Massimo Zamboni - From Punk to Pasolini

On January 31st, Massimo Zamboni released his new album: “P.P.P. – Profezia è predire il presente”. The thread running through the project is the final phase of Pier Paolo Pasolini's life, including his tragic death. The project grew out of a reading-concert staged in Florence by the Gabinetto Scientifico Vieusseux in September 2024; the production of the show was followed by the album, released on Le Vele-Egea Records and distributed via the Rizosfera platform.

How did last night's concert in Parma, at Colonne 28, go? The places you choose are always distinctive.

More often than not it's the places that choose me, rather than the other way around. Last night's venue in Parma is a beautiful deconsecrated church used for all kinds of events, and it creates a really strong sense of intimacy - it feels almost like being inside some kind of capsule. It's not a show for the faint of heart, it's very... very dramatic, very intense, both because of Pasolini's words and the songs themselves, and on top of that it's a show that accompanies a man like him toward his death, so it can't have a playful or entertaining tone. And yet, through some strange alchemy, people always seem to leave feeling fairly uplifted - even I couldn't tell you exactly why.

The album “P.P.P. – Profezia è predire il presente” has a double effect on the listener: on one hand, there's a sense of breathlessness, of no way out. But on the other hand, there are tracks that express a strong will to stay, to keep striving. If that weren't the case, your role as an author, an intellectual, a musician wouldn't make sense either.

Pasolini spoke about himself with a desperate vitality, and I think this is an album that is desperate and vital at once: desperate because it does lead a person, an intellectual like him, toward extinction, disappearance, murder; and yet at the same time you realize it isn't a death-driven path at all - quite the opposite, it's a path of absolute vitality, because it's in the name of that vitality, in the name of love, of landscape, of culture, of language, of an idea of the world, that Pasolini had to accept this path. Some songs make that point more clearly than others, like “Grândola vila morena” and “Vorremmo esserci”; there are outbursts of participation and a desire for change. Many others don't shy away from the murder itself: one in particular is a song I carried in my mind for five or six years before deciding to record it, “Tu muori”, which, right from the title, was waiting for its own protagonist - it couldn't be a song built on the beauty of the music or the words alone. It had to intersect with Pasolini and had to describe, in such a terrifying way from the inside, what happens to a body like his when it's beaten, clubbed, killed and run over by a car. All the way to that final song of isolation, “Persona non grata”, another very powerful moment, one of those that make you hold your breath because there's nothing left - no redemption, no hope, no past, no future, no voice left inside: that's what the song tells.

Over time you've built a very personal way of storytelling and singing. Here it seems there are some very specific musical references: on one hand, there's definitely the folk music of Giovanna Marini and José Afonso, which I find deeply moving. On the other hand, there are also more modern sounds: in “Persona non grata”, for instance, I feel like I can hear the Einstürzende Neubauten of “The garden”… is that just my impression, or is there something to it? After all, Neubauten have always been a point of reference for you.

As far as popular music goes, it was a bit like finding my way back home. I started listening to music as a boy, looking for music that I felt represented me, starting with folk music. That was a period of great ferment around the discovery of the folk world, we were in the mid-70s, and I formed myself on those songs, on Giovanna Marini, on Canzoniere Italiano, on Giovanna Daffini, also on José Afonso singing “Grândola vila morena”. The year of the Portuguese revolution was also a year of great blossoming for me, in some way it felt like I was encountering the world for the first time, so it became one of my anthems, in a way. I'd bought the album, and I listened to it and wore it out for a long time. This connects with a more modern sensibility — “The Garden” by Neubauten is definitely in there too. In a sense there's also Nick Cave, Patti Smith, as ideal reference points too, as very strong, very dark individualities; it seems to me the best way to face the passing of time, and also what I want to tell.

You've been on a beautiful journey with your voice. When you were in Cccp and Csi, I never really noticed that you weren't singing, or barely singing: you were so cohesive, you were one single thing. Maybe only once, in an early Csi interview, during the recording of “In quiete”, did Giovanni point out that you never sang. And that was the first time I realized it. Since then, from when you began your solo career, you've made a remarkable journey: first you had female voices interpret your songs, and then you gave your songs your own voice, which has opened up, has become increasingly expressive. On this latest album, in particular, you can hear that your voice is warm, open, with nuances — on the one hand in the Giovanna Marini songs, but on the other, for instance, also in “Tu muori”, in “Persona non grata”, where you can feel that something has happened. Was there a particular path you took in that sense?

