Enzo Carella - An Irresistible Outsider

Beyond pop's perimeter wall

by Marco Bercella

“Ahoh yé nanà is a title born from interjections, sighs, choruses, wonders, vowels, suspensions, waiting, decisions made, vocal grimaces, verses that mimic themselves, from the ahs, ohs, uhs of life scattered throughout the song”. I have this sentence in front of me, immortalized on the back cover of Enzo's new album, as I pick up the receiver for the phone chat I'm about to tell you about. A sentence that promises a life lived under the banner of simple emotions that don't rhyme with banality — the kind that Carella the musician has always managed to convey to us with a proverbial, never-surpassed lightness. It's the antithesis of drifting through life, as is confirmed by what comes out of our half-hour on the phone: honesty and timeless transparency, a great desire to talk about himself as an artist, but also as a man dealing with his everyday life. A man who has made artistic consistency and a straightforward path his banners, and who tells us a bit about himself in this exclusive interview.

Enzo, listening to “Vocation“, which came out in 1977, you get the sense of something that arrived too early for its time, something hard to pigeonhole. An unprecedented blend of Italian progressive rock, singer-songwriter tradition and black music, topped off with Pasquale Panella's absolutely unique lyrics. Can you tell us a bit about that period, about how you got started? How did such unusual, forward-thinking ideas manage to take hold?

Thanks for the compliments, and I can see you remember everything perfectly. You know, neither Pasquale nor I ever intended to make records, let alone get into show business. Actually we just wanted to combine parts of his poems with my songs. Back then I was playing Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix covers in basements with my friends, while he was doing avant-garde theatre in the style of Carmelo Bene. That's how we started, and we even found a record producer who had us cut our first single, “Fosse vero”.

You had some great Italian musicians backing you, from Pignatelli of Goblin to Elio D'Anna of Osanna. How did you manage to gather them around such an unusual project?

Well, the producers believed in me a lot, so they always brought in the best musicians to play on my records. You know, they saw my music as something ten or twenty years ahead of what was around at the time…

…And I can assure you it was! Listening to your new record too, you get the sense of something extremely modern, and yet your style is still the same as it was 30 years ago. In short, you're our Donald Fagen, it's just a shame we're in Italy and not the States…

Wow, I really love Donald Fagen, that's a truly flattering comparison, I'm really glad you think so.

Your songs from back then still sound remarkably fresh and current: I find your music completely free of the solemnity that marked that era (and certainly free of the banality of the pop music that stood in contrast to it). A sound that's committed, yes, but carefree at the same time. Today's new singer-songwriters compete with each other to avoid taking themselves seriously, so let me ask you: is there anyone among them in whom you recognize your own approach to making music?

Look, unfortunately I don't listen to much music, so I couldn't say. Sure, every now and then on the radio I hear someone who might have drawn on one of my songs, but I honestly couldn't tell you who, how, or when…

…So you're not exactly what you'd call an attentive listener…

Absolutely not, although I should start again, because listening to music is important, to stay up to date. But yeah, in recent years I haven't been interested in it at all.

If I said that your first three records represent a kind of bridge between the Battisti of the Mogol era and the one that came after, from “Ancora tu” to “Don Giovanni” so to speak, would that statement bother you or flatter you?

It flatters me, because Battisti was a great singer-songwriter. Being compared to a singer like that is nothing but an honour, because Battisti was Battisti, he was number one: he really stood apart from what you called the solemn singers. From that point of view, I too brought a certain joyfulness to my songs, at a time when singers would all show up with a few little moves here and there, all very similar to one another.

We have to talk about the lyrics. Tell us how you work with Pasquale Panella. How does your collaboration actually happen? I'd guess you send him the tracks and he then writes the lyrics for them. That's the impression I get from the work with Battisti too, where, with the exception of “Don Giovanni”, it seems to happen the other way around. Am I wrong?

You're not wrong. After the “Don Giovanni” experience, where Battisti would send Pasquale the songs for him to write lyrics to, starting with the second album and through to the end, it was Panella who sent the lyrics to Lucio for him to set to music. I'll confess I didn't like how Battisti worked on those lyrics, in my opinion he didn't manage to set them to music well…

…And it's also harder to shape melodies around lyrics that are already written…

Yes, in part it's as you say. In my case, I've almost always written the songs first and then Pasquale added the words, but the opposite happened too, as in "Malamore", for example.

