Patty Pravo - Wonderful mystery

Autumn 1966. It's an ordinary Saturday, an Italian Saturday. "Canzonissima" is on TV, or rather "Scala Reale", as that year's edition of the most nationally beloved of TV shows was called. The lottery gimmick frames it as a contest between teams of singers. One is captained by Françoise Hardy, the French fairy-chansonnier who, four years on from "Tous les garçons et les filles", has already broken millions of hearts. The other team is less fortunate: instead of Parisian charme, it has the homelier appeal of resident crooner Michele. But among its ranks is the real surprise of the evening. An eighteen-year-old from Venice, making her debut, tiny and willowy, two big heavily made-up green eyes hidden behind a cascade of blonde hair, dressed in a black Yves Saint Laurent suit. She sings "Ragazzo triste", a cover of Sonny & Cher's "But You're Mine", and instantly turns it into an anthem for the young beat generation of the 60s. A performance so electrifying it makes even the most jaded viewers sit up in their armchairs. And so begins the legend of the woman who — like Mina, and perhaps even more than Mina — would become the "diva" par excellence of Italian song.

Nicoletta Strambelli, known artistically as Patty Pravo, was "Prava" (wicked) from birth.

Born into comfortable Venetian bourgeoisie, she grew up in a cultured, stimulating environment, devoting herself to the study of piano and classical dance. From soprano Toti Dal Monte to Cardinal Roncalli (the future Pope John XXIII), all the way to the two celebrated talent-scouts of Italian "pop" music across the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, Gianni Boncompagni and Renzo Arbore, by way of Luigi Tenco, Peggy Guggenheim and Ezra Pound: these were among the first people to take notice of a very young Nicoletta Strambelli. From childhood, Strambelli always pursued lofty paths, studying piano with Mazzin Crovato, conducting with Maestro Ettore Gracis, solfeggio and harmony with Maestro Amendola, and spending much of her adolescence among the artists of the Biennale.

From her very first private performances, when she still went by the name Guy Magenta, the Venetian chanteuse always left her audience stunned, enchanting them with an explosive mix of physical sensuality and stage unpredictability, backed by a voice that was robust, theatrical, aphrodisiac and sexless all at once.

The choice of her stage name was likewise singular and offbeat. At the conservatory, among many other subjects, Strambelli studied Dante, and the only part she truly loved was the Inferno. From this came the urge to project that fascination through a new artistic identity: "Pravo" evokes the "wicked souls" (anime prave) of Dante's various circles. As for Patty, it was simply a common name at the time, and it paired beautifully with "Pravo". A choice that fully reflects her deep inner duality, her being "nonconformist", at times "heretical", yet at the same time eternally drawn to the crowds and the glare of television.

Generally hostile to journalists and to the flattery of others, the fair-haired Patty always followed her own "self", remaining, more often than not, stubbornly faithful to her musical instinct. And so it caused quite a stir when she flatly turned down some major film offers. De Sica asked her to star in "Il giardino dei Finzi Contini", and Antonioni suggested her for "Professione: reporter". Even Fellini came calling for her hair, while Luchino Visconti "settled" for naming her his favourite singer. What set her light years apart from the rest of Italy's great female performers of the time wasn't just her unmistakable look — men's jackets, vertiginous miniskirts, Oriental robes — but above all her public statements, paired with a love life lived in constant turmoil, inevitably designed to draw attention: "I smoke men like cigarettes".

What follows is her story. A story that can only begin in Rome's most famous nightclub of the Sixties.

The girl from the Piper

Restless, sensual, possessed of a hypnotic charm, the future "Girl from the Piper" is above all a relentless devourer of passions, first satisfied in the floating quarters of the most patrician Venice, a city she nonetheless describes as "a city of ghosts". She arrives in Rome by way of London, where she had lived for a while, mixing with beatniks and Pop Art artists, as well as hippies and avant-garde musicians. "Swinging Rome", fresh from the hangover of the Dolce Vita years, has its own temple, called the Piper. "People had told me so much about it, I had to go... Falling in love with the club — so strange, so big, so original — and with the music they played there happened in the same instant," she would later reveal to the magazines of the time.

That first night is an immediate shock. She walks through the door on Via Tagliamento with a group of friends, and starts writhing in wild shakes on the lit-up platform, where they leave her alone, like a go-go dancer ahead of her time. "What a sight, I'd never seen anything like it," lawyer Alberigo Crocetta, the Piper's owner and overlord and her future manager, would later swear.

"After four nights someone asked me if I could sing too. I replied: 'Even better!'. But I'd never sung before. It was pure luck!" And so, in one stroke, the brazen Patty claimed both the title of "Girl from the Piper" (stealing it from Caterina Caselli, who had held it until then) and pole position in the colourful line-up of Italian song.

It's the year of Mary Quant's miniskirt, but also of the first stirrings of social rebellion. Beat music is all the rage, somewhere between Anglophile mimicry and more or less rebellious lyrics. Patty gives voice, in her own way, to the anxieties of her generation. "What's wrong," she asks, "with being a daughter of my century: being a sister to the long-haired kids, a fierce champion of the miniskirt, of prints, of stripes, of colourful patchwork in clothes?" Lawyer Crocetta sees in her "the prototype of tomorrow's girl, quick-witted, disenchanted, self-sufficient", because "the other Italian singers belong to the past, still tied to provincial life, to mum and dad, while she is international". And she doesn't hesitate to go even further, declaring: "I couldn't care less about mum and dad, they dumped me on a grandmother when I was 3, clearly I was in the way" (she would later "soften" on this). And firing both barrels at the morality of the day: "I make love before every show. Virginity? It's just a useless little membrane," she tells a magazine, scandalising buttoned-up Italy.

Backing her in her first shows are three English freak-outs, the Cyan Three, whose leader, Gordon Fagetter, would also become her partner and first husband.

