Ivan Graziani - The Guitarist's Treasure

The start of the 1970s is remembered in Italy for the definitive consecration of the so-called "engaged" singer-songwriter figure. The flourishing ferment of the Sixties had given us the French-inflected existentialism typical of the Genoese school, a singer-songwriter tradition in line with Italy's own melodic heritage (complete with amorous yearning), the one that drew on the then-dominant beat movement, and finally the militant folk strand traceable first to Cantacronache and later to the "I dischi del sole" label.

In parallel to these scenes, in a basement in Rome's Trastevere district, the Folkstudio opened its doors: a true crossroads of popular cultures ranging from Black music (whether American or directly African) to South American sounds, jazz, and Irish and American folk. It is mainly here that, spurred on by the demands of '68 and the echoes of American protest song, a young generation of artists emerged who, with simple musical formulas, made political and social themes their reason for being. While the rest of musical Italy could be divided between the heirs of the Sanremo-style pop song and a newborn but already significant progressive movement, the real counterpart to this new kind of singer-songwriter was the unusual pairing of Battisti-Mogol. Singer-songwriter music, yes, perhaps not as politically disengaged as it was made out to be at the time, but certainly more inclined toward the individual's experience, with particular attention to an intimately human dimension rather than a collective one. Musically too, the contrast between the new singer-songwriter model and the archetypal Battisti holds up well: instrumentation and arrangements stripped to the essentials on one side, orchestras and major recording studios on the other.

The great absentee from the singer-songwriter debate was rock, which, at the dawn of the Seventies, was instead being fought over by survivors of the beat generation and the new progressive bands: for both, however, lyrics were mostly functional, if not merely accessory, to the musical aims. But it was in the wake of the newly founded Numero Uno label - set up by Mogol and Battisti themselves with the help of producer Alessandro Colombini - that the seeds were sown for new alchemies to take shape. The label's roster included, besides Battisti of course, a sizeable prog contingent (Pfm, Formula 3, Acqua Fragile, Jumbo, Il Volo), as well as performers of the Mogol-Battisti songbook such as Adriano Pappalardo and Bruno Lauzi. It's behind this scene, amid endless crossovers of innovative songwriters, talented musicians and assorted mavericks, that something collides, sparks, blends and explodes: and we can't leave out the Cramps label roster either (Eugenio Finardi, Claudio Rocchi, Alberto Camerini) - because, even starting from different premises, the historic names of the rock-singer-songwriter strain were born right there, and they answer to the names of Alberto Radius, Edoardo Bennato. And Ivan Graziani.

Although some magazines of the time credit his birth to the open sea, on a ferry between Civitavecchia and Olbia, Ivan was actually born in Teramo on 6 October 1945, to a Sardinian mother and an Abruzzese father. The latter, Paolo, is the "wedding photographer" immortalised in "Io mi annoio" ("Cicli e tricicli", 1991), with his studio in Teramo on "Campo della fiera" ("La città che io vorrei", 1973, and "Ballad for Four Seasons", 1976) - lyrics that are just two of the countless pieces of lived experience fitted into our man's composite autobiographical puzzle.

His special artistic gifts emerged well before adolescence, when he was given a drum kit as a present, which became his favourite pastime alongside drawing. This went on until his older brother left a guitar in the corner of the room they shared at the time. Sergio picked it up just long enough to realise it wasn't for him: much better to stick to his studies, which would lead him to become a respected teacher (could he be the lazy character who "quotes the classics by heart"? We'll get to that).

A whole world seemed to open up for the family's youngest child, as the new toy joined his coloured pencils, strummed so relentlessly that his family banished him to the courtyard, into the small shed his father used for his nighttime photography work. What actually went on within those cramped walls remains truly obscure - far more so than the darkroom that was its only witness. What were those sounds heard from outside, and how did they get in there? We can't know for sure, but it's certain that, somehow, figures like Big Joe Turner, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis forced their way into that world of dreams destined to become reality.

His adolescence was spent between the Istituto d'Arte in Ascoli Piceno, the streets of Teramo (where football was replaced by contests over who could play guitar loudest and fastest), and the bedroom of a peer his own age who studied piano, Gianni Dale, son of the orchestra musician Nino, a singer and saxophonist well known in Abruzzo, in whose band - the Modernists - Graziani, just past eighteen, would make his entrance. The booking wasn't the result of any favour, since the elder Dale discovered the young man's talent not within his own home but on stage, during a school music competition in which his son was also competing. Could the tale of this life-changing encounter fail to turn up, fictionalised, in a later song? "We were singing at a friend's place when a man from the back of the room came limping toward me. 'The last war left me with a souvenir. You know how to play and I'm the bandleader' he said. 'Come sing with me, my name's Nino. Nino Dale and his Modernists'" ("Ivan Graziani", 1983).

What travelled far and wide across village festivals, cruise ships and holiday resorts was a baby-faced, self-taught rocker ("going to guitar school would mean limiting my creativity," he would later say) who had grown up playing an acoustic with the ferocity of an electric guitar - a ferocity he now had the chance to put at the service of professional musicians. Could there be a better training ground? Better, perhaps not, but every bit as stimulating. And with the urge to take the next big leap.

After finishing secondary school, his life continued in Urbino, where he completed his studies in graphic arts. It's 1966, and Italy is in the full throes of artistic emancipation. For a couple of years, beat groups aping the British Invasion had been flooding the scene - acts like The Rokes, Equipe 84 and New Dada, who brought the psychedelic hues of the Yardbirds, the rhythm'n'blues of the Rolling Stones, and the multicoloured pop of the Animals to the forefront of the new generation. But also the more or less lysergic songs coming from the United States, with The Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys. Urbino isn't exactly the centre of the world, but it is still a university town where it's easy to find someone to share a passion for music with. That someone answers to the name of Velio Gualazzi (father and future manager of Raphael, winner of the 2011 edition of Sanremo Giovani), though strictly speaking this isn't a meeting of musicians. If, as we've seen, Ivan's background was already that of a young professional, Velio was merely an aspiring drummer who hadn't even tried his hand at a drum kit yet. Quite a gap to close, and yet his sheer determination was the spark that lit a bond destined to blossom a few months later, when the young man managed to buy the instrument of his dreams and practise just enough to become the linchpin of the rhythm section of Ivan e i Saggi, the first name the newborn group gave itself.

More reckless than wise: the third member had, up to that point, an artistic path - if we can call it that - very similar to the drummer's. Walter Monacchi met the other two at a party, and joined the project thanks to the magnificent bluff of the single bass line in his repertoire, which was enough to pass a rank beginner off as a virtuoso. Nevertheless, in his case too, willpower was the means by which all three reached the level needed to play venues up and down the region; and so the exposure gained from countless nights spent playing (especially at the popular Altromondo club in Rimini) earned them the attention of CBS record executives: 1968 was just around the corner, and the trio entered the recording studio under a brand new name, Anonima Sound.

It was with the b-side of their first single, "Fuori Piove", that the newborn group took its first leap toward wider audiences: "Speak Up" (that's the title) caught the ear of popular radio hosts Renzo Arbore and Gianni Boncompagni, and the resulting airplay paved the way for their entry into the Cantagiro. This was the most important song contest in the country alongside the Sanremo Festival, but for a debuting band it could actually prove even more effective, being a touring competition that guaranteed many more performances and longer-lasting exposure. The song, an orchestral beat ballad that showcased the unmistakable high timbre of Ivan's voice - never once straying into falsetto - placed last, but it was the springboard for the group's professional career. Other singles followed: "L'amore mio, l'amore tuo" and "I tetti" that same year, "Josephine" - chosen for the 1969 edition of the Cantagiro - and "Mille ragioni", and, again in 1969, "Ombre vive" (with lyrics penned by Mogol) and "Girotondo impossibile", which marked a shift toward the nascent progressive pop sound, helped along by the arrival in the band of keyboardist Roberto Carlotto, known as "Hunka Munka", who would play a significant role later in the story.

