Locanda delle fate
Forse le lucciole non si amano più

The right album at the wrong time. It's hard to describe the short career of Locanda delle Fate any other way. Starting in the early Seventies, after the usual string of gigs in dance halls and some Italian covers of foreign hits, the band found its footing with the arrival of Leonardo Sasso, a powerful voice styled after the great Francesco Di Giacomo. Asti is certainly not the center of the world, especially when your idols include the Genesis, Yes, and all the Italian prog of the time, but they still managed to clinch a deal with the prestigious Polydor. With a seven-member lineup, including two keyboardists, and Nico Papathanassiou at the helm, the band seemed to have all the cards in place to make a breakthrough. Success? Not quite.

By '77, the golden age of Italian “pop” had long since ended, and the audience for odd time signatures and eighteen-minute tracks was no longer interested. The LP turned out to be a flop and the band went into crisis, with Sasso being pushed out and a last-ditch effort to keep things afloat by adopting a less challenging style. Within a couple of years, everything would fall apart, repeating a story unfortunately similar to that of many local bands of that era.

But the album? One of the most beautiful of those years, an example of high-level symphonic rock, on par with the great classics. The hallmark? Never trivial lyrics, authentic poetry in music, comparable in depth to those of Banco, always balancing between dreamy and melancholic atmospheres and long and complex but fascinating tracks, all enhanced by Sasso’s voice, one of the few “real” singers on the Italian scene of the period.

The long instrumental A volte un istante di quiete, which opens the first side, immediately highlights the potential of the seven members, but the climax is reached with the piece that gives its name to the entire work, Forse le lucciole non si amano più: it lasts ten minutes, but you wish it would last an eternity. Artistically, it doesn't invent anything new, but everything is reworked tastefully, without copying, emphatically but never cloyingly, with lyrics imbued with memories and nostalgia. Profumo di colla bianca continues the narrative, closing side A beautifully. The lively Sogno di Estunno then gives way to the delicate Non chiudere a chiave le stelle, which seems to anticipate the “melodic” turn the band would attempt some time later. The curtain falls with Vendesi saggezza: if the lyrical level remains extremely high, the true cherry on top is the finale, with the track building up in intensity, enriched by an astounding display of flute and lead guitar. Listen to believe.

Years ago, bassist Luciano Boero published Prati di lucciole per sempre, in which he recounted the entire story of Locanda, and even after forty years, the sting from the total indifference with which the vinyl was received remained strong. Sure, the band, reunited in recent times, would find great satisfaction, even playing in Japan, but from the various chapters of the book, it’s clear their youthful expectations were quite different. One might say: better late than never. Today, Forse le lucciole non si amano più appears in every ranking of Italian prog, right alongside the greats of the genre, exactly where it belongs.

For the past few years, De Agostini has been curating a series dedicated to Italian prog from the golden days, strictly on vinyl, with Guido Bellachioma, a historic writer of the genre, overseeing it all. Naturally, it was also the turn of Forse le lucciole, reissued in a luxurious edition with a gatefold cover and insert with lyrics and interviews. From obscurity to newsstands throughout Italy: who knows if in '77 Sasso and the others would have ever expected it.

Side A

1. A volte un istante di quiete
2. Forse le lucciole non si amano più
3. Profumo di colla bianca

Side B

1. Cercando un nuovo confine
2. Sogno di Estunno
3. Non chiudere a chiave le stelle
4. Vendesi saggezza

• Leonardo Sasso, vocals
• Ezio Vevey, lead guitar, vocals
• Luciano Boero, bass, Hammond
• Giorgio Gardino, drums, vibraphone
• Alberto Gaviglio, flute, guitars, vocals
• Michele Conta, piano, keyboards
• Oscar Mazzoglio, keyboards