Lucio Battisti

It's a widely held belief that the "white period" of Lucio Battisti, the one made up of albums made with Pasquale Panella, represents a sensational turning point, a clean break from the previous output of the singer-songwriter from Poggio Bustone. In reality, that radicalism has roots in a quest that began much earlier, at least as far back as the early 1970s, when the musician from Lazio had already begun constantly shifting the boundaries of his own music. This trajectory, in which every destination contained the seeds of the next transformation, also encompasses the so-called funk-disco turn of one of Battisti's biggest hits: "Ancora tu". Behind the song's popular success – the best-selling single in Italy in 1976 – lies a restless Battisti, in search of new sonic contaminations, also a legacy of a new trip overseas, following the South American journey that had led to the turning point of "Anima latina", this time to the States of funk, soul, and the nascent disco music.

Into the groove

Between May and June 1975, Battisti travels to the United States. He visits New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, then skips the planned stop in Nashville to extend his stay in California. It's a trip of listening and inspiration, during which he takes an interest in new sounds as much as in recording techniques. Orchestral soul and disco are transforming the landscape of American music; funk offers a way of building songs in which the instruments interlock and the groove is born from the precision of their relationships. In those days he states: "It's foolish to keep looking back", revealing that he is "excited by the idea of recording an album in the USA".
Battisti brings with him a twelve-string acoustic guitar, with which he experiments with rhythms and melodies. In the account reconstructed by Mauro Ronconi in "Canzoni per un mondo senza Beatles", "Ancora tu" takes shape during a drive along Interstate 5 and receives a provisional first title on the roads of California: "San Diego Freeway".

Back in Italy, the watchword is groove, and Battisti seeks out musicians capable of giving shape to that new intuition. For "Lucio Battisti, drums, double bass, and so on", released in 1976, the backing band proves decisive: the title itself foregrounds the instruments and suggests just how much the rhythmic framework matters this time around. On drums and bass are, respectively, Walter Calloni and Hugh Bullen: both very young, but already regarded as rising stars on their instruments, they had worked with Eugenio Finardi and were session men for the Cramps label (Bullen, in particular, had also played with Area). On keyboards is Claudio Maioli, on guitars an Ivan Graziani finally on the verge of a breakthrough after years of paying his dues. The sessions also feature, uncredited, Tony Esposito on percussion and Massimo Salerno on keyboards for "Ancora tu".
Mogol writes all the lyrics and oversees the production, while Battisti handles the arrangements and production, as well as playing several instruments.

The manifesto of a new course

The single "Ancora tu" is already a manifesto of this new direction: the intro is a kaleidoscope of syncopation and rhythmic interplay between drums and electric guitars, engineered in a way that would put the most celebrated American funk outfits, like Ohio Players or Isley Brothers, to shame. The very first seconds are mathematical and primal at once, a combination typical of funk music. Mathematical, because the two electric guitars resolve like an equation. The one mixed in the left channel plays chords with a standard accompaniment fingering, as in a guitar-and-voice performance, in the mid-to-high register, and finishes its riff at the end of the second beat of the bar. The one on the right channel, meanwhile, plays high notes and completes its riff, with harmonic tensions like ninths, sixths, or chromatic passing notes, in the last two beats. The two guitars seem, metaphorically, like relay runners passing the baton. Primal, because the kick drum has a compressed, powerful sound, yet its rhythmic writing is refined, and the song's very opening is so electrifying it seems almost unfinished, as if cut and spliced together from a jam session. The disco hi-hats, usually used as rhythmic seasoning, instead serve as the load-bearing beam, the foundation of the song's first twenty seconds.

The elements of the intro form the song's skeleton and are never abandoned, and yet from the twenty-first second onward, the atmosphere feels completely different. As sharp, essential and raw as the incipit is, so velvety and sweet is the bed that accompanies the entrance of the lyrics. The drums are enriched with an additional hi-hat, overdubbed and played on the upbeat of every beat to emphasize it, along with a snare marking the second and fourth beats of the bar. These are classic rhythmic hallmarks of disco music. However, without the proverbial four-on-the-floor kick drum, the final result sounds decidedly more elaborate than the genre's average, without sacrificing solidity. Bullen's bass is the bridge between Richard Finch of KC & The Sunshine Band and Bernard Edwards of Chic. The crucial elements of this shift in register, though, are the keyboards: the electric piano, the most prominent, polishes the drum-and-bass groove with quick chord changes, the finest of which are the alternations between F-sharp minor seventh, G major seventh, and back to F-sharp minor seventh in the second chord cycle of the "verse". These alternations are essential in keeping the song's drive from dissipating, since it is precisely in those moments that there is a chord, the F-sharp minor seventh, lasting two bars, which contrasts with the one-chord-per-bar pattern maintained throughout the rest of the song. The other keyboards, though less pervasive, play an equally important role in the arrangement: one can hear numerous melodic interjections played on a high-register keyboard, inserts that often double Battisti's vocal line, as well as a constant synth string that, while remaining fairly understated in the mix, is decisive in setting the song's mood, with its octave rises and falls.

It is difficult to define the structure of "Ancora tu", since there is essentially one single, extended repetition of four chord sequences. With the exception of a "special" section that drastically breaks the momentum at 3:13, coinciding with the line "Disperazione e gioia mia/ Sarò ancora tuo, sperando che non sia follia": an unexpected passage that paves the way for the upward modulation of a tone that defines the ending and the coda. Here, the "verses" we've become familiar with up to a few seconds earlier repeat, raised by a tone. It's a device often used trivially in pop music, so much so that it has earned a sort of mocking label, "Truck Driver's Gear Shift", but in this case, thanks to the preceding setup, as instinctive as it is sophisticated, it takes on a cathartic, liberating quality, emphasized by Battisti's celestial high notes.

Onto this rhythmic framework, Mogol grafts an everyday scene: two former lovers meet again, gauge the distance between them, and discover how little has changed. The woman never speaks directly, but her presence is felt in the questions, in the anticipated answers, in the man's hesitations. Battisti begins almost speaking the words, with a naturalness that lets irony and complicity surface; then the vocal gains momentum, following the shift from conversation to desire. The voice, too, thus enters the game of interlocking parts, without losing the immediacy of the narrative. Another deliberate contrast, noted by Ronconi: although the song narrates the euphoria of a romantic reunion, Battisti writes it in a minor key, a key often used to better convey melancholic and introspective themes, unlike the major key, which tends to evoke more joyful feelings.

The lesson of "Ancora tu", a fusion of American funk influence, unprecedented in Italy at the time, and a Mediterranean/singer-songwriter melodic sensibility more accessible to the Italian public, is reprised across nearly the entire album, with a couple of exceptions. And it would prove, once again, an extraordinary success: "Lucio Battisti, drums, double bass, and so on" became the third best-selling album in Italy in 1976, staying at number one on the chart for sixteen consecutive weeks; the single "Ancora tu/Dove arriva quel cespuglio" was the year's best-seller. A popular hit that, however, already conceals the method that would lead Battisti toward further transformations, all the way to the most radical albums with Panella: constantly questioning his own way of writing, seeking out, each time, new musical horizons.

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14/10/2026