Alberto Fortis - Thirty years on an angel's wings

After some years of silence, people are talking about Alberto Fortis again thanks to a series of initiatives that see him involved or even taking centre stage. Vincenzo Micocci, the record executive to whom Fortis addressed his famous 1979 invective-song, has titled his autobiography (published by Coniglio Editore) precisely "Vincenzo io t'ammazzerò", while the writer Rossana Lozzio, from the Verbania area, drew inspiration from Fortis's persona, his songs, and above all the emotions she felt at one of his concerts for her recent novel "The Wings of an Angel" (Boopen), which has just received a sequel. As if that weren't enough, Universal has finally reissued his first six albums in a box set, and two new live albums have also been released.

"La storia autobiografica di Alberto Fortis" is an extremely fluid book, full of flashes, almost interactive in parts. I'm thinking especially of the quotes from your songs that pop up here and there. The title is unusual, and it's only at the end of the book that we understand who Yude is... First of all, what does it mean, and what does this character symbolise?

Yude is the thriller element of the book, a real-life character who comes to embody both good and bad conscience. In the accompanying DVD there are images in which we've also somewhat "demonised" her... It's not a particularly pleasant device — it's the image of a stern German lady who, as I explain in my book, I've carried with me since I was a child.

There's a whole series of memories in the book, ranging from your first drum kit (at age five) to your first band, i Raccomandati, right up to the important encounters you had over the course of your career. Which began right away with high-level collaborations, like the one with Micocci at RCA and later with Alberto Salerno, PFM and Mara Maionchi. What was it like making an LP in 1979? Would it still be possible today to debut with such a bold work?

For about three and a half years, the material that made up my self-titled debut album was considered by the Italian record executives I played it to as "unsuitable" for release, and therefore for a proper recording production. I managed to start my career thanks to the president of a French label who had graduated from the Sorbonne, but the Italian executives didn't see anything in my songs that could work — and yet four singles were pulled from that record. Things in music have changed enormously today, except for those who have a large budget and can still make quality records. Naturally the means of making records have changed, and then there's the web — which I like a great deal as a democratic tool that gives anyone the chance to express themselves and put out what they write, but which at the same time legitimises amateurism.

If you think about it, around three thousand releases come out every month (between domestic and imported titles): audiences, moreover, no longer really "fall in love" with an artist, which makes it difficult for labels to "steer" them and set up projects the way it used to be possible. Power in the record industry now lies mainly with radio networks, and today, if a single doesn't succeed within four weeks, any chance of promotion or growth for emerging artists is wiped out. That's why the big broadcasters (the small ones still make a difference) only ever offer around twenty or twenty-five products packaged for the mainstream. I'm not speaking for myself, but about what I feel is damaging today: there's a lot of art out there, there's an audience hungry for quality music (not necessarily intellectual singer-songwriter fare) that simply can't make its voice heard.

How did your first album come about, already so solid and hugely successful?

After years of closed doors, I never thought I'd end up with Alberto Salerno and Mara Maionchi (as executive producers) and Claudio Fabi (artistic producer) at "Castello di Carimate", which was the "Rolls Royce" of recording studios. And with Premiata Forneria Marconi. No one could have expected such a resounding result, even though in those years PolyGram was overtaking RCA, which up to that point had held a monopoly on the singer-songwriter scene (Philips also had Fabio Concato and Teresa De Sio). Nannini herself had worked with Fabi. Today there's a lack of industry people who are genuinely passionate music connoisseurs. People say you can't go back to certain codes, but I don't believe that's true.

Don't you think there's also a lack of willingness to take risks these days? You're an artist who debuted with a record that opened with a track like "A voi romani", and your next work threw both critics and audiences off balance. Because you'd already turned the page...

Absolutely. Speaking of "A voi romani", the price I paid was high... the news was reported by the mass media without explaining the real meaning of my lyrics (as a result I was seen as an "anti-Venditti"), and I didn't expect it to backfire so badly. I remember when Pippo Baudo called me "uncivil" after hearing the track... there was definitely an initial prejudice against it. Who knows, if I hadn't recorded that song, I might have had an easier time of it, and I honestly don't know if I'd write it again today. In political discourse it's fair game — after all, even Obama speaks ill of Washington while living there — but I realise it may have been a stumbling block for part of the audience, who immediately shut off. It wasn't the smartest Trojan horse I could have used, perhaps too impetuous. As you say, nowadays there's no appetite for risk: on one hand music is the most "fast-moving" and easily plundered art form, on the other hand those with something to invest prefer to put it on the twenty safest artists.

