Afterhours - Seeds of Italian alt-rock

"...Huh? Who is it? ...Mum? ...Tonight? No, I have to interview Manuel Agnelli: I managed to get ten minutes at some unspecified hour. I don't know when I'll be free. Mum, it's late, I have to go".

Agnelli??!! I mean, you two get sloshed together every week and for ten minutes you have to request an audience?

"It's not quite like that: you have to request the interview and find the time and the opportunity. Besides, it's not like Manuel and I have ever been drinking buddies: we run into each other in the evening at gigs, say hello and exchange a couple of pleasantries at most. We're not blood brothers! Mum, it's late, I have to go".

"Ask him when he's getting his hair cut, because he looks much better with short hair".

"Yes, look, in a ten-minute interview that question is a must. Wait, let me write it down, otherwise I'll forget it".

"Good girl. Call me when you're free, so you can tell me if you're coming for dinner".

And she hangs up without saying goodbye. Then again, I was in a hurry...

When you go to the supermarket to do your shopping and buy hair conditioner, does the checkout girl stare at you?

Eehh... No, not anymore. (smiles)

(I open the notebook with the questions and catch Agnelli peeking)

Don't peek!

No, no, who's peeking! Besides, I can't make out a thing from your handwriting!

Two double DVDs coming out. Not a simple collection of promotional videoclips, but a huge assortment of concert clips, TV appearances, prank calls, vintage photographs, interviews and a documentary on the US tour. Were you bored?

No, I'd say definitely not, quite the opposite! It was very much by chance that we made this DVD. Actually, the original idea was a boring one: let's make a DVD about the Ballate per piccole iene tour, which was a triumphant tour, which had gone really well, where we'd played some galactic shows, but in my opinion a bit stiff: watching the footage back we said: "But... though... I remembered it being better... we're playing a bit stiffly...", and digging through the material we had, every now and then we'd stumble on a clip from '97 that was actually a killer. At a certain point we said to ourselves: "Why do we have to put together a piece following a rigid concept? Let's make something with the best of what we've got, following this kind of approach, let's put in the best stuff". That's how we started, and we widened the scope with a ton of recordings, we went and tracked down and interviewed the people who had worked with us over these twenty years, and other ideas came out of that.

It really was a work in progress that went on for several months.

We had a blast doing it, honestly. Like when you make a scrapbook back in middle school: cutting out photographs…

How long did it take you to "put it all together"?

Many months. The actual technical work took a couple of months in the end, but between choosing the tracks, selecting them, looking them over, setting a direction… more than a year.

From what I understand, "Ballads For Little Hyenas" is doing really well abroad. You've just come back from an endless run of sold-out shows and now you're heading off to the US again. Did you expect that?

It's going well. "Really well" is a relative concept: we're not selling hundreds of thousands of copies. We've got small but very fertile pockets scattered around Europe and the United States. These are things we want to nurture, definitely not out of some career ambition, as a lot of people have said… things where, at forty, you can't exactly think you're going to redo fifteen years of paying your dues in Arkansas! In reality, this dimension is very important to us: it's a different dimension from the one we live in Italy, and so we hold onto it tightly. Absolutely.

Isn't that traumatic?

No, it's traumatic if you're not ready to experience certain things because you don't want to experience them, because you want to settle for what you have, or because you want to enjoy yourself without seeing what you've achieved. For us, the enjoyment always comes from putting ourselves on the line, that's far more stimulating: going outside Italy, the harder it is, the more it is, for us, a pleasure. In the United States, honestly, we went in with our armor and shields up, and instead we ended up having the best tour of our lives. We were the ones with the preconceptions about them, not the other way around.

So… when you go abroad, does the audience come to see you, or do they go to the venue just because they know there's a show on?

The first time we did the United States, the audience definitely came for the headliners and then discovered us. But this is what happens in America: there's an enormous word-of-mouth effect, especially thanks to the internet, so if the first three or four shows go well, the people who saw us start talking up the opening act, and that's exactly what happened to us. Online, word spread that said: "Get there early because the opening band kicks ass." People started showing up earlier and earlier, and we'd be playing to venues already packed by 8:30 in the evening. That happens there, they're very curious.

