Radio Days - The pop side of rock'n'roll

Standard-bearers of power-pop in Italy, Milan's Radio Days (currently Dario Persi, Paco Orsi and Mattia Baretta) have, over a career that began in the early 2000s, become one of the reference bands of the scene across Europe, as shown by their numerous tours up and down the Old Continent. Credit goes to a sound that perfectly blends crystalline melodies with rock'n'roll swagger, a mix honed over the years and one that truly exploded with their last two studio works, "Get Some Action" and "Back In The Day".

The first thing I thought listening to "Back In The Day" is that each of the fourteen songs could be a potential single. How do your songs come about, and what kind of work goes into each track?

First of all, thank you so much. With the opening of that question you've already earned yourself a place in our hearts and a commemorative pin, which will be triumphantly presented to you with a small ceremony at our next show. Actually, this observation of yours, which obviously delights us, perfectly reflects that mix of hard work and enthusiasm we felt when putting together the album's final tracklist. Our original idea was to record 14 tracks, then pick ten for the album and use the remaining four as b-sides for possible singles or as bonus tracks for the various foreign editions (Japan and the United States). Easier said than done: the dramatic evening when we got together to decide the record's "rejects" was so frustrating, and the tension between us so intense, that after two near-fights and a momentary breakup, we decided to release a fourteen-track album, something that probably hasn't been done since the early 2000s. Needless to say, it was the best choice we could have made.

As for how the songs are written and developed, I can tell you that after many years of experience we've finally landed on a pretty tried-and-tested formula: usually Dario brings in a song that's already more or less structured (verse and chorus), which he's previously written on acoustic guitar, and then we all get together to arrange it over several rehearsals, adding bridges, arpeggios, flourishes and baroque touches. After a while we realize we've completely overdone it, so we go back to work on the song to strip away all the excess and madness that our oxygen-starved brains produced. Within about three weeks the track is usually finished.

Looking back, you have a journey of more than ten years behind you. How hard is it to break through nowadays? And what's the ingredient that, with experience, you've learned to use just right?

It's pretty clear that if there is a secret ingredient for breaking through and bringing your band success, we don't know it. In fact, if we look at our musical journey from the standpoint of chasing fame and popularity, I think over the years we've consistently made the worst choice at the worst possible moment: we abandoned punk-rock to devote ourselves to a genre as obscure and thoroughly unloved as power-pop, we choose to sing in English rather than Italian for the sake of staying true to our musical background (can you imagine a Neapolitan tarantella sung in English?), we do use social media to promote ourselves, but without buying into those awful mechanisms that turn bands into two-dimensional entities made up of image and catchy soundbites (after all, who the hell cares about the music, that's the last thing that matters, right?).

As far as I'm concerned, the only way to feel fulfilled within a band is to play what you truly love, in the way that satisfies you most, with people you share a real bond and a strong passion with, without letting yourself be swayed by what you think might have commercial potential; it would ring false, and there's nothing worse than a band playing without being convinced by what it's doing.

This kind of outlook has allowed us to fulfil some of our dreams, like playing and recording albums together with two of our all-time favourite bands (the Rubinoos and the Beat), and having played pretty much all over Europe. We'll never be a chart-topping band, nor will we ever make it into the top 20 most popular indie bands in Italy... we know we play a genre that's traditionally low on commercial success, but it's what we love to do, and that's just fine.

With the new album the lineup becomes a trio, but joining you is Gabriele Bernardi of Rudi on keyboards. How did this collaboration come about, and what added value did it bring to these songs?

Writing "Back In The Day" as a power trio brought a breath of fresh air to our arrangement dynamics. It was a bit like wiping the slate clean of our certainties, which pushed us to play with the kind of enthusiasm kids have when approaching a completely new experience. The underlying idea was to write songs that could be played live exactly the way they'd been conceived in the rehearsal room: direct, immediate and as rock'n'roll as possible (in fact the record was played live and recorded live). Only in one case, the reggae-tinged "Your Words", did we realize that the song itself was crying out for a hammond organ, so it felt pretty natural to ask Gabriele - Rudi's keyboardist, and a friend and old schoolmate of Dario's - to help us write the part. We were so satisfied with the result (live, his part gets reproduced via a loop) that we got tempted into adding a couple more piano parts that wonderfully enriched songs we already considered finished (the The Band-style organ on "Rock'n'Roll Night" and the angelic Buddy Holly-esque riff on "You Bring Me Down").

Among the songs on "Back In The Day", which one best reflects Radio Days today and their evolution?

Even though it's not a true concept album, "Back In The Day" takes on a fuller meaning when listened to in its entirety: the songs have their own continuity, their own growth and development within the record, and they end up telling a story that isn't just musical but also thematic (which, as it happens, is always the same one that's obsessed me since I started writing lyrics: nostalgia for a lost idyllic past, a metaphorical age of the human spirit that identifies the "past" as humanity's "golden age").

