Ivano Fossati - Me, Mina and the mystery of songs

This record, built entirely around duets, is full of drama, of call-and-response between the voices, of a constant exchange between the characters you and Mina play, which drives the stories forward and creates music that's steeped in theatre. How much did you play with this dramatic tension? Was it one of the founding ideas behind the project?

It's the first time I've ever written a whole album for two singers. That had never happened to me before. And I immediately found myself facing the choice — or the problem, if you like — of having to make two characters talk to each other. The songs couldn't just be ordinary songs, split into sections where each person sings a verse. That could have been done too, but in our case we didn't want it that way. Mina and I really wanted to talk to each other, we wanted to answer each other, respond to one another. So I realised that, in terms of the lyrics, my writing had to be different from what I'm used to, and the tricky part was that I had to stay true to my own way of seeing things and my own storytelling, while also doing the same for her. It's as if, every time, two different styles have to coexist within the same song, because the Fossati who sings on this album is true to himself, but so is Mina. I had to write for her in a certain way, looking for ideas and words that were consistent with what we "know" about Mina, but I also had to try not to distort myself. And above all, in the end, I had to try to write things that made sense when sung together.

It's interesting how this dialogue between the voices gives the songs a more vivid quality...

That's certainly down to the shift, and the contrast, between Mina's high, pure, powerful voice and my deeper one. So there too, in the musical writing and not just the lyrics, I had to take a lot into account — I had to write musically what worked for her, but also what worked for me. And that probably gives you the sense of liveliness you're talking about.

Even though you wrote all the songs yourself, how much of a hand did Mina have in shaping them?

A considerable one. First of all, you should know that with Mina there's a lot of discussion. We talk a lot. And as a rule, she won't sing anything she doesn't believe in. She's certainly not the kind of performer you can just hand a song to and be done with it. For one thing, she knows perfectly well what she represents and what she "has to say", and what space of thoughts belongs to her. When we decided to make this record, the first time we spoke she told me: "I don't know if I really know what I like, but I know exactly what I don't like", and that made me happy and immediately made things easier, because in the weeks that followed we realised that what we didn't like was exactly the same. What she didn't like, I didn't like either, so it was very easy to avoid. Mina has a very clear idea of her musical taste, which makes it easy to work with her. So yes, she does get involved, and I'd add that she brings quality and a lot of conviction to it. Besides being down-to-earth, Mina is also a very determined artist. She knows what she wants and what she stands for.

There are great female artists who've chased after their own voice, shaping it over time. Mina's voice doesn't work that way — it doesn't change with time. And if it does change, by some strange magic, it's as if you can't tell. There's something ethereal about it, a kind of aura, probably reinforced by the myth surrounding her, that makes it feel eternal, solid. Do you agree, or do you think her voice has undergone some kind of transformation? Did you write these songs for the Mina of today?

That's an interesting question, but in my view there isn't a Mina of today and a Mina of before. Mina remains what she is. On that note, there's another equally important thing to say, which is that, having such incredible technique, she's so gifted that she adapts with extreme ease to the different ways songwriters write. She has no trouble at all fitting into whatever structure you build for her. She's incredibly flexible, and you never need to tell her how a song should be approached, because she already knows before you do.

Personally, my favourite track is "Luna diamante", because it contains some extraordinary passages, almost Puccini-like, with Mina's voice carried upward by the strings. Here your voice only makes a cameo, right at the close, like a signature. How did the decision to step aside on this track come about?

I'd stepped aside from the very beginning, because I'd written that song only for her. And given the lyrics, given what it's about, we knew right away it could only be entirely hers, but she was sorry that I wasn't there even in some small corner. So it was her idea to add that little wordless choir at the end. So it was she who wanted me to appear. It was a very sweet thing for her to do. But the song was born for her.

To my mind, your originality lies in the way you keep questioning the classic song format. You often play with the structure of your songs, take them apart, stretch the verses out well beyond the norm, talk within them, play with saying a great deal. I'm thinking of some of your classic tracks, like "C'è tempo", where the miracle is that all those words never end up burying the music. This record shows the same approach, the same attention to varying the form, to giving precedence to the words...

You're right. I can tell you it's a long process. It's work I've been doing for years now, because I don't want to give up on the music. I know that might sound like an obvious, or even a strange thing to say, but for example many singer-songwriters, especially in the early Seventies, gave up on the music in favour of words and literary ambition. I, on the other hand, don't want to give up on the music. I want there to be plenty of music in my songs, but at the same time I also want there to be plenty of thought. And that's what gives rise to what you're describing. I always have to find a form that makes room for both. That's my way of writing.

Perhaps it was from “The Tea Plant” onward that you perfected this approach…

Let's say that at a certain point in my career I realized that certain songs stood perfectly well on their own even when their structure wasn't quite the canonical one. But it's not a discovery of mine, it's not something I take credit for. I've listened to a great many foreign artists who were doing it well before me. I'm thinking of Randy Newman, to name one, who has always been able to write songs in traditional terms, but then when he needed to change the form he'd do it in an instant, and he still does, always arriving at a result that in the end remains a song, something that doesn't turn into a 'work' — there's no presumption in him, nor in me, of creating something experimental. I love songs, but songs can be made in many different ways.