(smiles, ed.) Thank you, that's reassuring. Yes, over the last 25 years I've found myself, like Pasolini, a persona non grata, singing a very harsh isolation. And in passing through the neck of the hourglass... slowly you accumulate the little grains that take on the shape of a mountain; I'm starting to resemble that mountain of grains, because I have more and more awareness of my voice — I was also helped in this by a couple of bouts of pneumonia, which forced me to think, to deepen my tone a little, to believe in it. That's the most important thing, because when you sing, it's not so much about knowing how to sing, it's really about believing you can do it. I know I can do it — I barely play guitar anymore, for instance. I've entrusted it almost entirely to Erik Montanari, who has played with me for years, because what I need to discover now is more tied to my vocal cords than to amplified ones. It's a process of reaching a version of myself that I didn't know, that until a fairly advanced age never thought of or wanted to show itself. I never used to talk, let alone sing. I started singing only in recent years — in some ways the turning point came with the 2022 album “La mia patria attuale”, and now I feel very confident about it. Confident means I have to do it my own way, according to my own breath and my own intentions. But I find myself singing in the car — alone, of course, because I'm still very private about this — songs by other artists that I used to listen to when I was 17 or 18. And just think, I can actually sing them now! But if I'd been able to do this at 18, imagine how different my life would have been? Maybe I already knew how, but I never had the chance to show it, even to myself.

I'm struck by the fact that “Defeated Sister” (2004) is also present on this album — a song you've said you often bring back, perhaps in different versions, because it was your starting point for this new path. “Mi hai dato gli occhi, un microfono in mano e il coraggio per poterlo cantare” is a beautiful line.

That song is exactly the neck of the hourglass I was talking about earlier. Once you get through it, a whole world opens up that has slowly built itself. It's the song that accompanies me constantly, because it adapts to every aspect of life. Crossing paths with Pasolini, it found a further reason to exist, when he expresses his contempt for victory and advises younger generations to listen to the value of defeat: we find ourselves very aligned on this. That song also speaks of a withdrawal of the inhabited part of the body behind the line of the eyes, almost an abandonment of the physical part. I like to think of it as a kind of song of invisibility, where everything you are is enclosed behind the line of your eyes, and the body is left adrift, no longer you. The song says my body is a fake passport, it's what is seen, what others look at, but it's a false document, not the true identity. The true identity is well hidden and manifests itself in other ways.

In this album you openly cite two of Pasolini's works. One is “Le belle bandiere” and the other is “Scritti corsari”. Regarding the latter, there's an article by Pasolini about the disappearance of the fireflies, titled “Il vuoto del potere in Italy”. I was deeply struck by that image of the fireflies disappearing as a way of signalling the end of a civilization, and also a real anthropological shift among Italians. So much so that I, living in the city where I never see fireflies, would go looking for them in the countryside to see if there were still any left... Do you think there's a chance the fireflies could come back? Or are we lost in this society that is not only a consumer society, as Pasolini said, but a society that erases our capacity to think because it satisfies us with what we already expect to see and what we like to see.

I live in a place where there are fireflies, among the mountains, among the fields — I haven't used herbicides or pesticides for at least 25-30 years, so the fireflies are there. What I have noticed, though, is that there are no more amphibians, no more reptiles, very few birds, and this is a highly wooded area full of meadows — there aren't even any bees. When the flowering happens, like with rosemary, there's silence, and it's quite striking, because this is a very natural area, so imagine what it's like in cities or in built-up countryside. There's this distracted kind of acceptance of what's happening: I read that the Council of Europe is advising us to stock up on 72-hour emergency supplies in case of war, so war has essentially already been declared. I think — I don't wish for it, but in some way, yes — I hope to be the first one hit, I don't want to live in an air-raid shelter eating tinned food without ever seeing the sky. That's not a kind of life that suits me, I couldn't do it. We've accepted the anthropological shift: just look at our footage from 40, 35 years ago, at concerts — there was already a population with faces quite different from today's, which are all so smoothed out, so fresh, so perfumed. Without taking anything away from people, objectively there's a race toward levelling everyone out.