Now that I've given you an embarrassing answer worthy of a frustrated pseudo-songwriter, I can tell you that ideally "Back In The Day" should be listened to the old-fashioned way, on vinyl, one side first, then the other, with the essential ritual of "getting up and going to flip the record". Because let's be honest: that's how music should be listened to, instead of virtually wandering among hundreds of anonymous files that get skipped at the speed with which people get bored nowadays (there's no helping it... today I'm in the mood for senile lecturing, and I apologize for that).

Anyway, listening to the album with this approach makes it easier to distinctly perceive the two souls that inspire the record: a side A rooted in the incredibly rich soil of the Sixties (see the opening track) and the Seventies (the title track is a perfect example), with a keen eye on the origins of power-pop, and a side B that draws more inspiration from bands chronologically closer to us, like Weezer or Teenage Fanclub. So, to answer your question, I'd say "You Won't Fool Me Twice" for the first side (maybe the most Beatles-esque track we've ever written) and "Out Of The Shade" for the second.

Speaking of influences, I'd say broadly that your music draws from power-pop, "classic" British and American rock, garage, Mod revival... Which bands inspire you most and may have shaped your sound? And as for the contemporary scene, which foreign and Italian bands do you appreciate most?

Our songs are born with clear British sixties intentions, but during their gestation they inevitably get contaminated by our more recent teenage background (the so-called "90s power pop") made up of bands like Muffs, Weezer and Teenage Fanclub who, in turn, wrote songs inspired by classics like Byrds, Elvis Costello or Graham Parker. In this hall of mirrors of derivations, we turn out to be, partly unwittingly, grandchildren trying to retrace their grandparents' footsteps, who inevitably end up resembling their fathers a bit too. This way, a song born with Paul Collins in mind, during the arrangement process meets a Rivers Cuomo halfway, who inevitably ends up influencing how it turns out.

As for my own listening habits, I admit I'm totally enslaved to the Sixties classics and 70s power pop. So spinning on my stereo you'll always find Kinks, Hollies, Small Faces, Who as much as Nick Lowe, Big Star and Badfinger (and I'll stop there, because the list would be endless). I also love contemporary power-pop bands, and besides the better-known Teenage Fanclub or Fountains of Wayne, I like to hunt down lesser-known gems. Personally I really appreciate 88, Cherry Twister, Red Button, Len Price Three, Farrah, The Cry! and our friend Kurt Baker. I also always listen to the great classics, like David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust period or Lou Reed's "Transformer", although perhaps the perfect record remains "London Calling" by Clash. Among Italians, I really like Labradors, Giuda, Bad Love Experience, Home and Leeches.

Over the years, and recently too, you've played several times in Europe, especially in Spain - by now your second home. Is there an episode or a show you're particularly attached to, for any reason?

When you've been on tour for many days in a row, there's a moment when time starts flowing differently, the universe is no longer subject to the laws of physics you thought you knew (gravity especially), and you find yourself suspended in a kind of space-time bubble where everything is precarious, the days blur together, and you get the feeling that anything could happen. It sounds like new-age nonsense, but that's really how it is. In these years of Spanish tours we've really seen it all, from bribing a public official to get the wheel clamp removed from our van, to extraordinary beach shows; from improvised acoustic sets in bed and breakfasts, to managing a sold-out Saturday night show in Madrid. But perhaps one of the most absurd days that's ever happened to us in our lives is one that began, a couple of years ago, on a Spanish motorway between Valencia and Almansa. During a lunch stop at a service station, some cheerful locals smashed the huge side window of Sergione (our rustic, aging van) and stole a few backpacks and bags. We filed a report with the local police in some tiny village lost in the middle of nowhere, and rigged up a new cardboard window that would have looked right at home among early-20th-century Italian immigrants on Staten Island. We showed up at the venue looking like genuine refugees, played the show, and booked an appointment to replace the glass at a Carglass shop in Madrid, 400 km away. The drama was that the next day we had the dreaded double show (one of which was an afternoon slot), so we set the alarm for a shockingly early hour to make all the running around fit, and after a couple of hours' sleep we braced ourselves for the nightmare day ahead. At that point Marco (our sound engineer) decided to defy the laws of physics and, with the athleticism that sets him apart, slipped in the bathtub, launching himself in a swan dive against the sink, cracking his skull open and turning the bathroom into the set of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. What followed was a frantic dash to the ER (five stitches) and a mad drive to Madrid to not miss the appointment at the body shop, where, once we arrived, we were informed, amid tears and hysterical laughter, that our van was so old that the window model we needed to replace was no longer in production, making it impossible to change the glass. We opted for the budget solution of "plexiglass panel plus duct tape" (which, years later, is still the only line of defense against the elements and ill-intentioned passersby) and heroically pulled off the double show.

If you could choose one artist to write a song with... who would it be?

Well... the greatest songwriter of all time is without doubt McCartney, so answering you with "good old Paul Ramone" would be pretty predictable. I'm sure that if he were still alive, Dario would want to write a song together with Buddy Holly (one of his idols), but in the end I think we'd settle for collaborating with Elvis Costello, or failing that, with Ray Davies. 🙂

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