Edoardo Bennato - The Roads of Rock Are Endless

by Claudio Fabretti

Edoardo, what's the point of revisiting "Puppet without strings" today?

It's a record I'm very attached to, first of all, even forty years on. And I also think its message is still relevant, perhaps more than ever. Collodi would have great fun today watching his prophecies come true right on schedule, rediscovering all our contradictions. So I've re-sung and rearranged the tracks together with the musician friends who tour with me. We'll soon turn it into a musical too, along the same lines as the one we did for Peter Pan with the music from "Sono solo canzonette".

But you've added a missing piece: "Mastro Geppetto", the previously unreleased track that opens the 2017 edition of the album.

Right, in the original album I left out two key figures: Lucignolo (added on the last studio album, "Ready to Set Sail", ed.) and above all Geppetto, because I found them hard to handle from a rock perspective. Last year I found the solution: what came out was a Dixieland track, rich with horns, and I'm very happy with how it turned out musically, as well as with the wonderful video directed by Stefano Salvati, a real blockbuster production with as many as 200 extras.

So now nobody's missing?

Now Collodi's whole world is back: alongside Mastro Geppetto, who's become a retired craftsman, and Lucignolo, now a PR organizing rave parties, we find the Cat and the Fox, the Fairy, and Mangiafuoco, who runs the show and makes all the puppets dance to his own perverse, despotic logic. And the Talking Cricket is funnier than ever.

Isn't the comparison to Beppe too obvious?

No, honestly, I've known Beppe Grillo for a long time, he's also invited me several times to his shows and initiatives. He always does the same thing: he urges people to understand the rot around them. He was already doing that in his shows many years ago. Grillo had it easy, and you know why? Because Casaleggio had a group of young people working for him, in this two-floor office, gathering data and information on all the corruption in Italy, supplying Beppe with material for his shows. And he'd get up on stage and say "Belin, do you realize you're all victims..." (a hilarious impression of Grillo, ed.). But he was missing other data, the kind about Italy's genetic makeup...

What does this data tell us?

The map of the last election, for instance, shows an Italy split down the middle: the Five Star Movement in the South, the center-right in the North. It's a figure that mirrors the country's split. Another figure is the one from the referendum on the Republic and the Monarchy, a map that overlaps almost perfectly with today's, just as the map from 1860 did. In short, we have this problem: the way the relationship between the State and its citizens is experienced in Reggio Emilia is different from Reggio Calabria. And since I'm a man from the South, I feel it's my duty to protect it. It's not a question of good/bad or stupid/smart - if anything, plenty of excellence comes out of the South. The problem concerns the social maturity of the masses. The difference in participation and social maturity means that in the South there's an alternative, protectionist entity that stands in for the state, one we have to reckon with. Whoever wants to govern Italy has to reckon with this entity, with the anti-state.

If anything, the gap between North and South is widening. Wouldn't you say that's true beyond Italy too?

Of course, this latitude-based divide runs through the European Union itself: the countries in the most trouble - or "less virtuous", as they say - are all in the Mediterranean area: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece... I have my own theory: in the regions of the planet where, for latitude-related reasons - meaning the alternation of seasons and consequent necessity - members of the human family were forced to advance their technological know-how as well as their interpersonal and legal relationships, the level of the masses has grown and a higher social maturity has developed. So when in Stockholm, Seattle or Vancouver someone is delegated to be a minister, a councillor, a prime minister, that delegate is constantly steered and kept in check by the electorate they represent, and they're very careful to act in the interest of the community that voted for them and keeps watching them. In Cairo, that doesn't happen. I think in terms of adult humanity and childlike humanity. And so I operate according to this logic, which is "very politically incorrect", but constructive.

A logic that you also apply to the theme of immigration on your latest album. Why do you argue that we Westerners are the ones who need to be “Ready to set sail”?

