Fausto Rossi - In praise of fearlessness

March 20, 2010. Cooperativa Sociale Robert Owen, in the province of Taranto. The occasion is "Maledetta Primavera", a national celebration of independent Italian music, and the guest is Fausto Rossi. The audience is split into two factions: those who are there in memory of Faust'o, the restless agitator of an Italian wave utterly at odds with passively lumping itself together into one single, all-encompassing and muddled fold, and those who are fully aware of the evolution of a Man, with all his burden of torment and never-resolved redemption, who today goes by the name of Fausto Rossi. The man Fausto bears, with admirable dignity, the marks of a tormented yet crystal-clear existential path, aware of every grim side of the coin, yet still proud to be able to think outside the confines of a dying system. On stage stands a sort of magnetic guru, thin, long-haired, dressed with no affectation whatsoever, focused instead on essence. Before starting to play, Fausto reads out Charles Manson's self-defense speech from the trial in which he stood accused of the murder of Sharon Tate. Those who came for Faust'o leave the room. Those who respect the evolution of Fausto Rossi stay. The concert is almost entirely devoted to "Becoming Visible", his 2009 album, a stripped-down and unexpected return as a songwriter, shortly before the release of "Below The Line", of which Fausto will drop a few hints. After the concert, with none of the usual formalities, shedding the rigid roles of interviewer and interviewee, the conversation turns into a long, surprising, absorbing chat, from which it emerges that that old "pact with torment" was never broken.

The album you presented tonight, "Becoming Visible", seems different from your previous work — twelve years have passed since "Exit".

Yes, as I explained, it was hard to shake off "Exit". If I happen to listen to it, it's incredible, I listen to it as if it weren't mine. It was born and made in a very particular situation, I was up in the hills, in this isolated house, and we played all the time, whenever we felt like it, night and day. It's an album I'm deeply attached to, because of the way we made it. Still, sometimes I find myself listening to "Exit" and I feel like I'm listening to someone else. It's as if it weren't me. Whereas if I listen to older stuff, it's harder, because that is me. Sometimes I do listen to myself, when I feel like hearing something again that I did in a particular song.

"Becoming Visible" strikes me as a somewhat sunnier record compared to your previous ones.

Yes, and the fact that it's sung in English helped with that. Because, unlike the songs in Italian, I noticed things came out together, there was no issue. In fact, there's an album about to come out made up of songs that were all written in a single night, lyrics included. And it was a night of grace, also because I really like these songs. Part of that album is in English. I could never have written eight sets of lyrics in one night, all in Italian. In Italian you really have to work like a mule, because you somehow have to give the words musicality.

I was telling some people yesterday to ask themselves why the Pope reinstated the Latin mass. In my view it's because Latin has a magical cadence, almost like a ritual. It's the same with a song, and it's incredible how many people try to separate the lyrics from the music. Singer-songwriters have managed to do it, but you can't really separate the two elements — if you do, you're wasting your time, because what you end up with in your hands is something else entirely. Let me tell you an anecdote: I went to school with Branduardi (he was older than me), and during the student occupations he used to amuse himself by setting Prévert to music… honestly, he bored us stiff, he wasn't Branduardi yet, he was just some student.

I'll quote from "Blues": "I have changed, the world hasn't changed." Thirteen years on, does that still hold true for you?

Yes, that night I wrote "Blues", all in one go, it was Christmas night, 1995.

When I wrote that line, I found it a revelation to myself, I was telling it to myself and it was simply the truth. Not something clever, right or wrong, simply the truth. It really was a particular night for me, I saw them all parade before me, every one of them. And a lot of things, a lot of the repetitions that are in "Blues", which someone later pointed out to me — when I tried to fix them, they no longer had the same effect. That's how it was born. I must have corrected, maybe, two or three things, no more.

So a continuous flow, nothing premeditated?

Yes, it took me ten, fifteen minutes, no more. You can tell from the punctuation too, because on certain things you even lose the subject, you can no longer tell what you're referring to. I left everything as it was, because whenever I tried to tidy it up, the song took on a different shape that no longer had anything to do with the starting point.

I'm usually careful to make things either very clear, or deliberately obscure.

