A tribute to Lucio Battisti
Who would have thought that in such a small village as Poggio Bustone would have been born one of the very last contemporary poets?
Surely not his mother when she was asked for a guitar as a gift for his middle school promotion.
There the adventure began, and the man became once again the boy, the same boy that kept living in each and every song he has made from that moment.
The passion he put into music drove him to Milan, where he met Giulio Rapetti, AKA Mogol, who assisted him as an author, leaving him the total freedom to translate his vision on love into music.
When he first met Mogol, he wasn’t completely convinced of his lyrics, but luckily they succeeded in recording their first vinyl, that contained just two songs: ‘per una lira’, that spoke about selling himself for cheap for love, and ‘dolce di giorno’, an ode about the his two-faced girlfriend, who was ‘sweet during the day but cold at night’.
They weren’t immediately greatest hits, but the modest success allowed them not to lose their hope, and helped Lucio seizing his voice, of which he was ashamed, considering his high pitch. They were between the first and definitely the best singer-songwriters that the Italian music landscape has ever known, and their discography is ample, adding up to 165 of the most disparate songs.
That single meeting was as casual as two atoms that collide in empty space, shaping and creating a whole new universe just as well. It was 1967 when finally, helped out by an Equipe 84’s cover of ’29th September’ that they reached the first place on the Italian charts, and that was the exact point where they started to influence the whole music history, inspiring many more musicians to follow their style guidelines, to the point of creating 'Italian soft rock’, a whole new music category that persists nowadays.
I grew up with their poetry, as well as many other ’70s, ‘80s and ‘90s kids did, and I’m thankful to my mother for letting me discover their genius.
Their work made three generations fall in love, and even though he died in 1998, he still lives in every word, and vocalization, and note he has left behind, and you can sense for real how much of himself he poured into his music.
That is, in my opinion, one of the very few ways a legacy can be left.
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# Fans # Memorials