The infectious single "Ragazzo Triste" — with lyrics translated by Gianni Boncompagni, at the time the radio guru behind "Bandiera Gialla", and orchestration by Carlo Pes — immediately becomes a hit, marking Patty out as a singer still rough around the edges, but already original and vibrant. What strikes most is the contrast between her sweet, polished looks and a murky voice carrying within it the seeds of despair. "Ragazzo Triste" is a smash everywhere, even becoming the first pop song ever broadcast by Radio Vatican.

The second single, "Qui e là" (a cover of Lee Dorsey's "Holy Cow"), renews her success, still flirting with beat sounds and the imagery of youthful freedom: “Oggi qui, domani là/ Io vado e vivo così/ … qui e là io amo la libertà/ e nessuno me la toglierà mai”. Almost a pop slogan for the hot summer of '67.

But Patty is already tired of beat music and of being "the Piper girl" – her ambitions now look beyond the Alps, to French chanson, to the romantic tradition of Leo Ferré, Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens. Hence a poignant ballad with sweeping orchestral and melodic construction, "Se perdo te" (her third single), masterfully put together by Sergio Bardotti by "slowing down" to 33 rpm a track by P.P. Arnold ("The Time Has Come") – launching a vein that would remain one of the most successful in her repertoire.

The real breakthrough, however, is still to come. Ironically, the song that will definitively launch the most subversive of Italian female singers into orbit is a song about women as objects. "La bambola" has already passed through various hands, including those of Caterina Caselli, who in the end preferred to cover David McWilliams' "Days Of Pearly Spencer" instead. No one seems to like it. Not even Patty Pravo herself: "It's a matter of the times. I didn't like it, even though it went on to sell a million copies in Italy and twenty million worldwide. What you hear is just a demo: I only sang it once." In truth, this "depraved" version of "La bambola" resembles the torments of a femme fatale far more than the complaints of a model-girlfriend type: a sensual, desperate rumba coiled around the strings of a Spanish-flavored guitar.

The success of the single – her fourth in a row – pushes the record label to release her first, self-titled album, Patty Pravo (1968), with an illustrious introduction penned by Renzo Arbore, one of her most passionate champions. The record collects the singles released so far, plus all her best performances of the moment, largely covers: "Old Man River," the old spiritual from the musical "Show Boat," and "Yesterday" by the Beatles; "Se mi vuoi bene" is a translation of a Bacharach hit made famous by Dusty Springfield ("I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself"), "Ci amiamo troppo" reworks "River Deep Mountain High," an R&B number by Ike & Tina Turner, while on "Five Foot Two Eyes Of Blue" Patty has fun playing with dixieland, showing remarkable versatility, almost as if to suggest that pop isn't her only field.

Meanwhile, the Pravo persona is spilling over more than ever, sending the gossip magazines into a frenzy. An unrepentant vamp, an androgynous, cold and glacial icon (literally: by her own admission, her body temperature hovers around 35 degrees), a devourer of men, she describes herself as "an amoral romantic." And she plays with ambiguity in a thoroughly Bowie-esque way, even facing insinuations about her sex: "Is it true you're a man?" interviewers ask her. "I'm neither man nor woman. Don't tell anyone, but actually I'm a Martian," comes the inimitable reply.

But it's also the artist herself who commands attention, with her constant "zigzagging" toward new frontiers, and with ever more gripping songs, like the new hit "Sentimento," where the vibrations of her contralto voice marry a lyric of aching melancholy (“Al di là delle stelle chissà cosa c’è/ forse un mondo diverso per chi/ non ha avuto mai niente in questo mondo qui”) and a sweeping orchestral arrangement. Her voice too, initially raw and almost strangled in her throat, becomes broader and more robust, her phrasing increasingly precise and controlled. Not enough to win over the mainstream audience, though. The populist "tribunal" of Canzonissima condemns her, rewarding the then-almost-debutant Massimo Ranieri instead. "The day I win a festival, I'll know it's time to pack it all in and retire," she would later quip mockingly.

In Search of Lost Time

By 1969, Patty Pravo has already shaken up Christian Democrat Italy with her look and her beat songs, swinging between sadness, joy and provocation, for a generation tired of the frivolity of the Rita Pavone type and hungry for torments to identify with and wallow in a little, but also hungry for change, for action and struggle. She has met Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones. And her performances at the Piper (in 1968 even Pink Floyd – in their Barrett era – would take that stage) are by now etched into the history of Italian pop culture, as indelible as Mina's appearances on Studio Uno. But the next leap will be even more daring.

In "Oggi," a historic Italian weekly magazine, an interview appears with a sound engineer from RCA, the label that in the early Seventies would launch the likes of David Bowie and Lou Reed, artists who would always be linked to Patty for their class and their sense of provocation: "A few weeks ago, while recording 'Concerto per Patty,' she burst into tears," the engineer recalls. "'I don't like this song,' she told us. 'But it's beautiful,' I replied. 'Yes, it's beautiful. But it's too sad'…"

And so it was that the proto-cubist of the Piper transformed into a tragic, existentialist heroine. An extremely ambitious project, Concerto per Patty. One of the most revolutionary, dramatic, melodic, best-arranged compositions – already classical-progressive in spirit – that the Italian music scene would hand down to history. Battisti hadn't gone that far yet, nor had New Trolls. A 12-minute-long experiment, taking up an entire side of the old vinyl, with a second side featuring original gems and covers of extremely famous songs, from the Beatles to the Bee Gees, to Aphrodite's Child featuring Vangelis.

Concerto per Patty (1969) is produced, in an economic rather than musical sense, by Crocetta, who, thrown off balance by his protégée's change of direction, would end their partnership shortly after. The executive producer, meanwhile, is Lilli Greco, a classically trained musician who graduated in piano from the Santa Cecilia conservatory in Rome.