For Ivan, it was an extremely conflicted phase: on one hand, the thrill of having reached a first goal of popularity; on the other, the frustration of the little creative space the record industry seemed willing to grant him as a songwriter. This unease led him to make a few mistakes, such as turning down a song offered to him by Mogol himself for the Numero Uno label: the gorgeous "Non credere", which Mina would shortly after have reason to thank him for, taking it to success with millions in sales. The amusing thing is that the track had still been recorded by the quartet, showcasing genuinely sharp arrangements - the splendid Procol Harum-style keyboard carpet laid down by "Hunka Munka" - and a vocal performance that would probably have been worth the consecration. Fate, combined with a touch of stubbornness on the part of the man himself, decided to postpone his real brush with fame: "Non credere" would be released as a (very) posthumous CD single in 2004, credited to Ivan alone, in one of those operations halfway between a tribute and salvage work from the bottom of the warehouse.

In 1970 the band set about recording their full-length debut, most of which was indeed recorded (though never released), but alongside the leader's doubts came small internal frictions: what ultimately put an end to the project was the call-up for military service, which Ivan used as a convenient pretext to distance himself from his bandmates, who nonetheless tried to carry on without him. The frontman from Teramo was replaced by the two guitarists Massimo Meloni and Lamberto Clementi, and Walter Monacchi also left, with Piero Cecchini stepping in. Under the banner of Anonima Sound Ltd, after the 1971 single "Io prendo amore/Cerchi", the progressive album "Red Tape Machine" came out in 1972; among its many session players, it features Ivan himself on two tracks in the unexpected role of bassist, a sign that his personal relationship with his old bandmates remained more than good. But while the Anonima Sound train reached its terminus here, Ivan's journey had yet to begin.

In the early Seventies he often found himself around Milan, where he built friendships that blossomed into artistic collaborations. Besides his guest appearance on the Anonima Sound Ltd record, Ivan played a central role on Roberto "Hunka Munka" Carlotto's album "Dedicato a Giovanna G." (1972), on which, besides playing bass and handling all the arrangements, he also wrote most of the music. Despite a few naive beat-era holdovers and perhaps excessive pomposity, the record stands out for its innovative use of instruments. Carlotto, who had worked as a session musician in England and was about to join Dik Dik, was equipped with all the latest electronic gadgetry, both in keyboards and electronic drums, and this - combined with his vocal exuberance and the musical flair of his arranger - still makes the album worth a place in any solid Italian prog collection.

Another LP on which Graziani played an essential role is the double album "Megalopolis" (1972) by his great friend Herbert Pagani. Almost stateless, eclectic (he had devoted himself to singer-songwriter fare since the Sixties, then worked as a TV actor, while also being a radio host, painter and sculptor), a French-speaking bilingual and a committed environmentalist, that year he too ventured into progressive rock, insisting on having Ivan by his side, and even hosted him on Radio Montecarlo, improvising innovative on-air segments with him for that job of deejaying which, within a couple of years, would have its baptism in Italy thanks to the advent of free radio.

That Milan had come to hold a significant place in his life is confirmed by the fact that it soon became home to his brand-new family. In the summer of 1972, in fact, he married Anna and moved there to rent a place, becoming a partner in a small venue in the Brera area where, unsurprisingly, he performed with his guitar. Under the pseudonym Rockleberry Roll he released the single "Drop Out/True Blue", marking a break both with the progressive sound of his recent collaborations and with the pop-beat of Anonima Sound; the choice of English was no accident, serving his decision to steer toward a melodic, British-style glam rock that would give free rein to the bluesy soul of his guitar.

The result was convincing enough that it was stretched into a full-length album, Desperation (1973), which, while not exactly a showcase of production polish, does establish a few defining traits of the singer-songwriter-rocker he would become. The somewhat too spartan conception is partly offset by his by-now familiar guitar skill and by the help of fine musicians like Roberto Carlotto and Nunzio Favia (already drummer with prog outfit Osage Tribe - a band in which a young Franco Battiato can be spotted - and later also Carlotto's bandmate in Dik Dik); but the songwriting too reveals a thoroughly respectable grounding, spanning choral pop ballads (the title track, "For Julia" and the Beatles-esque "Sometimes Maryanna", which we'll later find on his Italian-language debut album under the title "A volte in primavera"), sparkling rock'n'roll numbers ("Crystal Dale", "The Message", "Guitar Woman") and muscular updates of Sixties-style rock ("Give You All My Love").

Ivan would later be unduly saddled with the label of Italy's Elton John, when the only thing the two actually had in common was a taste for eccentric eyeglass frames; but if we wanted to dig up some trace of shared artistic identity, Desperation is the record where it can, at least in part, be found.

Another round, another pseudonym: in 1973, released only as a jukebox single, came the country-tinged track "Longer Is The Beach", credited to Ivan & The Transport. Aside from Tatotomaso's Guitar (1974), on which Ivan, in the guise of the mysterious Tatotomaso, dedicated eleven instrumental tracks to his newborn son (mostly covers arranged in a guitar-bar style, though his skill on the instrument shines through all the more), the final word on these off-the-cuff projects came with his true debut under his own name, and in Italian: La città che io vorrei (1973) was finally ready.

It doesn't take long to realize that, unlike the frantic projects of what was, to put it mildly, an overabundant period, this is the work on which the best energies of that time were concentrated. Flanked by his trusty friend Hunka Munka and his keyboards, and supported by his wife Anna, who supervised the lyrics (as she would do many more times in the future), the album was written and arranged entirely by Ivan himself, who lays out in naive form all the versatility that would come to define his career. Melancholy, self-deprecating humor, a taste for caricature, delicate watercolors of a provincial world lost in everyday life but certainly not in the heart: these are many of the ingredients on display in this city of dreams. And that's true from the cover onward, where he doesn't just "put his face" on it but something more - his own wedding photo, complete with relatives lined up for the shot. Melancholy, as mentioned, as in the splendid ballad that opens the album and gives it its title ("…sì lo so che non è vero, sì lo so ma son sincero, e non esiste più, non ritrovo più la città che io vorrei, è scomparsa ormai, ingoiata ormai…"), alternating between hushed moments and explosive choral bursts of Hammond organ, stitched together by flawless acoustic guitar. Then there are delicate sketches drawn from his early reading ("Tom Sawyer"), youthful dreams steeped in psychedelic beat ("Colori"), but above all unsettling tales of hidden lives: the idlers of "Nah Nah Nah" and the gritty rocker "L'ubriaco", and especially the cripple of "Il campo della fiera" who "sings songs and holds out his little plate," dreaming of being able to chase after love and after the life that is so miserably denied him.

But one cannot overlook "Luisa", for voice and guitar, a striking demonstration of how worn-out romantic clichés can be turned into disarming narrative twists: in the lyrics, the sweet and impeccable beloved, dressed in white, holding "Yves Saint Laurent cream" in her hands, ends up strangled with a silk stocking, presumably because of her excessive perfection. If it's true that the record carries a certain naïveté, it's equally true that its essential, at times bucolic colors fit like a glove on songs with an aura that is now fairy-tale-like, now amused, now playful, now melancholy.

