Eugenio Finardi

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Eugenio Finardi
Born
Eugenio Finardi

(1952-07-16) July 16, 1952 (age 71)
Milan (Italy)
NationalityItalian
Occupation(s)singer, composer, songwriter, guitarist and keyboardist
Years active1972–present
Height1.84 m (6 ft 0 in)
SpousePatrizia Convertino
Children2

Eugenio Finardi (born July 16, 1952) is an Italian rock singer, songwriter, guitarist and keyboardist.

Life

Eugenio Finardi was born in Milan, Italy, on July 16, 1952, in a musical family: his father Enzo was an Italian music sound engineer and his mother Eloise an American opera singer; at age six Finardi made his first record, Palloncino Rosso Fuoco, a children song.

Finardi became part of a thriving music scene in Milan in the late 1960s. Rooted in the

techno-pop to Italian pop music. Together they even emulated the US film Easy Rider by travelling on motorbikes from Milan to Amsterdam. The scene Finardi became part of included among others bands like Area and Stormy Six, Claudio Rocchi and female singer-songwriter Donatella Bardi
. Finardi made a living by day teaching English, in which he was fluent because of his American mother, and as a musician by night, as a singer, guitarist and piano player. After forming the band Il Pacco with Camerini, Finardi recorded a single in English in 1973, Spacey Stacey/Hard Rock Honey for Numero Uno, the first Italian independent record label started by singer-songwriter Lucio Battisti and his writing partner Mogol, who had a long string of Italian and international hits under their belts, and who had introduced in Italian Pop music different styles from the US and the UK, from the Rock music of Bob Dylan, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, to Blues and Soul. Finardi's single went largely unnoticed.

Early career, the 1970s

Thanks to his friendship with the band Area and their singer

Rock'n'Roll. Camerini on guitar, Lucio Fabbri on violin, Walter Calloni on drums were among the musicians who played on the record, which included a Rock version of traditional Italian protest folk song Saluteremo Il Signor Padrone, and original songs by Finardi – one, Taking It Easy, in English – with social commentary about metropolitan alienation, against the compulsory national service in the Italian army, and political prisoners. The album was influenced by both progressive rock, which was extremely popular in Italy, and Hippie
idealism.

Finardi became known from playing at Milan's alternative Festival in

Patrizio Fariselli and Ares Tavolazzi, and bass-player Hugh Bullen
.

Years of lead

Finardi's sound and style became a success in 1976, with his second album

Autonomia, the Indiani Metropolitani and terrorist groups like the Red Brigades
(Brigate Rosse).

This eventful period of Italian contemporary history is known as the

Anni di piombo (Years Of Lead) and also as the era of the Movimento '77, the youth movement for which 1977 was a pivotal year, somewhat an Italian equivalent of the punk rock upheaval in the US and Great Britain. The dramatic and eventful climate of the period was the result of the so-called strategy of tension
(strategia della tensione): the confrontation between youth counter-culture and left-wing activists against an Italian government perceived as reactionary, repressive, corrupt, unstable, manoeuvred by the US, which disseminated disinformation and engaged in false-flag terror attacks blamed on the left to establish a more authoritarian regime.

Finardi was a notable counter-cultural and musical protagonist of these years, with songs like "

Extraterrestre in 1978, and Roccando Rollando (Rocking and Rolling) in 1979, which contained Legalizzatela, his song-manifesto for the legalization of cannabis. Other significant hits were Patrizia, and the bitter-sweet ballad Le Ragazze Di Osaka
in 1981.

From the 1980s to the present

Since then Finardi has lived periodically abroad, in London, UK, and in the United States. He has appeared at the Mecca of Italian commercial Pop music, the annual musical contest of the Sanremo Festival, which would have been unthinkable in the counter-cultural climate of the 1970s. Through many different collaborations, he has released regular albums: among them, one made entirely of songs with English lyrics,

Sanremo Music Festival
with the song E tu lo chiami Dio.

Discography

Albums

Singles

Compilations

Live albums

  • Strade (1984)
  • Suono (2008)
  • Un uomo Tour 2009 (2009)
  • Musica ribelle Live (2013)

References

  1. ^ The title is a written requirement shown on Italian trains. It means: "Don't throw anything out of windows".
  2. ^ The title is a neologism that does not exist in Italian. It's the exact translation, word by word, from English: "Rocking and Rolling".
  3. ^ The title is Italian longhand for H2O, the chemical formula of water.

External links

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