We all need to be ready to set sail, because smartphones and social networks issue constant invitations every day from those who have already emigrated, aimed at those still down below, in the immature, imperfect world. Africa today is like the Middle Ages, Italy is like the 1950s, while the global North keeps progressing and becomes the coveted destination. I've also made some paintings, exhibited at the Expo in Milan, then at the PAN in Naples and at the Palazzo Ducale in Siena, in which, using a hyper-realist style, I depicted the vu cumprà, who represent the journey of the human family.

On the subject of the need to rebel and not stay silent in the face of abuses by the powerful, I have to confess that one of your songs did a lot to shape my rebellious streak when I was a kid (we laugh). The song is “Ma che sarà”, a shame it remained one of the lesser-known tracks on “Sono solo canzonette”…

But I'm very fond of that song, I even included it in the Peter Pan musical, addressing it specifically to kids, to the very young, because I sense that today there's so much confusion, and they're disgusted by what they see. “Ma che sarà” told the story of how, escaping the usual logic of reason, chasing dreams to the point of madness, you can often unmask the abuses of the powerful. That one too remains, in fact, a very timely song. Back then, though, there was a risk of being misunderstood, those were the Years of Lead, there was a very heavy political climate.

You, however, have always been very careful not to be identified with any political side, even in the years when your colleagues were more or less all aligned on the same side.

Anyone who does this job has to stand above all factions, even though political factions try to co-opt you. What I say in my songs, to be credible, has to be free of any conditioning. And yet you always run the risk of being disliked by the militants of one faction or another. If it happens that I go to Circo Massimo invited by Beppe Grillo, I'm immediately branded a M5S supporter; if I then go to another rally organized by other political forces, they slap different labels on me. I'm used to living with all that, also because I didn't get my license to do this job from record labels, but precisely from the most politicized music scenes of the 1970s.

What do you mean by that?

In the early 1970s, my record label had basically dropped me. So I found myself out on the street, in Civitanova Marche. It was the period when “open air” festivals were emerging, independent of Sanremo, which by then had become a parish-hall pageant, even RAI stopped covering it (the reference is specifically to the 1976 edition, when RAI only broadcast the final night and even cut the moment the winner was announced, ed.). So I got my license to perform from the politicized scene, from the musical intelligentsia of those years: there were Claudio Lolli, Franco Battiato, Claudio Rocchi. I played every single festival that summer of 1973. And at the end of the year the director of Ricordi called me to say they'd had a change of heart and wanted to put out a 45 with “Salviamo il salvabile” and “Ma che bella città”, and later the album “The Good and the Bad”. That's how I started writing my first concept albums, in which I used the mechanism of the fable to tell the paradoxes of reality. But the situation has never changed: since we live in a country like an operetta, where factions tear each other apart with plenty of bloodshed, in any circumstance, whatever I say, I run the risk of being misunderstood. But I have to not give a damn about that, even if I risk making enemies among the followers of one faction or another… I speak to the rank and file of rock.

Right, rock. You're really one of the very few Italian singer-songwriters to have tackled this field with real conviction. What does rock mean to you?

To me it's something essential, something I can't do without. Rock is what charges me up, what drives me to play. It's a proactive charge, an energy that goes from the stage down into the crowd and back again. And we need that charge and drive to stand up to the world's troubles. The hardest thing, though, is writing the lyrics.

Lyrics like the ones in “La Fata”. In concert you performed it accompanied by a video about women who are victims of violence or political oppression around the world. Has the witch hunt never really ended?

Sadly, no, especially – once again – in the global South, in the most backward areas of the planet. Discrimination remains a huge social scourge, and women often keep paying the highest price, they're the easiest victims. Luckily, in many cases, women have instead fully won their rights; I remember how it felt in the 1960s to see women driving taxis and buses in Stockholm and the surrounding area. Or Denmark, where I'll soon be taking my daughter Gaia… There, thankfully, the problem was solved long ago. That song, “La Fata”, was also a celebration of femininity, of the magic of women.