I'm old enough to remember the 1979 Sanremo festival fairly well. In many ways it was a surreal edition, packed with newcomers and with no leading ladies. You came second with that wonderful song "Barbara", but the impression you gave was that of some sprite who'd landed on that stage from another planet. You just didn't fit in at all! Tell us about that experience...

Sanremo was an incredible experience. Even though at first I tried to stay emotionally detached from it, I was immediately swept up by the atmosphere you breathe there. I started getting overwhelmed by tension, haunted by a thousand doubts about how I'd sing, or whether I'd manage to make a good impression — the kind of stuff you'd need a psychiatrist for, really! And instead everything went really well, and that gave me a wonderful feeling. And if you consider that I came second ("But a lot of people still remember 'Barbara', while nobody remembers the song that won anymore", he adds with a touch of understandable pride), it really was a great celebration.

I never would have thought I'd feel such things taking part in a festival like Sanremo, since I used to look down on it, I didn't really follow it much. But once you're inside it, it gets you, there's no way around it.

You stopped making records for a long time right after "Sfinge", perhaps your best album. What made you leave the scene?

After Sanremo you move into an entirely new dimension, because you start selling records and, as a result, you feel on your shoulders the responsibility of an industry that's investing in you, that has certain expectations, and for these reasons puts a lot of pressure on you. It was an atmosphere that didn't suit me at all: I've always played with complete ease, for the joy of playing, out of passion and love for music. So I realized I felt uncomfortable in that situation, and that's why I started falling out of love with it, and drifted away soon after.

What did you do after that? How did you spend the following years?

I kept playing out of passion, I went back to basements and rehearsal rooms, back to where I'd come from, basically. I have a great love for the guitar, so I went back to being a guitarist. Then, since I'd done certain studies, I did some work as an architect, though not much. I started living a normal life, like everyone else, doing all those things that being a musician had kept me from doing before, even though now I've got the urge back to devote myself only to music. My return has been very well received, especially by the musicians I meet at the events I take part in. Maybe it's because I left the scene at a moment when I was still successful: it seems a lot of people picked up on that, and that's why people still hold me in high regard.

In the meantime did you start a family, did you have children?

No, I don't have children. I've had relationships, partners. One of them had a daughter from a previous relationship, so for a few years I also experienced what you might call being a "half-father".

The gossip-magazine question was really meant to ask whether you'd support a child of yours who wanted to pursue a career in music, especially in light of your own varied artistic experience...

Music is first and foremost a passion, and if you've got it, it's really hard to be talked out of it! Certainly being a singer, especially now with the rise of computers, has become a pretty poorly paid job, so from that point of view I wouldn't be in favor. However, if I saw talent and passion, I think I'd encourage it, since music is like a faithful friend, it's something you carry inside you, it's company that's only yours, and something nobody can ever take away from you.

Let's talk about "Ahoh yé nanà" and about Pasquale Panella, who produced it. How did you two reconnect? Tell us about the new record, how it came about, how long you've been working on it...

It came about because, as I wrote new songs, I kept sending them to Pasquale, and the next day he'd punctually call me up, enthusiastic about those tracks. In short, he was really won over by it, so I hope people feel the same way he does — that would mean it's been a success. Anyway, "Ahoh yé nanà" is the result of different experiences: I tried my hand at various musical genres, from world music to rock, from folk to funk...

...I find it's funkier than any of your previous records...

Yes, I've already been told that. Anyway, I tried to have what I'd call a total approach to music, and I put everything I had into the album.

I imagine you've worked a lot with technology - are you comfortable with digital tools? I find them very convenient, for instance, but they tend to homogenize the sound, especially if you let them get the better of you...

Indeed, nowadays you come across excellent arrangements, but often the songs themselves are missing. That said, I'm not at all comfortable with computers - if it were up to me, I'd always play with live musicians. The problem is that for financial reasons this wasn't possible, so I turned to technology. Even though I barely touch it myself, since I just play and get recorded, I find that technology offers a sound that's too square, too standardized, while I'm decidedly more black and emotional. I'd always rather play with the guys, everything feels more natural, but the problem is you then have to pay them all (laughs)! So in the end I produced, arranged and mixed "Ahoh yé nanà" entirely with Fabio Raponi, who plays keyboards, while I took care of guitar and bass.

Do you have any concerts planned?

I definitely want to go on tour, so much so that I'm already planning it with Fabio and the other friends who play with him.

(July 31, 2007)

Thanks to Ivano Rebustini and Fabio Russo