Bo Hansson
Lord of the Rings

Many years ago, there was a kid who, in his beautiful city, breathed an atmosphere of dreams for those like him who were about to become passionate about rock music. The older boys wore long hair and in the summer wore colorful psychedelic t-shirts while in winter they sported maxi coats that reached down to their ankles. 

 Every new release was a joy, savored by turning over the large and fragrant cardboard cover of the album bought by someone and exchanged (after memorizing it) with others in the real and non-virtual community, with the recommendation to be careful with the record player needle. Lyrics were translated from English and transcribed into a notebook, mixing progressive with hard rock without being branded with ignominy as belonging to one or the other current, and those who demonstrated knowing a little more about the music we were interested in were a sort of prophet who, in an era where there were no means of information beyond the printed paper and the radio, became a point of reference. Write reviews? To what end? Stuff for old fogies, not for kids even if passionate, since when we met we could animatedly discuss the skill of a singer like Robert Plant or the mastery of a Squire on bass.

 For example, word of mouth and a loaned copy of Bo Hansson's album secured him sales in droves for at least two-three years. The cover with the hand offering the Ring of Sauron, which I now find all worn on the spine, was of incredible charm among us kids who listened from A for Argent to Z for Zappa. The name Bo Hansson meant nothing to us (and not even to the magical Debaser Database), but he was a skilled Swedish multi-instrumentalist (a Mike Oldfield ante litteram) who had achieved good success at home in tandem with a jazz drummer, so much so that Jimi Hendrix on his Sweden tours wanted the duo as the opener of his concerts, even recording some jam sessions (whose tapes are still in someone's hands who has yet to decide to release them). Actually, "Lord of the Rings" from 1972 was a British reissue by Charisma, after the success that the original titled "Sagan Om Ringen" had had two years earlier in Sweden.

 Hansson was a virtuoso of the organ and moog and in this album also plays electric guitar and bass, accompanied by the talented percussionist Rune Carlsson and a saxophonist and a flutist. The work, entirely instrumental, was inspired by Tolkien's eponymous work and is permeated by a manly melancholy crossed by a psychedelic mood sometimes very similar to Pink Floyd's Live at Pompeii. Explicitly in this sense are the beautiful "At The House Of Elrond/The Ring Goes South" and the echoes that journey through the lively "The Old Forest/Tom Bombadil".

 Elsewhere, Hansson manages to merge Ennio Morricone with the Floyd, such as in the evocative opener "Leaving Shire", which uses a martial rhythmic carpet on which the languid notes of the moog intertwine and Hammond organ openings. Or he manages to surprise the listener by recalling the Latin percussion of Santana in the luxurious "The Black Riders/Flight To Elrond" (Hammond at full throttle and final guitar solo) and the gallop of "Shadowfax" with Gandalf's steed in full stride.

 The other gems on the second side are the melancholic "Lothlorien" which takes up the tribal percussive groove of the opener and the gallant battle of "The Horns Of Rohan/The Battle Of Pelennor Fields", where the drums' plates mimic the clash of swords and the moog outlines tracers of arrows crossing the sky.

 An album that still preserves its charm today but that the professional "downloaders" (a word with a double meaning) will be ready to condemn as irremediably dated, because it is too focused on the obsolete sound of organ and moog, which for us Italians is so reminiscent of the Guardiano del Faro (hahaha... God keep us&free us!). But how much does today's judgment count?

TODAY music is enclosed in a stream of data downloadable from the net, a kid no longer exchanges records but files. In a few weeks, they possess all the musical knowledge produced over the last forty years and are ready to discuss it with assurance by writing reviews after a cursory listen. The cover? Maybe they see it for the first time to post it along with their musical research done on the internet and will neither smell its scent nor enjoy its touch. The lyrics? TODAY, with all the backlog there is to listen to, who has the time to understand what the heck Van der Graaf had to say in their obscure stories of killer fish or houses without doors? The musical genres? TODAY whoever shoves Odin's lance up their ass finds Rick Wakeman's fiddlings with the six wives of Henry VIII ridiculous and vice versa.

 And the votes, the damn votes? TODAY kids are more upset about a bad review of their work than about failing in school. The friends with whom TODAY discuss music? Anonymous people hidden behind a nickname and of whom you don't even know if they have a silly face and/or a hot sister.

 TODAY those who know more than you and have a background (how I like the sound of this word!) are no longer a reference but a know-it-all and a blowhard. Once, John Lennon could either be liked or not (for the record, I was for the latter), but he was anyway deserving of the utmost respect for all he gave to rock. TODAY there are people who claim to love music and then on these same virtual pages chant the praises of Lennon's killer, and the beauty is that it gets published too!

  And what can you do, cry as you bore yourself to death with the freshly tanned uallera? (Yes, as a hippie, I bathe completely nude in the face of the metal-loving yet hypocritical kids who infest Debaser). Better to laugh about it...

"So let the end of the world come in eighty days!!!"

"Forty, dad, that was the around the world..."

(La Smorfia, 1979)