Lucio Corsi - The white arrow of Italian glam

interview by Giuliano Delli Paoli

We catch up with the Tuscan singer-songwriter right on the eve of the release of his third album, “Cosa faremo da grandi?“. A rock operetta marked by a vivid nod to the Seventies’ glam sound, an unconditional love for the sea and its elements, and given a touch of class by the presence of a proper little orchestra led by his trusty collaborator Francesco Bianconi.

“Cosa faremo da grandi?” (“What will we do when we grow up?”): does this question stem more from a hidden echo of James Matthew Barrie, who ultimately lives inside all of us, or from a very real disillusionment, anything but romanticized or dreamlike?

“Cosa faremo da grandi?” was written in winter on the beach at Castiglione della Pescaia. It’s about a possible way of living in which you celebrate the starting lines more than the finish lines. Artisans who craft shells only to throw them back into the sea are one of the finest examples of a grand endeavor sent up in smoke with a peaceful mind. There’s no disillusionment in “Cosa faremo da grandi?”, there’s the awareness that you can feel fine even while dismantling everything you’ve built, that you can be happy starting over from scratch.

Beyond the title track mentioned above, “time” comes up several times on the album, I’m thinking especially of “L’orologio”. What’s your relationship with time and the relentless ticking of the clock hands?

“Ed ora io domando tempo al Tempo (ed egli mi risponde: non ne ho!)” [“And now I ask Time for time (and it answers me: I have none!)”], as a title by Banco del Mutuo Soccorso put it.

The sea, boats, shells, waves: the great blue giant occupies an important place in the album’s lyrics, and at times takes on a redemptive quality, as all-encompassing as it is evocative. Where does this such strong bond with the sea and its wonders come from?

“La mia casa è il mare con un fiume no, non la posso cambiare” [“My home is the sea, not a river, I can’t change it”], as Ivan Graziani used to say.

Viola, violin, cello, Prophet, Moog, Mellotron, and I could go on. A very rich array of instrumentation, on a par with a little orchestra that I’d fondly and metaphorically describe as made up of blessed fishermen.

With Francesco Bianconi and Antonio Cooper Cupertino, we really let ourselves go. Using a mellotron, for instance, forces certain arrangement choices on you — it has “limits” (which are actually strengths) that push you to find alternative solutions. Compared to previous records, this one definitely has richer, more varied arrangements. There are distorted electric guitars, a sound inspired by 70s glam-rock, and other songs, like waves, played with double bass, marimba, percussion. I'm happy that it's a varied album, with different styles inside it.

In your songs, well-defined, real places keep coming up more and more often (the Isola del Giglio, Trieste, and so on). Where does this “geographic” storytelling come from?

I liked the idea of setting the album in an Italy with soft ground, where you could dig a hole and end up in China. A peninsula crossed by Freccia Bianca, the ancient spirit of an Indian chief. Basically, I had fun building the setting around the various stories and characters, bending and rebuilding it according to what each story needed.

They say the second album is always the hardest in a musician's career — what about the third? Was it a complicated gestation, or did everything flow smoothly, just as you wanted?

I couldn't say, I love the writing periods, when I stay in the Maremma with the dogs and the piano.

Is “Amico vola via” dedicated to someone in particular, or is that friend flying away actually you?

In Lugano, in autumn, they clear the dead leaves off the ground, they clean up the streets. In doing so, they effectively kill an entire season, they strike autumn off the calendar. “Amico vola via” was written to try to give that gesture a different meaning.

The album contains 2259 words: how much weight do numbers carry in your life, and how much in your music?

127 kg in life and 122 kg in music.

Who is “la ragazza trasparente”?

What was it like working with Bianconi, and what did you take away from it?

It was really great. I love Francesco and I admire him a lot, and we're also bound by a shared passion for a certain kind of music, from Dylan to glam-rock, to Paolo Conte. We share a lot of tastes. And then the Maremma definitely brought us closer, that land, Bianciardi, the Far West.

Between Bowie and Marc Bolan, who do you prefer?

Renato Zero.

New tour: can you give us a preview of anything new compared to the past?

There'll be six of us on stage. It'll be a guitar-and-harmonica live show, old-school, just the way we young folks like it.

