Marco Masini

Marco Masini is one of the most famous italian singers. He was born on the 18th of September 1964 in Florence. His mother, Anna Maria, sang and played the piano and stopped teaching (she was a teacher at the elementary school) for her family. His father, Giancarlo, worked as a representative of products for hairdresser. When Marco was 3, he received as a present for Christmas a pianola: he put on it his hands and he soon succeed in playing by ear White Christmas. Because of the advise of his uncle, some years later Marco began to have lessons of music, studying Bach, Chopin and Mozart, although he loved also Pop, Rock and Italian music. When he was 11 he had the occasion to play at the feast of the patron of a little city near Florence. In those year he played every kind of music, from liscio to Revival and to disco music. During lyceum he founded, together with some friends, a musical group called Errata Corrige, but he had another passion, soccer: when he was 15 Marco played in a team called Sanger and made also a specimen to enter in the team of the young footballer of Fiorentina as a goalkeeper. However, he had to leave sport because of his love for music. The incompatibility between the tiring life of the musician (who brought him to go out every night and to come back home very late) and the life of a student brought him to leave school when he was at the 4th year of the school of accountancy, causing a first contrast with his family, but also with his friends. For a while Marco worked with his father as a representative. In 1980 his family opened a bar in Florence, where Marco gave a hand with his sister Susanna. But the quarrels between Marco and his father increased, causing a strong sufferance in his mother. Some years later she had a tumour and her husband was bound to sell the bar: Marco leaved to serve in the army (in the military aeronautic of Florence) and, the day after his return, on the 22th of August 1984, his mother died, with the deep sorrow of Marco, who regretted for ever the fact that he couldn’t be near her in the last moments of her life. His engagement in the music increased: he went to Modena for 6 months, making arrangements for disco-music in a recording studio, so he came back to Florence because he had to continue his studies of composition, harmony and melody, while he made piano-bar wherever. He had as a teacher Walter Savelli, the pianist of Claudio Baglioni and the teacher of a lot of famous artists. Although he had composed a lot of pieces (also a signature tune for a discotheque), Marco found difficulties in the moment of their presentation to the record companies, who accused him of the fact that “he hadn’t a right face for an artist” and of the fact that he produced songs which had too atypical lyrics rather than what the public expected to hear. Thanks to Bob Rosati, who makes arrangements and is the proprietary of a studio in Sesto Fiorentino, Marco began to make the first specimens: he met Beppe Dati, a compositor and poet, with whom he wrote some pieces. In 1986 he had the important meeting with Bigazzi, in the studio situated in Settignano, where Marco made him hear some specimens. Bigazzi helped him to increase his gifts: Marco participated to the realization of some sound-tracks (Mediterraneo, Mary per sempre, Ragazzi fuori), he was the guide voice of Si può dare di più (sung by Morandi, Ruggeri and Tozzi at Sanremo Festival) and he participated to the tournée of Tozzi at the Royal Albert Hall of London (Marco made the arrangements, keyboards and remix of Immensamente). He leaved for the first tour in 1987, then he was in the tournée with Raf and he was the responsible of the realization and of the arrangements of his album Cosa resterà.... In 1988 he made a disc called Uomini, because of the initiative of Mario Ragni, with which he had to participate to Sanremo Festival, but that year Charlie Deanesi participated instead. Marco didn't give up! After his reconciliation with his father, he began to write Disperato working with Bigazzi and Dati on the text. In 1990 he participated with this song to Sanremo Festival, arriving at the first place in the section of "Young Artists". Coming back from America (where he participated to Sanremo in the World), Marco began the realization of his first album, Marco Masini, for which there were just Disperato and Dal buio (written to be sung by Massimo Ranieri) done. When he finished his first album, he worked soon on his second one to participate to Sanremo ’91. He prepared a piece entitled Ossigeno, but then they chose another song Perché lo fai, who won the third place after Riccardo Cocciante and Renato Zero, and the single sold more then any other in Italy in 1991. The new album was published with the title Malinconoia (a new word coined by Marco which indicates a mix of melancholy and paranoia), term that could then be found in the Dictionary of Italian Language edited by G. Devoto and G. C. Oli. Marco began to prepare his first tournée with the friends with whom he had played and realised some discs: Mario Manzani (guitars), Massimo Rastrelli (guitars - he played with him also with the Errata Corrige), Marcello De Toffoli (keyboards), Bruno Illiano (bass), Alfredo Golino (drums), Andrea Corsellini (phonic). In the same year he participated to Festivalbar and he won because his was valued as the better album of the year, while the video clip of Malinconoia, recorded during a concert at Palaeur in Rome, won as the better video live of Riminicinema '91. After having been closed in a studio of registration near Orvieto, on the 14th of January 