In my view, the magic of your songwriting lies in opening up constant parentheses and digressions that still never manage to weigh the songs down, in creating a literary, committed kind of music that stays within an enjoyable format…

I'm glad you say that. It wasn't easy. All these doors that open and yet stay light are the sum of something whose result must always simply be a song. And that's the best result you can get, at least for me. The risk, maybe years ago, was instead to write complex, convoluted compositions, as many did, at least in the Seventies and Eighties, which in the end didn't really lead anywhere. The hard work is never in complicating things. The hard work is in simplifying them.

In the lyrics of “Farfalle” you seem to be joking around, defending yourself against the usual questions from journalists, so I'll take up the challenge… Is the lyric of that song just a divertissement? Is there some meaning you want to tell us about?

It's certainly a divertissement, but there are things in it that run deeper than a simple nursery rhyme. For instance, the song is about the fact of being here, the happiness of being here and being able to tell things. I tried to convey extreme simplicity, but the thoughts are there. For example, observing how things around us are going, when it talks about that train running without brakes… there are dense moments, but handled lightly, coming back to what we were saying earlier. Besides, both Mina and I are convinced this album speaks to an attentive audience, one that fully understands things, even the small nuances and small lights hidden inside the lyrics or the music. We're convinced that whoever listens to us understands perfectly well, and there's no need to hold a symposium over every thought or every intuition. Sometimes it's enough to toss out a small idea, to switch on a small light, and that's enough.

Still on the subject of your lyrics, you seem to have a predilection for the fascination found in things that aren't understood, especially for the not-understood in which love has always been wrapped. And you seem to enjoy swimming around in it… as if not understanding were a good subject, an excellent source of inspiration…

It's true. The mystery of never quite managing to understand fascinates me… and one thing I'm terrified of is certainty when it comes to feelings. Every so often I happen to hear old interviews with Giorgio Gaber, when he talked about doubt, saying the very same thing, and that comforts me enormously. I feel the same way. I've gotten to this point in my life still having to understand almost everything about feelings. But also about many other things, about people's behavior in general… As you said, I prefer to 'swim' in uncertainties and doubts rather than in certainties, because certainties are frightening, at least to people like me, and historically they've produced monsters, so I'd rather stay far away from them.

Your way of writing, of lingering over things and sometimes losing yourself in them, reminds me of a wonderful definition by Marshall McLuhan, who said that literature is always the longest way of getting from one point to another, and indeed that the very essence of literature lies precisely in all the digressions that lengthen the path…

What you're talking about is nothing other than thought, which is something that doesn't only exist in the loftiest structures, but can exist even in songs. I mentioned Gaber before, or if we take songs by Francesco De Gregori, for example… You certainly can't say that thought isn't present there just because the piece lasts four minutes. And even in some fields where in theory digressions don't exist or shouldn't be allowed, thought is there. In mathematical formulas, for instance… Of course, not in elementary mathematics, but in the highest mathematics that brushes up against philosophy and intertwines with it, thought is there. And it's true that it's the longest road, and in some cases the most exhausting, but it's also the one that eventually illuminates us and creates great works, in the history of literature as in other fields, so what you're describing I can't call anything other than 'thought'.

Your songs are generally declarations of love or reflections on love, but in some cases they're also genuine creations of scenery. I'm thinking of certain South American landscapes you conjured up on albums before this one, or of this very album's own “Tex-Mex”. To what extent, when writing songs, do you think in terms of set design?

I love cinema very much, at least a certain kind of cinema. And I'm convinced that a story needs a context. Telling a story without context is like telling it in a dark room. You can tell a love story, but if there's no backdrop behind it, it doesn't work. I like it when, behind the characters, you can glimpse things, a background, even a playful one. For example, “Tex-Mex” is definitely a playful song. Behind me and Mina, with her coming back and me waiting for her, there's a kind of New Mexico setting, and of course all of this is theatre. They're little papier-mâché sets, they're brushstrokes, it's small-scale theatre, the homemade kind, sets made out of bedsheets that are nonetheless enough to make you 'see'. I've always been in love with songs you can see with your eyes without needing a video. For instance, you could see the Beatles' songs. The songs of many artists you look at rather than listen to. It might be a generational thing, but when videos didn't exist, we used to imagine the songs. I remember seeing “Eleanor Rigby” like a film, to me it was already made, and any video that had been made would have disappointed me, because the idea I'd formed in my own head was far more beautiful…

Do you think art can be made within the popular format of the song? I mean the most important art, the kind with the greatest achievements, like painting, sculpture, poetry. Do you think the song is an art form comparable to those languages? I'm asking you, who have flown so high precisely by using the 'small' format of the song…

This isn't the easiest question to answer, because among songwriters there are various kinds of commitment. One should start drawing distinctions between certain ways of writing and certain others, but I'm not much for drawing distinctions, because I love the song in its totality. From 'small', commercial songs all the way to Jacques Brel. I'm in love with every form the song can take, even the little ditties. I think it's essentially popular art, which in certain cases rises up and reaches extremely high levels, but if I have to be honest, I believe the strength of the truly great songwriters lies in being aware that they are simply songwriters. If a masterpiece comes out of you, if Jacques Brel suddenly writes “Ne me quitte pas”, I don't think that at the moment he wrote it he wanted to become Prévert or Neruda — I think he was simply writing a song.

(Leivi, 6/1/2020)

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google