Franco Battiato

"I came to understand certain things after many years of study and research, and through my experiences. Afterwards, reintroducing myself to society was not easy. I had trouble recognizing human beings when I was on the street or on the tram. It was strange: I didn't understand if I was crazy or a mystic. But I realized that the journey on this planet is decisive. We must escape the rules of the universe."

"If you are unable to watch something different from yourself, it is because you need an enemy. Italian politics has influenced certain attitudes in this regard. In Venice, it has always been this way since Fellini onwards. Once, the police had to rescue Carmelo Bene because they wanted to kill him. They uprooted the chairs in the cinema."

"The crisis in human beings is decisive, otherwise existence is useless. I have taken refuge in what is called metaphysics because I am someone who believes that human beings are immortal."

"(Speaking of Giorgio Gaber) In the mid-1970s, we spent wonderful evenings talking and playing poker until morning. Giorgio was an impressive listener. He was extremely intelligent, curious, and open-minded. Being a perfectionist, he could not stand (and in this he was fierce) incivility, incompetence, sloppiness, delinquency as a philosophy of life... And then there was corrupt politics. [...] The passing of such a man in our midst was, for me, yet another proof that life is not a matter of chance."

"Inner evolution has no party. Those who want me on one side or the other do not appreciate my music, and if they think they do, it is a misunderstanding. In 1982, during a concert in Verona, I sang “Centro di gravita' permanente” and found myself surrounded by four thousand outstretched arms: it was mind-blowing. However, the left has committed crimes as horrible as those of the right throughout the world."

"I am naturally a contemplative person. Scents and the air are like a remote control that turns off the world for me."

"Morgan is a very knowledgeable guy, I would say a complete musician because he also has a classical background, and this helps a lot, because as the saying goes, “the more you know, the more you're worth,” and if you also have talent, as in his case, that's it."

"(Speaking of the reality show ‘'L'isola dei famosi’') I don't want to feel intelligent watching idiots, I want to feel like an idiot watching intelligent people."

"I have been a committed vegetarian for many years, I can't even remember how many. Even as a child I refused to eat meat, I just didn't like it. [...] Over time, being vegetarian has become an existential necessity. I can no longer eat something that is close to human sensitivity. And one day, long ago, I realized that my choice was irreversible. [...] Also because I see the results on my health and my mental state. Since I banned meat and fish, I have had better dreams, and I know for sure that it depends on the food I eat."

"Morgan is not a carbon copy of the Americans or the British, but an independent thinker, and it's nice to hear him speak."

"There are storytellers from the island, such as Bufalino, Sgalambro, Tomasi di Lampedusa, who made their debut late in life. It is as if, for years, they had pointed a large telescope at the surrounding world. Then, drawing on their reserves and giving us, as Bufalino does, novels of overflowing sensuality, a Dionysian Sicily, full of flavors and colors."

"The bad moments I've had in my life have only been cosmological in nature. Once during the night I got up, came into this room and looked my fear in the face, carefully, and the crisis was resolved. It's not easy, because at that moment you feel like a being thrown into nothingness, you have no ties to anything. It is the dark night of St. John of the Cross, suffering that seems insurmountable, unbearable, and yet you can overcome it in the blink of an eye. Just remember that we are impermanent. We think we are eternal, and that is our misfortune. They don't teach us how to die in school; the ancient Egyptians, on the other hand, built a civilization around death."

"‘’Il Gioco dell'Eroe‘’ by Gianluca Magi is a large stone thrown into a still pond. An invitation to inner life and its (inevitable) evolutionary transmutation."

"And then culture is a difficult word to interpret. We are one of those countries that has only thought about stealing."

"The extraordinary and disastrous event, albeit pleasantly bizarre, is death. One day I will die silently, I will enter esoteric and synoptic spaces, moving in siderurgical and negotiable conditions. Farewell world, I will say then. I am dead forever."

"Battiato [...] is considered an intellectual author, but if you analyze his lyrics, they are complete nonsense: quotes upon quotes with no real meaning."

"He is a great personality, a national treasure, the representative of the best Sicilian and Italian culture."

"Una canzone del 1991 del cantautore Battiato, intitolata Povera patria, riuscì a cogliere in anticipo lo spirito dei tempi. L'Italia vi era rappresentata «schiacciata dagli abusi del potere | di gente infame che non sa cos'è il pudore», abitata da «governanti, quanti perfetti e inutili buffoni!», ma «la primavera tarda ad arrivare [...] non cambierà, non cambierà, | no cambierà, forse cambierà». Dalla canzone Viva l'Italia del 1979 di De Gregori, in cui era orgogliosamente rivendicata, con esplicito riferimento alla strage di piazza Fontana, «l'Italia del 12 dicembre, | l'Italia con le bandiere, l'Italia nuda come sempre, | l'Italia con gli occhi aperti nella notte triste, | viva l'Italia, l'Italia che resiste», erano trascorsi soltanto dodici anni, ma quelle parole sembravano provenire da un'altra epoca. La percezione di questa sfasatura temporale derivava dal fatto che la canzone di De Gregori illuminava il passato della nazione mentre quella di Battiato il suo futuro: come se in quell'arco di tempo sospeso e improvvisamente dilatato, l'Italia fosse stata presa in un vortice, sollevata da un turbine e poi precipitata giù."

"He once came to visit us in Montreux while we were recording Zero, and we spent two wonderful days with him, during which he taught us so much. I, [...] am always looking for a father figure. Not only in music: he took us to a Middle Eastern restaurant, where he ordered in Arabic. But somehow, we managed to take him to McDonald's: he had never been there before. We let him try fries with ketchup. At first he was suspicious, but he took a fry, dipped it in ketchup, and said, “Guys, this is delicious! What have I been missing...”"

"We are faced with a double temptation when viewing his [pictorial] works: on the one hand, we would like to indulge in a naive judgment, unaccompanied by the clamor that comes from his legend as a musician, singer, and poet; on the other hand, we feel that we cannot escape this legend, as it necessarily conspires to give us the complete portrait of the man. In other words, if we were to try to channel Battiato's painting into a convenient bed of neo-primitivism, forgetting the operational and intellectual richness that underpins it, it would risk appearing to us as the hobby of an episodic and half-hearted artist; whereas, on the contrary, observing it with both eyes, those of nature and those of culture, we will see its colors marry affectionately with the notes, words, and meditations of the author, and in this alliance, not to say connivance, explain to us the unmistakable signature of a soul."

"(Referring to the degenerative disease that had affected Battiato) He was always Franco. He always had been, regardless of outward appearances. In fact, perhaps that day he was even more so."

"The last time I saw him was in Milo in 2020. I went to visit him at his home and we spent the whole day together. They were intense moments in which words were unnecessary."

"In the 1980s, Franco and I had common interests beyond music. We had both arrived, by different paths, at the teachings of the philosopher and mystic Gurdjieff. In 1981, I was given his book ‘'Meetings with Remarkable Men’', and it took me two years before I opened it: I read it in one sitting. I was finally ready."

"Interviewer: “How much did Battiato influence your career?” Alice: A great deal. Before meeting Franco, I probably would have stopped singing because I had already tried twice and failed to achieve what I wanted."

"My desire was to be an instrument of what Franco conveyed musically and what he communicated. This is fundamental for me: what Franco left us is a precious gift that must be watered, nourished, and kept alive forever, even if there were no need to do so. His records, his films, and his paintings bear witness to his thoughts and his culture. He called himself a “man of music.” He was unique."