Alice's new album Weekend is released today. The title comes from the fact it has been recorded over the weekends the past two years, after the release of her previous Samsara album. In many interviews she has given for the album she also talks about her relationship with Franco Battiato and the music business.
"With Battiato we have always stayed friends and I have continued singing his songs, even recording some like È stato molto bello in 2003. I asked him to write me a song for Samsara and he gave me Eri con me. Now in this album he sings duet with me in late Claudio Rocchi's La realtà non esiste, and he wrote also Veleni, a song sent to Sanremo 2014 and luckily not accepted, The lyrics are by late Manlio Sgalambro, propably his last text" she now says. "Working with Battiato is always a pleasure and comes naturally. He has also written the Italian lyrics to Tante belle cose, a Francoise Hardy cover, masterfully adapting the original."
She's not fond of festivals even after winning Sanremo 1981 and doing Eurovision 1984. "In 1981 I didn't want to go to Sanremo but I was pretty much forced by my label. And then I won. After that I was living in a luggage and by 1984 I almost gave up exhausted and stopped singing."
Instead she continued but by her own terms, doing very anti-commercial choices, "difficult music" and staying away from television and in 1998 she created her own label freeing herself from deadlines, promotional demands and commercialism and today she is her own producer and does what she wants, when and how she wants it. "It's the only way" she says.
Despite all this she smilingly answers "Never say never, life is full of surprises!" when asked if she would go to Sanremo 2015. If it's on her own terms, why not?
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