Enrico Ruggeri - What other singer-songwriters won't say - Video

It's always said whenever a well-established artist releases a new album, but this time it really is true: “La caverna di Platone”, the latest studio effort from Enrico Ruggeri, ranks among the moments worth circling in red within a long and multifaceted career, made up of successes but also setbacks, of dazzling flashes of insight and inevitable uncertainties. But above all, and this is what remains, of a fair number of songs that have entered the Italian popular songbook through the front door, and of a certain number of albums confirming that this wasn't just down to chance. And “La caverna di Platone” belongs right among them, so much so that the questions for this interview came out in one go, and only after a few listens that, as it turns out, hit the mark. Here's the result of our chat, with an Enrico who, as ever, is little inclined to play it safe or dodge the question. Below you'll also find the video interview.

Reading the title of the album's opening track, “Gli eroi del cinema muto”, I couldn't help but connect it to “Sons Of The Silent Age” and to another song of the same name from David Bowie's album “Heroes”. I won't ask what Bowie meant to you, since he's always been one of your touchstones, but rather your opinion on the beatification process that followed his death. Now we have a number of last-minute Bowie fans who maybe only know two or three of his songs. Do you find this a positive thing, or is it something that makes you smile?Ah well…Bowie…! First of all, I'm proud of the comparison…I like “Heroes of the Silent Age”, I might reuse it, but you'll see what a circus it'll be when I die too, hopefully as late as possible… you'll see, you'll see (smiles). I think it's a natural phenomenon to witness, and one that I generally find positive. Although, within this dynamic, the teenage part of me does feel a bit put out, but in the end that's always happened to me. I remember back in high school, when one day I was the first to say there was this incredibly strong artist, and it was Lou Reed. A while later “Walk On the Wild Side” comes out, the Velvet Underground get rediscovered, then “Vicious” arrives, then “Perfect Day”, and in the end everyone was a Lou Reed fan. But it's happened to me too, on the other side of the fence: sometimes I sense that some of my fans unconsciously love me more during the dark periods, when maybe you play a show but the theatre isn't full. Whereas during the peak periods, somehow, they feel a bit less central, so to speak. Because it's clear that when you play a show in a theatre that isn't packed, you manage to give your best: you want to reward the ones who, despite everything, showed up. It's a fairly natural phenomenon. As for Bowie, well, Bowie always had plenty of admirers, definitely more than Lou Reed: and then, obviously, after death, exactly the things that happen when you die happen.

By the way, I have a story of my own about you too. Because in '77 or '78, I don't remember exactly, you showed up with bleached hair and white Lozza glasses at the middle school I attended, Tito Livio, to substitute for a teacher of mine who was absent for an hour. You were rather surprised when I told you I knew who you were, because the older siblings of my group of friends hung out with yours. So I was already extremely well informed about you, and you were also a bit taken aback to see a 12-year-old kid trying to talk to you about Lou Reed.

You see, you see? Well, with this story poor Raffaella Carrà would be delighted (laughs). By the way, did you know Tito Livio doesn't exist anymore? They tore it down to build some terrifying block of flats.

Exactly. Anyway, personal anecdotes aside… “Il poeta” contains references to Pasolini, but it made me think of an even more uncomfortable poet than Pasolini…

…Ezra Pound?

…him exactly! A man with questionable ideas in some respects, but above all one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. As you know, Pound was locked up and made out to be insane, and only the intervention of major intellectuals, including the anti-fascist Hemingway, partly led to his rehabilitation. So let me ask you: to what extent, in your view, can the artist be separated from the man? Because especially in our age of political correctness, opportunism seems to be the rule…

Well, look, history shows that the man and the artist are, and must be, separable, because, you know, aside from a few anecdotes about Caravaggio walking around with a knife and a handful of others, we don't actually know whether Dostoevsky was a better person than Chekhov. Although Tolstoy, especially in the second phase of his life, becomes super-mystical, and his wife complains that she's living with a madman. The more years go by, the more convinced I am that time is what delivers justice, because anecdotes tend to be forgotten while the work remains… sure, if social media had existed back then, maybe Tolstoy's wife would have turned into a Ferragni? Who knows. So today it's a bit more complicated, but it can be done. About my private life, practically nothing is known. It can be done. In fact, I'm at the very least puzzled, and sometimes my puzzlement borders on contempt, for those who go on television to talk about their own business, because it means they have little to say about their work. I don't like it. Just think of the discretion with which Fabrizio De André dealt with his kidnapping, which mostly ended up being addressed in a song, “Hotel Supramonte”. He didn't go on Mara Venier to tell everyone how he felt when he was kidnapped, you know? Or take the discretion of Francesco De Gregori regarding his partner, both while she was alive and now that his Francesca is gone. That's why I remain convinced that the best artists are the ones who try to focus attention on what they do, not on how they live.

