Carlo Massarini

I'll start from way back. I first met Carlo Massarini in the spring of 2008 at the Turin Book Fair, on the occasion of a round table on "Music and the internet" ("the internet's long tail"). When, in the newsroom, Claudio Fabretti asked who was available to take part, I immediately raised my virtual hand, even though I'm historically reluctant to move beyond my four city blocks even to attend an enticing concert. Just imagine whether I'd let an opportunity like that slip away. The topic was quite interesting, but even more tantalizing (no offense to Claudio, nor to DeaStore, the brilliant organizer of the event) was the chance to try to capture one of the historic figures of our music journalism, one of those who, literally, wrote the history of it.

Well, once I got his contact details (he was very kind, I must say), I thought arranging the interview would be a piece of cake. Think again. Over the following two months there was a string of failed attempts, appointments missed by a hair, phone calls that for the most disparate reasons cut off right at the crucial moment. To the point that, rather than come across as a persistent pest, I decided to shelve the idea for the time being. Fast forward to last December: Carlo publishes the book "Dear Mister Fantasy – fotoracconto di un'epoca musicale in cui tutto era possibile (1969-1982)". One day I was wandering the shelves of Feltrinelli here in Milan and, lo and behold, I bump into him. As friendly as ever, and, as ever, me firmly resolved to threaten him with my interview. Between that moment and what you're about to read below, there were more phone calls, a phone line (his) that went down for a few days, and, to top it all off, my iPod recorder which, like a modern-day John Cage, handed me back fifty-eight unsettling minutes of silence in place of the .wav file that was supposed to contain the long-awaited interview. Professional secrecy dictates that I can't reveal how we still managed to publish it: I'll simply thank the interviewee.

Carlo, for someone like me who considers themselves a "victim" of the fateful "you don't get out of the 80s alive," "Mr. Fantasy" was a crucial milestone. A show able to capture, in the few minutes of each episode, the essence of that period (and I'd say not just its musical essence), and to remain indelibly etched in the minds of that generation. Looking back today on those years (1981-1984), what do you think was their genuine distinguishing trait, the reason why they're still so "mythologized" today, unlike, say, other later phases?

I don't actually think they're particularly mythologized, you know? Or rather, no more than other periods that came before them—I'm thinking of the 70s, or the 60s. Certainly they were years of major change: image became the focal element for conveying music, and with it the video clip, which opened up new spaces and became an important tool of artistic expression. But in the end, everyone has their own era—those who came in the following decades can tell you about the defining elements of theirs too, and indeed there are plenty of people who associate the 80s with hedonism and superficiality. Of course there was quite a bit of that, but it didn't stop there, far from it. The evolution of punk into new wave brought us bands like Talking Heads or Police. "World" music, whether from Africa, the Middle East or the Caribbean, entered rock the way it had entered jazz in previous decades. Some rebels effectively became the singer-songwriters of the new era: for me the prototype of the 80s singer-songwriter is the Elvis Costello of "Imperial Bedroom", which is something very different from the Jackson Browne of the previous decade. Then the digital technology revolution delivered the first electronic keyboards, the first samplers and sound boxes that laid the foundations of rap and hip-hop. People began using computers for demos too, for recording and post-production. The rather basic electronics of Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk became more sophisticated, and that's where a new world opened up, the music of the future.

The 80s were, in fact, years of huge change. Perhaps the last great turning point.

You were a pioneer of video music in Italy—consider that "Mr. Fantasy" was born several months before American MTV. In your view, what did the language of the music video change in the relationship between listeners and music?

It changed an enormous amount. From an artistic standpoint, it put directors and video artists to work who, using it as a training ground for their future careers, produced interesting pieces—sometimes rough around the edges but very creative. Some of the top directors of the time, for instance John Landis with Michael Jackson's "Thriller", had budgets at their disposal that were almost cinematic. There were all sorts of trends: the dreamlike, the parody, the short movie, the fantastical. They also represented the first tool for the globalization of the musical product: for the first time a band could be seen and become known in far-off lands, in a different and more complete way than through a live clip. And since the videos were charming, enjoyable little stories, they appealed even to people who didn't listen to music at all. Back then, "Mister Fantasy" was watched by young people, but also by 50-somethings and older. The various MTVs and Videomusics that sprang up everywhere laid the groundwork for a youth fil rouge that, over 30 years, has made rock stars—along with footballers and, to a lesser extent, actors—the true global heroes, the icons of the contemporary age.