I wanted to talk to you about two aspects of our society that we tend to push aside, both related to death: funerals and cemeteries. Pasolini's funeral is mentioned on your album, in the Giovanna Marini song, “Lamento per la morte di Pasolini”. “E la piazza e le bandiere e noi a cantare 'Bella ciao', l'Internazionale, che strano funerale”. When I heard it, it brought to mind the footage of his funeral, with Moravia saying: “We have lost a great poet”. The other funeral is Berlinguer's: you recently scored the documentary “Arrivederci Berlinguer”, which shows an enormous, moving outpouring of participation from Italians. So, two funerals, both secular, both with huge public participation: it's inevitable to draw a parallel between the two figures. What role did Berlinguer play for you, what did he represent for you in relation to Pasolini?

Given the way they passed and the way they were accompanied in death, you can't simply call them civil funerals, in the sense that there was a participation — I don't even know if I'd call it religious — but with such intensity that it touched spheres quite different from those of mere civic life: the disappearance of a poet, and the disappearance of a great political figure. There are people who touch you deeply because of their humanity, who have remained in the hearts of Italians. Berlinguer, in a way, fell while at work, in a kind of sacrificial mode, in his final Via Crucis on that last day in Padua — it's striking, just as Pasolini too offered himself in sacrifice, and that's certainly an idea with a Catholic aftertaste. There are passages in Pasolini that spell out in advance what was to come; when he writes about the Crucifixion, it's very easy to see Pasolini's own body on that cross. He had a very clear idea of what was happening and of his role in it. He says that the central point of Christ's martyrdom is exposure, having exposed himself: that's what happened to him, he exposed himself as an object of scandal from the very start, since he was a boy, accepting that role, not out of masochism; it was desperate vitality that pushed him forward. I think reckoning with this is absolutely necessary; I know I write a lot about disappearances, in all my books there's always something that disappears. Even the latest one, which I've just delivered to my publisher, is about another person who gets killed. Living in the mountains, you realize that every loss is everyone's loss: here, funerals disrupt work, everything stops, there's even a kind of civic mourning. Often, when something particularly grave happens, death imposes a stop. We think it's we who impose a stop on it, instead, as if it should only come forward when we have time for it.

As for cemeteries, the images on your latest album are photos taken by Diego Cuoghi in some famous cemeteries: there's the Staglieno cemetery in Genoa, there's Père-Lachaise in Paris... they're powerful images. Is it a conscious nod to the Joy Division cover (the album “Closer” was released in July 1980, two months after Ian Curtis's suicide, ed.) or was it a random choice?

I think Diego had Joy Division in mind when he took these photos — they're photos from many years ago, maybe 35 or 40 years back. It suddenly occurred to me that he had this small treasure trove, so we went and rediscovered it, so the reference is probably there. What I really like is this physicality made of concrete and marble, with these figures exposing themselves once again. On the cover, in particular, there's this female figure offering herself, with this crown of light above her head and this body of marble, of stone — I'm not exactly sure what material it is. And it seems perfectly aligned with what the album wants to express; so, when I found that image, I had no hesitation at all. I'm also a great frequenter of cemeteries, I love them — when I go to a city I usually go to see the cemeteries, but I do it with the same passion with which I'd visit a farm or walk through fields or mountains, I find no distance between the two. They're places of contemplation, places where our potential expresses itself at its fullest.

After all, in your book “L'eco di uno sparo” the cemetery of Reggio Emilia, where your family members are, plays an important role.

In “L'eco di uno sparo” I write that “home” is where our dead are; we have an idea of home calibrated on tourist rentals or on the chance to travel on cheap flights for two days, and it seems to us that the whole world is our home. Right now, the world is showing us that this isn't true. On a deeper level, “home” is where someone planted us, where someone prepared the ground for us, and therefore where, in turn, we will leave behind what remains of us. These aren't sad thoughts, they actually bring me a lot of peace — sadness is this overabundance, this urge to run away from things.

Still on the subject of Pasolini, in the film “Uccellacci e uccellini”, the crow, which represents the voice of the intellectual, comes to a bad end: Totò and Ninetto Davoli eat it! So what can an intellectual, a thinking person, do today to be heard?

