisa”).

At the Théâtre Municipal of Luxembourg, which that year hosts the continental singing race, won the previous year by the ambassador of the Grand Duchy Corinne Hermès with “Si la Vie Est Cadeau”, Battiato and Alice present themselves with “The trains of Tozeur”, a song signed by the same Sicilian singer -songwriter together with Saro Cosentino (for the text) and his right arm music). The song is a piece in pure battiato style, which in references high and low mixes: the title of the piece refers to Tozeur, an ancient Chott El Jerid shopping center, in Tunisia, on the edge of the Sahara desert, surrounded by a salty lake whose fumes can give hallucinations to the wayfarers, and at the end of the song the choir sings in German a fragment of the text of ” Magico ”by Mozart (” DOCH WIR WOLLEN IHN DIR ZEIGEN, UND DU WIRST “). It is a success, even if it does not allow the duo to conquer the victory: they classify fifths on nineteen participants (and the individual achieves a fair success in sales throughout Europe), the best Italian result at the Eurovision in ten years (Riccardo Fogli, the previous year, with “For Lucia” had just classified himself, and better than the couple had managed to do only Wess and Dori Ghezzi in 1975, with “Era”. classified).

The history of Franco Battiato’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest, who remained in the oblivion for decades, re -emerged when Skyarte in 2020 broadcast a special on the Sicilian singer -songwriter, who in a passage recalled that experience. Before the special, already in 2016, on the occasion of the joint tour together with Alice, with whom he returned to share the stages for what would prove to be one of his latest tournaments (in 2017, a few months after that series of concerts, Battiato’s management canceled all his live performances), the voice of “white flag” had remembered that parenthesis of his career:

“In 1984 the Emi, our record company, pushed why we went to the Eurofestival. Neither she nor did we want: ‘But which euro -festival? We don’t care at all’. I insisted and we finally took it as a holiday to have a little fun. So before going there was a great meeting. They made their predictions: ‘Let’s go quiet. Spain will give us the 12 points and so they will also make France. The vote was a very funny experience.

Franco Battiato and Alice got 70 points in total, as many as the Belgian Jacques Zegers with “Next La Vie”. Although the song was among the best in the race that year – still under the videos on YouTube there are many comments of Eurovision enthusiasts who speak of “The Tozeur trains” as one of the most beautiful pieces of the whole history of the event – Battiato, the reporters present in Luxembourg told it, did nothing to make themselves nice to the public and the press and only at the suggestion of the Commissioner Rai, Antonio De Robertis, Antonio De Robertis, He accepted to go on stage by removing his sunglasses he used to wear in that period (“to have more charisma and symptomatic mystery”?). To win that edition were the Swedes Herreys with “Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley” (145 points), second came the Irish Linda Martin with “Terminal 3” (137 points) and third the Spanish Bravo with “Lady, Lady” (106 points). Small curiosity: in 1984 a Finnish version of the song was published and to record the female voice was the Finnish singer Seija Simola. In 2015, however, the duo Sasha & Davy would have proposed a cover in Dutch entitled “Eeuwig Bij Elkaar”.