Sergio Caputo - Il sabato italiano gets a jazz makeover

Sergio Caputo's Sabato italiano, thirty years on, takes on a jazz tinge. And once again "dilaga anacronistica la musica di ieri". Even though the new arrangements have actually stripped away the more dated sheen of the flashy '80s. To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of his 1983 classic, the Roman singer-songwriter has released a remake of the original album, enriched with two unreleased tracks, which will also be the centerpiece of a new tour called "Un Sabato Italiano Show". But along the way there's also a memoir and the long thread of a story to be picked back up. A few more wrinkles, but plenty of rediscovered enthusiasm running through his veins, Sergio Caputo opens up in this wide-ranging conversation. Without hiding his ambitions or his quirks.

How did the idea for a remake of "An Italian Saturday" come about?

My problem with the original 1983 record was that I could no longer listen to it, because it was too tied to the sound culture of the 80s, which was full of cheesy effects, synthesizer echoes and so on. So, given that these songs have survived for thirty years despite me, I wanted to give them back to new generations in a more classic form. I completely redid the album in a more jazz-oriented version, so without frills, with real horns instead of fake ones, and I also thought it was only right to add two new, previously unreleased tracks ("C'est moi l'amour" and "I Love The Sky In September", ed.) that could stand worthily alongside these songs.

Will that also be the sound you bring to the live shows?

Yes, that was actually one of my concerns: not to record things that couldn't be reproduced live. It's also the same lineup — a septet (three horns, me on guitar and vocals, piano, drums and bass). I really wanted the stage sound to match the new record exactly.

In the album's liner notes you also talk about having changed profoundly since those days in 1983. In what way?

Well, if I'd stayed the way I was back then, I certainly wouldn't be here to tell the story. Luckily I calmed down quite a bit.

So in the end you did go to that doctor you didn't want to see because you really didn't want to "quit drinking and smoking"?

Yes! (we laugh). Although I admit I only quit smoking in 2001. So I'd recommend to all smokers: do it soon, and only once, because it's such a hard thing that you can't go through it twice! As for drinking, I've cut out spirits completely, but wine remains untouchable.

But those lyrics really were incredible... The whiskey that "comes back up" and "becomes literary", the "tightrope walkers balanced on the weekend", the "granular Citrosodina"... Where did they come from?

They came above all from my passion for Beat poetry, from the way American poets of that period wrote, including Gregory Corso, whom I actually met once in Trastevere without knowing it was him. It was that way of speaking in very quick images, almost like film frames. I've never liked songs that read like a "school essay", with such an obvious, tidy logic — life isn't like that, it's more fragmentary...

And then there was the irony holding it all together.

Absolutely, because I think you also have to look at life with a certain optimism.

Among the new Italian singer-songwriters, do you see anyone with that same spirit? Max Gazzè comes to mind, but maybe I'm off track...

Well... if you're asking me, I honestly wouldn't know. I was in California until two years ago, then I moved back here and had two kids in quick succession: I really haven't had the chance to listen to Italian music from this period.

When "An Italian Saturday" came out in 1983, it was a bolt from the blue. While everyone else was looking to the future (electronics, synthesizers, drum machines), you went and dusted off the golden age of jazz and swing instead. How did that idea come to you?

You're giving me a wonderful opportunity to mention that a book of mine is coming out with Oscar Mondadori ("An Italian Saturday – Memories", ed.), in which I describe exactly those years, the background of that record, how and why it came about, the musical trends, the loves, the houses I lived in, answering the thirty-year-old curiosities of those who have appreciated my music. But, to cut it short, at that time I was listening to a lot of live jazz and I kept asking myself why I always had to play "My Funny Valentine" and all those standards, when there was no one left writing songs in that style anymore. And I was also very inspired by Joe Jackson, the one behind "Jumpin' Jive" and "Night And Day", by the Manhattan Transfer, and by Duke Ellington himself.

…and I'd also add Donald Fagen: some even claim that "An Italian Saturday" is a kind of Italian "The Nightfly".

