Franti - Unclassifiable Rock

It wasn't a given that we'd see all five of them together on the same stage again, after 30 years of self-imposed silence during which the world – both establishment and counterculture – has been turned inside out. And yet here they are, back together in their beloved/hated Turin, if only for one night. Not a nostalgic reunion to wallow in memories, but an event with a very specific purpose: to unveil in style “Magazzini Franti“, a substantial online database gathering everything the most important Italian independent band has scattered across various media over the years – free of charge, naturally, just like tonight's gig.

Via Po is no ordinary street: a handful of doors down from the Blah Blah stood that damned Angelo Azzurro where, on October 1st, 1977, the symbolic end of the largest Western political-cultural movement played out. I'm greeted by Luca Buonaguidi, their young biographer, who's just watched the sound-check and can barely contain himself: “It's a bomb! They're in shape, tonight they're going to tear it up!”. Below the stage I find Stefano Giaccone, with whom I'd made arrangements the day before: “Would you rather do this before or after the show?”, I ask him. “Tonight we're playing twice so everyone gets a chance to see us, so I'd say now or never”.

He gathers the troops at a table near the stage: Vanni Gio Picciuolo, Massimo D’Ambrosio and Marco Ciari look like anything but battle-worn veterans, and their white hair isn't enough to dim eyes still burning with life. From start to finish they'll keep needling each other, proving how integrity and (self-)irony can and must go hand in hand. Lalli, by her own admission, is worn out after the long sound-check: although she'll sit through the whole interview, she'd rather not take part. Meanwhile, the background DJ set runs through Social Distortion and Bob Dylan: a pairing that is, let's say, very Franti.

So much for “No dreams, no future” – here you are again, giving us something to dream about. If a band like yours, which has made consistency its banner, decides to retrace its steps, there must be an important reason behind it: is it just “Magazzini Franti”, or is there something more?

Massimo: It definitely started with “Magazzini Franti”, that is, from the need to manage our whole archive from that period in a coherent way, for one specific purpose: not letting an experience we consider important – at least to us – slip into oblivion. From there we decided…

Vanni: You decided…

Massimo: Ok, I decided to do this concert, and that's when the desire to play together again kicked in, even though as things stand it won't lead to anything else, it'll stay tied to this one event. I like these little incursions, you can do one every 20-25 years.

There had already been another one before, if I'm not mistaken…

Massimo: In 2005, on the occasion of the reissue of "Unclassified", but Vanni wasn't there, so we haven't played with this lineup since 1989, thirty years ago…

The year in which, among other things, yours truly was born, though I imagine that's not the most notable event of the period. So I take it there won't be a follow-up?

Massimo: No, right now it's not on the table, but time will tell. If there are opportunities that one of us considers worthwhile, they can try proposing them to this sort of collective, even if that's a slightly outdated word… This time that's exactly how it went: one of us made a proposal, we talked it over and approved it. The channels are always open, at least until we start beating each other up…

Vanni: The important thing is that now, finally, this huge trove of material produced back then is available to everyone, beyond any fetishism for physical objects. The funny thing is that there are records out there we used to fight tooth and nail to knock 100-200 lire off the price of, and now you find them going for outrageous sums, because like a bunch of suckers we fell into the trap of valuing a rare product: since they came out in very limited pressings, they now go for insane prices. A bit like Duchamp's upturned toilet, or the Impressionists' work — revolutionary comrades who took part in the Commune and painted terrible subjects, but whose work ended up being traded by filthy bourgeois scum for billions… Van Gogh never sold a single painting in his lifetime, he bartered them just to eat the next day, it's an incredible thing when you think about it. We wanted to make an effort to sweep this whole logic away: the stuff is there, whoever wants it can take it, and screw it.

How does it feel to see Franti unwittingly turned into merchandise for collectors, i.e. everything you've always despised?

Vanni: It disgusts me, in fact what we're trying to do goes against this tendency.

Also because, if I'm not mistaken, that was one of the reasons for the split: not getting caught up in a market you openly fought against…

Vanni: Yes, along with some interpersonal issues and ordinary wear and tear.

