Lucio Dalla was born in Bologna on March 4, 1943. He begins playing at an early age: starting with the accordion he then moves to the clarinet when he is fourteen years old, performing along the way in various jazz formations. His singing debut occurs in 1964 under the auspices of Gino Paoli and with a style inspired to Soul music. In 1971, after a vaguely beat experimental tangent, he achieves great figures in music sales thanks to “4/3/43”, followed by “Piazza Grande”, “Il gigante e la ba...
Lucio Dalla was born in Bologna on March 4, 1943. He begins playing at an early age: starting with the accordion he then moves to the clarinet when he is fourteen years old, performing along the way in various jazz formations. His singing debut occurs in 1964 under the auspices of Gino Paoli and with a style inspired to Soul music. In 1971, after a vaguely beat experimental tangent, he achieves great figures in music sales thanks to “4/3/43”, followed by “Piazza Grande”, “Il gigante e la bambina”(The giant and the baby girl), and “Itaca” (Ithaca), songs destined to be “evergreen”. From 1974 to 1977 he sets upon another direction: inaugurating a show that is half way in between a concert and a play. He begins a fertile collaboration with the Bolognese poet Roberto Roversi directing his production toward civil-social contents. The result of this teamwork will be had in three “landmark” albums: “Il giorno aveva cinque teste” (The day had five heads), “Anidride solforoso” (Sulphur dioxide), and “Automobili” (Automobiles). In 1977, Lucio Dalla debuts as the author of his own lyrics with the album “Com’è profondo il mare”(How deep is the sea). For the Bolognese singer this is the beginning of a decade that will see him obtain popular consensus and reach the record of sales with its highs in the period between 1979-1981 during which the Tour “Banana Republic” with his colleague Francesco De Gregori (from which comes the live with the same title) will take place. Soon to follow are, the album “Bugie” (1985) and “Dallamericaruso” (1986), containing the song “Caruso” universally hailed as Dalla’s masterpiece, which has sold more than eight million copies in the thirty different editions of the piece that have been produced worldwide and amongst which is Luciano Pavarotti’s own version. In 1988, another winning duet: Dalla-Morandi, with relative album and triumphal tour in the most fascinating art sites of Italy used for the first time to host such music events. In 1990 marks yet another triumph for Dalla: a TV performance with an efficacious annexed ballet and an absolutely atypical song “Attenti al lupo” (Beware of the wolf) launch the album “Cambio” (Change) that still holds the record of sales in Italy with about 1,400,000 copies sold. This record is followed by a prolonged Tour as documented by the live “Amen” and, in 1994, the album “Henna”. 1996 marks another recording success with the album “Canzoni” (Songs) which passed the 1,300,000 sales figure thus classifying itself as the Italian album that sold the most copies during this decade. Besides being the author and interpreter of poetry-songs amongst the most intense of the last twenty years as well as a music globetrotter in Europe and South America, today Lucio Dalla is also the engine and the heart of an intense production activity together with a high-level recording realization that has in Bologna and PRESSING S.r.l., the record label he owns and which has launched artists of the like of Stadio, Ron, Luca Carboni, Samuele Bersani and the artistic renaissance of Gianni Morandi, its headquarters. He is equally responsible for the composition of various musical scores for the movies of directors such as Monicelli, Antonioni, Giannarelli, Verdone, Campiotti, Placido, and many others. One should not forget, however, his activity as a successful TV program author (Te vojo bene assaie, New Year’s Eve, RaiUno – Taxi, RaiTre – S. Patrignano, etc…) as well as his interest as manager of an avant-garde art gallery: as he recently opened his own gallery, NO CODE, in Via dei Coltelli in Bologna. The musical curiosity of Lucio Dalla is without boundaries: from the incursions in Classical Music as in “Pierino e il lupo” by Prokofiev (1997) to the project of “Enzo Re” (1998) realized in collaboration with the University of Bologna, saluting a new artistic effort with poet Roberto Roversi. The result of this enterprise is an album with six previously unreleased songs that was not put on sale but rather handed out for free within the University, thus immediately becoming a cult object and a collector’s item. It is just as important to note the concerts held in the two summers going from 1998 and 1999 with a Symphonic Music Orchestra composed of 76 elements and directed by Maestro Beppe D’Onghia in a re-interpretation of Lucio Dalla’s most famous pieces, rearranged for the occasion in symphonic form. On 9/9/99 the album “CIAO” is released, thirty-three years after his debut with the album called “1999”. The last album contains eleven pieces produced and arranged by Mauro Malavasi among which is the title-track “Ciao”, truthful summertime radio “torment” of the 1999 season. This album obtains the double platinum record. In October 2001, the new release comes with an album whose title is “LUNA MATàNA” which was entirely written and produced in the Tremiti Islands. The album contains eleven new songs among which is the single hit “Siciliano”.