The first side – as mentioned – is a single 12-minute composition, featuring an orchestra of no fewer than 90 musicians: "Concerto per Patty," with lyrics by Gianni Meccia and music by Bruno Zambrini, superbly orchestrated and arranged by maestro Franco Pisano. "What I'd give to remember things from the past… what I'd give to erase things from the past": thus it begins and thus it ends, "Concerto per Patty" being her own coming-of-age story, suspended between memories and the bitterness of a love lost and never found again. Her own "À la recherche du temps perdu." The narrative unfolds around three central movements: the hours of the past; the air of a village; my thought becomes you. A harp intro opens the memories as the orchestra unfurls a wonderful melody, which is then taken up and expanded before giving way to the violin, which introduces the second theme: the air of a village. The music floats lightly, following the shifting moods of the story. In the third theme, the 90-piece orchestra falls silent, with the final solo touch entrusted to a cello and a guitar, accompanied by a Hammond organ, opening the mind to memories gone by. The whole piece has an unguarded romanticism to it, with nothing calculating or trite about it. The structure of the story is circular, with events overlapping in flow; the longed-for peace is only achieved by erasing the failed love.

The second side seems to move along more traditional lines, but there are surprises here too. The idea is to create something close to a concept album, tying all the tracks together around a single, eternal theme: romantic love that both aches and destroys. It opens with a track written by Mogol–Battisti: "Il Paradiso." The tone lightens, its breezy melody with faint beat flavors destined to become one of her signature songs, reminding us that paradise is always right before our eyes. We keep sailing through these dreamy, ethereal worlds with "Sola in capo al mondo," a cover of Aphrodite's Child's "End Of The World," with the harp toying with "electronic" effects to create the kind of cosmic spaces so dear to Vangelis. "Un giorno come un altro" is another gem penned by the Bee Gees, magnificently sung by a visibly moved Patty; here too, time destroying feelings is the recurring theme. Friendship comes to the rescue, a feeling that seems to escape this "curse," with a Beatles-esque cover of "With A Little Help From My Friends," performed with just piano, backing vocals providing counterpoint.

"Tripoli '69," also released as a single, with lyrics by Vito Pallavicini and music by Paolo Conte, finds Patty tackling boldly anti-feminist lyrics in a vaguely exotic atmosphere, with a martial, march-like pace, a well laid-out horn section and trombones underpinning the melody. The record closes with the famous "Un'ora fa," written by the great Franco Intra and performed by the Cyan Three.

Concerto per Patty is Patty Pravo's most revolutionary work, her own "Tapestry," a concept album tied – like Carole King's masterpiece – to the eternal themes of the inexorable passing of time and of loves that fade away into nothing along with it.

Sealing this magical moment, the same year saw the release of the single "Nel giardino dell'amore", one of the absolute peaks of her melodramatic art. It's another majestic ballad, reworking with a desperately romantic touch José Feliciano's "Rain" (translated by Paolo Dossena, who from this point on became Patty's trusted collaborator). The Venetian chanteuse is at the height of her interpretive powers, and the orchestra, masterfully arranged by Luciano Michelini, backs her without missing a beat: from the flute-led incipit, which throws open the gates of a devious, timelessly lost Eden, to the subtle embroidery of guitar and strings that carries the melodious central phrase, right through to the crescendo of the chorus. But the true star is the singer herself, an aloof, elusive muse who is at the same time desperately sentimental, like a Nico steeped in the existentialist languor of Jacques Brel.

A romantic chansonnier

An undisputed symbol of women's emancipation in Italy and a gay icon, Patty Pravo was in demand everywhere, from TV shows to Carosello ads (she even endorsed "Paiper" ice cream!). But it was cinema above all that tried to lure her. Antonioni wanted her for "Professione Reporter", De Sica for "Il giardino dei Finzi Contini". Yet she always said no: "It's too much hassle getting up at 6 in the morning to be on set all the time." Even her role as a cyber-girl in the TV drama "A come Andromeda" lasted only a few takes.

In 1970 she took part in the Sanremo Festival with "La spada nel cuore", a duet with Little Tony, winning, among other things, the critics' prize. It's the year she definitively left beat music behind in favor of the romantic singer-songwriter style of which she was by then the undisputed queen.

So the hugely famous hit "Per te", penned by Battisti-Mogol, went straight into the hearts of Italian women everywhere. Her second, self-titled album, Patty Pravo (1970), with its unsettling, gothic, sepulchral cover (which earned it the nickname "Cimiteria"), is built on a well-balanced mix of covers — the likes of Charles Dumond and Michel Vaucaire's "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" (made eternal back in 1960 by the great Edith Piaf) and the Beatles' "Something" (perhaps the finest song George Harrison ever wrote), delivered here with even more aching intensity by a red-hot Patty — alongside brilliant Italian versions of songs already famous worldwide, such as "Gocce di pioggia su di me" (a reworking of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head", written the previous year by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for the film "Butch Cassidy"), snapshots set against the saddest chapters of the past, like "1941" (again credited to Mogol), and deeply inspired ballads that build to poetic crescendos ("Una conchiglia"). The album opens instead with "The Day That My Love Went Away", written by the Cyan Three — a brisk, pastoral arpeggio whose job, if nothing else, is to pave the way for the drama and resignation of the following track, "Il mio fiore nero".

Patty Pravo was recorded in several versions for the Spanish, German, Japanese and French markets. And it was in Paris that a wildly uninhibited Strambelli danced, sang and seduced her French cousins at the New Year's Eve 1970-71 gala, "Bravo Pravo", a huge show staged by French television. It was the first spark of what would become a lasting bond with audiences and critics across the Alps.