I don't think there have been any particularly striking phenomena in the last five years, with the exception of Caterina Caselli's Sugar roster, which still works by the old criteria. Negramaro, for instance, didn't become famous with their first album — in the hands of a major label they probably wouldn't have gotten a second chance. I gambled with the risk on my second album, "Tra demonio e santità": it was actually meant to be my first, because the piano suite was the first thing I ever wrote, but debuting with a record like that would have been madness. Critics were divided, of course, but that album remains one of the favourites among those who went on to follow my career.

I admit I prefer your second album to the first — I can also hear echoes of Supertramp in it. Speaking of influences, I notice your style draws heavily on foreign sources of inspiration, American or British, while always managing to avoid slipping into imitation. There's a real consistency running from your first record right through to your latest.

This comes from a foundation I built up in the first bands I played in. My musical loves, from the Beatles to Chicago, by way of Ten Years After and Vanilla Fudge, weren't Italian. Then, partly because of the musical taste I'd developed and partly through a series of coincidences, I managed to meet the right people: I think of a historic figure like Franco Mamone, who managed to take PFM abroad and get them signed to Manticore, the label of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Alas, he may have been on the verge of pulling it off again, but due to budget issues and because, naively, we thought that train would sooner or later come round again, the idea of an English-language record (a "greatest hits" for the American market) that I was going to make after "Fragole infinite", in collaboration with Gerry Beckley of America, eventually fell through. That's the one great regret I truly have.

“Fragole infinite”, which followed another major hit with the public (“La grande grotta”), saw you collaborate with the legendary George Martin, who was working at the time with Ultravox. Later on you also got the chance to meet and work with Carlos Alomar, David Bowie's guitarist…

Working with George Martin had always been a dream of mine, and in my book I tell the story of how we met. I met Carlos during David Bowie's “Serious Moonlight” tour – he'd already had some contact with Mamone a while before, and I myself wanted to go back to recording in the United States (this time with an American producer), so choosing Alomar seemed like an excellent idea.

At first nothing came of it, but in 1987 I found myself working with him at the legendary “Power Station” studios, where Bruce Springsteen usually records, and where I met Julian Lennon and Ryuichi Sakamoto. That was another huge achievement… It might sound like a cliché, but America really has been a land of opportunity for me. There's a huge difference between Italian session musicians, who always struck me as a bit like the barons of medicine, and American musicians who would leave Stevie Wonder's studio session to go play on a record by some Italian singer nobody had heard of. It's exactly that mentality, that way of living, that made me fall in love with the States, where I ended up living for years.

It was in the United States, after a long silence, that you worked on a new album (“Angeldom”) with the musicians who played with Alanis Morissette…

Yes, the programmer is Francis Buckley, the same one who worked on Alanis Morissette's “Jagged Little Pill”. Between “Dentro il giardino” and “Angeldom”, seven years actually went by. That's a very long time for an audience: sometimes I ask myself why that happened, and it certainly wasn't for lack of material. The truth is I'd tried to settle permanently in the United States. There's one dream that's still sitting in a drawer: I pitched a storyboard for a film to Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks. Cinema is another passion of mine — over the years I've also directed a few of my own videos.

I've noticed a real attention to sound engineers and recording quality. You mention Bob Ludwig, Stephen Marcussen, Bernie Grundman… the “Universo Fortis” anthology was handled by the same team that worked on Fabrizio De André's “In direzione ostinata e contraria” box set.

Absolutely. Stephen Marcussen regularly works for Bob Dylan and Prince, and a lot of R&B and hip-hop material is mastered by him. Bernie Grundman remastered records by the Doors and Michael Jackson, and Bob Ludwig is another name that needs no introduction.

For over a month I was going crazy trying to decide whether to do it or not. My gut instinct would have told me never to take part — that format just isn't me — but at that moment I needed to communicate, I'd been away from the spotlight for a long time, and there was quite a bit of pressure from my entourage. In the end I agreed, partly because I thought it would be a positive move overall, and I'd get to show myself to an audience that might have had a skewed idea of me. If you'd searched around online, you'd never have imagined me getting caught up in that sort of pseudo-psychotic squabbling straight out of a condo meeting! But talking to the production team, I was told that, even more than in the past, the focus would be on the music (and I promise you, we really worked hard). At the time I was working on a new album with Fio Zanotti, whom I recommended to the show's staff after Maestro Lombardi dropped out.