You dedicate one of the album's most inspired songs, “Il cielo di Milano”, to our shared home city. It's not the first time you've addressed your city: in 1983 you sang a brash, somewhat un-PC “Salviamo Milano”, so I have to ask you whether Milan was saved in the end, or whether you see it as being in trouble these days…

This is the worst moment since the days of the Piazza Fontana massacre, let's say, and since the '70s with the Autonomists shooting and people dying in the streets. But back then, at least, there was a deranged, mad ideology, whatever you want to call it, but those were crimes committed in the name of something…

…you know what, Enrico? Back then you more or less had to go looking for trouble, whereas now it lands on you whether you like it or not…

That's exactly it, but I see you already know that. Look, I'm quite privileged, in the sense that, being an âgé person myself, I no longer go out clubbing at night, so the most I can do is go out for dinner and head back home. But I have a 19-year-old son and he tells me terrible things: gangs of second- or third-generation immigrants, brawls, gangs, it's a terrible phenomenon that's very hard to contain. But Milan remains a welcoming city, it's a city that's only "racist" toward those who have no desire to do anything, that's the truth. But if you come to Milan and roll up your sleeves, you can be Calabrian, Congolese, South African, and after a moment nobody notices anymore. Look, let me tell you something: my daughter, who's 15 now, when she was in primary school had a best friend, and one day she tells me about this friend of hers, about what they did together, about their shared tastes. Her mother later told me that this little girl was Black… and you know what that means? That my daughter, at 8 years old, already had the antibodies, meaning she didn't consider skin colour a relevant detail worth mentioning to her father, and that's something that struck me a lot. Every so often my son, the 19-year-old, says: “Yeah, that friend of mine is coming over today with his boyfriend”, but nobody bats an eye, least of all him. But then again, I'm convinced that, so to speak, evil lies in the eye of the beholder. As a kid I used to listen to Bowie, Lou Reed, the New York Dolls, all people with an absolutely vague, promiscuous, transgressive sexuality and so on, and I never gave it a second thought either. The ones who do notice are other people, the ones who say: “Ah watch out, we need 'quotas' here”, and so on. But I wrote a song called “Trans” back in 1991, when LGBT was just a tax code.

I could say the same thing. I used to hang out at what for you was “Piccola Broadway”, later renamed “Taxi”, here in Milan, and you know that promiscuity was the norm there, and yet it never once crossed my mind to choose my friends based on sexual orientation, nor theirs with me, I imagine.

It really is an artificially constructed issue, because there is, in my opinion, no discrimination of any kind. Discrimination arises when someone wants to highlight certain circumstances so they can have something to complain about.

In “Zone di guerra” you return to another delicate subject. Plenty of your colleagues talk a big game about pacifism in the media, but then it's far more common to find their songs dealing with completely unrelated themes. You, on the other hand, wrote a song about it - and it's not even the first time - so let me ask you: right now we're witnessing two great tragedies not far from us, except one gets sold to us as some kind of acceptable war (in Gaza), while the other is framed as an assault on a defenseless people (the Ukrainians). Does this inconsistency strike you too?

They're all afraid, that's why certain subjects don't get touched. You see, nowadays the narrative matters more than the substance. Whoever seizes control of the channels can tell a story that can do even more damage than bombs: it can cause enormous harm, and in any case they hold all the cards, and at a certain point it gets established that anyone who raises a doubt is a dangerous subversive. We've even got the word "divisive" being used in a negative sense, as if everyone were obligated to think according to a single approved line of thought. In a civilized country where people actually engage with each other, "divisive" ought to be a term that means you can be friends with someone who thinks differently from you.I have friends I have nothing in common with, we disagree on everything, but they're still my friends, and I actually enjoy talking to someone who doesn't think like me more than being comforted by someone who shares my exact views. Instead, that word has become a label slapped on you because you're not following the line of thought you're supposed to follow.

In the title track, “La caverna di Platone”, love is described as an illusion, drawing on the famous allegory of the Greek philosopher: do you find there are parallels between the illusion of love and the idea that reality is only what appears to us?

