Tamarrock

A while back, a guest on RaiTre's talk show "Quante Storie" was Piero Pelù. Hair still long, but neatly combed and carefully tied back, a perfectly trimmed moustache and a musketeer-style goatee. My mother's comment was: "How handsome he's become! Back when you used to listen to him, I thought he looked like a monkey." Indeed, as a teenager, when I was in the car with my parents trying to force them to listen to some tape of mine, it was almost easier to get them to put on Iron Maiden or some other mildly metal stuff than the Litfiba. My father, in particular, hated them: he considered them theatrically boorish, bland and utterly devoid of class, especially Pelù himself (whom he called "Peluso"). He never used the word "tamarro" (Italian slang for "trashy" or "chav"), but that was exactly the gist of his criticism.

Today, one of the Italian music industry's cleverest moves has been to launch a bunch of Roman models, artfully tousled and blatantly modeled on the Litfiba of the '90s (except that back then, I imagine, a woman in the lineup wouldn't have lasted very long), so that people my age can happily take their kids to the group's concerts to listen to a kind of social-media surrogate for the music of their youth. Anything, as long as someone keeps them away from trap music!

It's a flash in the pan, of course. Tamarrock has given what it had to give, and to quote someone wiser than me, it's fine right where it is. A quarter of a century ago I read, I don't remember if it was in Mucchio or Rumore: "We've reached the point where kids and parents go to Litfiba concerts together. Rock is dying!" — precisely. An effective paradox: it's far better for kids to listen to their own stuff, like trap and hyperpop, rather than a rehash of what their parents used to record onto some hissing old cassette. And yet that music meant a great deal to those who were teenagers in the Nineties and were, perhaps, looking for something more immediate than indie music, but less obvious than the bleak pop of the era. Which is enough to give it value — even if almost never an absolute one. And it can prove interesting, if not to reassess, then at least to recontextualize, that form of rock with lofty aspirations and innate provincialism. The kind of rock that, at the end of the day, was the first, very belated, form of genuinely homegrown hard rock, and is still considered "Italian rock" par excellence: proof of this lies in how often tracks by Vasco Rossi, Ligabue, Litfiba or, at a stretch, Negrita get played on the most mainstream rock radio stations, where, by contrast, almost anything smacking of "alternative rock" is all but ignored. Because commercial radio lives on listener loyalty, and nothing scares it more than a listener switching channel just because a song comes on that breaks the flow and no longer feels like home. And nothing sounds more like home than the hoarse, slurring voice of Vasco or the almost Tex-Mex guitar of Ghigo Renzulli.

For a long time, hard rock and its jolly sibling glam never really caught on in our music: in the Seventies they were absorbed by prog (which, however commercially successful at times, didn't have, let's say, ecumenical ambitions, in the etymological sense of the word), and even by the singer-songwriter tradition (has there ever been a more glam artist in Italy than Renato Zero?). It was precisely some of the singer-songwriters most devoted to the electric guitar (Edoardo Bennato and Ivan Graziani, first and foremost) who brought about a significant toughening of the structures in our songwriting, but the personality (despite obvious influences, and even outright plagiarism) expressed by the early Vasco Rossi, particularly on his fourth album "Siamo solo noi", marks a decisive break. If a form of rock ever existed that was at times decidedly heavy and lyrical, populist in spirit, with chart ambitions, and distinctly Italian (not just for the language used), it was born here. Hot on its heels came Gianna Nannini's "Latin Lover", from an artist who had always flirted with rock, but never before so fully and originally.

And what about "Alzati la gonna", the smash hit of the summer of 1988 by Steve Rogers Band?! A song condemned to damnatio memoriae for its sexism, which can't be dated using carbon testing, and which, heard again today, is unredeemably cringe — yet an unavoidable stop on this journey. In that very same year, the heroes of this piece made, if only partially, the shift from an alternative rock steeped in new wave influences to a simpler, more immediate sound, in which hard rock and Latin American flavors merged into a highly effective hybrid.

Contrary to what's been assumed for years, Litfiba were already "tamarrock" with "3", the final chapter of their power trilogy. And they would definitively explode a couple of years later with "El Diablo" — 1990, new music for a new decade, Italian rock that took the country by storm — and not just for one summer.