RCA seized the opportunity and, capitalizing on her French buzz, named her new album precisely Bravo Pravo (1971). The record follows in its predecessor's footsteps: recorded entirely in France, it once again skillfully alternates foreign covers with the melodic Italian sound of the era, as perfectly broadcast to the nation through the TV saga "Canzonissima". This time Broadway-musical cadences stand out ("Cry Me A River" and "You Make Me Love You"), alongside tributes to Jacques Brel ("Non andare via", the version of his famous "Ne Me Quitte Pas" that would later make even Dalida fall in love with it), relentlessly swelling romantic dramas built in classic Italian radio style ("Tutt'al più", with its highly theatrical spoken opening), bucolic visions introduced with folk appeal ("Chissà come finirò"), sharp and playful romantic reflections ("Chi ti dirà"), and yet another Beatles-esque flourish ("The Long And Winding Road"). The curtain falls on the comfortable carefree mood of "Parlez Moi", written by her friend Robert Charlesbois.

The record, however, was something of a flop: largely due to the lack of promotion, following Pravo's announced label switch, as that same year she moved from RCA to Philips/PhonoGram.

Continuing down the path of refined international song, Patty Pravo released Di vero in fondo (1971), a collection of further covers and authored interpretations. The lead single pairs "Love Story", a sung version of the theme composed by Francis Lai for the film of the same name, with the title track, written by Gino Paoli and Ninì Carucci. Then comes a long parade of covers, from Cat Stevens's "Wild World" to the Brazil of Vinicius De Moraes, on whose "Samba Preludio" she also appears as a guest vocalist, from Guccini's "...E tornò la primavera" to Battisti's "Emozioni", taking in international pop stars like the Bee Gees' Maurice Gibb ("Lonely Days", translated as "Il buio viene con te") and Neil Diamond ("Soolaimon"). Her usual French fascinations yield yet another tribute to Brel ("Canzone degli amanti", a translation by Bardotti/Del Prete of "La Chanson Des Vieux Amants") and the opening "Foglie morte", a musical reworking of Jacques Prevert's poem of the same name.

The move paid off and the record sold well, further fueling the fame of the young Strambelli even beyond the Alps, while she kept giving surreal interviews in the meantime: "My one regret? Not being a toad. I've been told that when they make love they stay on top of each other for a whole year..."

Almost a "twin" of its predecessor, Per aver visto un uomo piangere e soffrire, Dio si trasformò in musica e poesia (1972) is certainly her most reflective record, where meditation and contemplation conjure up gloomy scenarios never heard before in her melodic repertoire. The romantic liturgy of "Morire... dormire... forse sognare" (based on a text by Shakespeare) wrong-footed both audience and critics, while "Lanterne antiche" shows Patty in the unprecedented guise of a folksinger. Vinicius De Moraes's "Poema degli occhi" is an intense, mystical depiction, in which narrative poetry flows together with a quiet, melancholy-tinged folk sensibility.

"Storia di una donna che ha amato due volte un uomo che non sapeva amare ("The Same Old Chair")", a song written by Shel Shapiro and translated by Vito Pallavicini, is a small, nine-minute melodramatic suite; in it Patty is superbly backed by a small orchestra, moving between pure storytelling and sudden surges of intensity, driven by exultant violins, backing choirs and jazzy sighs. The spiritual atmospheres of "Preghiera" bring the former Piper girl close to churchy American soul, while another Shapiro song, "T. L. & R. (Thunder, Lightning And Rain)" — also recorded and released by its author on the album "Affittasi" (1972) — pushes Strambelli even further away from the cheap commercialism of the era. Indeed, the record was conceived entirely without hit singles. It raised eyebrows and sparked curiosity that the famous "Non ti bastavo più" was left off the tracklist, despite being recorded around the same time and released only as a single, two months before the album came out, to coincide with Patty Pravo's appearance at Venice's International Light Music Festival.

Produced by Pravo herself, with Bill Conti and Luis Enriquez Bacalov as arrangers, Per aver visto un uomo piangere e soffrire, Dio si trasformò in musica e poesia is unquestionably one of the Venetian singer's boldest works, and effectively represents the high point of her Philips-era trilogy.

The third chapter of this sort of three-act opera is Sì... incoerenza, in which the French deity of reference becomes Léo Ferré, "plundered" for one of his classics, "Avec Le Temps" (reinterpreted to perfection), as well as two other pieces ("Petite" and a short orchestral passage from "La Solitude"). There's no shortage of other, rather imposing covers, such as Frank Sinatra's "My Way", which becomes "A modo mio", while her recent infatuation with Brazil yields a heartfelt rendition of "Valsinha", a small gem written by Vinicius De Moraes and Chico Buarque de Hollanda. "Non so perché mi sto innamorando", meanwhile, is a cover of Dalida's "The Way Of Love", further cementing an ideal "fil rouge" between the two.

A low, throaty timbre, vocal swoops and the trademark drawling delivery are by now the hallmarks of a successful chanteuse-charmeuse. But the Philips/PhonoGram phase, too, was coming to an end, complete with the inevitable legal wrangling: here today, gone tomorrow... her next destination, however, would be the very station she started from.

Violets, crazy ideas and international encounters

Back at Rca, the label that had launched her seven years earlier, Patty Pravo finds a new climate. This time, it's the age of the singer-songwriters, of the Folkstudio, mecca of the Capital's new songwriting scene and a hotbed of talent, from Francesco De Gregori to Antonello Venditti, by way of Edoardo De Angelis, Stefano Rosso and many others. But orbiting around that circle are also lesser-known figures, like Maurizio Monti, a young songwriter who has already sent some material to Rca. While sifting through his demos, Lilli Greco stumbles on a track recorded in English, titled "Follow, Follow Me". It's a revelation. Greco immediately gets in touch with Dossena, by now Pravo's musical factotum, and the two have no doubts: this track is a bomb. All you need to do is turn "follow" into "folle" ("crazy"), maybe "Folle Idea" ("Crazy Idea"). Though in the end, for the title, they settle on "Pazza Idea". Out of this odd alchemy comes what is perhaps still, to this day, Patty Pravo's most famous and beloved song, a ravishing ballad with an irresistible melodic appeal, and that aching, sinful refrain (“Pazza idea di far l’amore con lui/ pensando di stare ancora insieme a te/ Folle, folle, folle idea di averti qui/ mentre chiudo gli occhi e sono tua/ Pazza idea, io che sorrido a lui/ sognando di stare a piangere con te/ Folle, folle, folle idea sentirti mio/ se io chiudo gli occhi vedo te”).