That would be wonderful, it's an enormous compliment! That's a record I wore out, it was also the first one to come out on CD, in digital format. And with those extraordinary sounds it's still a classic even thirty years on: unlike me, he never had to remake it! (we laugh)

Despite the somewhat dated sound, though, "An Italian Saturday" has genuinely remained a classic of Italian pop for thirty years. A nice bit of vindication, all things considered, against those who snubbed it at the time as a frivolous product of the Eighties…

Actually, that record wasn't tied to a specific historical period, but to basic emotions that all of us, at some point in our lives, have felt. It's the moment when you go through a phase of growth and, to use a nautical metaphor, leave the safe waters of the harbour and head out into the open sea. For me it happened around the age of thirty, when I had a job, was single, lived alone, and so had this whole unexplored area of the world waiting for me. That's why today, thirty years later, there are people who identify with it who weren't even born back then.

Less well known, though, is the second part of your career, marked by collaborations with major jazz musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Tony Scott, and also by a period when you lived in the United States, in California. What did that experience leave you with?

In the years I was in the US I didn't play the Italian, in the sense that even though I sang my songs in Italian too, I was addressing myself exclusively to the American audience. In other words, I didn't follow that tendency of going over to play the "Italian singer" and clustering together with our community, which always huddles very tightly around itself. There too I ventured into the open sea and fulfilled a lifelong dream of mine, making an instrumental record: I called it "That Kind Of Thing" and it's in the smooth jazz vein. A dream that would have been unrealizable in Italy, because everyone always only asked me for songs with lyrics. So it was a great experience, also because I got to work alongside American musicians, born into that musical culture. I've had the chance to work with plenty of talented jazz musicians in Italy too, but it's clear that jazz is an art form that was born in the United States.

Among Italian artists of the past, though, you've often been compared to Fred Buscaglione. Is it a comparison you agree with?

No, actually, it's something that has always bothered me! He did an Italian caricature of the American gangster, while I told stories from real life, I was just a young guy going through a growth phase singing love stories. Buscaglione, by the way, was a great musician, so he has all my admiration, but it's a comparison I've never understood. If anything, I feel closer to a composer like Cole Porter… – there, now everyone's going to say I'm terribly full of myself! But honestly, I let myself be drawn in by that kind of music, not by this fake-gangster "guys and dolls" music.

Then I know who started spreading that story around…

Who was it?

Luzzatto Fegiz. Yes, he was fixated on that story. In fact, every time I made a record that didn't strike him as Buscaglione enough, it would bother him and he'd slam it. (we laugh)

Few people know, though, that you actually started out at the Folkstudio, the Roman temple of folk singer-songwriters.

Yes, I go into it in detail in the book. I started going to the Folkstudio in Rome out of curiosity and interest. And also because it made me feel part of an artistic environment different from conventional music. I had a passion for guitar and played country-folk music.

That was truly unpredictable!

Yes, but it was too much fun. And in fact, when I later went to the States, I said to myself: 'Why didn't I keep on being a country musician!'. Actually, at the Folkstudio I also started listening to jazz, and that's where I drew inspiration for that kind of music: live, I played folk-jazz songs and performed with Carl Potter on congas, Giancarlo Molina on sax, myself on twelve-string guitar and Roberto Della Grotta on double bass.

You're also working on a new album of original material. Can you give us a preview?

Actually I already have three or four ready in the drawer, which I've never brought out because everyone knows - there's no point hiding it - that the market no longer absorbs new music, it's very hard for a musician, especially an independent one, at a time when the majors have completely collapsed. The market has changed a lot, we're in the full digital era, and it's very hard for an artist to invest a lot of time and money in a project that maybe will never even be heard, also because nowadays the media no longer cover music the way they used to... maybe you're a rare breed!

Let's wrap up with the tour: what's the real challenge you want to take on onstage?

The tour is called "An Italian Saturday show" and for the first time in my career I'll perform every track from the album, a bit like Neil Young or the Eagles used to do, taking an album and playing it in full live. It's a really interesting confrontation with myself too, because I've never played most of the tracks from "An Italian Saturday" live, I always limited myself to bringing out the usual three or four. On top of that, I'll explore some other things the audience knows but in different forms, and then I'll launch into a set with all my most famous songs. I'll also be in Rome, my city, at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, Sala Sinopoli, on December 18th.

In collaboration with Leggo

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