The video clip was born as the child of cinema and advertising, but it would in turn change its own parents, as in a family saga: rock entered both of them massively, editing became tighter, rigorously cut to the beat, and in general timing began to shrink everywhere. Today advertising looks like a clip, and action cinema looks like one long clip. The thing I enjoy and get most excited about on TV are football highlight reels set to music.

All things considered, I'm glad music has developed new means to grow. Now you really hear it everywhere, in every situation. It's become a product that can be adapted in a thousand ways: from what's sold online to ringtones. It's much more pervasive, and paradoxically it may have taken something away in terms of attentive listening—it's certainly made it more superficial, skin-deep, easily accessible. There are definitely fewer places, whether virtual like radio or TV, or physical like record shops, where you can educate yourself. What strikes me a lot is that today on the radio, besides no longer talking about music (though that's been true for a long time), they don't even announce song titles anymore—a sign that songs have become background noise, filler between chit-chat, banter, and ads. Since they all play the same 40 songs, if you don't recognize one, just wait half an hour or change the station and you'll hear it again anyway.

And today, with the advent of YouTube, are we facing a revolution of the same magnitude?

Yes and no. YouTube is an immense container whose focus isn't solely on spreading music. Sure, that's part of it, but I see it more as a powerful vehicle than as a musical revolution in the strict sense. The real revolution concerning YouTube needs to be placed within that of social networks, and thus within the new phase of the internet that began a few years ago: greater participation, uploading your own content, see also MySpace, a truly global audience and market. But at the end of the day it's a vast database, one that doesn't play a genuinely active role—it doesn't propose content, it simply makes it available.

The RAI of the "Mister Fantasy" years really did seem to be trying to revolutionize the way television entertainment and music television were made. What memories do you have of RAI back then? How much freedom did you have in deciding content, and what was your relationship like with colleagues and department heads? How did you experience the substantial restoration that followed?

At that time RAI was in the hands of the DC (Christian Democrats), and things were still run according to the Cencelli manual—that is, through a rigorous, almost scientific division of airtime: to each their share according to a proportional representative mechanism, just like in Parliament. But the big difference compared to today is that back then another golden rule also applied, the meritocratic one: in short, if you were good, regardless of your political sympathies, you had a better chance of making your way. The overall quality level, relatively speaking, was higher. Just think of the variety shows of the 70s, whose quality, in terms of content and stars, was the envy of the whole world. Today RAI is an importer of foreign formats. The truth is that RAI's directors back then were consummate professionals, people from the industry who knew the job inside out—certainly not the officials who came afterward, the ones who until the day before were doing something completely different and who were (and still are) brought in only to occupy positions of power. And all of this can't help but be reflected in the programming.

For this reason, when Paolo Giaccio brought to Rai the idea for that multi-artistic laboratory that was "Mister Fantasy", on the other side there were professionals capable of understanding and appreciating the scope of that proposal, which thus became reality.

In the book I talk about the rules and constraints of the time, like the Listening Commission, which was active when I was still working in radio. Sure, it was something paradoxical, straight out of the Ministry of Popular Culture, but as good rockers we worked around it whenever we could. Because within that representative system, there had to be an important show for young people, and there was one, run by kids who did it well, and it was called, somewhat empirically, "Per Voi Giovani".

Were there cultural differences...

Yes, although ours has always been a rather peculiar situation, since historically our level of musical culture isn't remotely comparable to America's: this has always weighed heavily, even today. In the United States, entertainment is also business, it carries significant weight in the international balance of payments, and as such it's handled with great care. Business doesn't just mean commerce, but an organized system for conveying content. The US has always exported dreams, cultural models and lifestyle. They've always had a leaning toward intangible values, well before the new economy. I like the vision of music that a magazine like "Rolling Stone" has, where it's considered on a par with the other arts: sculpture, painting, theatre, cinema, literature. Not just a generational soundtrack then - which would already be significant in itself - but a genuine artistic, cultural, social phenomenon. Sure, they gave the world blues, jazz, rock'n'roll, no small thing. But regarding it as contemporary art is a step further. Americans love and respect their myths. The esteem enjoyed by artists like Bob Dylan, or Bruce Springsteen, who stirred the conscience of tens of millions of people, is enormous - they're regarded, and I fully agree, as historical figures in every sense, at times even more important than some of the presidents that country has had...