Well, actually Plato framed it in a way that was, let's say, more... public, and less private. I have to say this song is strange because, if you read the lyrics, yes, it's a love song that says that, whatever happens, we can delude ourselves for as long as we're granted. But then the title was such a perfect hook to push online that the album ended up being named after it. As for your question, love is a great engine, everyone seeks it out wherever they feel most warmed by it, so it's not necessarily love for a man or a woman. For instance, in my case, one of the moments when I feel the most love is while I'm playing a concert, so it depends. In short, "Ognuno ha tanta storia, tante facce nella memoria", to quote Gabriella Ferri. Everyone lives life their own way, but ultimately everything we do is a mix of seeking approval, affection, love and gratification.

In “Il problema” I found again the sardonic disenchantment of the early Enrico, a sort of earthly retelling of Totò's “'A livella”. Don't you think that, if we adopted the view that chasing the mirage of perfect well-being is pointless, we'd all live a bit better?

Exactly. Although now there's this counter-trend on social media of performing the conformism of anti-conformism, where everyone says "Yes, okay, but crying in Dubai is better than crying in the suburbs, complaining on a Rolls Royce is better than complaining on a Fiat Panda." That may well be true, but the fact is that the pursuit of happiness has nothing to do with owning material goods: it's no coincidence that psychoanalysts aren't based in Zaire, they're in New York, because there people have far more problems with their own minds than in places where the problems are more practical, like having to survive on a couple of dollars a day. I, for example, have had both major financial setbacks and great fortune, but if you look at the graph of my happiness, it's completely different from the graph of my bank account. Besides, you tend to get used to material things almost immediately, because if tomorrow someone gave me a Lamborghini, I'd be thrilled, but after two weeks I'd already be used to it and it wouldn't do anything for me anymore. So the song is about exactly this: you might be extremely rich or completely destitute, but either way you'll still see your own problem.

“Das ist mir wurst” is 100% Decibel musically - it's actually co-written with Silvio Capeccia - and it has lyrics that take a clear stance: it's our roots that should guide us, not the social and economic models we've imported. Do you think it's possible to change this state of affairs, this sort of colonization?

It depends on what we mean by colonization. In a sense I too was colonized by David Bowie, by Lou Reed, by Roxy Music, by prog, by Yes, by Emerson Lake & Palmer. But what I went through was - how shall I put it - a pure form of colonization, not one of those scientifically engineered to manipulate minds. And as a teenager, I was listening to music I would never again listen to with that same intensity, and I think I was listening to music of a caliber that has rarely been matched in the decades since.

Careful with statements like that, or you'll get branded a "boomer"...

But that's a different point I'm making. On the TV show I curated and hosted, “The Musician's Eyes”, I tried, for instance, to demonstrate - successfully, I think - that Italian music is alive and well. The problem certainly isn't a shortage of talented artists, the problems are streaming and the fact that radio stations only point in one direction, and that the big TV shows are in the hands of one or two organizations that keep sending on the same 25 singers who invite each other back and forth.

Even the Sanremo promoters are always the same, in fact the promoter whose artist wins Sanremo has been the same one for four years running...

Yes, we've noticed that. So there are centers of power that somehow steer the whole path: I've had some exceptional musicians as guests, I'm just going through them at random now but I'm thinking of Erica Mou, Fulminacci, Mirkoeilcane comes to mind...

...my friend Avincola, who besides being an excellent singer-songwriter is also about to publish a book on Enzo Carella...

Yes, excellent... there are lots of young artists like him who maybe went to Sanremo once and even left their mark, but then dropped out of that circle we were talking about earlier and as a result went back, let's say, to a club-circuit dimension, while still making beautiful and really interesting work. So Italian music keeps producing very interesting things: after finishing “The Musician's Eyes”, I've received 300 emails from singers of varying fame, but none of them top-tier, and many of them are doing truly beautiful work. The problem, obviously, is something else, namely that two or three people hold the power and manage - very shrewdly and very skillfully, from their point of view - those same 20 or 25 artists, who are always the same ones.

But will there be a follow-up to “The Musician's Eyes”? Since I fear we'll have to abandon the idea that popular music could ever be taught in compulsory schools, at least we deserve one small oasis within public broadcasting...

Of course, it doesn't depend on me. This time I'm even more confident, given that the viewership numbers were much higher than the first edition. But, as you can imagine, that might not be enough. I've got a ton of ideas, like "The Musician's Eyes", or I'd simply like to make that show more, let's say, regular. But it's not up to me to decide, and it's the one thing I have no say over, because by now I decide when to make records, I decide when to publish books, but television isn't something I get to make happen.

Going back to "Das ist mir wurst", speaking of Decibel, I find this song extremely Sparks-like: are you still following the exploits of the Mael brothers? To me, half a century on, they remain an extraordinarily fresh and original one-off.