Pazza Idea is also the title of an album that offers other first-rate numbers, like the sophisticated piece "Morire tra le viole" (written by Monti himself) or Cocciante's tender "Poesia", as well as Mauro Lusini's "Limpidi pensieri" (the author of "C'era un ragazzo che come me amava i Beatles e i Rolling Stones"), while the cover of Lou Reed's "Walk On The Wild Side" ("I giardini di Kensington") is a considerable disappointment.

The single and the album stay at the top of the charts for almost all of 1973, becoming the year's biggest hit. The song "Pazza idea" becomes "Crazy Idea", "Una Locura", "Was Fur Ein Tag" as it crosses into England, Spain and Germany, but it's also released in Italian around the world, from the US and South America to Australia and Japan.

A year later, two of the writers behind Pazza Idea, Maurizio Monti and Giovanni Ullu, are thus entrusted with writing fifteen new songs destined for the new LP, Mai una signora (1974). Emerging musicians such as Alberto Camerini and Roberto Colombo also work on the album, in bizarre sessions, amid incense and Persian rugs, set up across three different studios. The operation, however, comes across as patchy (many of the final tracks are unfinished, especially in terms of arrangement) and lacking in flow: the ballads that survive are "Un amore assoluto" (originally recorded in English as "Athena") and "La valigia blu", b-side of "Come un Pierrot", which, despite becoming the album's hit, would be slammed by the singer herself: "It was so awful I thought Rca would just throw it away"! So what really gets people talking about the record is mostly the "scandal" of the lyrics to "Quale signora", with references to the taboo subject of the contraceptive pill, and allusions to drugs and hallucinogens.

Reinforcements are clearly needed, then, to stop Patty from withering among her violets. So Rca turns to its natural pool of talent, drawing from the singer-songwriters in her circle for Encounter (1975). It's a very young and inspired Francesco De Gregori who gifts her the splendid "Al Mercato dei fiori", but other big names stand out too, such as Antonello Venditti on "Le tue mani su di me", and Bruno Lauzi with the enchanting melodic trot of "Roberto e l'aquilone", a poignant little love poem masterfully performed by a Pravo at the height of her powers.

The album doesn't lack the "usual" covers (such as "Rispondi", i.e. Barry Manilow's "Mandy") translated by the tireless Sergio Bardotti, who together with the stout Sergepy (Gepy & Gepy) also co-writes the title track, a theatrical pantomime whose alternation of spoken word and music (a device very much in vogue at the time) wins over Italians, dominating jukeboxes throughout the summer of 1975.

The summer tour that follows the release of Encounter will once again crown Patty Pravo as the undisputed queen of Italy's coastlines, through a danced, choreographed show.

Buoyed by new international ambitions, Strambelli hires Greek musician Vangelis (former Aphrodite's Child member and successful electronic composer) as arranger for So Much (1976), recorded at Nemo Studios in London with contributions from Paul Jeffery (former Cockney Rebel) and some English session musicians. Yet the track that dominates is the thoroughly Italian disco-pop stride of "Io ti venderei", penned by Mogol-Battisti and included that same year on the Rieti-born singer-songwriter's album "La batteria, il contrabbasso, eccetera". Still, Vangelis's touch is evident in the eccentric colours he brings to the grandiloquent title track (written by Bencini/Del Turco) or in the skilful blend of electronics and pastoral calm on "Per te che mi apri l'universo" (written by a very young Pino Mango, as were "La mia stagione in più" and "Per amarti d'amore"). The inevitable foreign cover this time is Bob Seger's "Where Have All The Flowers Gone", translated as "Dove andranno i nostri fiori".

But it's a record that too often spins its wheels, caught between risk-taking and playing it safe. Poor sales ease the way to another split: Patty feels like a hostage to Rca's commercial logic, has no interest in becoming a docile jukebox singer, and looks elsewhere—to the United States, for instance, where she spends time on a study trip. Reviving her never-quite-dormant avant-garde streak.

The diva of the future

A new "diva" bursts out of the grooves of Patty Pravo, an album also released in 1976, on the new label Ricordi, as if to seal her urge for immediate change. It's a shock from the cover onward, portraying a skeletal Pravo against a black background (hence the nickname "Biafra" fans gave the record). Even her own audience is left bewildered by a wall of moogs, synths and guitars, and by sounds that, with an almost Byrne-like attitude, range from electronic to new wave, from rock to funk. Backing Pravo, who for the first time also tries her hand at a few instruments, is a stellar cast led by Jeffery, including, among others, Alberto Radius, Vangelis, Mark Harris and Jon Anderson (Yes). The result is a set of disorienting compositions, like "Sconosciuti cieli" (also recorded by Jon Anderson under the title "So Long As So Clear"), which Vangelis lets float on a cloud of electronics, or the equally dreamlike "Grand Hotel", written by the up-and-coming Renato Zero (Patty's former "Piper club companion", who will later turn it into his own "Motel"), or again the exotic "Piramidi di vetro", built entirely around a Middle Eastern riff. A Greek air runs through the waves of "Jmanjia", where a siren-like Patty raises her voice amid searing guitar scratches, bells and a tense, relentless drumming, while the nursery-rhyme simplicity of "Dirin Din Din" (composed by the duo Genova & Steffan) redeems its own banality through the vocal interplay of a girlish yet ever-mischievous Strambelli. And she is the record's true star, with a voice that is at once light and deep, able to send "Aeroplano" soaring over acoustic country inlays and to give even the sentimental treacle of "Innamorata io" some real flavour.

