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| Photo credit: Massimo Cotto's Instagram, edit by Emanuela |
Many of us already know him from his interviews with Placebo: the one he did in November 2016 in Milan, just before the concert celebrating Placebo's 20th anniversary, and the more recent one he did in London on the occasion of the release of Never Let Me Go (see our post from April 3rd). But there is much more...
...Massimo Cotto is not only a true institution and one of the most influential voices in italian music journalism: he is an enthusiastic professional, with an extraordinary ability to tell stories, the stories of rock and beyond, passionate and amused about his work, with a humble, genuine and above all self-ironic human side.
By reading his biography, one would think that he has already lived at least five lives...he is an ever-erupting volcano, suffice it to say that he has written 71 books - even though he says he has not read them all - to name just one of the countless activities he is involved in...
Before leaving you to read the interview, here is a 'short' biography to let you know something more about Massimo Cotto (I can assure you that it was very difficult to try to summarise it as much as possible, but I tried my best).
I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed chatting with him.
I would like to thank Massimo Cotto once again, on behalf of the whole Placebo Anyway Team, for giving us this interview.
With gratitude,
Emanuela
๐ทBIOGRAPHY๐ท
Massimo Cotto was born in 1962 in Asti, where he still lives.
He was a promising basketball player, until, at the age of 16, he was struck by the voice of a deejay on the radio: the next day he left basketball and introduced himself to the director of a private radio station and began broadcasting, kicking off a career that would see him engaged on several fronts: radio, television, newspapers, books, theatre and artistic direction. He is considered one of the most important Italian music journalists, certainly the one with the highest number of publications as an author.
๐ธRADIO: for 20 years he was a disc-jockey, host and then artistic director of Radiorai, later broadcasting for Radio 24 and Radio Capital, and for the last 10 years he has been hosting a morning show on Virgin Radio Italia.
๐ธTELEVISION: has been both TV host and TV author (among the most important are the Sanremo Festival and the Virgin Rock Live Special, as well as author for several Italian artists).
๐ธJOURNALISM: he was director of Rockstar Magazine and has collaborated with the main Italian and international newspapers (the American Billboard and the German Howl!. Today he writes for Italian newspaper Il Messaggero.
๐ธPUBLISHING: he has written more than 70 books, including many official biographies for Italian artists. He has also written "Leonard Cohen: Canzoni da una stanza” (Songs from a Room) and, again on Leonard Cohen, "I Famosi Impermeabili Blu" (The Famous Blue Raincoats), which contains, among other things, nine interviews conducted with the Canadian artist over a period of 25 years. He has translated and commented on the lyrics of Tom Waits (first in Italy), Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead.
He has also written two novels for which he has received literary awards.
Etc, etc, etc...
๐ธARTISTIC DIRECTIONS: Radiorai for 4 years, SanremoLab and Area Sanremo, in addition to numerous festivals scattered throughout Italy like Festival di Castrocaro.
๐ธTHEATRE: He invented the so-called fireplace theatre, based on the desire to gather around the hot flame in the living room and listen to stories. In 2005 he staged his first play, 'Cry baby, Janis Joplin's last night'. He is currently on tour with the show “Decamerock”, based on his 2020 book by the same name.
He has won many awards. He is also a Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
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| Photo credit: Massimo Cotto's Instagram |
๐ท๐ธ๐ทINTERVIEW๐ท๐ธ๐ท
Hi Massimo, welcome to Palcebo Anyway.
After so many years as a journalist, have you developed kind of a 'modus operandi', kind of an approach to the artist, a universally valid attitude to take home an interview with which you feel satisfied?
๐ค There are some common elements to all interviews. Preparation, firstly. Re-listening to records and reading a lot of previous interviews, to select which topics to develop and which not to cover. I often read answers given to other journalists and from there I start asking other questions. These are basic things that should be taken for granted. But it isn't so.
I remember a lunch with Mick Jagger's manager in London before I met Mick, who was coming out with a solo album. He kept asking me questions about the record that seemed randomly thrown around, but it was clear he wanted to know if I'd really listened to it.
I laughed and said, 'Do you think I'm going to interview Mick Jagger without having listened to the record?'
He said, 'Most people do, unfortunately.'
But no matter how much you prepare, it's the empathy you create with the artist that counts.
You are, to all intents and purposes, a sort of living 'music encyclopaedia'. Of all the 'close encounters' you have had with the greatest artists in music, which one or ones do you still remember with emotion and participation?
๐ค I have interviewed both David Bowie and Leonard Cohen nine times and they are my best memories.
Bowie in Berlin, London, New York, Rome and Milan. Cohen everywhere, but mostly at his home in Los Angeles.
