Happy birthday, 'Happy birthday Elvis'

Some albums are a vice that you never want to take off: more than a million people have thought of buying it Happy birthday Elvis In 1995, and hundreds of thousands still thought it today, in the year of the thirty years. On the day of his Birthday, Luciano Ligabue presented the powerful tribute to the album that definitively consecrated him. The idea of ​​his record company seems to make all the Deluxe versions never attempted in Italy pale. There will be six hours of new music: the more contained version will be the 3 CD one, to be released on April 18; The most powerful one provides 8, and will be complete when the artists (to now, mysterious) invited to reinterpret the songs of the album will have finished their work. His, Ligabue has already done so with a new version Naked of the album, in which the songs are reinterpreted: «They are the goals, to say that they are acoustic versions is a bit limiting, because I tried to bring those songs to the version closest to how I wrote them, on an acoustic guitar, without bass, drums and electric guitars, but trying to give them a completely different life. Maybe they will make you dance less but they will make you try new things ».

As for the “Normal” album, it was mixed and edited, without overwhelming, with the contribution of the same producer, Fabrizio Barbacci. And flanked by a plethora of demo, rarity, live recordings of 1995 and 2024, a disc Tales in which the rocker tells the genesis of each of the 14 tracks. «We found things in archives that we didn't even know we had. There are some demos that make almost tenderness, there were not even all the ready -made texts, I simply make vowels. And some rarities, like a superfunky version of The strength of the band played by the Uptown Horns, the wind section of the Rolling Stones of the time. Then there is a version of Kay was here cHe has nothing to do with those that people have heard so far, or Sorry I'm just this herethat no one can ever have heard but contains the germ of what he would become On my way in the next album ».

The link with that album is still very strong, Ligabue admits, although obviously “it's like looking at an old photograph, you always end up saying: look how fuck I was tanned”. Obviously we all changed, but America has also changed so much, which was in the end one of the themes of the album. «I have never been pro -American, I have always admitted that my real passions from a musical, cinematographic and literary point of view came from there but always concerned people who told the problems they had in living in the United States. Including Elvis: one of the three most important musical icons of the last century, which had started giving a huge Scroll to America only with some movement of the pelvis, and then becomes an FBI light. A king who died of “too much”. Too many calories, too many substances, drugs, too much loneliness, isolation, boredom. A king who dies on the cup of the toilet, because he was no longer in a position to evacuate physically, and is a great metaphor, after having become almost a parody of himself in the concerts in Las Vegas ».

Speaking of concerts, the birthday megaphels will be two: a return to Campovolo, in Reggio Emilia, and one at the Royal Palace of Caserta. In the first case, 90 thousand tickets have already been sold, for Caserta the capacity will obviously be less, Ferdinando Salzano of Friends & Partners speaks of 36 thousand seats and warns that there will be no double date: “They will be the only two live of Ligabue this year”. The two concerts will tend to be the same, so as not to disconnect anyone. «This time too there will certainly be all the groups they play with me. But since we have to deal with the other parties, we are working because they have a unique flavor, recovering things with which we would like to tear the smile. I can't say more ». For now.