Lucio Battisti

Italian singer and songwriter Lucio Battisti had already secured a reputation as one of the most legendary and influential figures in domestic rock and pop long before cancer claimed his life at fifty-five. Born March 5, 1943, in the modest community of Poggio Bustone near Rieti, he saw his family move to Rome in 1950. By the middle of the following decade he was playing with neighborhood groups, among them Campioni.

Drawn toward a professional path in music, Battisti shifted to Milan, then the center of Italy’s recording industry, and approached French talent scout Christine Leroux for guidance. Under her mentorship he composed three major successes in 1966 for fellow performers: “Per Una Lira” for Ribelli, “Dolce di Giorno” for Dik Dik, and “Uno in Più” for Riki Maiocchi. Throughout the remainder of the sixties he kept supplying material to other acts while also releasing his own first singles. One of those compositions, “Balla Linda,” reached the American charts via the U.S. rock band the Grass Roots. Another, “Il Paradiso (If Paradise Is Half as Nice),” topped the British singles chart in 1969 after Amen Corner recorded it.

Capitalizing on that songwriting momentum, Battisti delivered his self-titled debut album the same year, which included the Italian successes “Acqua Azzurra, Acqua Chiara” and “Mi Ritorni in Mente.” He maintained a steady schedule of solo releases across the seventies. In 1977 he settled in Los Angeles and, the following year, issued Images, an album that presented several of his best-known songs newly cut in English. On September 9, 1998, he died of cancer in a Milan hospital at the age of fifty-five.

Following his passing, numerous collections appeared, among them Battisti in 2000 and Canzoni D’Amore in 2001. In 2006 the label Water made 1971’s Amore e Non Amore available again to American listeners, sparking renewed interest among longtime admirers and introducing his work to fresh audiences throughout the English-speaking world. In the years that followed, the bulk of his recordings were remastered and reissued by Sony International, SOI/Universal, and the Mogol Edition imprint of Sony/BMG.