With “Cantautore”, on the other hand, were you poking fun at someone? Maybe some colleague from back then took offense…

No, actually, I was poking fun at myself. I've always had good relationships with my colleagues. And when I made the album “La fantastica storia del Pifferaio Magico” (which reworked ideas from “È arrivato un bastimento”, ed.), I brought in a lot of colleagues, like Piero Pelù, Jovanotti, Morgan, Irene Grandi, Negrita, Sud Sound System, Max Pezzali and many others.

Who impressed you the most?

Morgan. He pays for his excesses, but he's brilliant. He's the kind of guy who can write an orchestral score in a single night. But I also really like, for instance, Roy Paci, Negrita, Ron, Neffa, Alex Britti…

Nowadays, though, the singer-songwriter is no longer an untouchable guru.

True, but over time the way we understand that role has also changed. Bono is a singer-songwriter, Mick Jagger or the Green Day singer both sing and write their own lyrics. And then there are misunderstandings, because for example Fabrizio De André, a great friend and mentor of mine, to whom I also dedicated the ballad "Ready to Set Sail" on my latest album, didn't always write both the lyrics and the music himself. Same goes for Lucio Battisti, who composed the music and left the words to Mogol or Panella. In that case, who's the singer-songwriter? So very often these labels are approximate.

Were you friends with Battisti too?

Yes, we used to hang out in Milan. Since the Numero Uno headquarters were in Galleria del Corso, he'd give me a lift home to viale Monza and then carry on further north, since he lived out in the countryside, in Brianza. I was younger, still paying my dues, and Lucio would always tell me: "Nun te preoccupa', arriverà il tuo momento…" ["Don't worry, your moment will come..."]. He was a huge blues fan. Once I lent him a John Hammond album — Hammond was a mentor of mine, the son of John Hammond Sr., who used to travel around like Alan Lomax in the Mississippi Delta recording songs… I lent that record to Lucio, who kept it for a month and wore it out. He had one of those cheap little guitars you'd buy from a street stall, he'd do these bluesy things, and Mogol was already writing the lyrics for his first hits.

On "Ready to Set Sail" there's a track, "La calunnia è un venticello", dedicated to the Enzo Tortora affair. How do you view our justice system today, and the rush to judgment, the thirst for public shaming, that you sense all around us?

The Tortora case is something that struck me deeply on a personal level too. In fact, in the album I included a photo of me and my little brothers Eugenio and Giorgio together with Enzo Tortora himself, who's introducing us at a music festival. So we knew him, and I saw him again on other occasions: he was a person who deserved esteem and respect. What happened to him is Collodi-esque, paradoxical, absurd, but it's part of the same twisted mechanism that governs our nation (or rather, "country", as people say nowadays). A genetically unbalanced country: the people who made it — Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi — are heroes with streets and squares named after them. Those who governed it afterwards, on the other hand, are considered crooks. Will we ever have a via Andreotti, a piazza Renzi or a Largo Berlusconi? Something doesn't add up if, for 150 years, whoever has taken on the burden of governing the country has been remembered as a villain: maybe these are alibis for our own superficiality, our lack of participation, our ineptitude, our laziness. Everything I'm saying is going to come back to bite me! (we laugh).

As for the thirst for public shaming, it's true, it's very strong today, but it was already well present in Collodi's book. The scene where Pinocchio goes before the judge is emblematic — an old chimpanzee, "the judge listened very attentively to the poor puppet's story, was moved and even shed a tear, then turned to two gendarmes — two dogs dressed as gendarmes (who knows why…) — and finally said 'this puppet has been robbed, wronged, humiliated, so now take him and throw him in prison'." A Kafkaesque, surreal situation, just like the Italian situation — in 1977, but also in 2018.

Now, though, take everything I've said with a grain of salt, because I'm a *pazzaglione*, a loose cannon, a stray dog who's allowed to say anything… in the name of rock'n'roll!

(Extended version of an interview published in the newspaper Leggo on April 19, 2018, with contributions from Mario Fabbroni)