Claudio Rocchi

When I think of Claudio Rocchi, I'm reminded of a fable by Gianni Rodari that I read as a child: a little story about a young crayfish who wanted to learn to walk forwards, despite the utter disapproval of his fellow crayfish and his loved ones. Claudio Rocchi must have felt a bit like the hero of that fable when, in 1969, he reluctantly decided to leave Stormy Six after their debut album "Le idee di oggi per la musica di domani". The bone of contention was the band's militant turn, which Rocchi didn't share. His mind, in fact, was elsewhere: he had fallen in love with India. But these were Italy's Years of Lead, and his bandmates couldn't understand how, in such a politically fraught time, he could speak in a dreamy voice of love and spirituality.

To confirm their disdain, on the album "L'unità" (1972) Stormy Six dedicate a song called "Fratello" to their former bassist, sternly warning him that it was no time to be thinking of mystical, faraway worlds ("when the last exploiter, the last corrupter, the last careerist, the last hypocrite, the last bourgeois has vanished from this earth/ then your moment to talk to us about love will have come"). Even his close friend Mauro Pagani, leader of Premiata Forneria Marconi, took a dim view of Claudio's drift away from the tenets of the revolutionary left, echoing the sentiment expressed by Stormy Six by dedicating the album "Per un amico" to Rocchi himself, along with some rather blunt lyrics ("it's no longer time for dreams/ you need to fight harder").

But who was Claudio Rocchi, the crayfish who wanted to walk forwards? A philosophy student and the son of a building contractor, he grew up artistically in the underground Milan scene revolving around the magazine "Il Re Nudo" and the "Festival del proletariato giovanile". Captivated by his personality, Ariston signed him the moment he came of age, glimpsing in him a new Lucio Battisti. Rocchi, however, never felt comfortable playing the star: when signing autographs, he would often simply write the fan's own name instead of his.

Despite his friends' objections, Claudio Rocchi went his own way and began an uncompromising solo career, one destined to move through several musical genres over the years. For convenience's sake (or out of sheer laziness), his name would often be lumped in with the vast Italian progressive scene, but for Rocchi music went beyond aesthetic standards: it was a genuine mission. In 1970, when he debuted with "Viaggio", it was clear to everyone that this 19-year-old took life very seriously indeed. His first album is an acoustic, dreamlike record hard to imagine in the Italy of the time, one that showcased his great communicative gifts, aided by the collaboration of a young Mauro Pagani. Anyone who lived through those years could never forget a track like "La tua prima luna", which already placed him far from Italy and much closer to what was happening in the English-speaking world at the time: think of visionary singer-songwriters like David Crosby, Roy Harper and, above all, Syd Barrett.

While, using their voices as instruments, Juri Camisasca and Alan Sorrenti were in those same years drifting away from homegrown progressive rock toward dreamlike atmospheres akin to those of Tim Buckley and Peter Hammill, Claudio Rocchi was aiming even higher, and in 1971 he finally managed to take flight, fusing on "Volo magico n. 1" his melancholy poetic streak with his genuine love of Eastern music. The cover of this second record was built around a simple photograph of a wall with a closed door - a shot that, on reflection, is as plain as it is deeply representative of Claudio Rocchi's spirit, a product of a culture we have unfortunately long since stopped being used to: one that never stopped in the face of the obstacles society puts in our way.

Rocchi originally conceived the record as a double album, but someone at Ariston balked and insisted the second half be released in 1972 alongside "La norma del cielo". "Volo magico n. 1" thus came out with only four tracks, but with an underlying ambition of colossal proportions, unfolding over almost forty minutes. Beyond the influences of the Italian singer-songwriter scene, his take on psychedelic folk was tightly bound to the tenets of Eastern mysticism: what we find here is an inner quest under way, in which the boundaries of the mind are subjected to rigorous meditative processes, with certain teachings drawn from Buddhism and Taoism enveloping the listener in pathos and empathy. This feeling is reinforced by the lineup backing Rocchi, which included numerous guests: Eugenio Pezza (keyboards), Alberto Camerini and Ricky Belloni (guitars), Eno Bruce (bass, harmonica), Lorenzo Vassallo (drums) and Donatella Badi, Gigi Belloni, Michel Kanah and Gianfranco Lombardi on backing vocals. These weren't mere session players, but friends drawn from local bands such as Il Pacco and Nuova Idea, chosen for their cultural and spiritual affinity. A rapport that, in practice, translated into the ability to record the whole album in a single session.