An uneven album, often overreaching, but also bold and skilfully produced, "Biafra" hands the Italian scene of the late decade a brand-new artist, light years away from the naive beat days of her debut and fully in step with the most advanced sounds of the moment.

To reassure the market, Ricordi releases a more conventional single, "Tutto il mondo è casa mia". But by then Patty has already changed again, returning for the third time to the Rca fold.

This time, however, she demands guarantees: Monti's return as a songwriter, and a free hand for experimentation on at least part of the tracklist. On top of that, she lands a real gem: the still up-and-coming Ivano Fossati tailors "Pensiero stupendo" for her, an intensely sensual ballad built around an instantly knockout chorus and a titillating little "depravity" (the idea of the me-him-her triangle). Needless to say, it's a triumph: Patty performs it with sublime perversity, also unveiling a new futurist and "fetish" image: crested hair, smoky eyes, a dazed gaze, plunging necklines. A look almost in the vein of Ziggy Stardust, with which she'll run riot on TV in the "Stryx" saga, the memorable cult show by the late Enzo Trapani. In these performances you can appreciate some of the boldest tracks from Miss Italy (1978): the synthetic, lascivious delirium of "Johnny" (Monti), the "devilish" cover of "Bello" (David Byrne), the electroshock of "Vola" (another feat by Fossati) and the liquid, undulating textures of "Sentirti" (Mango). A provocation that might even have become "political" had Rca not excluded from the final tracklist the anti-Christian-Democrat title track, a ramshackle para-metal invective that, at the time of the Moro kidnapping, couldn't avoid running into censorship. Veering almost into trash territory, meanwhile, is the cover of Bonnie Tyler's "It's A Heartache", turned into the improbable "Notti bianche (Wow wow come soffro)" (!).

Overall, though, Miss Italy lands a real triumph, managing to express both sides of Patty to the fullest: the hit parade diva, but also the transgressive avant-gardist, icy and glamour, with a taste for provocation à-la Bowie.

Driven precisely by an ever-growing ambition, which also pushes her to start writing her own songs, Patty Pravo lands in Munich, Germany, at the court of sound engineer Frank Von Dem Bottlenberg. He is the true deus ex machina of Patty Pravo (1979), better known as the Munich Album. The “Teutonic” turn is equally disorienting: surrounded by a host of German musicians armed with keyboards, synths, computers, voice boxes and other contraptions, the former Piper go-go dancer sharpens the hard edges of her voice and turns into a sort of Italian Laurie Anderson, playing her voice like an electric guitar, to the point of distorting it, on “Male bello” (penned by Ivan Cattaneo). Or she plays at parodying Donna Summer, the sexy queen of disco (“Donna Do You Wanna”), and improvises as a refined rockeuse amid the electric guitars of “Tie A Ribbon Round My Soul” (courtesy of producer Rainer Pietsch). No less daring is the allusive synth-and-vocoder sketch of the single “Autostop”, with its Lou Reed-esque shades. Amid so much artifice, what stands out is the lucid self-portrait of “Io che amo”, a melodic ballad written by Pravo herself together with Cristiano Malgioglio.

These are surreal experiments, at times overreaching or naive, but ones that testify to a thoroughbred talent, undoubtedly deserving of a scene less stifling than Italy's. Which indeed fails to understand her, partly because of her unruly, provocative behaviour. One evening in ‘79, at the Palasport in Bologna, Patty throws a microphone at the event's organizer. Even earlier, in Naples, at an avant-garde music festival organized by Massimo Bernardi, she sings while hundreds of kids hurl objects onto the stage. In Lucca, an enraged spectator throws an ashtray at her face, nearly disfiguring her. Meanwhile, her daring photo shoots for some erotic magazines cause a scandal.

Smoke Rings

The fact is that Patty packs up and moves to America, where she will stay for three years. Among other things, marrying John Edward Johnson in San Francisco. At this point it's worth opening a parenthesis on a love life that was, to put it mildly, turbulent, counting no fewer than five marriages, more or less fleeting and “official”: the first with Gordon Fagetter, the second, in 1972, with Roman interior designer Franco Baldieri, then the controversial (and fake) lightning wedding with Riccardo Fogli of Pooh, who “left the band” precisely for her. All this after two flings with Giorgio D’Adamo of New Trolls and Maurizio Vandelli of Equipe 84. Then, in 1976, another sham marriage, with American musician Paul Martinez, and finally the “trigamous” one with Johnson (two of the previous marriages had not been annulled). All this before the turmoil and youthful infatuations of her later years.

The “American Patty” enlists the help of Paul Martinez, David Kahne and Corrado Bacchelli for Circles (1982), a collection of eight tracks in Italian and English, balanced between new wave (the title track) and pop-dance (“Let’s Go”, “Motion Dance”). Increasingly hermetic lyrics and increasingly obscure, hazy sounds try to disguise some unforgiving truths: Patty doesn't work as a songwriter, and even her voice is losing its shine, dropping lower and abandoning its characteristic “vibrato”. So the public condemns it, almost completely ignoring the record.

If post-modern pop and nonsense is the order of the day, then better the more self-aware and sparkling kind offered by one of her own disciples, Donatella Rettore, the other blonde, who is stealing the spotlight from her with a string of gloriously demented hits (from “Splendido Splendente” to “Lamette”).

Like a phoenix, though, Patty rises again two years later on the steps of the Teatro Ariston. And in the most theatrical of ways. Wrapped in a long laminated Versace gown, a long braid of hair and a fan to complete the look, she appears to the viewers of the Sanremo Festival as an enigmatic oriental geisha, swooning to the notes of “Per una bambola”, a new, suave ballad penned by Maurizio Monti, which will go on to win the Critics' Prize.