This, then, is a highly original work that never achieves great popularity but does get radio play and solid critical response. Despite a few small concessions paid on the altar of exuberance, "La città che io vorrei" lands squarely among the central works of Graziani's artistic vision, so much so that it's hard to understand why, in some biographies, it is almost ignored or at best relegated among his less successful efforts. If anything, paradoxically, we'd be inclined to attribute that oversight to some of the episodes that immediately followed, precisely at the moment when Ivan would have - in theory - every collaborator and every artistic resource needed to do things on a grand scale.

What is certain is that Graziani's performances as an instrumentalist did not go unnoticed by his fellow musicians, so much so that over the following three years his talents became genuinely sought after. The first to think of him were the members of our internationally acclaimed group: PFM - freshly produced by prog guru Pete Sinfield and just back from their exploits at the Reading Festival in England, as well as a long and successful North American tour - were looking for a singer-guitarist who would let the other members focus on increasingly complex instrumental parts. Nothing came of it in the end, and the choice fell on Bernardo Lanzetti instead, but evidence of those sessions and of the collaboration that never fully materialized survives in the music of "From Under", the track that opens PFM's "Chocolate Kings" (1975), co-written by Ivan himself.

But the big opportunity was not long in coming, and it arrived in a thoroughly unplanned way. In 1975 he was on the hunt for a new record deal and, while making the rounds of Milan's rehearsal studios, found himself at an audition in the studios of Mogol's label Numero Uno, with which he had recorded the last single he played with Anonima Sound, "Ombre vive". While waiting for his turn, he strummed his guitar: in the next room was Lucio Battisti, who, intrigued, came in to see who was playing. Was it love at first sight, or rather the genuine instinct of the artist from Rieti? Either way, the guitarist from Abruzzo was immediately brought into the group of musicians recording Battisti's new album "La batteria, il contrabbasso, eccetera" (1976), laying the groundwork for the long-awaited turning point.

The recordings took place at Il Mulino, a farmhouse converted by Mogol into a cutting-edge recording studio in the middle of the so-called "poisonous Brianza" (in Anzano del Parco, near Como), where the artists and their partners lived day and night in close quarters, forging bonds of fellowship and, at times, friendship.

It's thanks to this singular setting, something like an artists' commune, that Ivan was able to count on Battisti's entire band for the recording of Ballad for Four Seasons (1976), which instead took place at the Fonorama Studios in Milan, due to damage suffered by Il Mulino following a flood. The line-up included Claudio Pascoli on production and horns, Lucio Fabbri on strings, an eighteen-year-old Walter Calloni on drums, Hugh Bullen on bass and Claudio Maioli on keyboards. Here we have a combo of jazz-trained virtuosos who, while on "La batteria..." they remained bound to the soft-disco atmospheres dictated by its charismatic author, carved out a much larger space for themselves on Ivan's album. Perhaps too large, judging by the final result, and not so much because of their technical skill, which does come through positively. What gets watered down is the style that, however immature, we had already come to recognize: Ballad for Four Seasons is a somewhat undecided work in terms of direction, as if the embarrassment of riches at its disposal had ended up muddling the ideas and preventing it from reaching a coherent result.

The title track ballad and "E sei così bella" - however fondly they're still regarded by the most devoted listeners - remain, lyrically too, caught up in the already familiar conventions of Seventies singer-songwriter fare; the vocal lines of "Il mio cerchio azzurro", "I giorni di novembre" and "Donna della terra" get carried along by the sumptuousness of the instrumentation without ever really landing anywhere; the rock rework of "Il campo della fiera" isn't bad, but loses out in comparison with the version recorded on the previous album; "La pazza sul fiume" is, frankly, rather uninspired. There are good songs too: the conversational "Come" highlights a maturity that's taking shape, "Dimmi ci credi tu" is the best balance between the clever virtuosity of its lead players (complete with a horn quotation from classical composer Franz Liszt's "Sogno d'amore") and a winning melodic sensibility, and finally "Trench" is a dazzling, cop-show-style instrumental that, just as it stands, anticipates the retro repertoire Calibro 35 would build in the 2000s. It's not a misstep, let alone a step backward, so much as a commendable attempt to adjust aim toward the right direction.

Thanks to the technical skills that everyone in the business now recognized, and the backing of record executives who believed in him, a number of new doors began to open. In 1976 he was called to Rome, along with Pascoli, Bullen, Calloni and Maioli, to play on the new album of an artist looking for confirmation after the previous year's double chart-topper (both LP and single, with "Lilly"): that Antonello Venditti destined to become his artistic sponsor, but also one of his closest friends. Antonello's album wouldn't quite manage it: for the Roman singer-songwriter, "Ullàlla" - on which Ivan also had a hand in the arrangements - marked a temporary commercial setback, but on the tour that followed the two would share the stage. A fine showcase, no doubt, and one that also strengthened their friendship, setting the stage for Venditti to return the favor by contributing to the production and arrangements of the Teramo rocker's next album, I Lupi (1977).

This is a pivotal work, since it brings together almost all the traits that would define the masterpieces to follow. And speaking of masterpieces, it's here that the discography delivers its first true heavyweight blow: "the white and blue tennis shoes, heavy breasts and red lips and the windbreaker..." The opening of the memory of Marta, with her smile and her hair "still as the lake," from "Lugano addio," is a frame worth more than a high-resolution 3D shot, in what becomes a moving whirlwind of interwoven recollections: the girl's passionate stories, the memory of his own childhood, the image of his father on the beach (“…le reti al sole/ i pescherecci in alto mare/conchiglie e stelle/ le bestemmie e il suo dolore…”), the sense of conscious disorientation brought on by absence (“…addio cantavi/ e non per falsa ingenuità/tu ci credevi/ e adesso anch’io che sono qua…”). And not least, the aching "po-po-po" of what might be called the perfect ballad, as well as his first hit-parade success: and to think that, incredibly, it was merely the "b-side" of a single whose "A" side featured the album's title track - good, but nowhere near as immediate.

Among the recurring themes in the lyrics of I Lupi, the irony glimpsed in his Italian-language debut, later set aside, now remains somewhat under the surface, appearing only as a bitter garnish to the first explicit bad story (of what would become a substantial series) narrated by Graziani. If it's true that the first victim of a tale that starts well and ends very badly is the innocent Luisa of "La città che io vorrei," in "Motocross" the narrative loses that surreal undercurrent to lodge itself in the everyday reality of a provincial setting already sketched out more than once. Within the exemplary frame of a semi-acoustic rock mantra and a brilliant lyrical device ("evviva il cross, evviva il motocross"), there's the magical encounter with a girl "thin as a reed" with "a girl's hips," who turns out to be the bait for the theft of his brand-new motorbike ("the yellow 250, Japanese make," bought on installments), complete with a beating dealt out by her accomplices in a secluded spot outside of town. Here, as on many occasions to come, the unfolding story proves to be as effective and complete as the screenplay for a short film, or better still, like the panels of a color comic strip.

Even though the core of the band backing him remains largely unchanged, the departure of Claudio Pascoli (and his horns) from the production, and the simultaneous arrival of Venditti, mark a further personalization of the sound, which aligns itself with the conventions of a more fitting singer-songwriter rock, dominated by Ivan's "one guitar," gliding effortlessly between intricate acoustic arpeggios and razor-sharp electric riffs.