I hope I took part with some dignity: the prime-time show was, all things considered, very well put together — the programme might even have been better than that year's Sanremo edition. My biggest disappointment, once I left the Farm, was seeing that everything that was supposed to happen afterwards, out in the real world, never actually materialized. I felt just as much of an “orphan” as before. The production was meant to release a CD with a few covers (including “Ciao amore ciao” and “Via del campo”), but the number of copies sold wouldn't even have covered the publishing costs.

Lately though, people have started talking about you again, and not just because of “Music Farm”. On another reality show, this time “X Factor”, your song “Milano e Vincenzo” was reinterpreted. Micocci, incidentally, titled his own autobiography “Vincenzo io t'ammazzerò”… does he still hold a grudge against you?

I count meeting Vincenzo Micocci among the great things in my life, and I still hold him in the highest regard. We're talking about the man who discovered Ennio Morricone, Bobby Solo, Francesco De Gregori, Rino Gaetano, Antonello Venditti, Paola Turci…

Any plans for 2010?

I'm coming off a pretty intense 2009 — there's been a series of reissues, and the tour will keep going through the whole year. A few new live albums have just hit the shops: two contain tracks pulled from various concerts, while another double CD is a “one night show”, the recording of a single all-night concert. There's unreleased material already in the works and ready to come out, but before the new album we need a “concept” that really grabs people. We've already made the video for what will be the single. In 2010 the adventure of the musical about Nobel laureate Salvatore Quasimodo with Q Projet will continue. Like I said, this time I'll make sure the ring lands in the right crater!

Why did you decide to celebrate thirty years of your career with a book, of all things?

My thanks go to Maurizio Parietti and Rossana Lozzio, because they were my counterpart, my second soul. We recorded several hours of my story, it was all a "work in progress". They were the ones who then patiently transcribed everything, which I later reread and reworked. I wanted to include some "pills" because they gave the book a different flavour compared to the usual biographies: what you find written is all true, but it has become a story, a novel. Maurizio also did an excellent job on the graphic design.

Speaking of books, Rossana Lozzio also wrote a novel inspired by the Domodossola concert. How did this collaboration on the two books come about?

Rossana Lozzio: After the Domodossola concert there was the fan gathering in Jesolo (Venice), which I attended. Afterwards the idea came about for this story, which draws inspiration from Alberto's personality and spirituality, which struck me deeply right away. It all started from a song from "Angeldom", "Hai ragione tu", which he performs on stage with the same pair of golden wings depicted on the novel's cover. Not long ago a collaboration was born involving Alberto Fortis's official website (for which I handle the section on tours and events), and a lovely friendship came out of it. On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of his career, I thought that creating a synergy between the publisher Aliberti and Alberto could be the best way to celebrate it, and "Whatever Happened to Yude?" will certainly make happy the fans who have been waiting for years to learn some behind-the-scenes details or particular anecdotes. When I wrote "The Wings of an Angel" I still didn't know Alberto, and I based it on impressions and feelings I had. In hindsight, I got very close to the mark.

Alberto Fortis's spirituality... in the book you mention Antonio Rosmini, but also Osho.

Of course, the Osho period was a very important parenthesis. With a friend of mine who was a sannyasin, I took a wonderful trip to India, including four days in Pune where the master Osho had his ashram. He had passed on to a better life just a few months earlier, but his presence was still very tangible, at least in the early Nineties. What fascinates me in his words is the possibility of a third way (I'm a huge fan of Gandhi, I consider him the greatest politician of the last century), and I was struck by his book, "Le disquisizioni sul Tao", a text that shows just how much similarity there is among all religions. Dogma gets shattered, and I think that's one of the main reasons Osho always caused unease. His interpretation struck me because I'm Catholic, of Jewish origins, but I've always had a great curiosity towards other cultures and faiths.

Finally, I'd like to ask you when your involvement with AISM (the Italian Multiple Sclerosis Association) began, for which you became an ambassador, alongside footballer Gianluca Zambrotta.

As a former medical student, raised in a family with a long medical tradition, I've always taken pleasure in seeking out what can be done for the greater good. Not only through music, which has therapeutic qualities, but also through volunteering. I visited the centre in Como and saw that it was a serious association. It can be an amazing life lesson; you don't often get to meet people like the ones I've met thanks to AISM around Italy. On top of that there's my involvement with the "City Angels", which was founded in Milan and deals with the reality of homeless people.

(18/03/2010)

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