The golden age of the genre begins, with Vasco back on top form with "Gli spari sopra", his heaviest album and also the last one worth mentioning, and the emergence of artists like Luciano Ligabue, Timoria and Negrita. All craftsmen of a more or less singer-songwriter-inflected rock, sharing a proudly claimed provincial origin, a relatively simple poetics (though, at the time at least, by no means trivial) and, above all, a passion for direct, visceral music, played with the crowd at the foot of the stage foremost in mind — even if that crowd was at some village fair (where, not by chance, tribute bands covering these artists remain an evergreen classic to this day). All of it set in opposition to the more intellectual and, at times, navel-gazing (to use one word: "university") alt-rock scene — even though we're talking about people who played the same festivals, often enjoyed the same critical standing, and could be found on the same shelves in record shops. And, to varying degrees, they would all leave their mark both on our musical imagination and on the sales charts.

At the time, of course, nobody spoke of "tamarrock". It's an effective label, but a relatively recent one, echoing the historic term "kraut-rock". But while that term, applied to German kosmische musik, was born of the ignorant chauvinism of the English press, "tamarrock" is happily self-deprecating. It's hard not to think that Piero Pelù, with his vest open over a hairy, medallion-laden chest, his iconic pointed sideburns and his primate-on-acid moves, really was a tamarro. The same could be said of the early Negrita, who writhed naked in front of the camera in the video for "Cambio". And, with hindsight, the typical tamarro of the Eighties is basically any random member of Steve Rogers Band. Above all, their music was (is) tamarro because it was sincerely popular and utterly unaffected. Perhaps too much so, considering that today the fans of Vasco and Ligabue look more like football supporters, crowding in adoringly to admire people who, objectively, haven't had anything new to say for a very long time.

Of course, the risk with this genre (as with anything that so perfectly captures the zeitgeist of an era) is aging very badly — which, for the most part, is exactly what happened. The end of the Nineties then marked a downward slope for tamarrock, with the split of Litfiba and Timoria (after records ranging from the dreadful to the disappointing), the emergence of a new, "successful" alternative scene (bands like Subsonica and Bluvertigo made the bands discussed here look decidedly dusty by comparison), and the consolidation of the historic alt-rock scene (with Afterhours gradually becoming an institution on the strength of phenomenal albums, and CSI even reaching the top of the sales charts moments before splitting up).

But above all, those who listened to that kind of rock as teenagers had, as they grew up, two options: move on to other things, or calcify into nostalgia for its own sake. Which isn't meant as a put-down: for the former, it was nonetheless an important and decisive stage in shaping their musical taste. As for the latter, I'd like to see which artists in the future will rack up the kind of enduring numbers that Ligabue or "Komandante" managed.

The definition of "tamarrock" can only be a porous one: while, especially in the Nineties, there was an evident overlap on the left with alternative rock, on the right there was never a shortage of thoroughly pop artists who weren't averse to rougher arrangements (Biagio Antonacci and Gianluca Grignani come to mind, but often also Eros Ramazzotti). But at least, in that decade, there are those three or four key figures who serve as an infallible yardstick. Looking at the new millennium, things get trickier. There's certainly been no shortage of artists championing a simple, direct Latin-tinged rock, both musically and lyrically, but none particularly significant. After all, we're talking about popular music, where success, however relative, carries decisive weight in determining what matters and what doesn't. What's more, once the Nineties ended, the genre somehow fragmented: at the start of this millennium, the distorted guitar (however polished by production) became an almost indispensable element in pop (Negramaro are a good example, as are Modà, and echoes of tamarrock can be found more recently even in the mawkish mush of Ultimo), and traces of that kind of rock's weight can be found in more straightforward indie bands like Ministri. As for Måneskin, my impression is that the rock of Litfiba and, especially, Negrita, however similar it may sound, was absorbed by them more than it was a genuine influence. It might sound snobbish, but the four Romans have never given me the impression of being people who love any music other than their own — which is, probably, also the only music they actually listen to.

In any case, "tamarrock", as used here, refers to a robust rock that's almost never particularly heavy, immediate in impact, with simple structures and strong melodic and lyrical components. Driving, but never fast, favoring intensity even (though I'd say especially) in its slower songs. But, as with rock'n'roll at its origins, what defines the genre is, above all, the deviation. Reworking Anglo-American models with a different sensibility and, unlike, say, Italian beat music, without simply aping them. It's obvious that Negrita adore the Rolling Stones, that the guitarists of the early Vasco blasted English hard rock at full volume, and that Ligabue dreamed of becoming the Springsteen of the Via Emilia. And yet all of them also claimed a strong baggage of Italian-ness, not just because of context, but also through their influences (for Vasco, Battisti and Jannacci; for Ligabue, Bertoli and Endrigo, and it's hard not to see the shadow of Edoardo Bennato looming over Piero Pelù). In other words: these were people who wanted to make "Italian" rock, not just rock "sung in Italian".

