Corrado Rustici - Io Sono Corrado

Certain memories have no intention of fading away, of stepping aside, of cutting and running: they come back, they peek through, they resurface, all of a sudden, perhaps even to lend you a hand. So, let's see... There's a room, spacious, brightly lit, a television switched on and an eager audience: five smiling kids, warm stovetops a few feet away, smells that speak of autumn. Late September 1989, Italy 1 broadcasts in near-live time, as press offices used to put it back then, in the pre-live era for commercial TV (a milestone that would finally be reached in 1992), the concert by Zucchero Sugar Fornaciari. The summer of "Oro Incenso e Birra" has just ended, but the LP, cassette and CD have no intention of relinquishing the top of the Italian charts.

Adelmo from Emilia, devoted to soul, blues and r'n'b, has reached his peak, and even looks handsome, styled like a gospel preacher. A fiery performance, the footage shows waterfalls crashing down on the former Roman slaughterhouse in Testaccio, Red Ronnie, still in dark glasses, interviews everyone: alongside Zucchero are, among others, Paul Young, Clarence Clemons and even Eric Clapton in the flesh. Suddenly the atmosphere turns rarefied, and there it is, the finest song on the record-breaking album, "Iruben Me". Sugar warms up, he paws at the ground, he kicks, he sweats, he screams, he performs, he suffers, and then, all of a sudden, his right-hand man appears: Corrado Rustici, armed with his Charvel, delivers 25 seconds of emotional suspension, one soaring, high-pitched note, a sequence of notes that bend, curl up and then break free. The kids on the sofa exchange furtive glances. Then comes "Wonderful World" with an elegant, engaged Slowhand, but Enrico won't have it and says it loud and clear: "Oh, fine, but Rustici eats Clapton alive! Did you hear what he did just before?!"

A little over 29 years later, in one of those quirks brought about by the relentless hourglass of time, I'm sitting across from Corrado Rustici. We're in a relaxing dressing room inside the Zio Live Music Club, a kind of oasis for lovers of jazz rock (and related genres), skilfully and deftly run by "Zio" Carlo Forti, in one of the quietest and most desolate parts of Milan, Porto di Mare. Urban paradoxes. There are four hours to go before the show starts.

Do you remember that time in Rome, in the pouring rain?

You know, I've never actually seen that concert at the former Mattatoio? It was a night full of trouble, ruined by rain that caused all kinds of technical problems. But judging by what you're saying, it worked. I think we owe it to how angry we were - we were furious with the organizers, we were furious at the weather. The whole performance was constantly at risk and had to be adjusted on the fly. It was crazy stuff. Almost 30 years have gone by, and it's finally time for me to take a look at the whole thing.

Corrado Rustici is coming to Italy, almost by popular demand - this isn't a leg of a larger European tour, but a short national run, almost like a prodigal son's return, alongside Peter Vettese and Pete Riley. Then he'll head back home to San Francisco, which isn't exactly around the corner.

A quick, almost stealthy run of shows...

I don't feel like doing huge tours anymore, criss-crossing everywhere. I want to have fun, enjoy life. I have an 11-month-old son and another who's six, a family waiting for me at home.

Are you telling me that being a musician isn't the best job in the world?

Absolutely not. But it takes dedication, and you have to make some compromises, which can also mean hard work. Let me give you a recent example: not long ago we were offered a Cervello reunion on stage (the band Corrado made his debut with in 1973, ed.). We thought about it and agreed to do a single concert in Tokyo. And it went great. We recorded the show and we'll be releasing it soon. It wasn't easy, though. Suddenly I found myself face to face with another Corrado Rustici, a different way of playing. Compared to 1973 I've changed enormously - the way I approach the instrument, the way I play it, is completely different, so I had to work really hard to get back into the material from "Melos". I even had to transcribe the parts! We put in a huge effort, but the result was excellent, perfectly true to what we'd created 45 years earlier.

So no room for improvisation, then?

It's something that was almost never part of the progressive scene, a field where everything was worked out down to the last detail, as if you were dealing with classical music scores. Even in King Crimson, who leaned more toward certain flights of fancy, there still wasn't that much space to just let go. I believe that soon, besides the live album I mentioned, the original record, "Melos", will also be reissued, since it's impossible to find these days (your correspondent spotted a copy ten years ago at a vinyl fair: it cost 4000 euros, ed.).

A few weeks ago, after almost 30 years of putting it off, I finally read Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho". To my surprise, your name is mentioned by the murderous, maniacal protagonist, in one of his deranged and hyper-precise music reviews.

Yes, that's true, it happens when Bateman expresses his enthusiasm for Whitney Houston.

What was it like working with her?

Wonderful. She was 18 and was technically fabulous, brilliant.

Some people would call her "cold".

That's a misjudgment, because people wanted to compare her to the soul singers who came before her. But that was a different world. I played a lot with Aretha Franklin - she was original, she was the first, she was a formidable pianist and a songwriter. It was also a different era, a time when you had to prove something, you had to set yourself apart, even as a woman in a very male-dominated world. She was the one who wrote "Respect". Whitney belonged to another generation, and she set the tone for a whole string of singers who went on to win over the global market. After Houston came Mariah, then all the others. Great singers, very talented, but not songwriters, not original.