If there was a mechanism to erase memories, I would ask for these encounters to be put at the bottom of the list.
Everything was perfect, both the outline and their words.
Were there any times when it didn't go as you expected?
๐ค I don't remember interviews that disappointed me. Of course, that time in Munich when Nick Cave threw up on me was not pleasant. He was at the peak of his addiction and he wasn't feeling good. I delude myself that it wasn't a consequence of a question I asked.
What percentage is 'spontaneous' and what percentage is 'planned' in advance in an interview with a musician or a band?
๐ค Let's think of a concert: you can rehearse all the time in the world but, luckily, it will never go exactly as it did when you were rehearsing. You don't know what mood the artist will be in, whether he will be melancholic or cheerful, willing to open up or not.
To give you an example, one of my best interviews was with Elton John in Verona. At one point he opened up, he told me about his odyssey with drugs, he started crying, he said beautiful, touching things. Everyone in the room was moved.
People at the record label were amazed, because they had never seen him like that, so they wanted to buy the interview and publish it worldwide. Yet not long before, I had interviewed Elton John in Oslo, Norway, and he had said normal, almost ordinary things.
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| Massimo Cotto and Paul McCartney. Photo credit: Massimo Cotto's Instagram |
Have you ever found yourself with sweaty palms or a trembling voice thinking of the artist you were about to interview? Or, as a journalist, have you always managed to maintain a certain emotional detachment,a balance?
๐ค I am always happy and excited when I meet an artist, because the journalist always brings along the fan, the music lover. I live my job as the greatest gift life could give me, from a professional point of view of course.
In some interviews you talked about the moment, the exact event that completely changed your life when you were 17. Would you tell us about it?
๐ค I was 17 years old, I was a promising basketball player.
I was on my way to basket practice when I hear a voice on the radio, talking about things I don't understand: fluttering dresses, glass doors on the veranda slamming.
There are two people: a girl called Mary and a man who invites her into his car. He says that those two lanes can take you anywhere, but that the ride will not be free, he talks about redemption, roads, ghosts and dreams.
I don't understand, but I'm hooked.
Then Bruce Springsteen's 'Thunder Road' -which I'd never heard before- comes on...
'There were ghosts in the eyes
Of all the boys you sent away
They haunt this dusty beach road
In the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets'
...and by listening to the lyrics I realise that the speaker had made up a story out of the lyrics.
And then I say to myself 'This is what I want to do: tell stories and talk on the radio'.
Listening to the radio and to radio speakers today (apart from you of course) do you think you could find through words, through a story, the same dazzling inspiration as then?
๐ค Radio world has changed a lot since then. It's hard to relive those moments because the speakers are asked to do something different nowadays. But I'm not nostalgic. Nostalgia is quicksand, one wrong step and you're finished. I look at the past as an elastic band stretched towards tomorrow, otherwise you'll get old quickly.
Music, like other expressions of art, ends up permeating people's lives in every aspect...for you, has it remained confined to your work? Is there something in this sense that you share with your family?
๐ค If you love music, your whole life is music, even when there is no sound. There is music in everything you do. You just have to know how to listen to it.
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| Massimo Cotto and Alice Cooper. Photo credit: Massimo Cotto's Instagram |
๐ค Of course I'm attached to all the books I've written, but my absolute favourite is 'Rock Live', because it's my most personal.
I'm not consciously inspired by any writer, but I've learned a lot from Riccardo Bertoncelli and from American writers such as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Paul Auster, Pat Conroy and especially John Irving.
At the moment, in addition to your daily appointment on Virgin Radio Italia, you are touring a theatre show, 'Decamerock' (from the title of your book published in 2020), in which you talk about cursed and fascinating rock lives, both on stage and even more so behind the scenes, in their lives away from the spotlight. Upcoming projects?
๐ค I have a novel coming out in September. It was a necessity, not a desire to get away. After so many years spent recounting other people's stories (lives), I felt the need to invent. It's a very atypical noir. I consider it a present for my 60th birthday, which I am only on my identity card. Otherwise, I am not yet of legal age.
Of course, I can't help but ask you about Placebo, and I'm very curious about your opinion.
Have you listened to Never Let Me Go? What is your impression about their comeback, about the words and the themes chosen, and about the music as well?
๐ค I love Placebo because Brian Molko is not one to adjust. He has an uncanny ability to play with words and to draw you in. In his songs I always feel urgency to tell, anger and sweetness, the desire to feel part of the world even when you don't like it, the tension between isolation and joy. In this sense, we are mirrored in him and his songs. Regardless of our lives, job, whatever we do, nationality and age, we are all a little bit Brian Molko.