Among the other episodes worth noting is the sinister ballad that gives the album its title, with its wolves that harden feelings and serve as a metaphor for a war fought not only with weapons but in everyday life; the raw "Il topo nel formaggio," which may not be as effective lyrically but more than makes up for it with its varied instrumental passages; and then the Venditti-esque "Eva," the seductive thief with dark torments, one of the many successful female portraits found throughout his whole body of work. Among the more dispensable tracks, we'd point to the dialect piece "Ninna nanna dell'uomo," too flattened out into a melancholy folksiness, and the uncertain hermeticism of "Il soldo," which closes the album.

There are times when an album cover anticipates, in terms of inspiration, what you're about to hear: the cover of Lazy (1978) is one of those cases. The pig with glasses that dominates the artwork is signed by Mario Convertino, who captures with his usual brilliance two characteristic traits of Graziani: his sharp irony, and the quirk represented by the enormous red glasses that had, by then, become his trademark.

The artist who walked into the studio alongside his old Mulino bandmates (including Claudio Pascoli's sax) had very clear ideas about the direction to take. If on "Ballad for Four Seasons" it was the band calling the shots, and on "The Wolves" there was still a whiff of progressive leanings in both the lyrics and compositions, with the new record Ivan took full control, forging another couple of classics but above all legitimizing the trade of the homegrown Italian rocker, whose fruits others would reap in the years to come (starting with Vasco Rossi and running all the way to Ligabue). The first of these classics is "Monna Lisa," with Bullen's heavy disco-rock bass and Calloni's four-on-the-floor beat driving the comic-grotesque story of a madman who improvises the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, complete with the kidnapping of the guard (who "now has his mouth full of museum tickets"), the museum surrounded ("down below they're shouting/surely telling me to come out"), and the inevitable damage done to the precious painting ("and I'm torturing the canvas with a razor and my nails"). The other evergreen is "Lazy" (which, like "Lugano addio," is a b-side that surpassed in popularity the equally gorgeous "Paolina" found on the A-side), a nasty little rocker marked by a definitive acoustic guitar riff, in which, in just two minutes and twenty-five seconds, he manages to pillory the vices and hypocrisies of the self-righteous, drawing benevolent inspiration from the social tics of his older brother, the successful university professor mentioned at the start of this story.

But the rest is no mere filler - far from it. "Sabbia del deserto" brings back the themes of adolescence and provincial life, carrying with them an unwittingly sad premonition ("...and restlessness grows inside like a cancer..."), the blues-rock "Fango" returns to his beloved noir themes ("at twenty-one he's already a murderer"..."the house is dark, and has two windows/one looks onto the street/the other onto the garbage alley"), "Gabriele D'Annunzio" falls back on folk to sketch the life of a farmer burdened with an unwieldy name, kept at arm's length by women (understandably so, since "washing is pointless, it only weakens the male"), who despairs into a squalid bout of solitary self-pleasure and ends up marrying the widow Ricci, "a woman of ninety-two kilos" who "beats him every evening with an ox-hide whip," proving just as sad and demoralizing a companion. "Al festival slow folk di b-Milano" is an amiable dig at the prog bands that were fixtures at the fashionable festivals of the time, who often hid utter emptiness behind a facade of intellectualism, while "Scappo di casa" effectively tells another tale of rage, loneliness and despair.

Though it never reached the peaks of popularity of his best-known work, "Paolina" is another gem to be set among them. This portrait of a woman takes on the melancholy flavors of a loneliness partly endured and partly sought out ("...at home in the evening/after work/two eggs on the plate/the television making noise," but also "...at the cinema alone/in the back row/fear and love of the dark: the usual indecisions..."), until the narrator steps into the open, trying to shake her out of that apathetic daily routine ("Paolina let's be together, you're thirty now"), repeating her name without ever getting an answer; it's all built over a touching harmonic rise and fall, guided by a clear, limpid acoustic guitar.

Lazy is regarded by many as the peak reached by the Abruzzo singer-songwriter but, if that's not quite the case, it comes very close: the truth is that the three years from '78 to '80 correspond to his period of greatest creative grace, which makes it frankly difficult to rank which work is actually the best.

We'll go out on a limb and say Agnese Sweet Agnese (1979). His career sailed on with a full wind behind it, in a steady stream of concerts, press interviews, solid chart success, but also studio work: there was barely time to shelve "Lazy" before ten brand-new, deeply inspired songs arrived to enrich his songbook. The lineup taking part in the recordings was largely refreshed, or rather, it was something of a changing of the guard: Hugh Bullen's bass was replaced by those of Bob Callero (himself with a prog past in Osage Tribe) and Beppe Pippi, while Calloni was joined on drums by Gilberto "Attila" Rossi, who, together with Pippi, would also form live one of the most admired rhythm sections to ever back our guitarist; rounding out the lineup were the Battisti-schooled Maioli on keyboards, joined by newcomer Fabrizio Moschini.

For the third time running, Ivan steered the whole operation solo, striking the best alchemy between his beloved live dimension and studio production. "Taglia la testa al gallo" is a folk-rock completely freed from Anglo-American conventions, since the lyrics draw on the folkloric imagery of central-southern Italy while, musically, the rock is transfigured into the traditional Abruzzo dance known as the saltarello. This corresponds to another duality, through which Graziani pays tribute on one hand to his mother's homeland, Sardinia (“…commare mia commare/ dimmi che senti/ dimmi che provi/ se la tua terra è ancora in mano ai quattro mori…”), and on the other to his father's, through the musical form itself. Indeed, in "Il prete di Anghiari" too - an admirable gothic tale of village superstitions and gossip, framed by a guitar score worthy of the best Mick Ronson - ancestral references return that, up to this point, had found voice in the more strictly singer-songwriter-driven lyrics of Fabrizio De André. This same thread is picked up again, brimming with an inevitable dark-tinged irony, in "Il piede di San Raffaele," where faith is portrayed as an earthly remedy for equally earthly frustrations: Signora Sofia, cynically exploited by her eighteen-year-old lover; the homosexual Isidoro, mocked for his bleached hair and his little silk scarf; both can only find relief from their suffering by kissing "the holy foot of San Raffaele."

The reference to the roots of our popular culture would have been even more explicit, though also riskier, had the record label not forced a decisive change to the title and lyrics: the foot that gets kissed, in fact, was originally meant to be the fish with which the saint is depicted in his iconography. In Campanian tradition - halfway between pagan ritual and Christianity - kissing the fish of San Raffaele is believed to bring prosperity, but the image, though faithfully woven into the narrative, was deemed too blasphemous by the zealous record executives, given its obvious sexual double meaning.

