Eugenio Finardi

Eugenio Finardi (also known as "Gege") is a very famous rock and pop singer in Italy. With Angelo Branduardi, Edoardo Bennato, Lucio Battisti and Lucio Dalla, he represented Italian music during the seventies. With Francesco Guccini, he is the typical leftist committed singer and songwriter.

Life

Born in Milan (Italy) in 1952, his parents are an Italian sound director (his father) and an American opera singer (his mother). So he's native speaker fo English and Italian as well.

He joined Italian Comunist Party (PCI) during the early seventies: a lot of his songs (the first records, first of all) contains social and political items: "Musica ribelle" ("Rebel Music"), and "Saluteremo il Signor Padrone" ("We'll greet our Sir, the Employer") for example.

He also was a drug addict, in the same period, but his girl - friend (now, his wife) succeeded in getting him out of the drug racket. Many years later, he wrote a song ,"Patrizia" ("Patty"), to thank her. Because of drug, we can find many allusions to his problem in some lyrics of his. For example, "Extraterrestre" ("Extraterrestrial", an Italian slang for "drug"), "Scimmia" (litterally: "Monkey", an Italian slang for "Cold Turkey"), and "Legalizzatela !" ("Legalize it !", the drug, of course).

His first record, "Non gettate alcun oggetto dal finestrino" ("Don't throw any object out of train window") came on the market in 1975 and was a very successful L.P.

Since then he has been keeping on earning praises.

Career

Finardi has been churning out records since 1975. His carreer started when he was six, by making a record for children. During the early seventies, he began to play rock music.

He joined groups like “The Tiger”, “Il Pacco” (literally “The Parcel”, but – most probably – that name is an Italian slang for “Let - down”) and “L’Enorme Maria” (“Mary the huge”). The last one was a group where played Alberto Camerini a famous Italian – Brazilian guitarist.

Meanwhile Finardi began to write English lyrics and in 1973 his first E.P., containing the English text songs "Spacey stacey" and "Hard rock honey" was recorded by “Numero Uno” (“Number One”, Mogol’s and Lucio Battisti’s record company), but it was unnoticed.

In 1974 he made a contract with Cramps, Gianni Sassi’s record company, and – the next year – he wrote committed and leftist – ideological Italian lyrics, that were collected in his first LP “Non gettate alcun oggetto dal finestrino” (“Don’t throw any object out of train window”, 1975. This record contains a rock cover of the folk Italian song “Saluteremo il Signor Padrone” (“We’ll greet our sir, the employer”.

The succeess came with his second album "Sugo" ("Sauce"), during 1976, that contains two famous songs of his, "La Radio" ("The Radio") and "Musica Ribelle" ("Rebel Music"). In the same year, he attended to an aircheck in Parco Lambro, Milan (June, 26th - 30th), during the Sixth Youthful Working Class Festival .

In 1977, his new album, "Diesel" was a very successful record. Here, we can find two famous songs: "Non è nel cuore" ("Love, it isn't in your heart") and the most known song in this record, that is to say, "Scimmia" ("Cold Turkey"). This last one created a scandal for its crudely realistic words (Finardi tell us his dramatic experience with heroin, and uses some words like "buco". This substantive, in Italian, means "Hole", but in Italian slang, it sounds very cruel, and means "Fix"). Very pleasant are, instead, the words in "Love, it isn't in your heart". Actually, it sounds: “…./ But love / isn’t in your heart; / but it means to recognize each other by smell. / And fondness can’t exist / with no slightest respect / and as you can’t do without it / you must be a little patient; / Because love means to live together / and it really means to love each other, / but love can consist of delight, / but of boredom too. / And then, I relaxed, / and – as time goes by – I learnt / that it’s useless if we’re always perfect, / that I also love your failings, / that I like awaking / by your side, in the morning, / that I never get tired / to make love with you, / that it takes more than a moment / but the aim is to know each other inside. ….”

External Links to some of Finardi's songs

• "Love, it isn't in the heart" (in Italian) [2]
• "Patty" (in Italian) [3]
• "Osaka girls" (in Italian)