Enrico Ruggeri

Ruggeri’s earliest musical experiences date back to 1972 when, a 15-year-old student at the Giovanni Berchet classical high school in Milan during the years of student protest, he began playing music in the basement with friends and founded his first band, Josafat, which in 1974, with the entry of Silvio Capeccia, became Champagne Molotov (a name that will recur often in the first part of the singer-songwriter’s solo career).

In 1977, from the merger of Champagne Molotov with the group Clover, Decibel was born, with whom he recorded his first album Punk in 1978, released on Spaghetti Records, which proved to be a failure (a few hundred copies sold).

After the single Indigestione disko and the return of Silvio Capeccia on keyboards, the group moved away from punk sounds, reaching success with participation in the 1980 Sanremo Festival with the song Contessa (music by Fulvio Muzio, lyrics by Ruggeri).

In the spring, having exhausted the momentum of the 45 rpm Contessa, it was the turn of the LP Vivo da re (40 000 copies sold, the group’s biggest hit, reissued in 1986 under the name Decibel) produced by Shel Shapiro, whose title track took part in that year’s Festivalbar, where it ranked 4th, and soon after Decibel set off with the ensuing promotional tour at the hundreds of free radio and TV stations that were sharing the airwaves at that time. Then came the traditional summer events such as the Cantagiro and A Record for Summer.

In 1981 Enrico Ruggeri, following the breakup between the three Spaghetti partners, Crippa, Colombini and Shapiro, sided with Crippa, as opposed to the other members of Decibel, and then embarked on his own solo career produced by what would become his longtime producer, Silvio Crippa, and starting a decades-long collaboration with guitarist Luigi Schiavone.

This resulted in the album Champagne Molotov for the SIF label, which was not as successful as hoped partly due to legal problems with “Spaghetti Records” over the previous contract and disagreements with its former members.

Thanks to the album Polvere (1983) and the single track of the same name, Enrico achieved good success, crowned by the second place at Festivalbar of the title track, which also participated in the Azzurro song contest.

The song Il mare d’inverno (written after a sentimental disappointment and inspired by the Marche town of Marotta in the province of Pesaro-Urbino, where he spent his vacations as a teenager with his mother and aunts, also returning there later), which he would not record until the following year, is entrusted to Loredana Bertè and establishes him as an outstanding songwriter, opening his artistic horizons toward the singer-songwriter genre, though without denying his rock matrix.