In the rest of Europe we have niche followings in Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands; very small but very fierce pockets of fans. In England we're just starting to build that now.

Just curious, how many records do you sell after a show abroad?

In America we sold 700 copies over 24 dates. If you think about it, that's a good number.

Any copies in Italian?

Yes, yes! They're very intrigued by the Italian language. 50% of the setlist abroad is always in Italian.

Doesn't anyone get impatient?

No! If the whole setlist were in Italian that would probably happen. Actually, the fact that it's 50/50 builds a bridge towards them.

You started out in English and after twenty years you've gone back to English.

For the same reasons: we started in English because there was no scene in Italy, so we looked abroad and our models were English. We went back to English when we decided to get out of Italy, out of this "gilded cage". We're aware that English is a very communicative language, and also a lot of fun to sing: it lets me redo the same songs even after three or four years with the same freshness, because they're in another language, so, for me, they're still a new song anyway.

Tell me about when you were received by the then President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

It was wild, because we had a nomination for the David di Donatello for "best original song in a soundtrack" (“Gioia e Rivoluzione” for Guido Chiesa's film “Lavorare con Lentezza”), which, considering it was thought to be a cover of Area, is kind of funny. But it was an original version: it was played by us, reworked. In fact we didn't win... But we went to the Quirinale, which is wonderful. It has some incredible rooms inside, and we saw a few personalities... uh... I don't know... what's her name, the one with the huge boobs... the diva, come on... the one married to the guy from Florence...

Marini?

Yes, from Valeria Marini to Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. He's actually really likeable, a person with a very natural charm.

We didn't get the chance to actually interact with all these people: we were sitting next to them, but, well, you get a sense of what the atmosphere is like.

It was a very institutional affair and, for us, a lot of fun. We had a driver with a limousine...

So that's where my tax money goes! To drive Afterhours around in a limousine!

Exactly! Not bad, keep it up! (we laugh)

After you raised your left fist during the May Day concert a couple of years ago, the following editions of the event were broadcast on tape delay. How do you deal with the extraordinary media power you wield?

That's not why they put it on tape delay! (laughs) At May Day! If I'd done it who knows where else!

I don't actually have much media power: there are some very simple little rules for not getting bored. Actually, every now and then I do have something to say, and over time I've learned the most enjoyable way to communicate it... enjoyable for me... and I think that's as far as it goes: there's nothing else to it, nothing deeper than that.

I'm very lucky: people ask me what I think, and that's an incredible stroke of luck. I want to hold onto it, and above all I want to do it without becoming pompous, or gloomy, or worse, tacky, so I try to do it in the lightest and most enjoyable way possible.

Sometimes this kind of irony isn't understood, but that's part of the rules of the game. The price you have to pay is minimal compared to the satisfactions.

There's always someone who fires back at you, and you have to factor that in.

More than firing back, there's a segment of people who, I think, hate us for some reason. Some don't know us at all, others have a very blurry image of who we are and adapt it to fit their hatred – let's put it this way: we're fodder for their hatred – others know us very well and are envious, and still others probably know us well and have a very analytical, often excessive, critical spirit, but, honestly, a very interesting one. And that critical spirit really helps us question ourselves and never rest on what we've already done, while at the same time it stirs up the kind of anger that makes us react to certain situations. So thanks to everyone who hates us.

"How did the interview go?"

"Pretty well... I'm missing a knife, can you pass me one?"

"Did you ask him when he's going to cut his hair?"

"No, mom, I didn't ask Manuel Agnelli when he's cutting his hair"

"But then he'll never cut it!"

"But I did ask him about conditioner"

"Conditioner?"

"Yes, hair conditioner"

"I don't understand. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Remind me to lend you a book"

(Milan, February 16, 2007)

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