This is not an article: it’s an introduction to a series of articles. Actually, to a huge interview. This is different from the rest and may seem off topic, but I don’t think it is. Certainly, it is very important to me because it sort of closes a circle started long, long time ago. An explanation is necessary, of course.

You may know, or not, that I was a musician in my previous life. Someone may argue that I was a wanna-be musician later mutated into a sound engineer and music producer, but that’s not so important. Let’s say I have a solid past record which has a lot to do with music. Musicians, sound engineers, photographers and post-producers have something in common: we all deal with energy rather than matter. Sound and light are something we can’t hold in our hands, differently than paint or clay. That’s one of the things that differentiate us from painters and sculptors.

[Pt. 1 is here.]

I suppose your contact with Tony Stratton-Smith led you to Genesis.

My contact with Tony was a good thing. I didn’t go on being a journalist: I was a big rock fan, but the following year “BIG” magazine kind of folded, because the same publisher started “Man” and “Playman”, and they went, bang! through the roof. So they stopped publishing “BIG”. “BIG” had absorbed “Ciao amici” and became “Ciao Big” and after some chaos it re-emerged as “Ciao 2001”.