Let's talk about this breakup, so solemn it's always reminded me of that of Crass: rather than give in to a logic you don't agree with, you'd rather implode.

Stefano: Not only that. As Vanni said, different directions and attitudes had piled up on top of each other. As a generation, biographically and politically, we come from the '70s, and so from a discourse connected to the long tradition of the labour, union and resistance movements, albeit critically, and each of us in a different way. Franti was the meeting of two atoms: one coming from a scientific high school, the other from a political background, a couple of years older.

Vanni: I went to technical school, I was a real working-class kid, I didn't put on airs like they did…

Stefano: Exactly, not some snotty high schooler like us… Okay, you're cutting this bit, right?

No way, it's a beautiful moment, truly, straight out of an old-time beer hall! (we laugh)

Stefano: I think that to understand Franti you always have to keep in mind the relationship between the five of us (though really six, seven, eight: as you know, we weren't a closed group) and the world of the movement, because we're talking about years of enormous upheaval, I'd even say looming catastrophe. In '82, when we started playing as Franti, Italy was the country in the world with the most political prisoners, after the Soviet Union. It was a situation bordering on civil war, in which we somehow represented a bridge: while the movement in the streets was going underground, we, bucking the trend, went to live together.

Even in this idea of a self-sufficient commune, you've always reminded me of Crass. In general, I've always pictured you as the missing link between Crass and the Area, I don't know if you recognize yourselves in this rather cumbersome comparison...

Stefano: Yes, if you like, sure... Let's say that while the movement we came from was ending up behind bars, underground, or in the arms of heroin, the squats were emerging, the scenes in Berlin and Amsterdam, and obviously punk. Through the band we found a way to carry on a collective effort. We weren't a closed shop, there was never a uniform or an ivory-tower artist attitude. It's something you can grasp precisely from our music: yesterday we performed on the radio, in front of people with an average age of 25 who knew our stuff, but they looked at us like, "these guys play everything, they jump from one style to another...". Vanni has often used the image of a Polaroid: something quick, that loses its colors and that you can alter, not a carved image. A punk kind of thing... In Turin and elsewhere I've often met people who told me they had a strange feeling about our songs, like "sometimes I think I wrote them myself", and in a sense that's true. You can see it even now if you go and read the comments under the YouTube videos: a lot of people watch them and write really nice things, like that the sax player is a cool guy...

Vanni: Especially when he's not playing...

Stefano: Joking aside, I don't like talking about identity, but somehow a communal feeling emerges, a sense of recognition.

Vanni: There's a scene in a Tarkovsky film where a girl has to cross a pool with a lit candle, and if the candle doesn't go out then Good will come to pass...

"Nostalghia".

Vanni: Well done. That's more or less how we saw ourselves: people crossing a frozen lake with this little candle in hand, telling ourselves "let's see what happens". The collective mood was pretty depressing. Beyond the yuppies and "Milano da bere", those were years of catastrophe: the march of the 40,000, the retreat of an entire front of shared struggle, the social class fell apart and everything went to hell, and all of that was done deliberately. We lived through this stuff trying to make sense of it, even on a personal level.

In fact, one thing I find particularly striking about your music, even now, is this sense of tragedy that's not only collective (social, political, historical) but also individual, existential... The anguish of new wave and the rage of punk, we could say: that's why I think you were truly the symbol band of that era.

Vanni: I remember back then someone would ask, "But why do you always dress in black?", and I'd reply, "Sorry, what would you like me to be happy about?". It was one continuous funeral, there was death everywhere, ideal and otherwise. It wasn't so much an ideological nod to anarchy, let alone fascism, it was the color of mourning. I wasn't a goth, I was in mourning. The existentialists dressed in black too, after all, they certainly didn't wear little flowers. There are periods when great masses of people go through phenomena that mark them, and then whoever has the tools, the sensitivity and the disposition translates that into music, into a book or a film. I still love the image from Marx, the one about the silkworm that spins silk. A human being has to escape the cage of the role they're stitched into and rebuild their identity, making room for what they want to be beyond what's imposed on them. Am I in the factory? Who the hell said that in the factory I can't paint or get involved in politics? Returning to a human dimension that presents itself as a kind of afterlife: you'll always be told that yours is a utopia, so you have to try to dream and plan possibilities, because the world as it is is an absurd prison, right down into people's heads. Mine too: I'm full of walls, of messes, and imagine how many there can be once you put our five heads together...