(smiles, ed.) Getting eaten is always the best option, in the sense that in such a media-driven world, if you get yourself eaten cleverly enough, you reach a level of notoriety you'd never achieve otherwise — I'd like to avoid that, though. It's quite a strong promotional idea, I realize that! Maybe it's worth it, in a sense, to shout out for attention. I know, without arrogance, the value of what I'm doing, which I believe goes beyond what I see being written or the audience I manage to reach. There's an inability to step outside one's own phone, one's own life within four walls, which always surprises me. Why shouldn't we measure ourselves against figures like Berlinguer or Pasolini? Why shouldn't we talk about death? Why shouldn't we talk about homeland? What should music talk about? That's a powerful question — it doesn't have to be entertainment or talent shows, or the expression of one's own physicality, it can be that too, but there's also a ritual kind of music, a music that can carry a profound poetry: what kind of relationship do we want to have with each other, what can we give one another? That's what I can give — much more as an artist than as a physical person. My artistic side is decidedly superior to my individual side, because it's more willing to expose itself, it always tries to bring out the best and to do so in a very... understanding way, that is, capable of comprehension. Then there's the physical person that I am, who suffers all the same flaws as everyone else, and who, in my opinion, is far less worth spending time with.

In “La rabbia e l’hashish”, you say that this is a “land of heartbroken prophets, kingdom of quantity”, what are you referring to?

You know, we live these spinning-top lives, with no central point of gravity, overwhelmed by a mass of objects and stimuli that makes it impossible to actually live. The few who realize this, the few who have the desire or the courage to face it, can only end up heartbroken, because it's a voice calling in the desert. What can you do? Coming from a youthful political activism, I find myself unarmed on this front, there's really nothing I can do. You'd genuinely feel like screaming all day at what you see, what you hear, at the dynamics being built around us, and yet you feel that the best thing you can do is plant olive trees, plant chestnut trees, write books... I write songs, I stay close to my family, these feel to me like propositions of absolute value, but they're limited to that, because I have no real power to change anything.

You've decided not to release the new album on Spotify. Why is that?

Spotify is a treat for the listener, for me too as a listener, but it's a tragedy for a composer, a musician or a songwriter, because I get absolutely nothing out of it. In this huge phone book, you're accessible on every level, but really nothing comes back to you. In pragmatic terms, if I sell a CD at a concert, I earn far more than in a whole year of Spotify: that's madness, isn't it? This is also a job, and this kind of devaluation forces you to stop writing songs, stop producing them, stop releasing them. I'd rather settle for a small, deeply engaged audience. Whereas Spotify can be used in a way like a radio station: if I have a single I want people to hear, I put it up for free, everyone can listen to it and decide for themselves whether it's worth getting into a whole album or not.

Is this a retroactive choice? I noticed that “Sonata a Kreuzberg”, for instance, is no longer on Spotify…

Yes, I'm gradually taking down everything I can from Spotify.

Now, being a fan of yours and having grown up with Cccp's music in my head, I can't not ask you this: on March 21st there was the Gran Gala Punkettone, the last encounter with the city of Reggio Emilia. What did you feel seeing all these people at the Teatro Valli who came to say goodbye to you?

It was the first act of what we called a farewell, which will end on July 30th, with the concert in Taormina. We consciously decided to close this story ourselves, to do it at the end of another five-year plan that, oddly enough, we actually managed to complete, or so it seems. There were a lot of people, a lot of emotion, and I didn't come out of it feeling cheered, in the sense that I have a great deal of affection for Reggio and for Cccp. Thinking that it was the last time we would find ourselves together on that stage, well, on one hand it brings you a kind of peace, and on the other it leaves you with a bit of melancholy, whatever you want to call it. I think the audience sensed this too: two years ago, at the first Gran Gala Punkettone, there was a festive atmosphere, whereas this time we accompanied a story to its close.

After the concert in Parma, are new dates planned for this tour?

Yes, there's a date in Nardò in Puglia on April 27th, then Turin on May 18th, and Turin again in June. In Romagna, also in June. I'll be in Canelli on July 5th. There are a few scattered dates over the summer, but the bulk of it will definitely be in the fall, as we approach the anniversary of Pasolini's death (November 2nd marks the fiftieth anniversary of his death, ed.).

In this present that we struggle to make sense of, there's a great need for Massimo Zamboni's voice, music and integrity: let's hope the last time never comes!

(April 6, 2025)

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