All-round artist, intelligent and irreverent pen. Sophisticated and outspoken as always, perhaps also for this reason he pulled himself out of the system: Francesco Baccini, a Genoese artist who will come out at the end of the month with a new album that he composed entirely for the soundtrack of the film “I believe in a single father ”by Luca Guadabascio. We reach him on the phone while he is walking with his beloved Labrador and he tells us a little about his future projects and what goes around.
In the meantime, how are you?
“Well, I’m fine, let’s say I’m a bit like everyone else, in isolation, waiting for this nightmare to end. I’m walking with my dog, which drags me everywhere. You know I live in the countryside, it’s not like I have everyone these contacts so frequently. We are very few people in this area, an area between the other well-stocked and if on the one hand the pandemic forced me not to do concerts, which then I’m doing something else, on the other I try to grasp the positive side, that is I’ve been home for a year and for me it’s really new, I wasn’t used to it. I haven’t been home in a lifetime. “
Let’s talk about the loss of Battiato …
“A great artist … but everyone remembers Battiato now, but we want to talk about when his political experience ended and how? When he said that sentence about Parliament, a sentence that we all thought and was passed off almost like crazy, that he was starting to lose This is Italy, a country with a short memory, Battiato was an artist and a free man, the others, those who judge and point the finger, no. Even among those who remember him today “.
Your new single is titled “Senza Noise”, what project is it?
“Different schools looked for me, their teachers followed me and then they introduced me to their students. There was talk of family violence, violence against women. cases of violence have tripled, in those families that already suffered everything has become a major nightmare. But they have to get used to them from an early age to distinguish certain things. to the ministry and they started with Dante who talks about pure, high love, up to my song that deals with violence that can lead to death, can become a nightmare, obsession, possession. The important thing is to make these guys understand that there are no princes blue, there must be no red cross, at the first sign, when you see that this starts to get violent, you have to escape immediately. I, because you can’t do anything, you become a prisoner. Then often the psychological one where it fails leads to the physical one. It is wanting to possess another human being, it is not love, it is selfishness. I don’t want to own anyone. Love is exchange, not destruction and death “.
But what parents are there today?
“Among these children there is a turning back and it is certainly because they grew up with absent families. With parental figures who are children who have not grown up either. Today they are all friends of the children. I have a 23-year-old son, a friend until at a certain point, up to a line, you have to set up relationships from the beginning. Not respecting the parent, they don’t respect anyone, they don’t recognize any authority, you have to have someone who is your point of reference. Unfortunately the fifties and those of mine I am still in high school, we have never grown up, and especially in this image society nobody wants to get old. When I went to the disco as a child or to play in bars I didn’t find my mother. Today it’s easy to say people get used to everything, but let’s face it: it’s not normal for you to go to Instagram and find your mom or dad playing idiots. Because from ’68 onwards we don’t want to get old. “
Are there no examples to follow?
The problem is that these kids make myths, reference figures of their age. But how can a myth be the same age as you? A myth has to be bigger, it has to teach you something, someone who explains things to you. When I listened to De Andrè as a kid it was because he taught me things, but I would never have believed it if he had been the same age as me. Everyone is what they eat in the end. I grew up with BEETHOVEN, De Andrè… the guys today follow the influencers. The problem of the new generations is that there is no education to emotion, to manage emotion too. And how can they handle an emotion if they don’t recognize the importance of a “no”.
Who are their points of reference?
“Their myths are influencers, quick success, you can’t fail: influencers are normally the same age as those who follow them and are ignorant as beasts! I go to see them eh it’s not that I talk so nonsense. a channel on twich where at the beginning there were only kids, and then people of 23 who say crazy, absurd things. Then we keep saying that they are small, but at that age you are not a child. 23years I had been working for two and I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. Then let’s face it these things happen here because someone makes them happen, in the end the problem is that these kids here are used because they are consumers, the first consumers, so let’s give power to fifteen year olds so they buy the product “.
Young people = Product?
“I’ll give you an example: cars are no longer sold? Then we’ll let those 13-year-olds take the license in a while … This vehicle we have in our hands, we continue to call it a mobile phone, but it’s anything but a telephone, and it should be used not after 18 but after 21. Instead there are people who at nine already have the Iphone and you know very well that inside you can see anything. The problem will come when social networks put them in real problems and until you hit your nose it’s hard to understand the danger. My son asks me if he has a problem like that, and I’m a father of a certain type, imagine who has a father who doesn’t give a damn. “
In the 90s, were there managers today influencers?
“The 90s were a single giant, everyone bought on leasing. In Milan everyone with BMW but on leasing and then in reality they had nothing. The 90s are still there, the years of the image of appearing, if I come from you with a big machine I can make you believe that I am someone who has money. I remember they were all Managers: Yes, but manager of what? Nothing like the influencer today … But of what? “
You followed the Fedez case, Rai, censorship
“Fedez was able to do it because he can afford it, he has the money and therefore the power and then what does he care if the TVs don’t invite him anymore? He has the web. That’s his world. What we have become does yes. that the web has more power than everything and everyone “.
Any regrets?
“I made Sanremo 97 to leave Warner because he wanted to go to an independent label. Today I would never make a mistake like that again. Among other things, by dispersing at least my 4/5 albums because then he calculates that I have changed as many 4 / 5 independent labels. The world of independent labels is a hallucinating world, because today they are there and tomorrow they are gone. I made albums that no longer exist anywhere while if I had stayed at Warner I would have all my records, to part “Names and surnames” which has disappeared and this remains the usual mystery, it was not made to disappear at the time, because at the time I was very popular, then over the years they evidently removed it from the catalog “.
Your relationship with the left and with the parties?
“I do not speak for anyone, I have always been a free hitter, I may like it or not, by doing so I made myself out of the system. But I want to be free. If you politician or party give me the editorial line, from that moment on I am no longer free. And then when you are an artist you cannot take orders. Whether they are to be left or right, but those are c … mine. I don’t want to be used as has happened to so many artists, who have never been asked the opinion of being flags for the parties but despite themselves they were forced to wave “.
Let’s talk about your relationship with cinema
“This is my soundtrack of an entire film, which is called I believe in one father, that the whole soundtrack of the film, I had already made songs, Brizzi and Zoe. But I had never tried a whole soundtrack. And there came my first album as a musician, all instrumental. And then there is a song sung in English, real electronic sounds. I’m only interested in this, because I’m free as a musician, and being free as a musician is the best. And then the music in a film is fundamental “.
What does the figure of Tenco represent?
“Luigi Tenco and I don’t really know who it suits him, but in Italy he is treated as a crime case, to the media or to whoever cares only to always come out with suicide, guns, tell death. Instead Tenco was life, it is life. Tenco is music. That’s why a documentary about him will be released in 2022, a project that I care a lot about, because I want to tell Tenco as an artist, his irony in the songs, his beauty, how he lived, not how he died . I will tell through my tour “Baccini canta Tenco”, which was then resumed, the extraordinary life and legacy of one of the greatest artists of all time “
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