Except now we're seeing almost an inflation of great voices, ones that feel a bit anonymous.

Because the frame of reference has changed, so have the demands - today pure entertainment reigns supreme. But it won't last forever, it's just another cycle and things will change, as they always have.

It might sound obvious to point out, and maybe even a bit paternalistic, but there was a time when you really had to take risks, like when Corrado Rustici decided to leave Italy…

You have to remember what Italy was like in the '70s - a socially very difficult, risky country. There was tremendous enthusiasm, incredible youth participation, even around the idea of music for everyone and belonging to everyone - we shouldn't pay too much for tickets, the so-called "political prices." At first it seemed like a wonderful thing, but then everything degenerated, and unrest, violence and danger broke out. And, gradually, international artists vanished from our radar. Meanwhile, I kept feeding on all those sacred monsters, but I could no longer see them live. So I'd listen, I'd play, but then who could I measure myself against? I needed a change, even a radical one. And so, in 1975, at 18, I packed my bags and left. First to England, then to North America. And that's where a "small" problem arose: I couldn't go back to Italy, because I'd deserted - otherwise I'd have ended up in jail. I didn't want to do military service, it seemed like a waste of time to me. Problem solved? Not at all! Once in the US, my residency permit expired… And over there, they don't mess around - at the end of a concert, the agents in charge of checking papers would show up.

And how did you manage to escape the strong arm of the law?

Simple, every time I'd hide in the bathrooms. I remember it happening, for instance, when I was on tour with Chaka Khan. And obviously, since I wasn't legal, I got paid under the table.

Like a ghost reappearing in the night. How long did that period last?

Not that long: three years… You have to earn music. You have to suffer, take risks, sweat for it (he smiles).

How did you get into American studios? With what skills?

I can read sheet music, sure, not brilliantly, I'm not very fast, but I know the job and I have a very good ear. Nobody ever gave me trouble or had anything to say about it. At first they'd ask me for a certain performance, maybe a pianist would play it and I'd learn it on the spot. But I'm not an isolated case. Take Allan Holdsworth: he was an incredible musician, one of a kind, but he couldn't read sheet music. So, in order to work, he managed to create his own method, a personal vocabulary.

You loved Holdsworth a lot. Did you know him?

Yes, very well. He truly built a planet all his own, difficult to understand and to categorize. And if you asked him for explanations, he wouldn't give them to you - you had to figure it out yourself. Allan decided not to follow in the footsteps of blues, to go beyond it. The result was a kind of alien jazz, precisely because it was stripped of certain deep roots, like those of the blues. It was new music. It was harmonically complex, because his progressions are more recognizable on piano, while on guitar they have a sound, a flavor completely different from tradition. It's not even true that he didn't use patterns, licks - he did, but in a hidden, disguised, expanded way, with hugely stretched-out lines, outside the usual conventions. His music truly followed his own existential path: he was a tormented man, with personal problems, and in his art he loved to challenge the audience, to confuse them, he was Machiavellian.

And he never compromised. Years ago I read an interview with Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, in which they confessed to being great admirers of Holdsworth and to having sought him out repeatedly in the '70s, but without success. Steely Dan would really have changed his career, and not only that.

But it wouldn't have worked. He couldn't play with others, he always had to follow his own path. We're talking about someone who in 1978 left UK because Wetton and Jobson kept asking him to replay onstage the same solos that were on the record, and he'd answer: "I don't remember them, they were all improvised!" Steely Dan were a great pop band with jazz flavors, they'd have asked him for a solo here and another one there - that wasn't and never would have been his world.

Who was more important for the fate of your instrument: Allan or John McLaughlin?

I'd say John. An incredible person, an innovator, an insane musician. It was him and Miles who kicked everything off, who invented a context that Allan later drew his own inspiration from. John, who loved Hendrix, loved rock, and thought: let's try playing it while sneaking in something unusual. And that's where he met Miles. And so jazz-rock was born. Then came the fusion musicians, who were maybe more straightforward.

The difference lies entirely in the fact that McLaughlin found success and is always cited as a pioneer…

One could risk a comparison: the difference between McLaughlin and Holdsworth is the same as the one between Clapton and Hendrix. Let me explain: when I met Eric, I told him, "I know all your solos, I used to play them and I still do, you nourished me." I couldn't have said the same thing to Hendrix — you can't truly get inside Jimi's music. There are plenty of imitators, but when you hear someone doing his stuff, even very well, something's off, because he always went somewhere different every time, he was a Picasso-like, expressionist guitarist. That said, I'll say it again: McLaughlin invented a genre, while Allan, whose music is still hard to fully grasp, created "only" a world of his own.

What planet is the guitar's?

There are guitarists and guitarists, or rather, musician-artists and what I call players — great instrumentalists, but with or without them the world keeps turning anyway. I love playing fast, so maybe I shouldn't be the one to say this, but music is also about looking around, not just running. Then again, of course, everyone has their own way of expressing themselves, so who are you to tell me I'm playing too many notes or going too fast? To quote Forman's "Amadeus": "Too many notes? Which notes, Majesty?"