As for the lyrics, what prevails are glimpses of small-town life, portraits of losers caught in the desperate attempt to strike a pose or, in rare moments, with brutal clarity, cinematic and comic-book fascinations (the inevitable Indians), adolescent rebelliousness that's sometimes decidedly unfocused (though it should be remembered that these were, for the most part, people who proudly declared themselves left-wing, and that my generation also discovered political commitment thanks to songs like "Santiago" and "Maudit") — but all of this needs to be put in the context of a different era from ours, one in which nobody talked about "qualunquismo" and social media hadn't yet flattened and poisoned public discourse. Of course, as we grew up, we distanced ourselves from certain naïveties with a bit of contempt, only to end up looking back on them fondly once our own children reached the age we were back then.

In any case, we'll now run through 10 albums (almost all of them, incidentally, extremely famous) that marked the roughly fifteen-year historical arc of tamarrock. It goes without saying that this is, of course, a playful label that neither can nor wants to be exhaustive, especially for albums that are classics of Italian music, full stop. The intention of this piece is to trace the birth of a kind of Italian rock that was, for the first time, truly homegrown and successful, largely coinciding with the writer's own coming-of-age passion for music.

Vasco Rossi – Siamo solo noi (1981)

It's striking to think that, today, Vasco Rossi is considered the prophet of the average Italian. Especially because, at the start of his career, the man from Zocca sang about the down-and-out from the bottom rung himself — in this, closer to a boozy down-and-out like Piero Ciampi than to an upper-middle-class man who loved prostitutes, like Fabrizio De André. In 2024 the lyrics of "Siamo solo noi" get posted on social media by Mr. Average under photos of his seaside holidays. But that song is about alcoholics and addicts, at a point in history when nobody — not politics, not religion, not the cult of bourgeois tranquility — offered any real alternative to self-destruction. People that the aforementioned Mr. Average would today look down on, even if it were the Vasco of that era, who, on that wonderful original cover, appears with his face twisted into an unsettling grin, plainly under the influence of some substance or other. Once success arrived, that photo was replaced with an anonymous one featuring the standard-issue microphone and dark glasses. It's that second Vasco who became known to most people, but, at the start, he was something else entirely.

"Siamo solo noi" remains one of the high points of Italian song and our true first rock anthem. Solieri and Riva's guitars build with a crescendo and a grandeur worthy of Brian May, and I dare you to find a more famous or iconic bassline in the history of our music than "Gallo" Golinelli's, which opens the track.

But the whole album marks Vasco Rossi's definitive arrival on the shores of hard rock, only skirted in the past. From the riff lifted from Judas Priest in "Dimentichiamoci questa città" to the liberating electric explosions that set "Brava" and "Incredibile romantica" ablaze, right through to the robotic, deranged riff of "Ieri ho sgozzato mio figlio", which really falls just short of Scorpions territory and boasts lyrics that elevate the nonsense of Skiantos to the sublime.

Vasco's most "hard and heavy" phase (he never fully set aside rough, energetic sounds and has always proudly called himself a "rocker") would continue with the follow-up "Vado al massimo", before the pop turn of the still-sublime "Bollicine".

After that, it would still be fine form, at least until the powerful "Gli spari sopra", released, not coincidentally, during the period of greatest success for Italian rock following the breakthrough of "El Diablo".

The rest is best forgotten.

Gianna Nannini – Latin Lover (1982)

I don't want to wade into a minefield, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the only heroine in this survey is the one who has always flaunted an androgynous look, testosterone-fuelled energy (ouch!), and who, back then, was regarded as decidedly "masculine" (those were still fairly rigid times when it came to what could be considered "masculine" and "feminine"). Women, as we know, tend to be less boorish than men.

Gianna remains the Italian rocker par excellence, and her "California" could easily have opened this survey, were it not such a derivative record, however lovely. "Latin Lover", besides being more original, undoubtedly carved out a path for Italian rock, less forcefully than Vasco but with equal grandeur and a more international outlook, even earning recognition in German-speaking countries. Her hoarse screams on the opener "Prima donna" serve as a telling calling card: there's no longer any sense of inferiority toward Anglo-Saxon models here, allowing for kraut digressions ("Wagon-Lit") and psychedelic ones ("Volo 5/4"), but the heart of the record lies in the bursts of energy in the wonderful title track and in songs like "Amore Amore" — though the fire never quite stops blazing even in ballads like the famous "Ragazzo dell'Europa".

