Tutti Pfenomeni: «I will always challenge the status quo»
«It seems like a singer’s album to me. It’s no longer the record of an irreverent child peeing off an overpass. It’s no longer a game”, says Tutti Fenomeni when talking about “Monedì”, his new album, which comes out today. Whether this is indeed the case, time will tell. Of course, the opening verses of “La Ragazza di Vittorio”, the first song on the album, in which the Roman singer-songwriter repeats “anal sex, oral sex, vaginal sex” like a mantra, seem a bit to betray the declared intentions and bring everything back to a field of play and irreverence that the former pupil of Niccolò Contessa says he wants to overcome, rather than marking a real passage of maturity compared to the two previous works. But Giorgio Quarzo Guarascio, this is the real name of the former trapper who became a sui generis singer-songwriter, who after being forged by the mind of I Cani at the time of the debut album “Merce funebre” in 2020 and the subsequent “Privilegerare” in 2022 saw the partnership with his mentor dissolve and found shelter among the flashes of Giorgio Poi, insists: «Challenging the status quo is something I will do always. Opening an album with those verses on a 60s production is a strong choice, against the bigotry of Italy. That is the song that makes the most sense on the entire album: it is linked more than all the others to the unfair and mortifying times in which we live. Sex is a metaphor for everything. Scrolling on social media, the digital drug. I know it may be a meme, but a meme for a good cause.”
“Monday” arrives four years after “Rare Privilege”. You define it as “a record of salvation and survival, a resurrection”. What has happened to Tutti Phenomeni in recent years?
«After the end of the partnership with Niccolò Contessa, the ground fell from under me. I reacted. This album is a Monday. God said light and there was light, and he saw that it was good. Monday is the day the week starts again. It also applies to my journey, metaphorically: it’s a restart.”
Had the collaboration with Contessa been consummated?
“Yes. To save the human relationship we had to stop collaborating. Niccolò had a great need to go back to doing his things. That was the real reason. And as a result he had become intolerant of me. The breakup was hard, but relations between us are still good. We returned to working together last year when I launched the “Radio Guarascio” project.”
To Giorgio Poi, who took over the production department from Contessa, how did you get there?
«The esteem I had for him was also known to him. We have the drummer in common, Francesco Aprili. At that stage I was looking for another producer of the same level as Contessa. One evening I was in a pub in Rome. I was looking for a seat, but the place was full. I was about to leave when suddenly I saw someone waving his arms, calling me: it was him. He made me sit at his table. I made him listen to some auditions. Initially we were supposed to work together on just one single, but instead the whole album came out. Being produced by him was empowering.”
In what sense?
«I was the one who looked for him. And I didn’t want to disappoint him.”
What did Giorgio Poi bring to your music?
«A Copernican revolution: we put the lyrics in the background, focusing on the production, the arrangements, the sounds. Compared to “Merce funebre” and “Privilege Rare” this is a more ethereal, luminous album. The chords are always refined, the drums are all played: the pieces have a style that I define as retro. I feel like I’ve taken not one, but two steps forward.”
“If I look in the mirror I see a clown”, says a passage from “The Happiness of the Dog”. Why so hard?
«It was a decade in which I had a lot of fun, but I was enjoyed by others, dissipating. I also got myself very high with the use of alcohol, substances. In the mirror I see a clown because I feel guilty. I try to atone, to move forward. Now my lucid decade begins.”
Are you artistically pure?
“I hope to become one.”
What are you doing wrong?
«I steal a lot. I don’t cite sources. I’m demagogic, almost.”
“Col tuo nome” will be on the soundtrack of Susanna Nicchiarelli’s new film: will we see you again as an actor, after your experience in Pietro Castellitto’s “Enea”?
«Not in the film. As an actor in general I don’t know. After the film with Pietro I received offers for auditions. It felt like going back to school, though: I was a bit traumatized.”
Do you see yourself on a stage like Sanremo?
«I would have to change one, two or three words of the song. But I am precisely those two words.”
Have you tried and didn’t agree to compromise?
“No. I liked the idea of knowing if I might be interested in that schedule. But they don’t even know who they are. However, I would have seen a piece like “Vanagloria” on that stage: but quoting Berlusconi on Rai would have been unlikely. Seeing this year’s cast, however, I’m glad I didn’t even try.”