Having set aside her songwriting ambitions, Pravo entrusts herself to Monti himself and other seasoned songwriters for Occult Persuasions (1984), an album that relaunches her with the general public, thanks to the boost from Sanremo and a few standout tracks, such as the title track, streaked with an icy electronic breeze and written by Paolo Conte under the pseudonym Solingo (as is the even more unmistakably Conte-esque “Donne Ombra-Uomini nebbia”, with its Parisian flavour), and the sinuous “Passeggiata” (with music by Cocciante).

That same year she takes part in the TV show “Premiatissima”, with an extravagant staged and vocal interpretation of some famous early 20th-century songs.

Having gone through a difficult period on a personal level as well, Patty gets back on track, pushed precisely by her former rival Caterina Caselli, now a successful record executive at Cgd.

The misadventures, however, aren't over: the new single “Menù”, with which she takes on the 1985 Festivalbar, is a flop. And her return to Sanremo two years later with “Pigramente signora” sparks a storm: too similar to Dan Fogelberg's “To The Morning”, the song brings her accusations of plagiarism and the cancellation of the contract she had just signed with Virgin. The release of a new, highly unusual track titled “Contatto” will do little to help.

Amid this turmoil, Patty tries to anchor herself to her trusty collaborator Dossena, who produces Oltre l’Eden… (1989) for her, resurrecting some of the tracks originally intended for the Virgin project. Her friend Renzo Arbore also lends a hand, hosting her on “D.O.C. live”, where Patty gets the chance to perform many tracks from the album live, among which the fine self-portrait of “La viaggiatrice (Bisanzio)”, with its progressive symphonism, and the no less refined “Giardino degli aranci”, with its estranging sung/spoken delivery, stand out. Soft, sophisticated arrangements (“Terra di nessuno” even brushes up against Badalamenti-like atmospheres), sounds hovering between pop and rock, and a few orchestral flourishes enrich an album that is nonetheless indecisive and transitional, one that no one bets much on anymore (it will be released in a limited run on both LP and CD).

From China With Fury

Still transgressive, free and brazen, the Patty Pravo of the Nineties rightfully takes her place among the “grandes dames of Italian song”, but has to reckon with age. Her voice, still husky and haughty, no longer soars as it once did, and the mad despair of the “ragazza triste” can no longer suit her. She will therefore have to fall back on soft, polished singer-songwriter fare, with few jolts but plenty of class.

She has, however, always been averse to compromise: like when she was offered a spot at Sanremo with “Donna con te” (alongside Kaoma of “La Lambada” fame) and turned it down because she found the line “le tue mani su di me stanno già forzando la mia serratura” vulgar: it would be Anna Oxa who would take the song to success.

While nostalgic anthologies, outtake collections (one devoted to the 1972-'78 period is particularly interesting) and special limited editions — even in French and Spanish — proliferate, Patty Pravo goes back into the studio in '94 to record a new album of original material, Ideograms (1994), co-produced with David Zard. It's a work that once again catches everyone off guard, bearing the clear imprint of her recent trip to China, where Strambelli won over an unexpected following, even appearing at the "Beijing International TV Week" to an audience-monstre of 1.3 billion viewers.

The result is a set of delicate ethno-folk sketches inspired by Beijing-based director Zhang Yuan, such as "Esiste una storia" (with sections in Chinese, including a folk anecdote censored during the Cultural Revolution) and "Indiachiara" (entirely in Mandarin). Words aren't always necessary: sometimes monosyllables and nursery rhymes are enough. But there's also room for verses by Rimbaud ("Partenze", with extracts from “Départ”) and Maria Lucia Verdi's poem "Ainda" ("Senza idee"). All of it wrapped in a rarefied, elegant sound.

Recorded with a lavish array of instruments, both ethno-acoustic and electronic, blending arcane Eastern sounds with samplers and computers, Ideograms boosts Pravo's experimental credentials — though it also lands her with another plagiarism accusation: "Ultimo impero" sounds a little too close to a track by This Mortal Coil ("I Want To Live").

In 1995 her return to Sanremo with the sophisticated "I giorni dell'armonia" (originally a romanza roughly twenty minutes long!) didn't make waves, but it did confirm just how singular a figure she remained.

Perhaps, though, all Patty needed was a good song to shine again. Two years later, it would be Vasco Rossi and Gaetano Curreri (of Stadio) who gave her just that: "...E dimmi che non vuoi morire" is a light, moving ballad, performed on the Ariston stage with the class of a seasoned performer. The song won the Critics' Award and sealed the definitive relaunch of Patty Pravo, after years full of eccentricities and troubles, including a forced stay at Rebibbia prison for drug possession (where she entertained fellow inmates by singing her hits...).

The triumphant Bye Bye Patty tour and the success of the live album of the same name (over 300,000 copies sold) brought the last diva of Italian song back onto the big stages.

The renewed enthusiasm for the Venetian artist brought the cream of Italian singer-songwriters to her doorstep for the new album Nights, Troubles and Freedom (1998): among others, Franco Battiato, Ivano Fossati, Enrico Ruggeri, Lucio Dalla, Francesco Guccini, Roberto Vecchioni, Gaetano Curreri, Mario Lavezzi, Loredana Bertè, joined by rising names such as Alex Baroni, Rosario Di Bella and Luca Madonia (ex-Denovo). The result is an intense, passionate record, where the songs recover long-lost melodies and flow smoothly, backed by polished, modern arrangements. "Emma Bovary", stamped with Battiato's unmistakable electropop signature, unfolds disorientingly amid thunder and lightning, trumpets and runaway music boxes, before building to a majestic finale, where Patty's voice rises solemnly over a bed of synths. Even more stirring is the mystical litany of "Angelus" (Fossati), sighed out in a voice nearly broken with emotion over alluring, exotic textures. Guccini and Curreri craft "Una casa nuova" for her, embellished with a catchy chorus and Phil Palmer's rousing guitar solo. Harry Belafonte's calypso "Les étrangers", reworked by Dalla, is dressed in trip-hop beats, telling a tale of migrants and desperation. Strambelli herself, together with Mauro Paoluzzi, composes the ecstatic "Sylvian". And the enveloping melody of "La strada per un'altra città" (Ruggeri) opens up new, celestial horizons.