Absolutely, and on July 8th I'll be seeing them in Milan. Just think, the seed for the Decibel reunion was planted in a London theatre where I met Fulvio and Silvio: we were all there to watch the concert where Sparks performed their most important album with an orchestra, "Kimono My House". That's where it all began: we spent time together, then went to take the photo, like all the tourists, crossing the Abbey Road zebra crossing. In short, we spent time together and then went back there to shoot a video when we made the first post-reunion album.

In the vinyl version, and therefore not available on digital platforms, I also found your rendition of the beautiful Piero Ciampi song "Ha tutte le carte in regola", and with this interpretation of yours a question came to mind that I've often found myself asking even about lyrics you write yourself: do you recognize yourself in this figure of the lone, disenchanted, misunderstood artist, or is it a romantic figure that you somehow feel the need to make your own?

Well, Ciampi wrote great poetry, with musicians who turned it into great songs. He was, is, a misfit, an alcoholic, probably an insufferable person too, but he had such poetry and such intensity, such desperation, that they made him one of the cornerstones. I always remember one episode: he was great friends with an unconventional footballer named Ezio Vendrame, who played for Lanerossi Vicenza, the kind of player who wore his socks pulled down, with long hair and a beard. One day Ciampi goes to the stadium to watch his friend play... well, Vendrame, while playing, notices him, picks up the ball in his hands and won't let go, walks over to the stands and says: "Now you're going to applaud this genius, and only then will we start the match again". Anyway, since you mentioned the vinyl version of the album, besides this song there are four more that aren't available on streaming platforms.

"Benvenuto chi passa da qui" is a song written by your son Pico Rama. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I can remember, I don't recall an unreleased track on one of your albums credited to someone other than Enrico Ruggeri, let alone a singer to whom you hand over the microphone, stepping a little into the background yourself. Should we read this as an act of unconditional love, or a first encounter — perhaps with a follow-up — on common ground that, artistically speaking, has until now been light years away from yours?

True, it's never happened before. But it's not an act of love, it's his song, and, as I've already said several times, Pico has no interest in dealing with the market, he's not interested in doing promotion. He lives in the countryside, he's a hippie thrown into 2025, and I heard this song by chance, because he doesn't even play his stuff for me. But he had recorded it, and it was Sergio Bianchi who played it for me. Sergio is the producer, sound engineer and mixer on my album, and he was working on some tracks with Pico, and it was he who told me: "Look, you really need to hear this". Since "La caverna di Platone" is an album full of meaning, with some raw, harsh tracks too, and not much to smile about, "Benvenuto chi passa da qui", with its lyrics about reconciliation, was the perfect song to lighten things up, to bring a smile into an album where there aren't many smiles.

I'd like to dwell more generally on the father-son relationship, because I too have a grown-up son, so I don't know if the same thing happened to you: when he was little, I had a ton of expectations, but inevitably a moment comes when you realize that little or nothing of what you'd built up in your head and heart comes true, and you find yourself facing a person who is, rightly, different from you, and you have to come to terms with it.

It's a natural process. Jodorowsky called it the killing of the father, which is part of growing up. Pico killed me off in a way that even surprised me, because thankfully it's not tied to anything practical at all: he genuinely lives on ten euros a day in the countryside, he's completely self-sufficient, and he's a completely different person from me. This obviously surprised me, but I have to say I admire him for this scornful rejection of everything that consumer civilization represents.

Maybe then this being outside the box is something he got from you a little.

Yes, well, he's really far more extreme, because I still make records, put them out, do interviews and go on television. I try, so to speak, to maintain my independence and dignity. But I also have to make the books balance, because when you want to keep your studio, keep your musicians, make records on your own label, then you need the numbers to add up. He, on the other hand, doesn't have any of these problems.

Of course, there's an entrepreneurial side that's very important in every job, including yours — actually, especially in yours, because clearly you can't live on composing music alone, but also on the possibility of getting it heard by as many people as possible.

Money is freedom, and it has to be used well. The other day I made a post on social media recalling that when I won Sanremo with "Si può dare di più", money was raining down on me, and I could have afforded far more than a Lamborghini or a Ferrari. Instead, with that money I decided to do a tour with a 42-piece orchestra, Champagne Molotov on stage, technicians and everything else, and I was the first person in Italy to do something like that. In short, 70 people touring around Italy, and if every theatre had been full, as luckily happened, we would have at most broken even. My reasoning was: if I buy a Ferrari, will I get more or less pleasure than putting on 40-plus concerts with an orchestra? Which of the two pleasures would be greater? My answer was: I enjoy myself far more with an orchestra than strutting around Milan in a Testarossa. It was an important chapter, so to speak, in building the whole edifice.