With "Latin Lover", Italian rock no longer needed to invent an America of its own, but learned to stand on its own two feet and be enough as it was.

Litfiba – Litfiba 3 (1988)

Or "Tre", or whatever you want to call it. It remains a masterpiece. Not the last gasp of Litfiba, as many (myself included) believed, with a touch of Manichaeism, back in the '90s. Nor is it really true that there's such a sharp break between the end of the "alternative" power trilogy and the start of the "commercial" elements quadrilogy. In the end, the third album is very different from its dazzling predecessor, "17 Re" — but that record already had little in common with the late-wave sounds of "Desaparecido".

It's still the classic lineup of Aiazzi-De Palma-Maroccolo-Pelù-Renzulli, and in the album's photo the singer sports for the first time the Tuscan-Indian look that would define him for the rest of his career. It's Litfiba's most political work, starting with the combative "Santiago", a fierce accusation against "Saint" Wojtyła's complicity with Pinochet's fascist regime, set to devastating Latin American rock, and continuing through "Lousiana", "Paname" and "Ci sei solo tu", a genuine catalogue of stances against the injustices of our society, from the death penalty to social ghettoization to the appalling treatment often meted out to mental illness.

It's an album split in two, between experimental tracks in line with previous works ("Cuore di vetro", "Peste", "Bambino", the aforementioned "Ci sei solo tu") and decidedly more linear, immediate songs, in which Renzulli's guitar begins to take command without being overwhelmed any longer by the wall of keyboards. The lyrics get simpler, becoming, as noted, explicitly political or hymns to freedom ("Corri") and friendship ("Amigo"), and Piero Pelù definitively becomes the larger-than-life frontman we still know today.

But, above all, it's the album of "Tex", which stands as the model and anthem of tamarrock [Italian working-class rock bravado]. Anyone of my generation has, at least once in their life, found themselves on a bicycle or moped humming "sulla strada ci sono solo io/ circondato dal deserto attorno a me" or psyching themselves up thinking "non voglio più amici/ ma voglio solo nemici!". On the strength of songs like this, with such staggering impact and communicative power, Litfiba would soon go on to build their success.

Steve Rogers Band – Alzati la gonna (1988)

The 1980s have already been thoroughly reappraised, and it's not my intention to add the Steve Rogers Band to the list of essential rediscoveries. At the end of the day, without Vasco Rossi's genius, they were simply an honest, solid rock band, a product of their time. And yet, the success of "Alzati la gonna" in 1988 did carry real, non-negligible weight in establishing Italian rock in the popular imagination. A success that also says a lot about the social changes Italy was undergoing at the time. Today the song would be unacceptable for its embarrassing boomer machismo, but in the still formally Christian-Democrat Italy of the era (though by then effectively Craxi's, and already primed to become Berlusconi's), it was acceptable precisely for its blunt, earthy vulgarity. It didn't rely on innuendo (that had already been thoroughly normalized), but openly invited a schoolgirl to lift her skirt and let herself be had in a car, to the great scandal of mothers whenever the song played on the radio at the beach. Naturally, the single's success would have been unthinkable without the overwhelming power of private television and radio.

The Belpaese had changed and discovered it was free to be rude. And that rudeness came wrapped in the chromed riffs of Massimo Riva and Maurizio Solieri, two players who wouldn't have looked out of place in far more celebrated settings.

The whole album is a pleasant listen, even if dated. In the end, not as ridiculous as the cover photo had led me to fear. Then again, we're talking about tamarro music, and Steve Rogers Band can proudly claim the role of standard-bearer in that department.

Litfiba – El Diablo (1990)

Almost half a million copies sold in Italy in 1990 are serious numbers. "El Diablo" was our "Nevermind", and it got there a year early.

Litfiba didn't arrive at this point exactly as unknowns. The splendid single "Cangaceiro" and the terrible live album "Pirata" had already gone down well. At that point the band's historic rhythm section (Gianni Maroccolo and Ringo De Palma) left to join CCCP, who were about to record their farewell album "Epica Etica Etnica Pathos", while keyboardist Antonio Aiazzi stepped aside, though he kept working with the band almost as a session man. That left Pelù and Renzulli as the sole owners of the project.