There are still many episodes worth pausing on. "Fame," for instance, is the shrewd, blues-rock-inflected recollection of a genuinely difficult period he went through right after the end of the project with Anonima Sound: “Hai conosciuto la fame/ è una signora di classe/vive nella spazzatura… lei si presenta al momento giusto/ col suo profumo di pollo arrosto…”, so vivid an image that it became the subject of the album's splendid cover, drawn by the great Frigidaire cartoonist Tanino Liberatore. Then there's the thrilling guitar work, with a massive riff, behind "Doctor Jekyll And Mr. Hyde," destined to become a must in his live shows, and the masterpiece "Agnese," caught up in a pointless plagiarism dispute involving Phil Collins, who in 1988 released the strikingly similar global hit "A Groovy Kind Of Love." Ivan would ham it up over the misunderstanding for years, to the point of turning it into the live intro to his own song, apparently unaware - or more likely pretending not to be - that that track was itself a cover of a 1965 hit written by Toni Wine and Carole Bayer Sager. So is Ivan the plagiarist? The mystery unravels once you listen to the "Sonatina in G major" by the 18th-century composer Muzio Clementi, which both songs seem to explicitly draw on. In any case, "Agnese" is a breathtaking ballad, standing alongside "Lugano addio" among his most famous, best-selling and acclaimed songs, complete with a tribute in its opening line to George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" ("Se la mia chitarra/piange dolcemente..."). If flawless episodes like "Veleno all'autogrill" and the small romantic turmoil with its sad ending in "Canzone per Susy" risk being overlooked, it's only because the scene is being stolen by "Agnese," "Il prete di Anghiari," and "Taglia la testa al gallo."

But above all there's "Fuoco sulla collina": the account of a dream, as Ivan himself tells us right at the start of a song that, had nothing been revealed beforehand, might seem less packed with symbolism. But a dream is a dream, and can only give rise to the most varied, and (il)legitimate, interpretations. In the agitated yet stifled dreamlike atmosphere, the protagonist, a sixteen-year-old, appears to us motionless inside a garden, when instead he longs to take part in some unspecified battles taking place at that very moment on a hill not far off, the glow of whose fires and the echo of whose sounds he can glimpse and hear from the valley below. The boy dreams of nothing but joining in, and later, together with his comrades, reveling in the spoils of victory; but a faceless man (because he's seen from behind) holds him back and brings him back down to earth, addressing him bitterly thus: "Illuso, romantico e fesso (...) i fuochi di cui stai parlando, sono fari puntati sul campo dei trattori che stanno trebbiando." And there it is, blurred at the edges and set against a vague, timeless central-Italian backdrop: nothing less than a tightly condensed metaphor for the disillusionment that the passage into adulthood brings, set against the combative aspirations and rebellious impulses typical of adolescence. So the faceless man can only be the adult Ivan, by now cynical and embittered, whose face the adolescent Ivan cannot see or recognize. But one more step needs to be taken - arbitrary, no doubt, yet almost unavoidable if we bear in mind the concrete reality of the man Graziani became, the true adult. How can we not read something personal into that sixteen-year-old's inertia? The adolescent in the lyrics, after all, doesn't run up the hill, doesn't take part in the collective actions of his peers, just as Ivan-the-artist never actively took part in the protests of his own contemporaries. This dream, then, might signify a small regret, or conversely, foresight about the outcome of battles destined to prove fleeting. What's impossible to ignore, in any case, is how both he, left behind in the garden, and they, fighting on the hill, were nonetheless the direct offspring of a glorious generation that, on its own hills, had once truly fought its appointment with History. To all its many echoes, then, is added a faint sense of inferiority toward the generation that came before, and regret for everything left unlived.

The fact that Ivan was now part of the Italian rock elite is confirmed by Mario Lavezzi calling him in to take part in the operation launching Loredana Bertè's new musical style, which, with that blend of Caribbean sensuality and rocking aggression found on "Bandabertè" (1979), was about to leave a decisive mark on Italian pop at the dawn of the Eighties. His name sits alongside those of Lavezzi himself, Battisti's old session partner Alberto Radius, and Ivano Fossati in the set of credited composers. The track handed to the Calabrian singer is "Colombo", with lyrics by broadcaster and journalist Attilio "Art" De Rosa, who had already penned the words for "Doctor Jeckyll & Mister Hyde" – one of the two extremely rare cases in which the guitarist shares composing credit for his songs with someone else. Art's figure also appears as a character in the lyrics of "Limiti", which opens the album "Nove" (1984): "Hey Attilio che fai?", Ivan drily opens, dispensing romantic advice to him. The talented De Rosa suddenly passed away in January 2012 at just 57, sharing in this way the same fate as his dear friend.

The new decade opens under the banner of stylistic consistency and creative continuity, though bolstered by significant new elements in how the records were made. We don't know to what extent these were sought out or simply endured (though this will be a recurring theme in releases to come); the fact is that ex-Perigeo member Giovanni Tommaso and the controversial Canadian Douglas Bennett join the production team alongside him. While things go smoothly with the former, listen to what Ivan says about the latter: "What role did Bennett play? Mostly drinking his way through the RCA bar, good God! I wanted a producer because I understood it's not right to always shut yourself off, but the moment I realized he was the wrong person, or at least not exactly the producer who could help me do certain things, I had no choice but to go back to my own instincts... The first version of 'Firenze' sounded like a film score, I cut out quite a few things despite certain pressures coming from above...". Setting aside these hiccups, if the aim was to achieve a sound more attuned to the fashionable aesthetic demands of the moment without losing the spontaneity of his earlier work, we can say that Journeys and Rough Weather (1980) hits the target dead on.

We were talking about "Firenze (canzone triste)". With this song, Ivan delivers his definitive third installment of ballads that combine dazzling beauty with extraordinary popularity: after Marta from "Lugano addio" and chocolate-colored "Agnese", here comes the restless "donna d'amare in due", together with Barbarossa, the "studente in filosofia", set against the backdrop of a university-filled, history-laden Florence, but also of moments that are rapidly turning into memories. Indeed, because soon enough nothing will be left but loneliness, with her leaving, with Barbarossa about to return to his native Ireland with his philosophy degree, and the troubadour left alone wondering: "Ma io che farò in questa città, fottuto di malinconia e di lei?", in what instantly becomes an instant classic of Italian singer-songwriter music.

But the creative vein doesn't run dry there. "Isabella sul treno" is a whirlwind boogie seasoned with yet another tale as believable as it is unusual, sketched with the seasoned mastery of a master storyteller; "Angelina" – with a young Rossana Casale on backing vocals – is another uptempo number immortalizing the heartaches of a girl at odds with the frenzy of a bustling Milan; "Tutto questo cosa c'entra con il r&r" is a breakneck ride in which the romantic cliché ("Vieni al chiar di luna a far l'amore con me") is torn to shreds by the raw counterpoint of violence ("...porta una tua amica, noi saremo in tre: un boschetto fuori mano, una violenza e poi..."), before spilling into a pointed rhetorical question: "Yeah, but, does any of this have anything to do with rock'n'roll?". Message being: keep your eyes open, kids, so that rock and its transgressive spirit don't become an excuse to mask any wrongdoing.

The usual effectiveness of the blend between music and lyrics overshadows arrangements that actually undercut precisely the tracks with the strongest rock attitude. These may be mere nuances, but it's no coincidence that, performing them live, Ivan really floors it on numbers like "Isabella sul treno" or "Angelina", almost as if trying to restore the spirit he'd wanted to give them in the studio. From this standpoint, though, it's actually the more pop-leaning tracks that benefit from the new treatment. "Olanda" is a melancholy-soaked slow number telling of a train journey that never happened and an appointment left unkept by a fatal, perhaps somewhat cruel woman, while in "Siracusa" (its two musical movements alternating between 3/4 and 4/4 time are masterful) the journey from faraway Milan to reach his beloved does take place, but here too we find the bitter aftertaste of a reality clashing with the heart's expectations.