Internet has obviously changed everything... Without getting into the age-old question of file-sharing, what strikes you most about the internet's approach to music? And do you too believe that the CD, the traditional record, should by now be considered little more than a fossil?

I partly answered that before. The internet is an immense container, which means it's undoubtedly extremely useful, provided you know what you're looking for: you really find everything there, but I don't think it will fully replace the physical format, even though I might be proven wrong. Certainly, it's revolutionized the relationship between fans and music, it's created a new and incredible channel: now you go on Amazon, order twenty or thirty CDs and wait for them to arrive at home. This has somewhat undermined the sacredness tied to the desperate hunt for a record in shops, or the wait for a release - often months late - which was an integral part of building a listener's loyalty. The greater the effort, the sweeter the find, right? It was part of the ritual of listening, so to speak, and today it's no longer the same, as happens with anything that becomes easy and accessible. Still, I realize there's a different way of consuming music among the younger generations: recently, for instance, I bought the new Arctic Monkeys album for my son, except he ripped it into mp3s to put on his computer and iPod, while I was left with the CD. Together with some friends I'm building a digital database of all the titles I have on vinyl and CD, but there's nothing to be done about it - if I want to listen to something I do what I used to do when I hung around record shops: I get up, scan the shelves until I find what I feel like hearing, and put it in the player, or on the turntable. I read the liner notes. I just can't think in terms of file 1, file 7, and so on. That's why I say that, in the end, the physical format will survive, in spite of everything. Not to mention the sound quality itself, which matters a great deal to a hi-fi enthusiast.

What's your opinion of music magazines then and now?

Once they were truly important for a listener, they were informative, as well as the only useful tool for accessing a certain kind of information. It was the same mechanism as with records: hunting down a small piece on Traffic took the skills of a diviner. Today, and inevitably we're back to the earlier point, there's the internet: if you need information, you go and get what you need right there. So it's inevitable that the role of magazines has changed and has become heavily geared toward lifestyle, or gossip. When I started the "Popster" adventure, in '76, I wanted to create a magazine that was beautiful and rich to leaf through, but also well written. I'd grown up with the model of "Rolling Stone" and "Crawdaddy", where "elevated" writing was expected. Many of the most illustrious American novelists, journalists, Pulitzer Prize winners published there. Sure, there was a lot of narcissism, especially in the reviews, which often said more about the people writing them than about the record itself. Still, better that than the poor, ungrammatical writing you'd find elsewhere. To me, being a music journalist was preparation for a future as a writer or journalist, not (only) a way to get free records. In this rather superficial age, interest in in-depth work has inevitably been lost - in twenty-page interviews, produced by spending an entire day or more with the artist, capturing nuances that couldn't be picked up any other way. My later editorial experience at the Italian edition of "Rolling Stone" in 1980 is a good example of how I understood music journalism - not elitist but rich in content, one that could also embrace, why not, good writing, with a literary edge. In Italy it sadly had a very short life for entirely different reasons; the new edition now has picked that approach back up. In the '70s and '80s here we had "Ciao 2001", which, although it did great service in spreading rock music in Italy, could hardly be called well written. On the other side there was the Milan-based group behind "Muzak" and "Gong", in which, however, I never recognized myself. Too elitist and dogmatic in how it dealt with musical genres, mostly limited to avant-rock and jazz, and in any case with a very cold, intellectual approach to musical matters. Though, mind you, they too played a very important role.

Of course there are still fine examples of music journalism today too, but in Italy I find them to be isolated cases for the most part, whereas I'm a loyal reader of the British "Mojo", a mix of quality new releases - from the underground to world music - and historic artists, told a bit like a TV programme, "Sfide": because rock is full of great stories, dramatic or exhilarating, and this becomes, if well written, gripping material, like little literary mini-biographies. Then, when it comes to in-depth pieces, if you know how to search properly, even the internet is no joke. Indeed, the web can be an excellent training ground for learning how to write, including about music.

Your site, for instance, I check often because it seems to me rather well written, proof of which is that I even quoted Onda Rock in my book, when I write about Rino Gaetano.

Ah! (damn, here I could have simply nodded, but while I did remember a quote, the mention of the source had completely slipped my mind. Could that be? Yes. ed.).

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