Happy birthday, Franco
Franco Battiato (Ionia, 03-23-1945) is an Italian singer, songwriter, painter and musician
He was one of the most important artists on the Italian scene, extremely versatile and with many influences.
He started in the late 1960s in Milan, after moving from Sicily, with music mainly oriented towards beat-pop; with the advent of the 1970s, he entered the world of prog, with the publication of his first album, "Fetus".
Fetus, the Italian prog's masterpiece
Fetus is Battiato's first studio album, released in 1972. The album is an incredible journey, always expressed through metaphors, between the microscopic of the cell to the infinite of space, and is inspired by Aldous Huxley's The New World. Battiato outlines an ambiguous and desecrating concept-album, suspended between the Italian songwriting typical of those years and modernist trends such as Krautrock and psychedelia.
The work itself is a concept album, which tells of a hypothetical future despotic society, where man is created in a laboratory and every aspect of his life is managed in a scientific way ('My eyes are mechanical, my heart is plastic; my brain is mechanical, my taste is synthetic', from the song 'Meccanica)'.
The lyrics of the song 'Fenomenologia' end with the mathematical functions 'x1 = A*sen (ωt) and x2 = A*sen (ωt + γ)'. These functions can be regarded as the mathematical formulation of the entire theme of the album.In fact, these two mathematical expressions, if represented in the same graph, give rise to two sinusoids of equal amplitude but offset by one unit (γ), which results in a two-dimensional representation of the DNA helix (the main theme of the album).
After 'Fetus', Battiato produced several top-notch prog albums, such as 'Pollution'.
However, in 1975 he met Giusto Pio, a violinist for RAI, who introduced him to new wave music. His most important collaboration was with the album 'L'era del cinghiale bianco', whose title track is a legend in Italian music.
La voce del padrone
In 1981, Battiato, now launched at exponential speed by his collaboration with Pio and matured thanks to his previous musical experiences, released "La voce del padrone".
Considered the best Italian album in history together with Vasco Rossi's "Bollicine", it is a much-loved album and considered practically perfect.
Every track is danceable, but it has deep lyrics, and is pleasant to listen to in any situation, so much so that it is still very high in listenership in Italy, still played on the radio and in discos, even the cover is still widely imitated.
One of the most iconic songs in Italian history
The most famous song is definitely 'Centro di gravità permanente'. (Centre of permanent gravity)
It refers to the sense of bewilderment felt by Battiato, whose lyrics are based on figurative images (whose meaning apparently does not exist).
The lyrics speak of how the singer-songwriter seeks intimacy and stability, without having to revise his positions and expose himself, but where he can have tranquillity and be a simple observer, all expressed through metaphors and images.
This song is iconic, and still beloved, even by the younger generation, because of how much you can relate to the lyrics, but meanwhile it is not boring, because of its cheerful and unique melody.
After "La voce del padrone"
After his masterpiece, Battiato produced a lot more music, with several other iconic songs, such as 'Voglio vederti danzare', although he never returned to the incredible levels of "la voce del padrone", leaning towards more pop melodies (although never compromising with the trend).
Since 2016, he has started to appear less, and his latest release, dated 2019, has only one unreleased, anticipatory title, 'Torneremo ancora' (we will come back again). There has been no news of him since then, but there are rumours that he is ill, and this will indeed be his last release.
Dear Franco, I don't know if we will ever meet in this life, but I hope we will come back, albeit from the other side, again.