The chiaroscuro stories that linger in the background of journeys taken ("Siracusa"), journeys underway ("Isabella sul treno"), journeys belonging to others ("Firenze") and journeys missed ("Olanda") instead take center stage amid the storms of drugs and war. Built on a riff perhaps a little too reminiscent of Bowie's "Panic In Detroit", one of the most effective and dramatic bad stories in Graziani's songbook takes shape: sketched with essential yet unmistakable strokes, here is "Dada", a girl who is "buona e che tira fuori da guai", who falls in love with her young cousin Yvette, in "un rapporto torbido fra cugine strette". But what at first seems to be the main course (adolescence lived through homosexuality) turns out to be merely the device for telling a truly ugly story about drugs, in which Dada, armed with the best intentions as she tries to save her beloved from addiction, ends up herself caught in heroin's grip: "...e se tu le vuoi incontrare, uguali come gocce d'acqua, Dada la grande e Yvette senza tette, le due cugine strette".

The theme of war is tackled in the pop-blues of "Radio Londra": can you die on your birthday, on the very last day of the Second World War? Yes, if doing so serves to expose the absurdity lurking behind every conflict. Dying while chasing your own raw soldier's hunger, dying while chasing the "volpe-libertà" right at the moment when, elsewhere, "in piazza la gente si abbraccia" for the end of a war that "forse" – and here the bitterness creeps back in – "non ritornerà mai". "Radio Londra" is an entirely personal reworking of De André's "La guerra di Piero", though relocated into a wider overview, less immediate since it dwells less on individual details, but no less lucid or effective for it.

1980 is also the year in which the RCA label launched the "Q-Disc" onto the market, where the letter "Q" stood for "quattro" (the number of songs included), but also for quality, since the wider spacing between the vinyl grooves afforded by having so few tracks allowed for better sound quality. The record label's format was also brought to the stage, in a series featuring a trio of artists from different backgrounds each performing one of their own songs before joining together to play one shared track. Ivan took part in this project too, releasing the track "Dada" in "Q-Concert" format alongside Ron and Goran Kuzminac, with whom he co-wrote and performed the harmless "Canzone senza inganni".

1981 is the year of Sines and Cosines. Mario Convertino returns for the "cover concept", while in the production booth, overseeing the content, comes guru Tony Mimms, who had already worked alongside heavyweights such as De André, Baglioni, Mina, Celentano, Bertè and Zero. The album is built around two clearly distinct moods: side A offers a quartet of ballads notable for the striking total absence of guitars, while on side B Ivan makes up for it with a vengeance through four hefty rock'n'blues numbers. As odd as it may seem, it's actually side A that gathers the most compelling and inspired moments: the profile of a Greek woman in "Cleo" (another long-distance love, after the one in "Siracusa"), the typical afternoon loneliness of "Pasqua", its gloom softened by the hope of a tender love's return from the past, briefly disturbed by an encounter with a madman in deserted alleyways, and the love story between the alluring teacher Lulù and "Raimondo il poeta, quel ripetente di diciotto anni che sta sempre agli ultimi banchi" in the touching, scrapbook-like revisiting of "Signorina".

Not that the other side is throwaway, but while the ironic "Oh mamma mia" and "Digos Boogie" hold their own without being transcendent, "Tigre" and "Ugo l'italiano" (dedicated to his friend, the Black bassist Hugh Bullen) feel like they were thrown in without much conviction, just to round out the tracklist.

With such a substantial and well-established body of work behind him, the time was ripe to pull a long-cherished wish out of the drawer, in what amounts to something of a rite of passage for any self-respecting rocker: the live double LP. And the Abruzzese rocker certainly didn't let such an opportunity slip by, bringing out all his firepower and committing to the grooves one of the finest live acts in Italian recorded music. The lineup taking the stage for the 1981 tour from which all the sessions were drawn (with the exception of "Isabella sul treno", which dates back to the previous year and features Fabrizio Foschini on keyboards, and "Speak Up" – remember Anonima Sound's first b-side? – lifted from rehearsals at the Teatro Palestra in S. Leo in January '82) consisted of Daniele Angelini on second guitar, Fosco Foschini on bass, Maurizio "Pastrocchio" Lucantoni on keyboards and Gilberto "Attila" Rossi on drums. Truly nothing is missing from this live set, which also showcases his finest repertoire: the renditions of "Lugano Addio", "Paolina" and "Agnese" (three passages forming a spine-tingling medley) are flawless, as is the new entry "Lontano dalla paura", born from a recently released single destined for the soundtrack of Noel Marshall's film "Il grande ruggito", which sounds like the missing link between the Stranglers that once were and the Prefab Sprout of "Faron Young" yet to come. Likewise the powerful reworkings of "Isabella sul treno", stretched out to nine breathtaking minutes thanks to jaw-dropping solos (complete with a forgotten lyric at one point, though it barely registers in context), of "Motocross" and of "Mona Lisa", where – unsurprisingly – it's the guitar that truly shines.

And it's here that we get a true sense of the thinking of his colleague and friend Alberto Radius (though not his alone), who, on the subject of Ivan Graziani's style, brilliantly sums it up: "When you play guitar, whether electric or acoustic, there are those who accompany and those who embellish: Ivan combined the two perfectly". The stage animal, meanwhile, is every bit a match for the sonic performance: witty, with sharp quips between songs, but also something of a showman in his trademark lurching strut mimicking a limp, all while dishing out solos with a mischievous grin permanently plastered on his face.

In 1982 he found a way to take part, in a minor role, in a film from the trashier side of Italian cinema. The film in question is "Italian Boys", directed by the "Gatto di Vicolo Miracoli" himself, Umberto Smaila: we shouldn't forget, after all, that not taking himself too seriously was very much part of the rich repertoire that made up our protagonist's personality, both artistic and otherwise.

Anyone who believes the live album arrives at a point of waning inventiveness still has to reckon with two or three more absolute classics found on Ivan Graziani (1983): perhaps Speak Up marks a truce with his most visceral rock'n'roll side, but certainly not with great songwriting. Recorded in the prestigious studios of Castello di Carimate (among De André, Pooh, Ruggeri, Dalla and Conte, there's really no counting the big names of Italian song who ended up recording in that charming spot near Como), under the supervision of maestro Gian Piero Reverberi (here too, the list of artists who've passed through his hands is endless, running from Mina to Patty Pravo by way of Dalla himself, not to mention his years-long collaboration with Lucio Battisti), the self-titled album by the artist from Teramo moves toward a more elaborate sound in line with the big productions that were all the rage at the time.

Here we also find room for two more standout bad stories: "Torna a casa Lassie" and the all-time classic "Il Chitarrista". In the first, there's a chance encounter, to put it mildly, with his childhood friend Giulio, caught red-handed stealing his car radio in a parking lot. But the real kicker is that the two end up drinking together at a bar in the name of old times, that Giulio takes a serious beating from the bartender there, and that in the end, through a petty thief's trick, he really does make off with the car radio, earning the sympathy of his duped friend.

The second one bears Mogol's fingerprints, suggesting the now-historic line "te lo giuro sulla fender io non l'ho fatto apposta" ("I swear on my Fender, I didn't do it on purpose") in a lyric that, like the first, Ivan builds around the theme of deception: the cheating guitarist who, thanks to a rigged deck of cards, wins himself a night of love with the girlfriend of the man he's just swindled, the whole thing framed by a guitar riff that ranks among his most instantly recognizable. Rounding out a genuinely noteworthy picture are the masterpiece "Signora bionda dei ciliegi" - yet another wonderful dive into real or imagined memories of youth - the already-mentioned tribute to his old mentor on "Nino Dale And His Modernists", and the moving romantic reckoning of "Palla di gomma".

