Lily Island The song is dedicated to Gianni and to the wonderful Lily Island. He was a great lover of sailing boats. With him I have had the chance to look at the island in a unique way from a corner of an uncontaminated sea in an autumn day with the sun that seemed to pave the way to his tenacity and his courage. The image of the Tirrenian Sea azure waters will always remain impressed in my mind as to remind me of so many moments spent with him. The Spirit of St Louis Spirit of St Louis is a song written for my son Daniel. I found a tune based upon a samba and I wanted to write brilliant words to join the melody. I spent several nights awake to observe him, comparing the dimensions of his hands with my head and vice versa. I realised I was watching him as a portrait of Maigrette or a painting of Monet. I wanted to find a way to express my happiness and I compared it with Lindbergh’s happiness to see the European land during his first flight to Paris. 2pm - The three of you This song is composed by 2 different tunes. I had written two instrumental tunes in the years that did’t have an own identity. Every once in a while I played them between one song and another. Thanks to a poem (Tre di te) written by a dear friend who asked me to try and find a music for it, I succeeded in composing this patchwork starting and ending with a melody named 2:00 pm and in between the second melody, The three of you, finds his place. The song was born from this puzzle and would like to slowly diclose itself to the listener before getting him back to reality, as if in a walk at two o’clock in the afternoon. Dedicated to Monotics Monotics is a follow-up of Hunger in the chest, song that was part of my cd The stage. The title is a joke to identify a new way to do politics that is thinking in one way only: one’s own. This is a song I wrote in a moment of anger against the world and against my country that doesn’t seem to react in order to gain credibility. During a vacation in Malta, I read a proverb of American Natives that says: We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. The birth of my son Daniel put me in front of a terrible challenge: to justify the deterioration of this world in front of his eyes. Woody stanzas Villa La Petraia in Firenze has always been a place of worship to me. The trees, the lakes, the panorama, the silence are the other side of real life that it is hardly perceivable from afar and that seems to belong to another world. My Grandmother lived in a small house at the entrance of the park so that I was lucky to have the chance to visit the park at anytime, even when visitors were not admitted. I wrote this song in November 1979, when I was still attending the University that was close to my Grandma’s home and I often took a walk in the park to relax myself. I had the clear perception of the Spirit that moves everything in the Universe. Matter of limits I wrote this song in May 1988 when the record Exiles by Dan Fogelberg was just published. In a part of the album cover there is a broken glass with some red wine poured on a white table. I have always coupled this image with the moment in which I became aware I would have never met Marco again. Everytime I play this song I realise my limits as a human being that cannot give an explanation to some facts in one’s life. But in the ignorance of humility I accept a meaning for that, as the one in an abstract painting. Bach to Brahms I wrote this one in 2013. Bach and Brahms are among my favourite composers. I owe a lot to some melody I have been listening to since I was a child, because they helped me understand the great power of music on the human soul. I hold dear Eine kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart, because my Primary school teacher asked us to paint something while listening to that, as to convert our feelings in a drawing. The Suite n. 3 in D Maj by Bach always recalls to me the Spirits that moves everything in the Universe. I recently fell in love with the 4rth movement of the Symphony n. 1 by Brahms for its romantic rapture. I wrote this tune after receiving a cd as a gift by a dear friend of mine, containing prestigious recordings of Bach and Brahms. I dedicated this song to him. Daniel G. I started writing this song for my son in August 2013 and I recorded it a month before he was born. In the beginning of the song I tried to imagine what he could hear from inside his position, when I was playing the guitar. Therefore, in this part of the song I play the same notes in two different ways: the harmonics are what I imagined he could hear of notes I regularly played on the guitar neck. Afterwards I recorded the song and put it on an iPad. During the delivery, I played the song continuously, so that he was born listening to his own song. I don’t know how to play the blues I like blues, but I am not so skilled in playing the blues. This is the reason why I wrote a song like this. I had the honor to play with talented artists that, differently from me, perfectly know how to play the blues. Therefore, I tried to find funny words to describe a scene as if I were on a stage playing a blues in front of an audience. I almost apologize for not being a bluesman and I suggest people to have a chat and drink a beer, in order to distract themsleves from my poor performance, before starting a new song, hopefully not another blues! Come in This is a bucolic anthem dedicated to life, a sort of exhortation for everyone to enjoy what nature gave us, trying not to keep anything out of the door. Everything is part of one’s life, good and bad things. Technically speaking, the song is a finger picking exercise joined with cheerful lyrics in order to possibly convey optimism and will of life. Everytime I play and sing this song it works for me and I hope it may have the same effect for the listener, as a medicine to take at time of need. In case of unexpected depression give a listen to it: who knows… Where did our love go wrong? After the fina scene of my first love, I tried to revisit it trying to identify the reasons of its failure. I did not succed in it but I began to understand that, in the beginning of every relationship, we receive signals, but we often ignore them. Then, to try and fix broken hearts is almost impossible, because we often slide on the same errors and we lose the right way to go. A love is its own history product and, if we are not capable to accept it, this is a continuous threaten to one’s life serenity. But I understood this a lot of time after. I wrote this song in May 1981 and its groove was inspired by a wonderful song by Stephen Bishop, Madge, contained in his record Careless. ‘Round and ‘round This is a song I wrote in December 1980, when my life was deeply changing. I was having facing many failures in my life and I had to start againg with bowed head due to many disillusionments I had experienced. Therefore, on one hand I had my mind busy thinking about life and on the other hand I felt my feet longing to move forward, in some cases to run, even though they did not always know where to go. But I was feeling that I had to leave the floor to movement that, at some extent, is an antidote for depression. I did not know where I was going, but I was moving, putting considerations off to a future moment.