The resurrection of Nights, Troubles and Freedom borders on the miraculous. The all-star cast of songwriters gives Patty just the right suit to keep her allure shining, intact despite a few wrinkles, masked all the same by a dazzling new platinum-blonde look.

The eternal doll

Having crossed the threshold into a new decade of fame, Patty Pravo would keep feeding her legend, leaning on tried-and-tested songwriters and relying more on her inexhaustible gift for performance than on her voice, by now irreversibly weakened.

In 2000 came A Woman to Dream Of, an album born from a second collaboration with Vasco Rossi (although most of the songs were actually written by two women songwriters, Bettina Baldassarri and Maria Pia Tuccitto). The result, however, falls short of expectations: airless arrangements hem in Pravo's singing, and the songs never really take flight. The title single "A Woman to Dream Of" is a pale copy of "...E dimmi che non vuoi morire", the sultry aggression fails to redeem the vapid "Sparami al cuore", and the country-pop of "Se chiudi gli occhi" coasts on sheer professionalism. Better, if anything, is the oddball "Seduttori sedati", complete with accordion, which reworks Grace Jones's "Libertango". The cover art, at least, is by Mario Schifano.

That summer Patty Pravo took part in the Festivalbar for the last time (with "Una mattina d'estate"), and in 2002, after a facelift that had drastically altered her features, she returned to Sanremo with "L'immenso", the lead single from the new album Radio Station (2002), produced in Brazil. The single is well crafted, as are several episodes of undeniable experimental daring: the burst of rhythm and adrenaline of "Noi di là" (penned by Carlinhos Brown), driven by Arthur Mala's mighty bass and thunderous percussion; the sinister, lopsided gait of "A me gli occhi" (with the distorted drumming of Mimmo Ciaramella of Avion Travel); the almost punk-noise gamble of "Fammi male che fai bene", with Patty in sadomasochistic geisha mode; the tour de force of the ethereal, ten-minute "Captivity"; and the nocturnal elegy of "A me gli occhi", lost amid the waves of Federico Bruno's piano and Roberto Vernetti's distant organ. Elsewhere the album loses its way, and on "Per Lontano" the Cugini di Campagna even show up!

Two years later came Nic-Unic, presumably standing for "Nicoletta-unica" ["Nicoletta-unique"], confirming the megalomania of the character, whose ambition (she is writer, musician and overseer of the whole project) clashes with a confusion only partly disguised by the music's modern avant-garde packaging. The relentless disco beats of "Che uomo sei", the circus-like melodrama of "Tristezza moderna" (with Bandabardò), and the sensual reworking of "Love Letters" (Elvis Presley) rise above the general chaos, in which experiments like "Tender chiara", with its nature sounds, the artificially exotic "Orient Express" and the surreal love story of "Fiaba" all sink. But in the end, perhaps, the album finds its reason for being in the entertaining 70s-disco pastiche of "Siamo sicuri che…", which dusts off a whole arsenal of Clavinet, Korg, vocoder and synths, ranging from Moroder to Sheila B. Devotion.

With her most creative drive long spent, Patty Pravo is by now an elegant lady who distills her art with class, sometimes revisiting herself, sometimes revisiting chapters of that history of Italian song of which she was both protagonist and witness. In 2005 came a box-set anthology of her hits, Canzoni stupende, featuring an unreleased track gifted to her by Ennio Morricone ("Un treno in più"). In 2006 she received various honours, including a lifetime achievement award in Venice as "the artist who has best represented, and continues to represent, Italy around the world". A year later her life was chronicled in the book "Bla, bla, bla…", an autobiography co-written with journalist Massimo Cotto. Her Piperesque saga was revisited in a TV drama starring Martina Stella ("I don't know who that is", she would quip, waspishly). Rai Trade compiled all her most famous television appearances on DVD (Patty Pravo, 2007). And on YouTube, gems from her youth keep popping up like mushrooms, for the enjoyment of a new generation of fans.

On the twentieth anniversary of Dalida's death, her former Italian friend dedicates to her the album Spero che ti piaccia… Pour toi… (2007), on which she performs songs from the repertoire of the Cairo-born singer (in French and Arabic), with new arrangements and little verve. The public doesn't fall for it.

Crowning a career that remains stellar nonetheless, 2009 brings a new Sanremo consecration with "E io verrò un giorno là" (written by the young Andrea Cutrì), with which she once again claims the title of "moral winner" of the festival, and even receives an unexpected "blessing" from the Vatican.

Having breezed past the threshold of 60, Patty Pravo carries on perpetuating her role as the eternally young, free, brazen woman.

The Piper girl, the romantic chanteuse, the avant-garde diva, the oriental lady are just some of the faces of a mysterious, elusive personality. Her powerful, uninhibited, alien, provocative, unreachable voice upended every convention tied to the figure of the female performer in Italy, steering it toward conceptual and performative innovations far removed from the imagery of the time. A constant vocal and aesthetic evolution, able to seduce a public shut away in its own cave of variety shows and religious censorship. Practically every one of the best Italian singer-songwriters has written at least one song for her. And her vibrations, forever teetering on the edge without a safety net, continue to captivate, just like a songbook now spanning over forty years that holds some of the most thrilling performances in the history of Italian pop music.

Contributions by Fabio Pierangeli ("Concerto per Patty")

Bibliography:

Fernando Fratarcangeli – Patty Pravo (Coniglio Editore, 2007)

Col tempo – Official site (a valuable source for archival material)

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