Even though they go almost entirely unnoticed within a body of work that, as we've seen, remains consistently excellent, one can't help but notice a slight disconnect between the refinement of this new artistic direction and the greater spontaneity of the records that defined the previous five years. What is certain is that Ivan was growing increasingly impatient with the record industry. As early as 1981 he had given an interview announcing his retirement from the scene (which thankfully never happened), citing his inability to freely follow his own instincts: hence the suspicion that the growing presence of outside producers, a feature of virtually the whole decade, wasn't entirely his own doing.

From this point of view, 1984 brings a kind of reckoning with the album Nove. At the helm is maestro Celso Valli, undoubtedly excellent when handling the electronic repertoire of Matia Bazar (he produced the gorgeous "Melanchólia" in 1985), or the sophisticated sound of Fabio Concato ("Senza avvisare", 1986), not to mention the lighter pop of Baglioni and Ramazzotti, but ill at ease with our man's earthy spontaneity. What results is a record that's respectable in its intentions but falls short in execution, as if an invisible pane of glass stood between the ideas and their actual realization.

We've already discussed the fine "Limiti", dedicated to his friend Attilio, so let's add the sparkling "Io che c'entro", the story of a surreal encounter with a woman who glides onto the bathroom windowsill (a sequel to "Isabella sul treno"?) while the protagonist is busy reading the newspaper (probably sitting on the toilet rather than in the bathtub, as the equally hilarious promotional video would have us believe), the dreamy "Geraldine", and perhaps the fifties-style rock'n'roll of "Minù Minù", were it not undermined by some overbearing, karaoke-leaning arrangements.

But the move that brings every remaining doubt to a head is his appearance at the 1985 Sanremo Festival with "Franca ti amo", a lightweight, hardly representative song that, to make matters worse, fails to win over either the judges or the audience. It's a half-hearted cameo, part of a crowd-pleasing approach that doesn't seem to suit Graziani at all: he finishes seventeenth and, in interviews, shows a certain irritation, as if trying to justify a move even he hadn't fully understood. Rounding out the Sanremo excursion is the compilation Greatest Hits, which also includes the other, fairly inconsequential unreleased track "Vento caldo", the B-side of the song submitted to the Festival.

Things don't go much better with the radical electronic turn of Piknic (1986), which at least marks the end of his partnership with Rca, but also the culmination of all the recent misunderstandings. Adding to the sense of distance between what the label wants and what the man himself wants is the fact that Ivan often performs live as a stripped-down power trio, accompanied only by Beppe Pippi on bass and Pasquale Venditto on drums. In practice, the exact opposite of what happens in the studio, where he finds Fabio Liberatori (former keyboardist of Stadio) waiting for him with his array of fairlights and sequencers, and even the synth-guitars of Luciano Ciccaglioni and Fabio Mariani, only partly offset by the presence of his two stage companions Venditto and Pippi.

Given the circumstances, perhaps it's asking a bit much to expect Ivan to write songs with total conviction in the project. And indeed Piknic has all the hallmarks of a record made to fulfill a contractual obligation, with songs that only occasionally manage to fall in line with the mood dictated by the production, instead getting bogged down in misguided nods to soul ("Shame"), watered-down, half-hearted rock'n'roll ("Ho paura dei temporali"), harmless little diversions ("Zio Gorilla"), and even easy-listening passages with no decent lyric to back them up ("Ed è felicità", "La mia isola").

After a decade marked by the steady rhythm of one release a year, the time has come to shut the doors of the record label behind him, with all its constraints and impositions, and go back home for good, to the countryside around Novafeltria, where over time Ivan had built his own studio, Officine Pan Idler, an ideal setting for reconnecting with his musical roots and finding the right inspiration, surrounded only by family and close friends. In 1988 the short novel "Arcipelago Chieti" came out, drawn from notes he'd taken during his year of military service, and meanwhile rehearsals for his comeback record kept going at a relaxed, convivial pace, with his wife Anna (always a key figure in writing the lyrics for so many of his songs) doing everything she could to make the steady stream of guests at the Graziani household feel at home. Among the regulars were of course the usual Pippi and Venditto, Maurizio Montanesi helping out at the mixing desk (having already worked with Lucio Dalla, Renato Zero, Mimmo Locasciulli, Rino Gaetano and Francesco De Gregori), Art De Rosa, who rose to the role of consultant and co-writer of the lyrics, and old acquaintance Roberto "Hunka Munka" Carlotto.

With a brand-new record deal signed with Carosello, 1989 brought Ivangarage. Whatever one thinks of the results, the strongest impression it leaves is one of sheer liberation, oozing from every note and every line: a markedly robust sound, a stripped-to-the-bone production, lyrics sardonically uninhibited. The reaction to the intangible mood of Piknic ("that's their album, not mine," Ivan said, pointing a finger at his old label) is embodied entirely in the Fender guitar, which takes center stage to the point of straying, at times, into hard-rock territory (on the effective "Un uomo"), if not outright heavy metal (on "Ora et labora", an anthem against sanctimonious clericalism, perhaps a touch less focused). So liberating, in fact, that "Ivangarage" opens with "Prudenza mai", an electric soul-blues number that airs out personal vices and quirks for all to see, complete with a dedication to an unnamed industry figure: "e invece ti mando a fare in culo, a te che sei il direttore" ("and instead I'm telling you to go to hell, you, the director"), echoing the spirit of Alberto Fortis's "Milano e Vincenzo".

"Non moriremo mai" dredges up, through the mists of his beloved Urbino, the memory of a friend and his fragilities, and it does so with such a Beatles-esque gait that it ends in an explicit coda medley of "She Loves You", "Hey Jude" and "Hello Goodbye", woven together in multi-part harmonies that speak volumes about his musical command.

Could a dark story be missing? "Johnny non c'entra" tells of a seven-year-old boy who kills his father with a shotgun blast, driven to it by his father's constant violence: musically solid if not memorable, it stands out once again for its ability to draw out, through what reads like a bare, stripped-down account, states of mind that are desperate yet entirely free of self-pity. Dragging down the final result are passages like "Guagliò guagliò", which squanders a backing track that deserved better fortune on a banal refrain, "Psychedelico", which throws out excellent ideas without ever following through on them, and the heavy-handed "I metallari", which moves to the notes of a pop'n'roll sound that's probably a bit dated.

The currency used to repay Carosello for the carte blanche granted with Ivangarage is the compilation Segni d'amore (1989), which reinterprets many of his career highlights and adds the decent unreleased track "La sposa bambina". Did anyone actually feel the need for this? Certainly not Ivan, nor his most devoted admirers, who would rather keep spinning the original versions.

Also in 1989 came the single "Tutto il coraggio che hai", distributed free in nightclubs to support a campaign against youth alcoholism, while the following year saw "Sogno rosso", a hard rock number dedicated to Ferrari, given away on cassette with the magazine "Autosprint": two songs that may not be essential, but useful evidence of an artistic vitality that never flagged.

Armed with the best of intentions - namely, a wish to reconnect with his audience by dusting off the ballad style that had made him famous - the Abruzzo-born singer-songwriter returned in 1991 with Cicli e tricicli, working alongside the great artistic director and former Numero Uno man Claudio Fabi. For reasons hard to pin down, the album takes a path that mirrors Piknic's, full of flat, over-arranged tracks, the exceptions being the delightful "Io mi annoio", a tribute to the playful pop style of his beloved Paul Simon dressed up with a remarkably sharp lyric, and the bad-news story "Kryptonite", a snapshot of the cruelty inflicted by his peers on a teenager who doesn't fit in, who in the end decides to put an end to it all in dramatic, spectacular fashion.