(January 19, 2020)

***

A New Bestiario musicale

by Lorenzo Righetto

Hi Lucio, thanks for your time. I'm really glad your “Musical Bestiary” is impressing and moving so many people. Are you surprised by this reception? How are you experiencing this moment?

I'm happy with how things are going, and it's great to hear you have that impression! Anyway, what matters most to me is being happy and satisfied with how the songs turned out!

You're very young, but it clearly seems like you've had a long relationship with music and art in general. Your mother is the author of all your artwork, if I'm not mistaken (very beautiful, by the way). How would you describe Lucio Corsi's life before finding his name on the cover of a record?

Yes, both the cover of “Musical Bestiary” and those of the previous EPs are paintings by Nicoletta Rabiti, my mother. I care a lot about this, and I'll use her drawings for future records too. Before I started playing music I used to draw a lot; as a kid I wanted to be a car designer! I should say my parents never forced me to make music or anything else, they always let me be free. That's a great thing.

You describe your “Musical Bestiary” as a work composed, arranged and recorded in a single summer week. Is that really true for every aspect of the record, from writing the lyrics to recording?

Yes, “Musical Bestiary” was made in one summer week out in the Maremma countryside. It was almost an exercise, and maybe that shows a bit. I'd never tried writing a concept album before, so I just sat down and figured out how to do it. It was written and arranged over those seven days (and nights), and in the end we only redid the double bass and piano parts in a studio, since my piano is out of tune and I don't own a double bass!

Did you play the whole record yourself? Have you learned any new instruments since your previous EPs?

I played everything except the double bass (played by Ivo Barbieri), the marimba and the vibraphone (played by Sebastiano De Gennaro).

It's really lovely how you've reinterpreted animal iconography according to your own personal pantheon. What do Maremma folk legends contribute to the mythology of “Musical Bestiary”? Like the legend of Lago dell'Accesa, which you mention in “La lucertola”…

Inside these songs there are true stories, stolen from folk tales, there are ideas stolen from paintings of animals that struck me, and there's imagination, which isn't a lie and which makes everything a little more beautiful and a little uglier. In short, “it's all a complex of things”.

If I'm not mistaken, you're now based in Milan, like Giacomo from Abiku. I read in an old interview of yours that you weren't settling in particularly well. Maybe you would never have written “Musical Bestiary” if you'd stayed home?

Moving to the big city made me grow even fonder of the Maremma. That much is certain, I realized I really do love living there. Maybe the melancholy of no longer having all those animals, all those olive trees around me also made me want to talk about it.

I've never been to Maremma; I only remember that once, in a seminar on light pollution, it came up as one of the very few "dark" areas in Italy's satellite night photos. In “La lucertola” it seems that even Maremma is about to become “all shops, all pizzerias.” How much of the setting of “Musical Bestiary” is ideal (and how much is real)?

On the record this is emphasized, but the streets around my house when I was a child were dirt roads, now they're paved. The city keeps sprawling anyway, the sprawling city eats up the fields.

If you feel like it, can you point us to the eight (or even fewer, of course) best songs about animals, in your opinion?

I'll tell you my favorite: “Il Merlo” by Piero Ciampi, another form of man-animal collaboration.

Making music (or any kind of art) that can “resonate” with a child is very difficult, “Bestiario musicale” is one of the very few recent examples I know of. If you had a child, what would be the first record you'd play for them?

Good question! Probably a De André record, maybe a song with some swear words. I remember that as a kid those were the ones that entertained me the most, you'd hear a man's voice singing words you're not supposed to say, my favorite part was “il cuore troppo vicino al buco del culo,” it was funny to hear, it amused me.

Can you give us a preview of the upcoming tour to present the record? When will it be, where, with what line-up…

Right now I'm opening the dates of the Baustelle theater tour and some Brunori sas dates, and I'm really glad about this, I want to thank them for the opportunity. They're having me play on some fantastic stages. After that, starting mid-May, I think I'll set off on my own tour, guitar and voice, old-school style.

(February 25, 2017)

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Giuliano Delli Paoli, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition

Lucio Corsi on OndaRock

Discography

Altalena Boy/Vetulonia Dakar (Picicca, 2015)
Musical Bestiary (Picicca, 2017)
Cosa faremo da grandi? (Piccica, 2020)
La gente che sogna (Piccica, 2023)
Volevo essere un duro (Sugar, 2025)