1993 Marco published T'innamorerai, the album which opened him the doors of the world and the album of the scandal, because it contained the song titled Vaffanculo (“Fuck you”), which caused controversies and censorships on TV and on the radio. Meanwhile in Spain, where a collection of some songs taken from the first two albums entitled Marco Masini had already had a great success, he obtained the Golden Disc with this album published in Spanish (as Te enamorarás). T'innamorerai was also published in Germany and France, giving a confirmation of the great expectations, obtaining also here the Golden Disc. As already said, the song Vaffanculo, contained in this album, was particularly criticized: it is a real outburst of Masini against his denigrators, who defined him a corruptor of young people, a looser, a pessimist, a singer who brings to depression... for a lot of people Masini was only a moan. This is because he often faces social themes in his songs in a deep and direct way. In 1995 (January) the fourth album was published, Il cielo della Vergine, in Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Germany and, in the Spanish version (El cielo de Virgo), in Spain and Latin America. In this album he was again criticized, this time because of the two songs Bella stronza (“Beautiful bastard”) and Principessa, both very direct and explicit. In 1996 he published L'amore sia con te, a compilation of his greatest hits, with the new song which gives the title to the album and Meglio solo, an old song recorded in the B side of Disperato single. This collection was also released in Spanish countries as Mi amor allí estará, presenting a slightly different tracklist. During the summer, instead, the tour called L'amore sia con te took place. In 1997 Enrico Ruggeri called Marco to sing with him La gente di cuore, included in the album Domani è un altro giorno by Ruggeri. After almost four years of silence, on the 12th of November 1998 Marco published the album Scimmie, published by the label Ma. Ma., founded by himself, Mario Manzani and Marco Poggioni. This new album has been a great turning point in the production of Marco, who presented himself in front of the public with a new look: white beard and hair. But, mostly, it indicated the separation from Bigazzi, the old Marco’s teacher, who had marked the beginning of his musical carrier. The disc is a harder Rock and the lyrics are in general less sentimental, but more hermetic: with Scimmie Marco said that he wanted to recover the music of the seventies, which he had loved so much and which was returning in fashion: the opinion of the critic was strangely positive, but negative was the opinion of the public, who decreed the commercial failure of this misunderstood album. But in 1999 the artist returned to the past, maybe because of the controversies of the fans who wanted the old Masini, of whom they had fallen in love, the love songs, and the lyrics characterized by poetry and profundity. After the publication of the single Il giorno più banale (“The most ordinary day”) on Christmas of that year (a wish for the unfortunate brother of the poor countries), the definitive confirm was his return to Sanremo 2000, with the song Raccontami di te, which arrived on the fifteenth position, the last but one: Marco accepted the result (considering the fifteenth position an honoured place, because of the precedents!), although the lighted controversies caused by the new voting system, which had brought absolutely unexpected results. In the same period (22th February 2000) he published the album Raccontami di te, containing the song of the Festival, Il giorno più banale; (here titled Il giorno di Natale - “Christmas day”), and other nine new songs, which join the new arrangements with the poetic themes and the sweet melody that characterized his first albums. On the 27th of March 2000 the new tour Raccontami di te began, with a big success. It was divided into two sessions, one during the spring in the theatres, one during the summer in the sqaures of a lot of Italian towns. When he finished the tour, just a year after the publication of the last album, on the 26th of January 20001, Marco published Uscita di sicurezza, containing fourteen new songs, written during all his carrier, a sort of secret diary brought to the light. Among the pieces stand out a cover of a very famous song of the Thrash group Metallica and a song dedicated to the adoption in the distance, embracing the cause of the children of Sudan. This new disc signed the artistic reconciliation with Bigazzi, proposing modern sonority, with a lot of foreigner influences and with themes characterized by a renewed force and determination. But the ruin of the euphoria for this new songs was determined by the scarce promotion of the record company (BMG Ricordi) and the continuous obstructionism of media against the figure of Marco, whose absurd reputation of bearer of bad luck and desperate began to be unbearable. The sale felt the effects of these things, also because Uscita di sicurezza was an album with a lot of facets, and for this reason it was more difficult to understand it. Marco, exhausted and on the 17th of April (it was Tuesday) he announced in public on the television news his retirement from the carrier of singer and songwriter, to become, maybe, the producer of other young groups. Some personalities intervened, as Adriano Celentano and Maurizio Costanzo, who wanted him as a guest of their TV transmissions to denounce what was happening, but all these things remained useless. However, for not cancelling the engagements taken some months