When three weeks ago I received the invitation to fly to London from the record company Universal Musicto listen in preview Amateurthe new album by Cesare Cremonini right there where it was conceived, I wondered what I should expect.
He, the artist, 46 years old, with a 27-year career, and ten albums with successful songs – among them Buon voyage, The new star of Broadway, and then Poetics, Come see why, Gray Goose, What they say about me, Someone like you, Logical and we could go on – let it be known that this would be a project to break with the past. What’s more, with a final performance atO2 Shepherd’s Bush Empirea two thousand seat theater, where the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Prince, Led Zeppelin, Amy Winehouse and Adele performed to name a few. And that he would be accompanied by Donny McCaslin on sax and Zach Danziger to the battery. Impossible not to have expectations.
Yesterday, the day of the listening, while the eleven songs scrolled by, and outside the windows of the headquarters of Universal of London, in Pancras Squareit rained non-stop, my thoughts went to 950 thousand tickets sold for Cremonini Live in less than a year. A record, which must have given him the courage to change pace. A desire he had had for a long time.
«I grew up with a manager for 24 years (Walter Mameliwith whom he broke off relations, ed.) who forged me, but also crushed me. He taught me ambition, discipline, the desire to achieve. He was one of those who, when I was young and at the height of success, told me: “You don’t have to carry your suitcase, you carry it.” He was like Agassi’s trainer, someone who knew how to turn me into a great racehorse,” he commented. «However, as happens with certain master fathers, it also created great insecurity within me, a crack that has recently started to bleed again. This new album couldn’t exist if I hadn’t been the one from the past, but today I’m no longer that thing. Now I’m trying to find a place where I can exist even without this crack. Being close to music helps me do this.”
Sitting in front of an audience of journalists, including international ones, Cremonini answered questions for an hour.
Why London?
«To push the puck away from me as much as possible. My name can distract from its essence. Here in London I’m just an Italian artist presenting a record: I wanted to make everything around me smaller and put the music at the centre, without conditioning.”
And what does the title Amateur mean?
«Doing something without necessarily having a goal, a mountain to climb or a stadium to fill. After 26 years in which I always had a goal, this album was born from the emptiness of normal life, from contact with myself. It’s the first album I made without knowing where it would take me. This is also why I feel it is a debut.”
What were you thinking when you wrote it?
«I would like a record to be a door for the listener, something that allows us to discover what we don’t know. Not a mirror that shows something that already looks like us. The algorithm today does not help us in this sense. And that’s why I chose to present it live tonight atO2 Shepherd’s Bush Empirebefore the public has even heard it.”
The album was born in Damon Albarn’s Studio 13, the founder of Blur and Gorillaz. What did he discover there?
«For years I was a music tourist: I recorded in the most famous studios in London, from the Olympic to other legendary places. Good experiences, but in a certain sense mistakes. The most important thing happened when I entered Damon’s creative studio, where Gorillaz was born. It is an almost sacred place: it is not enough to book it, you need the right spirit. Damon Albarn he showed me his treasure trove of tools collected from around the world, and felt that my project was truly creative. My band and I spent a month there, many songs were completed as they used to do: you came with a song and built it in the studio. This album wouldn’t have been born anywhere else.”
Among the collaborations there is also the one with Psalmto the song that gives the album its title. “My role in the song is as a psychoanalyst and magnet salesman,” he said. «It was nice to have him alongside me on this journey, he kept me anchored to reality. One evening, at dinner in London, I gave him a half-hour monologue: I wanted to convince him that together we could create a team and change the rules of the game. He listened to me until the end, then he said: “Do you know why we won’t be able to do this thing you’re saying? Because you’re old.” Maybe he’s right. I still have within me the energy of the eighteen year old I was when my story in music began. But people my age don’t change the world. It’s a teaching that I appreciate.”
In Very Small Things he sings with Malika Ayane, with whom he has had a relationship for sixteen years.
«On the phone it is saved as Mali. He is one of the few Italian voices capable of telling the details: the dust on the furniture, the things not shouted, the things we don’t see. He could describe a tomato risotto and make it wonderful. On this album I wanted more direct, less embroidered words. With Psalm and Fabri Fibra (who sings in the song Paparazzi, ed.) I looked for a strong energy. But I also needed femininity, and I found it with the voice of Malika Ayane».
Morgan is also on the album: what unites you?
«The love of music. One day he wrote to me and we started talking about life, aesthetics and the world we are going through. He sent me a song a day, I have them all in my phone. Then I made him listen to “The Garden of Saxophones” and he concentrated on the phrase: «We are diamonds alone, forever». Without me asking, a week later he sent me some harmonic passages and an arrangement that is on the record. He didn’t want money or credit, even though he insisted. He told me that music is purity, dialogue between artists.”
After 27 years of career, what do you still want to conquer?
«Freedom. But I don’t think any of us will ever really be. Freedom is an achievement, a hope, perhaps something that comes at the end of life, if we are lucky. I study the saxophone because it makes me feel like a microbe, despite my career. It reminds me that I still have so much to learn. I don’t know if Amateur he will be able to free me. If I don’t succeed, I’ll try again with the next one.”