Is the electric guitar a matter of sound?

Absolutely. There's a "before and after" Hendrix, Van Halen. But in the end I prefer to talk about composers rather than mere guitarists. Enormous composers like Zappa: as a guitarist he started out as a blues guy, but since he had so much on his plate, rather than practicing he ended up developing an absurd, different, unique, unrepeatable style. And then… Jeff Beck, a guy who spends more time fixing cars, yet has insane control over the instrument. One day I asked him: how do you use the whammy bar to get that sound out? Because I thought he was using a pedal. But he picked up the instrument and played the piece exactly as it sounds on the record, leaving me stunned — and he was sitting in an armchair!

Corrado Rustici became famous in Italy as Zucchero's producer. It's a curiosity I've been carrying around for 25 years, and I'll put it to you bluntly: how come Zucchero, after a dizzying rise, after a trilogy of increasingly great albums, "Rispetto", "Blue's" and "Oro Incenso e Birra" — a record that 30 years on still sounds current, in fact timeless — collapsed so spectacularly? Ugly, artificial sounds, songs stripped down to the bone, and the lyrics too. I don't think we can call it a sellout, a term that was overused back then, seeing as he was selling tons of copies…

It was the opposite. He paid the price of success. He's a simple guy, a sensitive artist, plagued by doubts. It took us forever to record "Miserere", it was extremely difficult. Back then, between 1991 and 1992, Zucchero wanted to get more deeply involved in the production side, wanted to be guided less, and he wasn't wrong, it was his music, but being a producer takes skill, it's a different job. And then he suffered a lot during that period, personal problems, he started wondering whether he was doing the right thing, whether everything that had happened to him — the success, the applause, the esteem — actually meant anything. He wanted to understand, so he tried to step into my territory too, and that led to the split. Some competition can creep in, it's part of life itself. But those issues are gone now, and next year marks 30 years since "Oro Incenso e Birra"…

Did you expect all that success?

No, how could you expect something like that?! I met Zucchero and told him that in my opinion he had untapped potential, a unique drive, a soul temperament. Some time later we recorded "Blue's", I went back to the States, and one day they told me the record was exploding. From there, the rise was sudden.

Italy, England, America…

When I left Italy, England already felt like a luxury, America was like Mars. And there are some important cultural differences. Let me tell you this story: at one point, in 1987, Miles Davis fell in love with the track "Dune Mosse" and decided to play with Zucchero. A partnership that caused a stir, but one that was met with a certain amount of sarcasm in Italy. We realized it during the press conference announcing the collaboration: in front of us, a crowd of intellectual, smirking journalists, who couldn't believe their eyes and decided to discredit the whole thing, asking questions dripping with irony. I found myself acting as Miles's interpreter, and after several jabs, faced with the question "Are you playing with Zucchero because you want to break down new barriers?", he replied, "What barriers?! I've already broken down all of them! You, instead, when are you going to stop asking these fucking questions?!" All translated by me, with great satisfaction. Miles Davis always told you the truth, even the uncomfortable kind. If you didn't like it, there was the door.

Who would you have liked to work with, and who would you like to work with?

With Kate Bush, an artist I've always adored.

That evening…

Corrado apologizes and takes his leave, soundcheck and rehearsals await him. He climbs onto the stage, the photographer shoots almost on the sly, manager Riccardo Cappelli eyes me warily. Three hours later, the performance (opened by a set from Filippo Bertipaglia, a young wizard of the acoustic guitar, moving between folk, classical and jazz, fresh from an experience in San Francisco where he met Rustici in the role of mentor and producer). A few weeks earlier, it had been Greg Howe, another six-string boss, packing the house for two sold-out shows – the celebrated neoclassical shredder of the early days who, in the mid-90s, went on to forge a new fusion blend in which black music influences, between jazz and funk, found their most fitting setting. Yet Greg, always delightful in his choice of notes, full of groove and tireless, never quite managed to take off. At least not as much as Rustici and his two bandmates. Corrado, fresh off his third solo album, released two years ago and titled “Aham” (which translated from Sanskrit means “I Am”), immediately seeks audience participation, the clapping along, then launches into a blistering performance, sharp and unleashed, with the odd technical hitch that tries to trip him up but instead turns into a further springboard.

More than once you can feel the sacred fire that once burned in the Mahavishnu Orchestra, as well as the fluid dialogues reminiscent of Holdsworth, echoing the lessons of the great horn players. Rustici appears almost in a trance, though perhaps that altered state has more to do with his fans, because in reality he seems calm and serene even during the wildest flights. Backing him up within the instrumental scores are the aforementioned Vettese, with his thick, tousled white mane and his flair on the keyboards, through which he also makes up for the missing bass pulse (as Rustici himself does too), and the younger Riley, an imaginative metronome on skins and cymbals. By the end everyone is moved, and “Uncle” Carlo Forti is left positively open-mouthed. Rightly so.

Ride the wave of great music

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