Fausto Rossi

"Take me by the hand Fausto wherever you go/ in search of silence and visions": an unusual, bold incipit opens one of the most memorable pages in the history of Italian rock, "L'erba" by Fausto Rossi. Words that may sound self-referential, but which on closer inspection immediately offer a key to reading the album, on which "the artist formerly known as Faust'o" seems, for the first time, to want to present himself fully as himself. That Fausto Rossi had a lot to say was clear from his debut album, "Suicide" (1978), for many his masterpiece; but a production that is at times overbearing, courtesy of Alberto Radius, and the attempt to build a persona suited to the music scenes of the time make it less personal and direct, a limitation that would persist in his later work, with the possible exception of the album "Faust'o" (1983) alone: always excellent records, but at times derivative and winking at the styles of the moment ("Poco zucchero" and "J'accuse amore mio"), or the product of interesting experiments that only partly express his potential ("Out now", "Love story" and "Cambiano le cose").

In 1995 Italy is caught up in a rich musical ferment, independent bands are springing up like mushrooms, ventures like the Consorzio Produttori Indipendenti allow young musicians to release albums and tour, and among those making their first appearance on the scene are also longtime fans of Fausto, kids who grew up listening to his music too: Manuel Agnelli and Afterhours, Fabrizio Tavernelli with Afa, or Massimo Volume, who recorded a cover of one of his songs and have an album to their name produced by him. Musically, for the first time Fausto and his era seem able to speak the same language, and he is ready to do so.

"L'erba" thus presents a truer, more direct and authentic Fausto Rossi, at the height of his artistic and creative powers, both musically and lyrically: in both, you can feel that his influences and interests have by now been processed and absorbed to generate something new, something that resembles nothing else. With a lineup and a rock style seasoned with just the right amount of ethnic instrumentation, dark with rare rays of light, paranoid just enough, "L'erba" is in its own way a mystical, liturgical, spiritual album, yet what it celebrates is exclusively earthly life, with the emotions and sensations that only this life can offer: dreams, love, but also visions and hallucinations. Tools to escape an oppressive reality, but also to push back against it, to fully inhabit the body, which is indeed "unique and mortal" but also "holy", for what it can give in terms of emotions and perceptions.

This isn't strictly a concept album, but certain themes recur repeatedly, even with phrases reiterated across different songs: the holiness of weed, of the body, its mortality, dreams/visions/hallucinations, love. The dominant lyrical form is enumeration: "L'erba" recounts what is "holy", not to be understood in the religious sense of the term but for the redemptive function it can have: “Santa è l’erba che apre dolcemente il cuore/ santo il Buddha che alza gli occhi al cielo/ santo anche il denaro nelle nostre vene/ santo il nostro corpo unico e mortale (…)”. The same formula appears in "La scienza il progresso la nuova nobiltà" ("..I don't want police on the streets/ yellow and blue sounds day and night/ that recall asylums and morgues/ I don't want a job that is loneliness/ misery and poverty and poisons our life"), and the device is repeated again in "Perché il mio amore" and "Troppe canzoni", where the keywords of the listing are "Perché" ("Because") and "Troppo" ("Too much").

The album opens with the title track, where an almost tribal drumbeat, immediately joined by the bass, catapults the listener straight into the musical whirlwind. And that is exactly how "L'erba" unfolds, dragging the listener through a brief but rarely intense lyrical and sonic journey. Taking center stage are bass (Franco Cristaldi), guitar (Pierluigi Ferrari and Fausto himself) and drums (Ivan Ciccarelli), which support freely structured rock songs, far removed from verse/chorus/verse formulas. Even the vocals sound more sincere and spontaneous than in the past. The electric guitar roams freely over the hypnotic, tense grooves of the rhythm section, but as it unfolds the album also opens up to more relaxed atmospheres, amid bluesy moments, psychedelic expansions, and electronics. Joining the album's core lineup are several guests contributing sarangi, veena, shenai and other ethnic instruments, very well integrated into the band's sound and never intrusive.

Far from monolithic, "L'Erba" pours years of its author's musical passion and culture into a single album, yet manages to stay remarkably coherent right up to its close, a cover of "Close Watch" by John Cale for voice, guitar and electronics. The sound turns minimal, the tones more relaxed, as if the secular priest wanted to tell us "the mass is over, go in peace". Perhaps precisely to dispel any doubt, with a very brief ghost track, Fausto's voice alone, in English, reaffirms to us that he doesn't believe in the spirit.

Nearly 30 years after its release, "L'erba" remains a perfect example of independent rock singer-songwriter craft for the 90s, one that should be remembered and celebrated in full as one of the finest productions of that era. Strangely, though, Fausto Rossi is cited as a reference point by many musicians of that generation, yet he has never fully crossed over from cult object to object of actual listening.

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09/03/2026