I know you don't like talking about what Faust'o is in relation to Fausto Rossi, but let me name three artists who, it seems to me, have in some way intersected with your past: Bowie, Talking Heads, Joy Division.

Those are different things. Bowie was already making music before I made records. And I was in love with it. Then, when he tried to be Frank Sinatra in the Eighties, without having the voice for it, there was a falling-out of sorts — not because Bowie's voice is a bad voice, it's very distinctive and very beautiful, but you can't do Frank Sinatra, those are two different things, and so I couldn't follow him anymore.

With Talking Heads and Joy Division, on the other hand, I already had a relationship. "77" is the first Talking Heads album, which is also the year I signed my first record deal. I liked them, but I want to say one thing: more than these figures — and you could name plenty, like Lou Reed, Ultravox, Velvet Underground, Stooges — I fell in love with the situations, with the context they were part of.

Actually, with "Becoming Visible", I instead brought out my own roots, a certain kind of pop and blues. I started making music at five, and the first time I saw the Beatles was, I believe, on a Tv 7 broadcast in 1963. I was studying classical music, and when I saw the bobbies on TV stopping people, I wondered who these people were, while in the background Beatles songs were playing, still virtually unknown in Italy at the time. I asked myself: what kind of stuff is this? The next day, at nine years old, I went with my mother to buy the record, and from then on I gave up my piano studies — first jazz swept me away, then other things. So I abandoned classical music for good.

Have you noticed today's overuse of the web and of image by artists?

Even the Eighties were a disaster in that respect.

Sure, but in my view there was a different kind of homogenization back then, maybe a bit more creative — now I sense a certain emptiness.

Yes, but if you go abroad, to Germany, Spain, the countries of Eastern Europe, you find a completely different cultural situation — Berlin and Barcelona themselves have remarkable energy. It's an all-Italian situation, even though I admit that a lot of the music coming out of the United States and England is just throwaway pop from baby bands.

Actually, that's what I meant too. If you had started out now, would you have made use of these web-related tools, with some kind of self-promotion as a result?

Probably yes, because when you're young it's inevitable to fall under certain influences. In part it's also a natural process. But now it's become a bit of a game, whereas back then you had to pick up a guitar, a piano, a bass, drums, and you had to write a song — or someone else wrote it — and then you actually had to play it. Now it's all turned into a game, take Guitar Hero, for instance... this world has become truly bizarre.

That's why I was talking about a different kind of homogenization and fascination.

But we're heading where we ourselves asked to go, because over the centuries people have always asked for protection — protection from bandits, from wild animals in the forest. In such a situation, the only way to keep everyone in agreement is to standardize thought, to have a single universal way of thinking, and indeed that's the direction we're heading in. Then again, who knows, it could all vanish like a dream... But it's incredible, we asked for it ourselves, maybe we were pushed into it — beware of bandits, beware of UFOs — all of this breeds fear, and you say "protect me, protect me", and they're happy to oblige.

And history goes from being cyclical to being linear...

We should show that we're no longer afraid. Since the Middle Ages, asking to be defended against nature has always meant asking those who govern us to protect us. You can't use the individual, because the individual is what he is, suffers or enjoys whatever happens. It's always their fault. They have nothing else to do, they're the ones who guide you.

What are you listening to now?

Very little lately, because I'm busy with the new work, which will be out soon. When I'm working on a new record, I try not to listen to anything else, I need to be sure that what I've written is good because I think so and it's truly mine, not because it might somehow recall something else.

The Italian one sometimes seems to me like a real musical system...

Yes, especially if you think back to the late Seventies, early Eighties, when the first commercial TV channels appeared. The record labels let themselves be fooled, because suddenly new television spaces opened up where they could place various singers and bands. They couldn't believe their luck, Rai was saturated by then, they couldn't put everyone on air, so there was great deference towards Berlusconi, but in the end, they got trapped in it. Just think of the whole Cecchetto crew, which dominated for at least six, seven years, the likes of Amadeus, still there today.

