(ANSA) - ROME, MARCH 02 - Those few hours that divide the birth of Lucio Dalla and Lucio Battisti, on 4 and 5 March 1943, looking at them today, end up becoming the first trace of a sidereal distance that divides life and career of duegeni of Italian music.
In the end it is an episode recounted by Dalla that offers the definitive image of this distance: in 1984 the two met in a restaurant.
The author of "How deep the sea is" was in the prime of his career, Battisti had already ended his public life.
Dalla spoke of a tour together, which should have been called "I due Lucio" and of a possible album: "He listened without giving me any importance - he said -. Then he finished eating, cleaned his mouth and said that it couldn't be done, that he felt very changed and that he was moving into a completely different musical quest".
Dalla was an entertainer of existence, a man animated by a profound religiosity who lived in public: he transformed his date of birth into a musical masterpiece, his curiosity was insatiable, he always found a way to change without losing contact with the public, he divided the stage with colleagues, he used television and the media very well, loved art and also experimented with musical forms close to opera.
He died suddenly, on March 1, close to 70, in a hotel room after a concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival.
Battisti stopped touring in 1970: he closed his bridges with television on April 23, 1972 with a duet with Mina, one of the most important musical performances in the history of TV, a few months later he said goodbye to the radio and in 1979 he granted the his last interview.
In fact he fled from the fame and success obtained thanks to the long association with Mogol which, if looked at carefully, has always been characterized by a desire to overcome conventions, ranging between genres.
When he died at the age of 55 from an illness whose details are unknown, he was a sort of Pynchon of Italian song, a voluntary recluse who had spent a good part of his life arguing with the press and who published records that were increasingly immersed in a dilated electronic music. .
(HANDLE).