July 1971. Amore e non amore, Lucio Battisti’s new 33 LP, is his first real album, with unreleased tracks. Audiences and critics are baffled: an extraordinarily successful singer invents a concept, sings four rock pieces, conducts the orchestra in four instrumental compositions with very long titles written by Mogol. Published a year late, Amore e non amore anticipa the progressive rock atmospheres that depopulate in England, amazes for the mysterious naked woman on the cover, marks the end of relations with the Ricordi. The single Dio mio no is considered too daring by the listening commission of RAI, but despite the censorship will be a success. It is the beginning of a new season for Italian music: that of progressive. Amore e non amore is a seed that will bear excellent fruit: the following progressive episode Le tre verità, the television experiment of Tutti Insieme, the sound laboratories as a Anima latina. This book retraces the making of of a work that is not in depth, photographing a key year in the history of our music, from compositional experimentation to the flower power spirit of the cover, from the freedom of work in the studio to the break with the respectability of Italy at the time.