And if there were any doubts about who was responsible for the wildest, most instinctive soul of their previous records, they're dispelled immediately by the now-legendary "buaaaarg!" that kicks off "El Diablo". A playful sabbath erupts straight away, with a guitar loaded with western flavour (spaghetti, ça va sans dire) backed by the rest of the band, with the percussion of the late Candelo Cabezas standing out, while Pelù declaims "Giro di notte con le anime perse/ sì, della famiglia io sono il ribelle" and other gems of high-school satanism. Perfectly effective, though. With hindsight, it's a harmless, naive kind of rebellion, but thousands of Italian kids went crazy for it, and rightly so: "El Diablo" is a perfect song that has earned itself immortality.

Pelù expands his repertoire of screams and vocal tics and leans hard into theatricality, instantly becoming one of the most iconic singers in Italian music. In truth, everything on the record works: the more playful tracks like "Proibito" and the wonderfully daft "Gioconda" (both hit singles), the socially engaged ones ("Woda Woda" and "Ragazzo") and the intimate ones ("Il volo").

For years it was easy to talk of "betrayal", but if "El Diablo" doesn't quite carry the weight of a "His Master's Voice" within successful Italian pop-rock, it comes pretty close.

A little over half an hour that marked a before and after in Italian music.

Ligabue – Lambrusco coltelli rose & pop corn (1991)

Through years of records built on a calculated mediocrity, tailored for undemanding, mainstream airplay, Ligabue has almost made everyone forget what a class act he was at the start of his career (even though, in his case, we're talking about a long apprenticeship that brought him to his debut only at 30 and to success five years later), with two wonderful albums and an aching masterpiece like "Sopravvissuti e sopravviventi".

"Lambrusco coltelli rose & pop corn", opus number 2, isn't therefore his best record, but it is his most rock one, the one full of stadium anthems – even if, at the time, it was still being played in small clubs. His raspy voice, now considered a classic but back then a real irritant to quite a few people, paints a wonderful portrait of provincial Emilia, depicted without indulgence (right from the opening track "Salviamoci la pelle", it's talked about as a place to flee rather than celebrate) and with an unmistakably Springsteen-esque attitude.

And if every fan of the Boss dreams of writing their own "Born To Run", Liga managed it with the ever-famous "Urlando contro il cielo". But the record yields other gems too, like the anthemic "Libera nos a malo" and "Anime in Plexiglass", heartfelt ballads such as "Con queste facce qui" and "Sarà un bel souvenir", and forays into (im)pure Americana like "Camera con vista sul deserto" and "Regalami il tuo sogno".

Singer-songwriter, rocker and writer for other acts (including Rats and Timoria), Ligabue was a central figure of that scene in the early '90s, straddling chart-friendly rock and alternative music. Having achieved mainstream success with the far-from-essential "Buon compleanno Elvis", he would go on to start a different story altogether — one that, frankly, didn't interest me back then and doesn't interest me now either.

Rats – Indiani Padani (1992)

We're talking about a band that, after recording a masterpiece of Italian new wave, found success in the '90s, carving its name into the history of tamarrock. And no, we're not talking about Litfiba.

The Modena-based Rats debuted in 1981 (under the protective wing of Red Ronnie, who, before losing himself to chemtrail conspiracies, was a genuinely sharp cultural agitator) with "C'est Disco", a gem of crooked, neurotic music. But, as we know, our wave was ephemeral by nature, and so the band failed to get a follow-up album - already recorded - released. Afterwards, singer Claudia "Lloyd" Baracchi and the other members left the project, leaving only guitarist Ulderico "Wilko" Zanni, who refused to give up: he improvised himself into the role of singer and began steering toward more rock-oriented sounds with a couple of transitional records and, above all, countless live shows.

Rats thus managed to perfectly catch the wave of the tamarrock explosion, and in 1992 released their best-selling record (50,000 copies), "Indiani Padani", with the three musicians on the cover looking like imitators of Piero Pelù - only less hairy.

The album is a concentration of tropes: earthy rock, provincial life, vague rebelliousness. Not as personal or innovative as Litfiba's work, nor written with the same skill as their contemporary Ligabue (who penned the opening "Fuori tempo"). Still, every girl of my generation sang "Chiara" at least once on a school trip, and there's really nothing to hold against the trio's honesty and attitude: 48 minutes of thoroughly enjoyable, working-class music that, in its own minor-key way, marked an era all the same. Proof of that is the enduring affection of the band's fans, which pushed the trio into a reunion in 2007 that continues to this day with great results.

