The road of “Everywhere you protect” by Vinicio Capossela
On January 20, 2006, twenty years ago today, “Ovunque proteggi” was released, perhaps the most loved album of a vast and important discography such as that of Vinicio Capossela. The singer-songwriter had not released unreleased albums for 5 years, and undertook a journey through places and sounds that led to a historic work: a few days after its release he took Capossela to 1st place in the album sales charts; “Ovunque proteggi”, the song, still closes his concerts today.
Giovanni Ansaldo, journalist for Internazionale, tells the story and the characters of that album in “The road of Vinicio Capossela. A journey in the footsteps of Ovunque proteggi”, a book by Nottetempo of which we are publishing the prologue, courtesy of the publisher. From the Giant to the Wonder Wizard, from Milan to Calitri to Sardinia to Sicily, the book retraces the journey – physical and mental – of a historic album of Italian music.
“Oh, there it is.” In front of Vinicio Capossela there is a fox, which looks at us and then runs away into the vegetation. “For a couple of days I’ve seen her hanging around my house, I think she’s looking for food,” says the singer-songwriter.
We are taking a walk in the countryside just outside Calitri, in Alta Irpinia. Capossela’s parents were born in these parts, and he occasionally spends a few days there. It’s a late afternoon on a winter Tuesday. On the horizon you can glimpse the sunset, and further in the distance a series of snow-capped peaks. It is our first meeting to retrace the history of Protect everywhereCapossela’s sixth album, released on 20 January 2006. An album of which he is very fond, which represented a fundamental step for Italian music of the new millennium, pointing the way to a generation of singer-songwriters. An album that surprisingly reached first place in the charts, in an era when there was no Spotify and records – especially CDs at that time – were still really selling.
“Protect everywhere it was a record different from the others. Recording it was kind of an adventure. And then it reached many people, who understood and adopted it right away. Contact was established with a new generation of audiences, who gathered at the concerts and joined those who already followed me. Furthermore, 2006 was a special year, not just for me. It perhaps coincided with the last period of collective euphoria in our country before the financial crisis. Italy won the World Cup, there was the White Night in Rome, during which I and the musicians who accompanied me gave an unforgettable concert on the Pincio terrace. It was a unique, unrepeatable season,” explains Capossela, who wears a large white scarf over a black jacket to protect himself from the cold, as he walks along a path surrounded by trees. On his head, as always, is a hat.
In January 2005 Capossela was ready to work on a record entitled Low life. His previous album, the acclaimed Crank songswas released in October 2000 and for some time his record company, Warner, had been pushing to release another one. At a certain point, however, something clicked in his head. He called his agent at the time, Ettore Caretta, and told him not to make any commitments for the rest of the year. He wanted to shelve the project Low life and make a new album from scratch, recording the samples of the songs while he set out on the road, as he says, “where the wonders of the insomniacs lead us”. He wanted the work to take place in different places, for it to be a traveling record. A bit like Pier Paolo Pasolini had done for Medea, a film of which the director and writer of Friulian origin had shot some scenes in Cappadocia, others in Syria and still others in Pisa. Warner not only satisfied him: they gave him carte blanche, or almost. And so the singer-songwriter set off, without having a clear idea of where he wanted to go, but convinced that he would find his destination along the way.
For the first time Capossela did not have at his side the historic manager, Renzo Fantini, from whom he had amicably parted ways a couple of years earlier. This time he had decided to do things his way. No producer, no arranger, at least in the first phase of production. At his side there was almost always the sound engineer and producer Marco Tagliola, former member of Paolo Benvegnù’s Scisma, who followed him with a portable mini studio in his vicissitudes. What guides them, above all else, is the desire to explore, to experiment, to embrace as many places and people as possible. Hence the title: Protect everywherean expression that recalls this traveling spirit, but which also brings to mind the expression “Protect me everywhere” which often accompanies holy cards, because Protect everywhere it is a record where the sacred dialogues with the profane, where the present (that of 2006, but also that of 2026) is reflected in the archaic.
Along the path that led him to create the songs Capossela met other people, some of whom became friends: for example the sinologist and expert on Russian culture Marco Cervetti, known as “the Giant”; the American punk magician Christopher Wonder, a character who seems to have come out of a Pogues song; the guitarist Alessandro “Asso” Stefana, twenty-four years old at the time, who played on various parts of the album and later became one of the singer-songwriter’s most trusted collaborators; the producer Taketo Gohara, today one of the most sought after on the Italian scene, who in 2005 was a young sound engineer.
To these were added some old acquaintances, such as the artist Jacopo Leone, who oversaw the graphic design of the album and provided useful advice; guitarist Marc Ribot, famous for having played for years with Tom Waits and who had collaborated with Capossela since the days of Dance of San Vito; the producers Mauro Pagani – famous for having played in pfm and for having written the masterpiece Creuza de mä together with Fabrizio De André – and Pasquale Minieri, without whom it would probably have been more difficult to complete the work. And the trumpeter and composer Roy Paci.
It all happened in a few months, in a breakneck creative and physical race which, seen in retrospect, created an ideal geography still, in a certain sense, to be explored.
Courtesy of the publisher: “The road of Vinicio Capossela. A journey in the footsteps of Ovunque proteggi” by Giovanni Ansaldo is published by Nottetempo