Earlier you mentioned that listeners are thrown off by this all-encompassing mix of languages, coherent but truly vast: "hardcore folk", to use your own definition. What has always surprised me is that this was happening in the years of new wave, and therefore of absolute contamination, but also of political orthodoxy, especially in Italy... How did a militant band like you manage to fit together such different, even contradictory, things, while still managing to get "accepted" with such a disruptive and non-aligned proposal?

Vanni: Basically we've always tried to break free from ourselves. All of us, with our own histories, always had a conflicted relationship with organizational structures and hierarchies, even those of the extra-parliamentary left. Within that world there was a tendency to fall back on classic schemes: if you want to make a revolution you have to organize, have a structured coordinating center, hand out leaflets and gradually build an organization that then turns into a party, falling right back into the original problem. We had an extremely problematic relationship with all that, so orthodoxy always felt like a straitjacket to us.

Let's talk about the city that produced you, not exactly just any city... What kind of place was it, and how has it changed?

Vanni: In the 1970s, Fiat Mirafiori was the largest concentration of industrial workers in Europe: to find anything similar you'd have to go to Poland, and it would still be a Fiat plant. The city's daily life was absolutely dictated by the rhythms of the big factory, which shaped everything. This gigantic concentration of more than 80,000 workers dragged along a terrifying network of workshops, and not just that: if you take a map of Turin and start coloring in blue the areas of Fiat production, Fiat's real-estate holdings, Fiat housing, you realize there's basically nothing left uncolored. It's no coincidence that the first person Appendino saw as soon as she looked set to win was John Elkann, who probably gave her a talking-to and made a couple of things clear to her... The idea that they might actually push for something of their own vanished immediately, they were flattened right away. I don't know if you've noticed, it's an attitude that's always been there: here, whoever comes to power tiptoes in, from Berlusconi to Grillo, everyone takes their shoes off and goes to kneel before the Agnellis. From the point of view of the structure of Italian power, Turin's reality is hugely important; from the point of view of those who lived through it, it was a total mess.

I've always seen it as the Italian Detroit: the working-class Mecca that declines and becomes the cradle of malaise...

Vanni: Exactly, and what's not easy to convey to someone who wasn't there is just how all-encompassing this was. The factory shift dictated everything: at certain hours there was no one left around, everyone was worn out with exhaustion. It was a rhythm dictated by the factory, which wasn't even a normal factory but something organized in a Prussian fashion, an army, or a life sentence if you prefer. Anyone who stepped out of line was immediately branded. Obviously, when the conflict exploded in there, it's like holding gas under pressure: boom!, and everything comes pouring out. But already by '80, with the march of the 40,000, it had all been reabsorbed. Lama had Romiti draft that contract, since by then they were on first-name terms: do you understand how far things had gone?

Already… With hindsight, do you regret the choice to split up, or was there no other way?

Massimo: I'm one of those who suffered a lot from that choice, I'm a very emotional person…

Stefano: Well, honestly, you seem like an animal to me…

Massimo: As you can see, Stefano and I had a deep bond, since '76 we've shared everything, we were classmates. With hindsight you have to admit the world was changing, and above all the ground the Franti project had stood on was giving way. That whole world was falling apart, or rather taking on strange new shapes, swallowed up by something else. It was a decision that made sense, that's the rational side. The emotional side, though, was a loss, like when a relationship ends…

Stefano: It's a cliché, but in my opinion regrets are pointless and they hurt a lot too, while remorse and guilt belong more to our Catholic upbringing.

