Years go by, but PFM remains a group that has few rivals live, with Franz Di Cioccio and Patrick Djivas who attract young students who learn to work their ass off on stage, not to be satisfied with reproposing the songs paro paro to the record but constantly reinventing them, changing playlists and arrangements, improvising with the awareness that, as Demetrio Stratos said, music can be a game in which you risk your life.
«The records in the studio are long and tiring to make, they attenuate our nature which is to go on stage looking ferocious and smashing everything», says Di Cioccio very excited. «The feeling with those who come to listen to us is the most beautiful thing an artist can ask for and we experience it every evening, they give us energy and we reciprocate by messing them up».
Di Cioccio throbs with pride for the release of The Event – Live in Luganowhich follows in the wake of the great live records that PFM has released over time, one for all the historic Live in USA of 1975, also known as Cook. «Real live records», Djivas specifies, «without retouching in the studio, real and sincere testimonies of a moment that will then be overcome by new inventions and ever-changing performances, without clicks, computers, sequences and various bullshit, only blood and passion» . The live in Lugano also leads the way to a series of named releases PFM Live Collectionwith further recordings of historical pieces, reinterpretations, jams and everything else the band is capable of doing on stage.
With more than 6,000 concerts in their 50-year career, it is natural to ask which tours Franz and Patrick remember most fondly, apart from the experience with Fabrizio De André. So here is their top 5 in chronological order.
Southern Italy 1972
Di Cioccio: «I don’t know if it was one of the best tours, certainly the most adventurous. An event: no rock band in Italy, and I really mean nobody, had ever played in the south. And at the time there wasn’t today’s organization, the stages were trucks for pigs placed next to each other, with the current arriving via very long extension cords perhaps attached to someone’s house. “Unplug the refrigerator, we have to give electricity to the musicians”, they said. Crazy stuff.”
United States 1974
Djivas: «We didn’t expect it, we were incredulous: an Italian group – not English or from other English-speaking countries – that landed in the United States and obtained so much acclaim. And we didn’t play in clubs. but directly in theaters and arenas».
Di Cioccio: «We performed at Madison Square Garden, I don’t know if I get the idea, then at Charlotte Motor Speedway before Emerson, Lake & Palmer. After them, the Allman Brothers who, as Americans, were the hosts, should have closed the festival. ELP warned them they were going to do an Attila show, after that the grass wouldn’t grow again. And so it was: a bomb, the people went crazy and at the end of their performance many left, pace of poor Allman».
England 1974
Di Cioccio: «We were rehearsing at the Royal Albert Hall for the evening concert, with the roadies launching into running and burping contests, when the Queen Mother unexpectedly enters. Shit, all petrified. She was there for the inauguration of a dance school and as she passed she heard the sound of Premoli’s Moog. Fascinated she asked what she was playing. Flavio, with doing Britishhe had replied “It’s Albinoni madame”, since at that moment he was grappling with the famous one Slowly».
Japan 1975
Djivas: «At the end of a concert I was so excited that I threw the bass in the air with enthusiasm, destroying it. An absurd thing that is not part of my character, but I was so gassed that I no longer understood anything ».
Di Cioccio: «I was Cioccio San for everyone, I looked like a cartoon character».
Reunion 1997
Djivas: «A beautiful tour, it was a pleasure to meet again and understand that the amalgam was intact, it seemed that time had not passed. Then we included outside musicians like Phil Drummy and Stefano Tavernese. Drummy played a lot of instruments, including didgeridoos and bagpipes, the songs took on color and acquired new life».
Di Cioccio: «The guests have always brought something extra to our music, a bit like nowadays with this “enlarged” PFM, a sort of orchestra with capable musicians who are totally free to put their skills into play in a never rigid, with a continuous interplay, with the desire to get involved that allows us to constantly reinvent ourselves».