Thanks to this large cast of musicians, another distinctive feature of the record - one that sets it apart from the progressive-rock models of the day - is the unusual choice of instruments: we find tabla, sitar, bongos and harmonica alongside the rest. An instrumental richness that shifts continually between India and the West Coast, recalling the ethnic atmospheres of Aktuala, Third Ear Band and some of the more mystical kraut-rockers. Only the use of keyboards, the cornerstone instrument of the progressive rock then in vogue, keeps us tethered to Italian soil. All these disparate ingredients also tend to warp the all-too-conventional path of the classic psychedelic album, elevating it to a stratospheric level - probably the very same cosmic realm in which Alan Sorrenti's "Aria" would be built just a few months later, drawing on the Milanese songwriter's own prototype flight.

Rocchi's cosmic journey sets sail somewhere between the Ganges and the Lambro on the title track, which over 18 minutes takes off into an ascetic voyage, not unlike Claudio's own life. It begins with a very clean, relaxed acoustic atmosphere, before unfurling into a long contemplative crescendo soon carried by the psychedelic guitars of Ricky Belloni (future New Trolls) and Alberto Camerini, joined by Donatella Bardi's countermelody and piano arpeggios, with celestial choirs radiating a blinding mystical light across much of the track. It's perhaps a slightly overlong piece for listeners unused to such lengthy jams, especially in its ethnic, free-form central section, but it remains digestible thanks to a few intriguing folk-leaning passages, as well as lyrics that consistently keep the listener engaged. With the elegance of an ancient minstrel, Rocchi responds to those who separate cultural revolution from spiritual revolution, gently claiming his own revenge: "C'è sempre tempo per cantare, il cielo, l'acqua, un corpo, tutti/ Poi puoi andare dove vuoi/ poi puoi essere come vuoi".

"La realtà non esiste", an enchanting pantheistic hymn, is a delicate acoustic piece in which piano and voice underline how divinity also dwells within its own creation, and how the perception of things is often stronger than reality itself. Rocchi had his own personal vision of psychedelia, one that led him to rewrite it from scratch in a way no one in Italy had dared before: his music is anti-rock, cyclical, primal - a hymn to human sensitivity, chanted like a mantra. The public understood, and thanks partly to an extraordinary track like "La realtà non esiste", Rocchi's second album lodged itself in the Italian Top 5.

Later, over the 11 minutes of "Giusto amore", a more structured symphony is woven, though still mystical and elusive, in which music is extolled as a cosmic wellspring of love ("Chi dice che la musica non passa, al piano di sopra qualcuno sente e forse protesta/ Ehi, è musica, è amore, signore, è amore, giusto amore quello che esce, nient'altro/ capisci per favore"). Rocchi's voice finally seems to dissolve amid the celestial notes of the mellotron on "Tutto quello che ho da dire", revealing along his compositional path a remarkable gift for instrumental synthesis that even seems to anticipate some of Brian Eno's later albums. As if it weren't already obvious, Rocchi's experimental streak would come through even more strongly on the 1972 single "Vado in India", a track that managed to astonish even jazz musician Carla Bley.

Claudio Rocchi, who died in 2013 from a degenerative bone disease, was a genuine figure of our counterculture, a one-of-a-kind character who left his mark well beyond the musical sphere. His "journey" was a recurring metaphor that led him to become an important radio host in Italy (worth remembering, among others, "Per voi giovani" on Radio 2), the founder of Nepal's first independent national radio station ("The Himalayan Broadcasting Company"), and also a filmmaker ("Pedra Mendalza"), an actor ("Musikanten"), a poet ("Le sorprese non amano annunciarsi: sono un gruppo rock di fanciulle, suonano nude e sono bellissime"), as well as a generous activist and cultural organizer ("Festival del proletariato giovanile").

In 1979, with "Non ce n'è per nessuno", he bid a temporary farewell to rock to join the Hare Krishna movement alongside his friend Paolo Tofani (Area), who joined him in making the record: when he came back, his music was different, though no less powerful or revolutionary, as when he played on loop the heartbeat of his daughter in her mother's womb at a concert for communist activists in Ravenna. In love with the East as sincerely as George Harrison had been in those very same years, long before this Zen infatuation became a Western fad, Rocchi was one of the greatest life-teachers Italian music has ever had and, just like Rodari's crayfish, he always kept moving forward along his own path with the same courage and resolve as on his very first day of walking... or of flying, one might more fittingly say.

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24/09/2017