Vanni: There's an Arab proverb that says "a regret is like a dead child rotting in your mind"…

Stefano: Well, after a statement like that I feel stupid adding anything… Let's say the main regret, though I wouldn't call it that, is that we could have acted differently, maybe putting everything on ice for six months, but I think once the dust settled we'd still have made the same decision.

Also because such a timid, cautious move wouldn't have been like you…

Stefano: You know what Chairman Mao used to say: when there's not enough water for the little fish to swim in… See, I can drop important quotes too, not just Vanni! At that point we would have had to individualize as a group, in a situation that had already dried up. We would have had to make the leap into seeing ourselves as an artistic group separate from everything else, moving through a hostile world like that of music entertainment, where we would have run into plenty of difficulties. Personally, I've always felt uncomfortable around people who identify a collective movement with themselves — in fact, I think the least interesting people are the ones who talked and wrote about punk the most. (Meanwhile the DJ plays "Troppo lontano"). Listen, Kina!

Are you still in touch with them?

Stefano: (pointing to a table at the end of the room) Gianpiero, the bassist, is over there.

Vanni: (shouting towards the aforementioned table, quoting the song's lyrics) There must be someone out there! Someone who talks, who says something! Come on, talk, say something! (Gianpiero cracks up laughing)

Well, wonderful.

Stefano: Vanni, why do you sometimes speak with a Sardinian accent?

Vanni: It just comes out that way, after all I did some great stretches of military service with Sardinians…

"This story about the Sardinians in the barracks – pretty much everyone's told me a version of it…

Vanni: Well yeah, they're a force of nature, it's like there's a magnetic field and suddenly you see the Sardinians all banding together against everyone else! The guys from Bergamo are the same, like glue: touch one and fifteen more show up on top of you…

This damned naja [mandatory military service] that, whether we like it or not, helped make Italy what it is…

Stefano: Vanni, I was actually saying some interesting things though…

Vanni: That's what you say…

I wanted to say I love this self-mocking vibe, also because it's obvious you two care about each other a lot…

Vanni: I'm just pretending…

Stefano: Right, this brotherhood between us, in a last-Japanese-soldier kind of situation like that one, let us get through a lot of tough moments, but we would have put it at risk if we'd pushed things further. Neither of us, anyway, became a professional musician – they couldn't, because they weren't good enough, while for me it was a tough-guy choice (we laugh). We carried on running life's obstacle course, starting with work, with getting older, and with a surrounding environment that demanded we adapt. Ever since I was very young I mostly listened to jazz, and when I started getting into new wave I immediately realized how rigid the way of thinking about things was in the '80s, even in Italy. You absolutely had to churn out those forty minutes with one identical style, one that made you instantly recognizable: Echo & The Bunnymen do this, Siouxsie & The Banshees do that, and so on. Four-on-the-floor kick drum, a certain kind of guitar sound, records that start and end in a certain way. Well, our approach was the diametric opposite: one thing we spent a lot of time on, for instance, was the sequencing of songs on the albums.

Which indeed have this almost narrative tension…

Stefano: Exactly, for example by often using intro tracks, to draw you into a particular atmosphere. We were never provocateurs, that was never our trademark.

If anything there was a lot of lyricism, and maybe that's also why you've aged much better than other bands from that era.

Stefano: Yes, and also I never talk about aesthetics…

Vanni: But you never talk about anything else!

Stefano: That's not true, at most I talk about it at the bar… Anyway, someone once compared us to Velvet Underground, and I think there's a point of contact in this sense: they were musicians who came from very different backgrounds who had a unifying force upstream, in that case Warhol and the Factory. On their two most distinctive records…

Vanni: See, he's talking about aesthetics again!

Stefano: I said the most distinctive, not the most beautiful!

In other times they'd have accused you of formalism!

Stefano: Well yes, I am a formalist! (we laugh) Anyway, as I was saying: they also had this ability to go from a very raw song about heroin to wonderful pop ballads…

By the way, your version of "Femme Fatale" is, in my opinion, the boldest ever done, I even prefer it to the Big Star one: you're the only ones who dared to desecrate it, without even trying to reproduce the original.

