The world, musical and otherwise, of Lucio Dalla is a continuous discovery.
Even nine years after his death.
Anecdotes, stories, unpublished material or material recovered from the drawers do not stop writing the story of one of the most brilliant artists of Italian music.
Lucio Dalla's star began to shine brightly in 1971, when he showed up in Sanremo with "4/3/1943", a censored version for that verse about the Child Jesus who was ecumenically "softened" at the festival ("And even now that I blaspheme and I drink wine, for thieves and whores I am Baby Jesus "was rewritten in" And even now that I play cards and drink wine, for the people of the port my name is Baby Jesus "), which became an ageless success.
"It was a song that we had been carrying around for at least a year, but no one noticed that it was not an unreleased. For us it was a great satisfaction to arrive at the festival", reveals today Bruno Cabassi, a member of Idoli, the group he accompanied in those years Lucio Dalla.
50 years later, Pressing Line and Sony Music pay tribute to Dalla with the reissue of the album Geniale ?, from 1991 with unreleased songs recorded live between 1969 and 1970 with Idoli, after the reissues of the historic albums "Come è deep sea "," Lucio Dalla "and" Dalla "and the collection" Duvudubà ".
The album, one of the lesser known of the Bolognese singer-songwriter, returns tomorrow with a remastered version, thanks to the tapes found by Giorgio Lecardi, another member of the Idols.
A way to turn the spotlight on a crucial period, but little known, and to restore luster even to the name of the Idols, "forgotten too quickly".
"An archaeological discovery worthy of the Valley of the Temples: it is the treasure of Tutankhamun", defines it Marino Bartoletti.
A journey to rediscover the musical roots of the artist and the period that preceded his success, the pre-Dalla which, however, already had in itself all the Dalla that would later come, with all its genius and creativity, with its evolutions vocals and with the extraordinary ability to amaze.
"Lucio was unpredictable - recalls Cabassi -, once we had to have an evening in Riccione and he was voiceless: he whistled all evening. Another time in a club, there was no piano and he sang on the juxebox records. . Unforgettable even when one evening he had a fight with a girl who had thrown a handful of confetti the moment he took a breath, making them go into his throat. It was always a great adventure with him. "
Brilliant?
it has been remastered from those original tapes, with a painstaking work by Maurizio Biancani explaining how it was "a restoration operation of Lucio's prehistory, but it is certainly not a record for hi-fi purists. for those who want to rediscover Dalla, who, singing in fake English, is able to use the voice as an instrument. The dirt and distortion that can be heard give back the image of what was happening musically in that period ".
Dalla's drawers still conceal many surprises and in the next 2-3 years, also coinciding with the 80th anniversary of its birth, there are many projects that Sony - as Paolo Maiorino who takes care of the catalog tells us - is ready to develop, without excluding the possibility of publishing live material that has never been released or some unreleased material recovered from the artist's studio (5 or 6 tracks would have been found).
Such as The Girl and the Hermit, written by Paola Pallottino, whom Dalla set to music and recorded but never published, while a version by Angelo Branduardi was subsequently released.
