The vinyl that unites Dalla and Battisti is already a Holy Grail

The vinyl that unites Lucio Battisti and Lucio Dalla for the first time is already a sort of Holy Grail for fans of Italian songwriting. The album was available for pre-order on the Sony Music Store website for only two days, March 4th and 5th, on the occasion of the birthdays of the two artists, born a few hours apart from each other in 1943. The album is officially released today, March 27th, but it is practically impossible to find anywhere: only those who purchased it between March 4th and 5th will receive it.

It is a limited and numbered edition 45 rpm single in 12 inch format in blue/lavender marble colour, which brings together two symbolic songs from the production of Lucio Dalla and Lucio Battisti. On Side A there is “4 March 1943” by Lucio Dalla. On Side B “The gardens of March” by Lucio Battisti.

The illustrated cover is signed by Matteo Berton. The personalized internal envelopes visually tell the ideal meeting between the two Lucios, in a symbolic dialogue between songs, eras and sensibilities. In the package there is also an unpublished text by Vincenzo Mollica, which tells of “those magical hours” in which two absolute geniuses of our music were born.

Dalla and Battisti never collaborated with each other. This is also why the album, posthumously, is a small cult object. In 1984 Dalla proposed to Battisti to tour together. The two met in a restaurant. The Bolognese singer-songwriter came from the great success of “Come è profound il mare”, “Lucio Dalla” and “Dalla”, but after the exploit at the end of the 70s he was going through a particular creative phase, as evidenced by records with less commercial impact such as “1983” and “Viaggi ordini”. Battisti, however, with “A woman for a friend” and “Una giorno uggiosa” had recently ended the collaboration with Mogol. Now allergic to certain dynamics of the world of recording and entertainment more generally, two years earlier he had published “E Gia”, the first album written without his historic companion, and shortly thereafter he would send “Don Giovanni” to the shops, the first album resulting from the collaboration with Pasquale Panella, in the name of sonic and textual experimentation. In that restaurant Dalla spoke to Battisti about a tour together, which should have been called simply “I due lucio”, and about a possible album. It didn’t go well: «He listened without giving me any importance – Dalla said – then he finished eating, wiped his mouth and said that it couldn’t be done, that he felt very changed and that he was moving on to a completely different musical research».