You've said that the words of the artists you've interviewed over the years, don't just remain on the tapes you painstakingly unspooled to write your book 'Rock Is The Answer', to name one, but they often echo in your head and you carry them with you. Are there any Brian's words or statements or lines from their songs that have resonated in your head?
๐ค "Soulmates Never Die". Of course he wasn't referring to love between two people, but to something more universal. He referred to those elective affinities that make us feel glued to someone even though we never met them.
Do you have a funny memory or anecdote related to the interviews you did with Placebo?
๐ค In Milan, in the dressing room at the Assago Forum, I asked him: 'Will you mind if we take a photo together?' He said: 'Yes, I do, but I'm happy to do it anyway'. It has all the Molko I love in it.
Years later, we are in London. I am on the sofa, waiting for my turn to interview him. He drops by for a bite to eat. He greets the press absent-mindedly. He goes up the stairs. Then, after a few steps, he stops, turns around, looks at me, points at me and says: "We have met before, haven't we?".
How he remembered that is really incredible.
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| Massimo Cotto and Michael Stipe. Photo credit: Massimo Cotto's Instagram |
I quote: 'Songs often have the answers, those who compose them do not. Fans worship you like a God, but you're as fragile as all human beings'.
๐ค Is it something you perceive in Placebo too? In Brian Molko in particular?
Brian was brilliant in realising that his frailty couldn't be overcome, but could be wooed and turned into art. To quote Cohen, my and his hero, 'we make ourselves strong through our weaknesses'.
Let's talk about social media. You already know Brian Molko has very precise and unflattering opinions on the subject. You look more friendly, you keep a connection with traditional media but you are always present on Instagram for example, isn't it?
Placebo's Instagram profile was completely emptied last year, and the oldest post currently dates back to 13 September 2021: since then rather 'service' communications and no personal content. Brian recently said that artists are under a lot of pressure from social media and rather than focusing on their art they become content creators for them.
What do you think about? What has the music world lost and gained with the advent of social media? Is there a way for artists to use it in their favour without being crushed by it?
๐ค I don't understand, honestly, the struggle against social media, by anyone, not necessarily Brian. As long as you use social media, as I think I do, without becoming a slave to it, I don't see any problem.
We are also those who follow us. Chiara Ferragni has her audience, I have mine.
What is really important is to be aware that social media are part of the real world, but they are not the real world.
Let's put it this way: social media stand to life as mobile phones at concerts. Taking a photo or video during a concert is fine with me. If you take photos and videos throughout the whole concert, I'm less OK with that.
I remember you said that talent is just the smell of the cake, but not the cake itself. What do you think there is in Placebo besides the talent that made the band so long-lived, but also so alive, so relevant after 26 years?
๐ค Besides what I've already said, I think the real guiding light of Placebo is Brian's unique and unmistakable voice. There is no voice like his in the world music scene.
You have been an author for the Sanremo Festival in several editions. Many of us remember the infamous “San Remo Incident” from 2001:
On 2nd of March Placebo performed “Special K” at the televised awards show Festival di San Remo in Italy, but the show didn't go as planned. To make a long story short, it ended with Brian smashing his guitar, provocating the shocked audience and finally proudly bowing to them before leaving stage. His violent outburst was televised live to 15 million Italian households.
SPECIAL K – SANREMO 2001
https://bit.ly/33yPJSq
But the festival has changed a lot in the last years, I think for example about the participation of Maneskin, much closer to Placebo's style than to the festival's one, and yet they were very successful.
Do you think Placebo from 2001 would be received differently in 2022 by the festival audience? And how do you think 2022's Placebo would deal with the festival and ihants audience?
๐ค That year, in 2001, I was in the stalls, in the front rows. It was great, because the punk spirit in me found nourishment and joy. The Ariston Theatre audience, of course, did not understand, also because most of them had never heard about punk or rock before.
Surely today Brian wouldn't behave like that anymore, for the simple reason that he would never do something in the same way as he has already done before.
Then it made sense: Sanremo Festival was the bourgeoisie opposed to rock. To not be crushed you had to ignore everything and everyone like Springsteen did: he went on stage and left immediately after the performance, or do what Placebo did. Which was kind of like saying, 'Hey, we always remain ourselves, even here in this context'.
THANKS SO MUCH, MASSIMO!
Original Interview by Emanuela, Placebo Anyway
Transcript and translation by Emanuela
If you want to listen again and review the interviews Massimo Cotto did with Placebo:
Milan, Assago Forum, November 15th 2016:
๐ https://bit.ly/3kufLPm
London, Strongroom Studios, February 2022:
๐https://bit.ly/3jitKYd
Post by Emanuela
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