...and yet I'm quite sure that whoever came second at Sanremo this year won't need your advice. Because Lucio Corsi seems to be one of those guys, one of those artists, who's positioned himself with just the right outlook. I've followed him since his early days, and when I saw the reception he got at Sanremo, I gave myself a little pat on the back on my Facebook page with a prediction from 2021, when I wrote: "The guy in the photo is the best singer-songwriter of his generation, you don't know it yet but soon everyone will realize it". I admit I was very lucky, because there are so many variables and talent is only one of them, but I really think he's on the right path...

Yes, yes, all the premises are there, and they're excellent... even the fact that he's now touring clubs speaks in his favour, he's not getting ahead of himself. He's one of ours, and in fact I had invited him onto "The Musician's Eyes": they told me he couldn't do it without telling me why, but evidently he was already in the running for Sanremo, because, as you know, if you go to the Festival there's a pre-emptive one-month embargo during which you can't appear on TV.

Are you aware that a song like “Arrivederci addio” – not least because I find it really well done from a compositional standpoint, and not only in the lyrics – is going to cause irreparable heartache among your huge following of Ruggeri fans, especially the female ones? There's a truth, alas, a universal one we all have to reckon with, and that's the truth of goodbyes… but don't tell me this is really going to be your last song…

Well… I don't know. Look, I'm convinced I've done the best work of my life from 2017 onward, especially in terms of the music, the arrangements. The album “Noblesse Oblige” with Decibel opened up a whole world for me, because I went into the studio with guys, with gentlemen, who hadn't set foot in a recording studio in at least 35 years, and from that moment on I stopped spending my afternoons listening to plug-ins. Plug-ins, for those who don't know, are those things where you turn on your PC and get every keyboard sound imaginable: “interstellar two”, “space four” and so on, and then you spend your afternoons choosing between them. With Silvio Capeccia, instead, we'd get together and start saying: “Let's put the Hammond here, or the Mellotron, or maybe a Mini Moog or a Wurlitzer piano”. Luckily Silvio had all these keyboards, and that's where everything started up again. A collaborator of mine told me: “This is the first time I've seen you walk into the studio smiling”. From there a kind of celebration started, which led to two Decibel albums, then a live album, then “Alma” and finally “La rivoluzione”. When “La rivoluzione” came out, I already thought that would be my last record, because I didn't think I could pull off something like that again. Instead it took me three years, I threw away dozens of songs, remade them, re-recorded them, and out came “La caverna di Platone”. So, for one thing, for the first time I'm asking myself whether I'll ever be able to make an album of this level again, at least for me. Second, working three years for a piece of plastic that ends up on the shelves of collectors and friends is starting to feel a bit like an end in itself: I don't want to be the hero of silent cinema, so my hesitation – aside from the fact that you have to be able to make an album like “La caverna di Platone” and I don't know if I'll be capable of it – aside from that, it's the object itself that's becoming a bit like “silent cinema”. One last thing: with 40 albums I could keep playing concerts for another hundred years, changing the setlist every tour, so I honestly don't know. If the question is: “Do you intend to quit?” The answer is no, certainly not when it comes to playing live. As for going back into the studio for another three years to make a record, I don't know.

So we'll definitely be seeing you live again soon…

Of course, we'll be playing to promote the new album starting next spring: we kick off on April 1st in Milan, at Magazzini Generali, and on April 3rd at Largo Venue in Rome, with more dates to follow.

This was supposed to be the last question, but while you were talking another one came to me, which is also a bit of a criticism I'd like to raise, if I may, about your career. You're also a listener and a music lover yourself, and I wonder if it's ever happened to you to think, “Wow – take Emerson, Lake & Palmer, for instance – why did they release this record? They could have taken two songs from this one, three from that one and four from yet another, and they would have made a masterpiece.”

Well, you're right. Look, I'll give you an example right away: “Pieces of Life” in 2015 and “An Incredible Journey” in 2016 – together they could have made one good album. They were records made a bit on autopilot, following a formula that worked, or at least seemed to benefit the songs. So I completely agree: sometimes I let myself get carried away by enthusiasm, and sometimes enthusiasm turns into a lack of self-criticism and impatience, qualities you really only learn to manage once you're old enough. So this time I say, half-joking but not entirely, that “La caverna di Platone” is the best of the three albums I didn't make in 2023, 2024 and 2025: in other times I would have made three albums, this time I made the best of three albums that never came out.

(March 2, 2025)

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