before, he made at the end of April the 2001 tour, in many squares around Italy. In this way it seemed to be concluded the extraordinary but brief carrier of a singer and songwriter, who has certainly given very much to Italian music and who could have given it more. A sensational singer and songwriter, who made of his simplicity, of his weaknesses, but also of his artistic, introspective and provocative capacities, a winning feature, which made thousands (or maybe millions) of people remember him and his songs in their hearts, in Italy and not only. A bit unexpectedly and on the sly, during the spring of 2002 a new tour began: in this case, however, it wasn't a promotional tour, but simply a present for his fans and an opportunity to introduce to the public the new emergent group with which he wanted to collaborate as an artistic producer. This group, called Anima, was composed by the musicians that accompanied him: Riccardo Cherubini (guitar and voice), Nicola Contini (bass), Filippo Martelli (keyboards), Francesco Isola (drums). The tour consisted of thirty dates in central and southern Italy, during the months of May-October. Meanwhile, his most affectionate public never stopped to show its closeness to Marco, in that so difficult and delicate period of his career, even organizing to make and dedicate a song to him (entitled Cosa rimane (A Marco), that is "What remains (To Marco)") to thank him for the emotions given in the past and to exhort him to find again the stimulus to write and sing new songs. Fortunately all this was not vain: the summer 2003 passed under banner of concerts in town squares exactly as in 2002, after which to the surprise of everybody Marco came back on the scene in October with a new album, .. il mio cammino ("My walk"), which included three unpublished songs (Generation, Io non ti sposerò and Benvenuta) and some rearrangements and reharmonizations of his previous successes. Once Marco had settled (by a negotiation) the suit against BMG Ricordi, he and his executive producer, manager and friend Marco Poggioni, made MAMADUE Records live again. With the collaboration of Mario Ragni's independent label MBO Music (Ragni was Masini's original "discoverer"), Marco decided to turn page and start again almost "from scratch", underlining his will to leave back controversies and prejudices that had made him retire. While not denying anything of his own past (except for the album Uscita di sicurezza, that was a record mainly by Giancarlo Bigazzi), Marco Masini then presented himself to the public more peaceful and jokingly than ever, with a great desire to go at it again, even without betraying his disillusioned and committed vein, as the three new songs he published witness. The first single, Generation, evidences how the anger and youth rebellion naturally passes (adapting themselves as times go by) to the new generations, leaving behind a more placid but still optimistic awareness: something like the attitude of the renewed and regenerated Masini. However, although the good reception by televisions, difficulties regarding radio airplays still continued: initially broadcast by just two national radio networks, the new singles were then played by other ones only because of many and pressing requests by the most affectionate public, more determined than ever. "Fables don't exist, but miracles, yes, may happen": this is what Marco sings in Generation, in a so much prophetic verse... and, in fact, in Janary 2004 medias announced that the test-piece that Marco presented for Sanremo Festival 2004 had been selected among the twenty-two songs that had to take part to that famous Italian music contest. But the real deliverance, after so many years of difficulties and (artistic, as well as human) undeserved suffering, arrived in March, with the beginning, the development and the end of the most innovative edition of Sanremo Festival of the last twenty years: Marco's song, L'uomo volante ("the flying man"), was the favourite one for Italian people, who could vote from home using phones and mobiles. That was a triumph: the so called "desperate" guy became suddenly a real "flying man", who could win Sanremo Festival with almost double the votes of the second placed, getting also the price for the best lyrics given by the artistic commission (first place together with Omar Pedrini) and the price given by the Radio and Private TV Broadcast commission (first place together with Mario Venuti). Marco Masini's new career therefore seemed to be started in the best way: in a music business in deep crisis, in a music environment dominated by International "use-and-trash" music, imposed to the public by the big multinational record companies and by the deejays of the most powerful radio networks, and in a music world ruled by those "young artists" that are usually replaced the following year because they are already "old", the forty-years-old Masini succeeded in the most difficult task at all: to enter back the heart of the public! The Sanremo single and the new record Masini (a new edition of .. il mio cammino with L'uomo volante and E ti amo added) flied to the Top 10 of sales and radio airplay charts (after something like eight years from Il cielo della Vergine), while the following tour dates (March-September 2004) were almost a unique "sold out", with multiple dates in Rome, Milan, Turin and Florence, among the others! Now, thanks to Dee 2 Records, in July Masini is going to be published in Belgium, Nederland and Luxemburg, while in September LM Live Music GmbH is going to publish it in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.