Just as happened after his 1986 album, a dissatisfied Ivan took refuge once again in the streets of his beloved Novafeltria, finding distraction in sessions at his home studio and frequent trips to Urbino, the city that had adopted him and left such a deep mark on his life as both man and artist. In 1992, helped by his friends Radius, Mingardi, Zero and Carlotto, he tried to plan his second appearance at Sanremo with a song titled "Bleh! Bleh! Bleh!", which however failed to make the selection and remained forever in the drawer of unreleased material.

But the sessions from 1992-93 don't end here, and in fact they make up the centerpiece of the musician's reconciliation with himself, which took concrete shape in early 1994 with his appearance at the Sanremo Festival and the subsequent release of the full-length Malelingue. As with Ivangarage, home turf once again proved to be a tonic: mixed by Maurizio Montanesi at the Fonopoli studios owned by Renato Zero, and aided by the whole family (wife, children, even his brother-in-law), Malelingue, compared to its predecessor, strikes softer notes but finds the right balance between rock impulses and easy listening. Starting with the Sanremo single "Maledette malelingue" (which ultimately placed a respectable seventh), which, with a catchy hook, carries forward the campaign against judgment and pre-judgment already hinted at in the lyrics of "Lazy", and continuing with "Poppe, poppe, poppe", an amused and mischievous tribute to an easily guessable feminine virtue, or with the hard-rocking "Il topo", a modern-day take on Aesop's fable, in which a pet python finds a live "slum rat" in its cage as a meal, but something goes wrong and the roles end up reversed.

Special mention goes to "La bella Gina", a naive small-town girl who comes to the city for a screen test with a director, whose attempts to seduce her and get her into bed are extinguished by the resounding slap she delivers him, which also turns out to be the final act of her artistic ambitions: listening to it again decades later, in light of the well-known "bunga bunga" affairs, only multiplies its tragicomic impact.

With catalogue number CLN-25167, Malelingue is also the last 33 rpm vinyl released by the historic label Carosello.

From the work done at the Fonopoli studios, an artistic partnership took shape that had until then remained dormant within the long personal friendship with Renato Zero. With his support, 1995 saw the release of Fragili Fiori… livan, a hybrid double CD made up of five tracks recorded at the Roman studio and a substantial live set. While the unreleased material drifts into creative anonymity (we'd mention only "Lanutella di tua sorella", but only for the flavour added by the vocal contributions of the king of the "sorcini"), the main attraction is naturally the live setlist, in which Ivan once again shows his most flamboyant side.

Among old and new reinterpretations, the version of "Il chitarrista" stands out, with its disarming central medley made up of "Would I Lie To You" by Charles & Eddie, "All That She Wants" by Ace Of Base, "The Rhythm of the Night" by Corona, and a thoroughbred guitar-hero coda that starts – unsurprisingly – with the notes of "Smoke On The Water" by Deep Purple before latching onto the Zeppelin-esque "Whole Lotta Love": it gives the exact measure of how much the man played purely for fun, without neglecting technical skill and reworking ability well out of the ordinary.

The carousel seems to start up again, as always. In 1996 our rocker wipes the slate clean on the historic Pippi-Venditto rhythm section, finds replacements in his son Tommaso and in Domenico Loparco, a young bassist the former scouted in a club, adds Giancarlo Del Vecchio on keyboards, and sets off touring up and down the peninsula, between arenas and village festivals, dishing out gut-punches with his Fender and caresses in the form of ballads, with his sly smile, his glasses, his guitar-strap waistcoat and his leg dragging as if lame. Yes, as always. In the autumn he returns to his recording studio, because in the meantime new ideas have emerged, new songs to prepare, and still more concerts, the banter with the audience, the digressions, the playful swagger and all the rest. But for some time now something no longer works as it used to – not the guitar, still played with the usual mastery, not the spirit, which insists on carrying on as if nothing were wrong, but rather the body, which sends out terrible, ominous signals, the kind one would never wish to receive and against which even immense strength of will can do nothing. And so, on the first of January 1997, a cursed cancer took Ivan Graziani away. "A real guitarist dies, he has to die on stage," he liked to repeat, and it very nearly happened that way, since right up to the end he really did play that guitar: the one who showed no "special regard" turned out to be precisely that Lord invoked in "Il chitarrista", snatching it prematurely from his hands.

Thanks to the involvement and production of Renato Zero, who retrieved some of the voice-and-guitar demos kept by Anna – Ivan's wife – and with the involvement of other friends including Venditti, 1999 saw the posthumous release of Per sempre Ivan, which however amounts to little more than a sincere and affectionate gesture of remembrance from those who loved him, and also the last chance to hear that beloved voice in new recordings. His sons Tommaso and Filippo also took part in the recordings; the latter would later end his career as a rapper to pick up the guitar himself, taking around Italy years later – still with his drummer brother – a well-received retrospective tour titled "Viaggi e Intemperie", from which the 2011 CD "Filippo canta Ivan Graziani" was drawn.

Ivan Graziani left a great legacy to Italian singer-songwriter music, marking out an unprecedented way of approaching rock, no longer experienced as an inferiority complex or an emulation of Anglo-Saxon aesthetics, but as a proud affirmation of the Italian tradition. And he did so not only through his inimitable lyrics, often centred on the provinces as the driving force of our culture and played out along a thread of irony streaked with the melancholy of memory, but also through a musical style born of a cross-cutting artistic vision, one that rejects pigeonholes and labels from the outset, or rather simply doesn't bother with them. "Amico ciao, il tuo giaccone di pelle una bandiera sarà, alta fino alle stelle, io per conto mio rimarrò sulla porta, certo non scapperò più: guardami, la mia anima non è morta" (Ivan Graziani, "Non moriremo mai").

Among the various more or less authorized anthologies published over the years, besides the already mentioned Greatest Hits (Numero Uno, ZL 70643, with the unreleased "Franca ti amo" and "Vento caldo") and Segni d'amore (Carosello, CLN 25139) with new recordings and one previously unreleased track, "La sposa bambina", it's worth noting the retrospective Firenze-Lugano No Stop, a double CD from Bmg including twenty-two songs in their original versions, chosen from among the classics of the Numero Uno output, plus two songs never released before – "Il lupo e il bracconiere" and "Giuliana". Particularly interesting too is the triple box set Ritratto (Carosello, 2010), which besides containing the unreleased "L'orchestrale bastardo" and "Con le mie lacrime" (an Italian cover of "As Tears Go By" by the Rolling Stones) includes a demo, "Emily", and the complete albums "Ivangarage" and "Malelingue", unavailable on CD for many years.

I would like to thank Laura L. for the long discussions, some of them well into the night, about the interpretation of the lyrics of "Fuoco sulla collina": in the end she "won", and so the analysis of this song is entirely her doing.

Anyone wishing to delve deeper into other aspects of Ivan Graziani's life and artistic career cannot do without the book "Journeys and Rough Weather" by Lorenzo Arabia (Minerva Edizioni, 2011): a thorough and indispensable source of anecdotes and first-hand accounts that, let's be honest, marks an important step forward in the rediscovery of a genuinely fundamental Italian artist.

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