I write this confused and clouded letter of love and respect and friendship from a hotel room in the Valley of the Temples in Sicily. A land that has thousands of years of history behind it and which now seems to be crumbling in the face of the news, received on WhatsApp from a now distant number, of the death of Matteo Romagnoli, friend, musician and founder of the independent label Garrincha Dischi. A message that came out of nowhere and that as a first reaction brought with it a river of tears.
Having communicated the dutiful news to the members of my former band, the emotional situation subsequently foundered in front of the Temple of Concordia. A piece of my life was in fact alongside Matteo who was at the same time talent scout, manager and record manager of my band. Seven years inextricably linked to him, sleeping very little, playing a lot.
I owe a lot to Matteo Romagnoli, but I’m sure he knew how grateful I was. I owe Matteo a decisive part of my life – my twenties – in which I was able to record records and travel around Italy doing what I considered the funniest thing in the world at the time. Like many of the bands he produced, especially at the beginning, I spent days and weeks in Matteo’s house outside Bologna. We wrote and recorded. We laughed and discussed. We talked about politics, history, music, philosophy. We had barbecues, slept on bunk beds and went to concerts all together; him, me, the band. Sometimes father to him. Staying at his house I learned how a studio works and I found brothers who have the names of Omar, Francesco, Niccolò, Gianni and a series of people I loved very much and that time and personal decisions eventually made me lose sight of. I was just 22 the first time I entered that house, in that life, 28 the last time I set foot in it. Many years have passed in between – seven to be precise – and perhaps everything has changed in the meantime.
That Matteo was ill was well known. We in the band didn’t know exactly what he had, he didn’t talk about it except when he mentioned new treatments or when he needed moments of rest. We talked about everything, but we didn’t ask about this, partly out of respect, partly because Matteo was life, not illness. We knew it was very hard for him and that this terrible day would come too soon. Too soon for him, for his father, for hers balotta. Yes, his balotta.
For Matteo, music was, above all, being together. Have a family, feel good, do good. It must have been something visceral for him who was an only child and whom I met in a house in the Bolognese countryside flanked only by his father, Raffele known as Lele, a person of a goodness that I can only define poignant. Matteo let me into that house when I was in my early twenties to have some songs recorded. First in the cellar, then over the years – upgrade after upgrade – in the home studio that had revolutionized the entire building. We tried to record a song together, we ended up recording two albums, a handful of EPs and a lot of singles, just like that, navigating a bit on sight with the idea that that sincerity would be rewarded. Because probably no one within his label was pure artistic talent, but his strength was this, seeing in music a door to make us feel less alone as human beings. And make those who listened to us feel less alone.
Working with Matteo was complex, fun and exhausting. He answered when he wanted, he got lost, he said yes to everything knowing he had the time to be able to do a tenth of the things he had consented to. He had difficulty trusting, delegating, bringing people into his vision to entrust the keys to the shack; just like me, as only children they understood us on this. To Matteo – I repeat – I owe a lot. He was the first and only person to offer me a record deal (sorry I never honored it and never wrote that fourth album, but you know I couldn’t do it like this), as well as the only person in the music business who put money out of his pocket on me, at the time a little boy who could play 4 chords with the guitar but who thought he had something to share on the microphone. For this Garrincha was a rarity. After seven years, and before Spotify, the project was closed even if Matteo didn’t agree. He didn’t say much to convince me, only that he understood me, deep down he understood the yearning of that decision. For me it was like losing a son, for him a brother. And that eventually drove us apart in the years that followed. Then Spotify arrived and when our lives were already elsewhere we brought home a few million plays which I think meant more to it than to me, or us. Not because Matteo had been a fanatic of numbers but because in the end he had been right that time too; another musical gamble had paid off.
In those years, roughly from 2010 to 2016, I was and we were part of his family. A bandwagon that toured Italy under the name of Garrincha Loves, a series of etiquette festivals in which different humanities met on the same stage. And on those stages, sometimes as beautiful as that theater in Genoa or ramshackle like that other one in a park in Rome, or how can we forget the endless cycle of stage diving at the Locomotiv in Bologna where we were all too drunk to follow his ideas, we found ourselves from L’orso, Lo Stato Sociale, The Representative of List, L’Officina della Camomilla, the Camillas, the Magellanos, the Chewingums, Brace, Costa! and who else have I forgotten now that I’m a bit foggy in these memories that accumulate, overwhelm, collide.
Like any family there were troubles, discomforts, frustrations (and, why lie, preferences), of course, but this battered way of keeping us together, of keeping the balotta together – as he would have said – for a higher cause worked. And the fun surpassed any internal or intestinal struggle. In those days we were so unhinged that a certain audience loved us very much and very strongly (and I hope this audience has those days in their hearts to remember Matteo) despite many others despising us, especially some sites, journalists, bands. Or other competitor labels. They didn’t understand why we had all that following, why that uncomfortable bunch worked at a time when indie didn’t exist, had no market, didn’t get on the radio. They were looking for motivation in music when they should have been looking for it in motivation. We were there for a reason, and that reason was Matteo. Or Johnny as he called himself. Or “the demiurge” as we nicknamed him inter nos in the band after a date and how they loved – and I hope we will love – to remember him in our stories.
Matteo Romagnoli was one of those capable of re-inventing indie in Italy, bringing it to the Sanremo stage with Lo Stato Sociale (of which he was practically a member). He knew from day one that he would be able to bring all this to the general public, for him it was logical, almost taken for granted that the public would understand his vision. In those years in which by many we were considered almost a joke, a joke, an error of the system, for others – an army of disadvantaged equal to us – we represented a possibility, a safe place. And Matteo knew it, he who with the madmen – as he called them and to whom he had also dedicated one of his solo albums (They are just my crazy) – he really worked on it in the institute. But in the end, who else is the musician if not a madman? Matteo himself was a madman, a madman, a visionary who with his ideas forged the Italian indie scene, helping it to overturn the mainstream. Many friends of those years passed through Sanremo. Matthew was right. The crazy ones were the others who didn’t understand him.
Johnny, let’s have one last round of “ciao grande” and then we’ll go home. It’s time, but this time you’ll have to wait for us.