If nothing else, theirs is the only pure tamarrock record in this rundown.

Timoria - Viaggio senza vento (1993)

It's a landmark of Italian rock. A unique, unrepeatable record, even by its own creators' standards (though they came close again when nobody expected it anymore, with "El Topo Gran Hotel"). Historically, it was the attempt of a band one step away from being dropped by their label (with some justification, given that the previous three albums weren't exactly essential) to craft their own swan song. A double album conceptually inspired by '70s prog, no less!

Thematically, it's a response - at times perhaps a bit naive, but undeniably heartfelt - to the nihilism of Vasco Rossi's "Siamo solo noi". Our generation may have no wind at our backs (political, cultural or religious), but the individual, through their own path of growth, can find a reason to keep moving forward.

But what really matters are the classics strung together across these 70 minutes of music: "Senza vento", "Sangue impazzito", "Il padrone dei cani", "Piove", "Come serpenti in amore": all gems built on a rock foundation, but enriched with ambitious arrangements - without ever tipping into inaccessibility. And what about Francesco Renga's splendid voice, which would have been better off sticking to interpreting Omar Pedrini's songs rather than diving into a thoroughly bland pop career that eventually led him to tour with Nek (good Lord)?!

"Viaggio senza vento" managed to combine quality with sales, finally launching the career of the Brescia band, who would hold their ground even after the departure of such a distinctive and charismatic singer.

Thirty years on, it remains a masterpiece impossible to underrate.

Negrita - Negrita (1994)

Pau and his mates have always struck me as likeable. I'm not exactly a fan of theirs, but whenever one of their songs comes on the radio, I never change the station, because at worst it's pleasant and well-crafted, and at best it's a little bomb of danceable rock.

And Negrita's success certainly didn't come all at once (I can think of hit songs of theirs, but never a true game changer, like "El Diablo" or "Certe notti"); rather, it was built one album at a time, never lacking those two or three singles that really work - and, sure, their contributions to the soundtracks of Aldo, Giovanni e Giacomo's films gave them a decent boost.

From their very debut, with the fun video for "Cambio" that used to air on the much-missed Videomusic, they laid their cards on the table: they couldn't care less about originality (and indeed, this album was torn apart by critics, who at the time seemed to have only one argument - "they're just copying Litfiba" - for every band whose singer performed shirtless); their focus was on impact. And that impact came mostly from the orgasmically rocking guitars of Drigo and Mac, bastard children of Keith Richards, conceived with the help of a few enterprising, uninhibited Tuscan fans.

Obviously, at least by osmosis, the influence of other Italian rock bands made itself felt (and not only that: at times they sound like the Black Crowes on amphetamines), and the lyrics often reveal a reassuring naivety (tracks like "Militare" definitely date the record), but Negrita had a surplus of grit that made them stand out even in an overcrowded scene.

"Negrita" goes by as fast as an electric jolt up your spine. And that's the best compliment you can pay a record whose first ambition is to get you moving.

Clan Destino – Clan Destino (1994)

It's a shame, but also telling, that Clan Destino never achieved success and that their fame is tied exclusively to Ligabue's first three albums, from whom, incidentally, they've been co-opted in recent years for the usual nostalgia operation at the various Campovolo shows.

A shame, because their two landmark albums (released in the blink of an eye between 1994 and 1995) were excellent, and because Max Cottafavi was one of the best Italian guitarists of his generation.

In any case, once the partnership with Ligabue broke up after the splendid (but poor-selling) "Sopravvissuti e sopravviventi", the four members of Clan Destino got organized and quickly recorded their self-titled debut, setting aside singer-songwriter leanings to give free rein to their passion for hard rock and blues. The record is downright heavy at times, but it never crosses the line into grunge (unlike certain contemporary Italian bands, such as Karma or Movida), keeping its feet planted firmly in the mud of the Emilian countryside, amid tales of failed love, manly friendship and decay.

"Clan Destino" is absolutely a minor classic, though it clearly lacks a single more effective than the album's average, even if the videos for "Fratello" and the ballad "Lui non ci sarà" got plenty of airplay.

They would try again the following year with "Cuore-Stomaco-Cervello", softening their sound, but without significant results. After that, everyone went their own way, until the customary reunion and the death of bassist Luciano Ghezzi.

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