“I’m afraid that my soul will break and fray: I stress it too much”. Cesare Cremonini is a fragile creature and a pure talent, “with a desperate need to be listened to in depth”. He chooses a trusted restaurant in Bologna, right in the center. Tortellini and a hint of wine. River in flood, confidences and gaze fixed into the future. Then he ran by car to his home – “as a little Lennon” – on the hills of Bologna, listening not without emotion to the song duetted with Luca Carboni. Finally in his studio, to listen to the new album that comes out tomorrow, “Alaska Baby”. Twelve songs that exude grace and scars. Cremonini cares a lot about it, and it’s a good thing because it’s a very inspired and courageous album (the ninth in the studio). “The theme that holds everything together is rebirth. Alaska Baby is a record born on the border, in which I once again tried to overcome my limits.”
Everything comes from a journey.
I needed to start over. After the last tour and the concert in Imola, I felt empty. Nothing new was born, blank page syndrome. And in Bologna the sun could no longer be seen. For days, for weeks. It was all dark and tiring. So, aimlessly, I left.
Antigua, Miami, Memphis, Nashville.
Then El Paso, Joshua Tree, Los Angeles, Seattle. Stage after stage I understood that the theme of the journey was origins. Those of rock, country, pop. Elvis, Johnny Cash, U2, grunge. The further I went back, the more I found myself. And new songs began to pour out.
Finally Alaska.
In the meantime, a friend had joined me, the same one with whom I had gone to Argentina twenty years earlier for another rebirth trip, when I thought my career was already over. I land and I immediately say: “Alaska baby”. Here is the title of the album. In Fairbanks we waited for the Northern Lights: I would never have left without seeing them. Suddenly she appeared, beautiful like nothing else. And I’m back.
The new single is going great and you sold 500 thousand tickets in an amen. Yet you don’t seem appeased.
“My creativity almost always comes from a puddle of pain, and then I feel fear when I have to step out into the infinity of happiness. I am as fragile as a damned soul and I don’t think I have truly achieved success. I never live in the present, I feel constantly looking towards the future.”
You don’t shine with lightness.
I have always wondered about the concept of eternity. At 8 years old I listened to Acqua azzurra, acqua chiara: electrocution. I locked myself in my bedroom and thought that I wanted to enter the history of music: I’m not saying a whole chapter about myself, but at least a page yes. It’s a sort of obsession. I don’t put anything ahead of my career.
Not even private life?
Not even. All my campaigns have told me at least once: “Songs are not real life.” And there is no more painful phrase to hear, because for me nothing is above art. I communicate with songs. And this frays my soul. I’m more concerned about the integrity of my soul than the many cigarettes I smoke in a row to write. Between artistic eternity and physical health, I would choose the first option for life.
A life like this leads to hurt and injury.
Without a doubt, but it’s like Fellini’s Mastroianni: it would be nice not to hurt anyone, but it’s impossible. If Fellini hadn’t hurt, he wouldn’t have been Fellini. So Mastroianni. And so, in my small way, I.
Peer systematically licked by demons.
I don’t want to give too dark an image of myself, I know how to joke and have fun too, but I think a lot and I have a fairly strong propensity towards self-destruction. I always need something to calm me down.
The songs?
Not necessarily, those are also and above all born from pain. What saved me more than anything else was mountain biking and mountain walking.
You speak as an outsider, but you achieve record numbers.
It hasn’t always been this way. My first solo album, after the end of Lunapop, turned out – in relation to expectations – to be one of the biggest flops in the history of Italian discography. For years, in the south, I performed for free in the squares. Maggese is also a record that I care a lot about, but the theater tour was a bloodbath. If nothing else it taught me a lot.
What?
At the time I was a huge dickhead, a kid who had already had everything. Those failures pushed me to travel, just like this record. In 2003 I left aimlessly for Argentina, with the same friend who accompanied me to Alaska a year ago. I returned and voraciously discovered singer-songwriters, especially Dylan and Gaber. I knew nothing about life and started studying like crazy. I was 20, but suddenly I was 60: I was already old. In this sense, Alaska Baby has the strength and momentum of a debut film.