Vanni: What a punch that cover packs, huh?

But all your covers are amazing for this same reason, I'm also thinking of "Gates Of Eden": taking something and violently blowing it wide open…

Stefano: Right, this is an important point: I've never had deference for anything or anyone, and this isn't some anarchist-braggart talk.

So, all things considered, was it worth being Franti?

Vanni: Hell yes it was worth it! (we laugh)

Stefano: Also because it's something that ran through our whole life, and we're still here tonight…

Vanni: And yet, despite the split, we actually kept playing together, at least for a while. Sure, it was a highly contentious situation, and you can see it even now: the moment he starts to say something, I'm straight on his case…

At times it feels like an old party assembly…

Vanni: Then after the separation, everyone shot off toward their own personal inclinations, like a dog let off the leash. I, for instance, started making a racket with my big guitar, finally free to rave, but then for about fifteen years I didn't touch an instrument or listen to music at all. On the other hand, I learned to do other things, for example I became a good marksman…

It's interesting that you started shooting once the era when people were shooting each other was over…

Vanni: Right, at fifty. I was finally the right age to do it.

One last question, maybe a bit silly: in some way, with the whole Blu Bus saga you anticipated these years of pervasive self-production, and your anti-copyright and anti-SIAE reflections are now the subject of widespread debate too…

Stefano: Look, I wouldn't call myself a pioneer, in the sense that there were plenty of other similar situations going on—if anything, given our age, we probably arrived a bit later than others. It's really since we started working with Kina that the label truly got going.

Vanni: Generally speaking, there was this selection process that happened on the ground, among people. You'd find a group with whom you clicked expressively and creatively, and that's where the synergy would start. Besides, there was a collective dimension where everything was shared—wherever you went there were people, you were always exchanging ideas with someone. Personally, though, I never followed the Blu Bus work that closely, because it meant busting your ass to an unbelievable degree, and I'm very lazy, so Stefano and Lalli took on more of that burden. It's a bit like what I was saying earlier: society is organized to crush you, so, more or less naively, you decide to produce your own stuff and keep control of every step—but that means dealing with the division of specialized labor, and you're screwed again, because society had already been through that fifty years before. When, like them, you slog through it completely on your own, at some point you're forced to stop playing music, because you can only do one thing or the other—you simply run out of time.

It seems to me there are some clearly defined roles in your line-up, which we could sum up with a spaghetti-western-style tagline: Vanni is the orthodox Marxist, Massimo the romantic, Stefano the cynic.

Stefano: But I'm not cynical! First and foremost, I support Torino FC. (we laugh) And anyway, speaking of Marxism, I'll destroy Vanni…

Vanni: I'll thrash you five-nil, on any topic you like… Anyway, as I was saying: to put it in more philosophical terms, all individuals are interconnected with society through language, culture and history. In our production system this interconnection is so pervasive that the individual practically doesn't exist: we're nodes, intersections of externally-driven determinations. The effort you have to make individually to push back against all this is enormous, and it's often a losing battle. I like to use this image: think of a wave, one of those huge ones surfers ride, rolling towards the shore; you're a drop of foam inside that wave, and for a split second you say "I'm going that way" and you're convinced of it, but the wave is moving at fifty miles an hour in the opposite direction, and by the time you're dead and buried, it'll still be heading that way. Maybe I've become a bit of a pessimist, but I want you to understand just how much tenacity and strength went into something like Blu Bus, which was heroic and hasn't been given nearly enough recognition.

Better that way—you never became a fearsome "cult band", miraculously managing to preserve your niche…

Vanni: I'd call it a crypt! (we laugh)

Stefano: Yes, in the sense that we're cryptic…

Anyway, my question was: in these times, which are partly your own offspring too, would a project like Franti still be plausible?

Stefano: Sure, it's always plausible. It would need updating to fit current conditions, but it can always be done.

(continues here)

Ride the wave of great music

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