Lucio Battisti

Lucio Battisti ( ? ) was an Italian singer-songwriter. He is considered to be one of the best and most influential musicians and authors in Italian pop/rock music history.

Battisti started his career in 1966 and from 1969 to 1994 he released 18 albums in his home country. A significant part of his production was translated into Spanish (various albums) and English (one album). He was renowned to be an extremely reserved artist: during his successful career he performed only a relatively small number of live concerts and, in 1976, he announced he would communicate only through his studio albums, completely disappearing from Italian public scene.

Biography

Battisti was born in Poggio Bustone, a town in the province of Rieti (Northern Latium), and moved with his family to Rome in 1947. A self-taught guitarist, Battisti made his debut as musician in the 1960s, performing in local bands in Rome, Naples and later in Milan: here he joined I Campioni (The Champions), the support band of then famous singer Tony Dallara. He also travelled abroad as a working musician, in Germany and England, where he absorbed the music of Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Animals, Jimi Hendrix, Blues and Soul - among others - which he would later introduce in Italian Pop music.

In Milan he found the aid of a French talent scout, Christine Leroux, who worked for the Ricordi musical label. Leroux took Battisti under her wing, and he penned three sizeable hits in 1966 for other artists ("Per una lira" for Ribelli, "Dolce di giorno" for Dik Dik, and "Uno in pi?" for Riki Maiocchi). Leroux also introduced Battisti to songwriter Giulio Rapetti, better known as Mogol: though not impressed at first by Battisti's music, Mogol declared later to have decided to start the collaboration anyway after recognizing Battisti's humble, though determined, desire to improve his work. Mogol also pushed Ricordi to allow Battisti to sing his own songs: Battisti's voice became the focal point of his strength and originality. As a singer, he made his debut with the song "Per una lira" in 1966: despite the relatively mediocre success (100,000 copies sold, not particularly successful for those years), it allowed him to begin building his career as a singer.

Battisti continued to write tunes for others in the late 1960s: the US rock group The Grass Roots scored a hit stateside with one of Battisti's compositions, "Balla Linda", translated as "Bella Linda". With the same song, Battisti classified fourth in the Cantagiro, a then popular Italian Pop music competition. 1969 saw another one of Battisti's compositions, "Il Paradiso", become a hit in the UK when it was covered by the group Amen Corner as "If Paradise Is Half as Nice", hitting the number one spot on the singles chart. In the same period another English band, The Hollies - featuring Graham Nash - recorded a Battisti song in Italian, "Non prego per me".