Why?
I don’t want to become a record industry stooge, like too many of my colleagues do. It’s a rebirth album, almost like Dylan in ’66 after the motorbike accident, also the result of notable changes in my life. The loss of my father and the abandonment of my historical manager: he discovered me and gave me a lot, but he was also very possessive and had an attitude towards me like Colonel Parker with Elvis.
What did your father teach you?
Generosity, always looking ahead and not showing off wealth. He was a doctor, and when he went to visit poor patients he never took the BMW: he didn’t want to disrespect them. I accompanied him and I was happy. He was a serene man. He passed away at the age of 94, and before he died he only wanted to see my mother. Perhaps, only at that point, a little fear came to him. For this reason he looked for serenity in the eyes and words of the woman of his life.
How would you define yourself?
Perhaps an unlabelable intimate. In some ways “a waste of the discography”, which represents the last generation that knew the historical songwriters and had time to experience the “real” discography. My music brings together Dalla and Venditti, Dylan and Queen. Then everything changed. In fact I feel quite alone. And I don’t feel comfortable at all on TV.
What are you missing?
Credibility, according to many. The success with Lunapop put me at a disadvantage when faced with a certain criticism, and I suffer a little from it. But this is also what pushes me to demand the most from myself.
Your greatest asset?
I feel pain very well, I am particularly receptive. Just too much. There are design songs and extravagant songs. I write both, and the best known are almost always the first. Nobody wants to be Robin it’s extravagant, born in five minutes and dictated by an urgency that almost strangled me. It’s so full of pain that many fans can’t listen to it. I myself couldn’t write a record with only songs like that or Easy girls.
A song you care deeply about.
For someone like me who lives in pain and private life tends to wear masks, Easy girls it was a matter of completely exposing yourself. It is a work created thinking of Giorgia (Cardinaletti, his ex-partner, Ndr), who asked me with candor to be loved and pushed me to find the courage to love. One of the things that scares me and us the most. Easy girls it devastates me. I can’t explain it and if I listen to it I cry. Inside there is the passing, there is redemption. It’s all there (stops, gets emotional).
San Luca, which you sing with Luca Carboni, is splendid.
(Caesar sighs and takes another long pause). It’s the first song I wrote, but I put it aside, almost as if I was waiting for something. Then, one day, I read the interview with Luca on Corriere della Serathe one in which he talked about his illness. In Bologna we all knew it and the rumors suggested the worst. I feel so happy about his recovery that, without thinking, I call him. He comes to me in the studio and sings Saint Lukededicated to a Bolognese church as dear to him as to me. I discover that his name is Luca for that and that, during his illness, he went to pray right there: without knowing it, we were both closing a circle. I see him singing, I’m moved. His wife cries. It was the perfect song for him, watching him I had the feeling that he was being reborn. One of the greatest emotions of my life. I felt at peace with myself like other times (gets emotional again).
Bologna is central for you.
I could only live here. When I go to the stadium, I do it with a group of eighty-year-olds. They make me breathe a healthy climate, an antidote to too much ego. I was also a footballer, and I was just like I am now as a singer: I scored the difficult goals and missed the easy ones.
You are very good friends with Valentino Rossi.
It’s mine partner in crime. Music and sports are very similar, but there is a big difference. In sport, merit is objective: there are records, numbers. In music, however, everything is damn subjective. You never have proof that you are objectively good. This is why I envy Vale above all one thing.
Which?
The records. They are something that will stay. I wish I could have them too: it would mean having the certainty of being eternal, of leaving something definitive as an artist. But it’s funny, because Valentino envies me. He would give everything to run again, and every time he tells me: “What the fuck do you care about records!? You will be able to sing until you are 100, but I had to stop at 40. Do you realize how lucky you are?”.
Do you realize it?
No, or at least I don’t think so. But this record makes me feel alive, and that’s what matters most.
