Author(s): Angelique van Os
Date of publication: 7/2004
Multi Music Magazine
ZUCCHERO HAS AFFAIRS
Zucchero has dreamed about it for a logn time: making an album with all the famous artists he shared stages and studios with. In the past two years he finally found time to put all these collaborations together on one album: Zu & Co is the result. Eighteen wonderful tracks from Sting to Vanessa Carlton and even Miles Davis
Fascinated Zucchero looks at the Pickwick tea box. "Do you think I could get a box like that full of tea? We don't have that in Italy" the Italian singer asks his translator. That should be possible she thinks. Of course it's tough for an artist to spent this beautiful day inside a fancy but boring hotel room doing interview after interview. But he also knows: it's part of the job.
Soon the little Italian is sitting relaxed in his chair and plays around with his hat a little. Zucchero has played with almost everybody but when asked he would like to add Aretha Franklin, Anastacia and Peter Gabriel to his worked-with list at a certain point. So eventually it had to happen: a duet album. It took him a 1 1/2 year and the result is a sparkling, fresh album with many different musical styles.
"This album is not a compilation of my work" Zucchero says. "I didn't want that. I wanted to be able to put my artistic views in it and that's why we remixed and rearranged all the songs. It's not easy to please me and a lot of the older recordings sounded a bit dated. If I were to make a new studio album right now it would sound exactly like this album"
On Zu & Co there are both Italian and English songs. He prefers singing in his own language because his voice sounds better. There are also two new songs on the album: Mama get real written with and produced by Mousse T and a new version of J. Warrens Everybody's got to learn sometime with Vanessa Carlton on piano. The collaborations on the album are spread over a period of 15 years.
"It all started in 1988 with Miles Davis. Miles loved the song "Dune Mosse" and asked me to come to New York and record it with him. I was honored and at first thought it was a joke because at that time I was a complete unknown outside of Italy. It didn't really hit me untill I was actually in the studio with him and realised that we were going to record my song together". Zucchero explains that the legendary trumpet player was mostly intruiged by the bluesy theme and the typical Italian melody of the song. This studioproject was followed by several live performances togehter. From that moment on things started moving for Zucchero. His curriculum vitae of the past 20 years is breathtaking, if you consider what he has achieved in that time. In the late 80's he changed from a national star to an international super star famous far outside Italy.
Collaborations have brought him many special moments. Like touring with Eric Clapton. "I remember the first tour I did with Eric through Europe. We played in the Royal Albert Hall and I thought; I would love to play here with my own show and have Eric as a guest, and that happened a on may 6th during the release of the album. Amazing moment that was!"
The contact between artists is give and take. Sometimes Zucchero gets invited like in 1992 when Queen guitarist Brian May asked him to perform with Queen during the Freddy Mercury tribute in Wembley. And sometimes Zucchero takes the initiative although when he started most reactions started with "Zucchero Who?". Now things are a lot easier. For instance he wanted to record the song Like the sun together with macy Gray because he thought her voice would fit the song. "I didn't know her, only met her briefly after a concert once so I just asked if she wanted to do something. She reacted enthousiastically so I send her the song and then didn't hear anything for 6 months so I figured she wasn't interested after all. And then she called unexpected at 3 in the morning to say she did want to record the song after all".
Zucchero appreciates it when artists approach him personally and does that himself too: artists are a lot more honest and direct towards eachother than the recordcompanies and managers according to Zucchero; "they either say yes, I want to do this, or no, I don't care for it". Working with all these artists does mean it takes a lot of time getting it all together. The production of Zu & Co took more than a year. Most songs, except for the ones recorded with Davis and John Lee Hooker, have been recorded in between tours and private projects in so Zucchero was forced to have a lot of patience while he did want the album done before may. This meant that some artists didn't make the album; Peter Gabriel wanted, but was only available in october. Zucchero would've loved to also have a song with Ray Charles and his idol Joe Cocker on the album but also because of scheduling this fell apart (and now of course with Charles' death it will never happen), and the Cocker songs would have taken too much work.
The two stars have 7 live duets ready on Zucchero's shelf. The Italian thought it unwise to put them out without working on them but the songs are still there so who knows in the future. Besides American and English stars the Italians are represented by Bocelli and pavarotti.