Jovanotti I'll admit was the only one, even though he seemed the silliest of them all, to ask himself some questions, so as to do slightly more substantial things. The only thing I hold against these people, be it Vasco or Ligabue, is the fact that they don't speak up, that they don't openly say how things stand, and since they sell millions of records they would naturally be listened to. I've tried to talk about this with Vasco and with other famous names too. The question I asked was: "Why don't you speak up?" and they'd say "because they'll cut our legs off" and so what, you'll still have your arms left (general laughter). But afraid of what, anyway? If someone like Vasco, with such a huge influence on young people, someone who wrote one of the most beautiful songs in the whole of Italian music, "Vita Spericolata", he strikes me as "all things considered" a genuine character. Since he had drug problems, he's been a bit more subdued, not so much in using or not using, but precisely in saying things, perhaps out of fear of losing his audience; but that shouldn't happen.

And I think significant inner conflicts also arise within the artist...

Yes, but they forgive themselves so easily, self-indulgence is right at home there, it's not a problem.

Then, for instance, I have great respect for De Gregori, for many things he's done, but I can't respect Venditti.

And what about your fellow label-mates at the label you're signed to now?

I was referring to the singer-songwriter tradition in general. In fact, as I said in an interview, I care about being called a songwriter, which is much simpler, because "cantautore" is a neologism coined in the early Sixties of the last century, referring above all to the Genoese school, but it was later applied definitively to the following generation of singer-songwriters. I have nothing culturally in common with them, even though, as I told you, I do like De Gregori. Many others devoured Dylan, whereas I'm a musician, unlike them, who have always claimed to be writing poems, not songs. And then there's also the matter of funding, not only in money but in various other ways, including ties with political parties. Some situations are truly disgusting

I know you've toured with Massimo Volume. Are there other emerging Italian artists you'd like to collaborate with?

I'd like to get to know Verdena, some of their stuff is good, some less so, but I sense a real will on their part to try to do something, to "dig around" as they say in Milan, like Massimo Volume. I'm not interested in Afterhours. Manuel Agnelli should explain what he went to do at Sanremo, any answer will be bullshit.

And what about the Morgan affair, what do you make of it?

The Morgan affair, for me, only has this aspect to it: I wanted to see him on "Porta a porta", but I knew what would happen, though I didn't think they'd go as far as that.

Morgan had the chance to stand up and say: "Gentlemen, you've busted my balls, all of you can go to hell!" Instead he had to sit through a lecture from Pupo. I'm not okay with artists - who he was representing in that moment - being treated this way. When he brought up figures like Dalí, who went through similar experiences, the chorus of replies was that if they hadn't done drugs they'd have produced better work. Well, at that point out comes the knife and you might as well slit throats one by one, because there's nothing else to be done, there's no arguing with them, they have no capacity for opinion, like Nazis. I, as an artist, cannot accept that they - politicians, pundits, journalists - get to explain to me how to make music and in what state of mind. Artaud used to say: "You have no right to forbid me what you forbid me."

Human despair is innate, and until they find a way to cure it, they shouldn't be busting people's balls about it - everyone deals with their own despair however they see fit, and anyway there are millions of dependencies out there in this world, it's not just a matter of heroin, cocaine, hashish, hallucinogens.

The problem is them, always them, getting nastier and nastier, more and more determined to be nasty. I hope one day there's a strong response, but I see that young people aren't moving, and yet they shouldn't be afraid - I'd be less scared taking a crowbar to a mafioso than to a policeman, because a policeman can really do whatever he wants with you, he grabs you and hauls you away and you're done for, you're a rag. Everywhere there's always someone in charge, ready to haul you away.

To me it seems more like a form of numbness than fear.

Young people think too much about the future, wasting time and energy that way. Sure, in the Sixties it was simpler, because there was a global movement, at least in the West. We were convinced we'd shoved them down the sewers, and instead no, they came back out, who would have guessed? So what's one supposed to do? Go up to the attic, dig out the old parka and the combat boots again?

We could have more civil, more rational attitudes..

Sure, but you also have to be careful not to be too soft. I understand that things don't get solved with violence, but you can't always do without it either.

Back then the police would come at you with their eyes all warped from amphetamines, they beat us in an outrageous way, but we gave them a good beating too.

So maybe people were more reactive back then…

Yes, there was no fear, it was easier, because the movement was international, and you could feel that strength, and you didn't feel alone. Today young people feel alone, and so there's a reluctance to say certain things, to risk a somewhat unusual opinion, because there's no great movement anymore, but who knows, it could come together again from one moment to the next...

(28/11/2010)

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