Ricky Portera

Born in Messina, he moved with his family to Modena two months after his birth.
Ricky Portera’s first approach to the music scene dates back to July 1969, when he joined Club72, a group formed a few years earlier in Castelfranco Emilia that included Danilo Bastoni (keyboards), Augusto Menozzi (vocals), Renato Tabarroni (percussion), Gianni Suzzi (bass), Gabriele Mattioli (tenor and baritone sax), Dino Melotti (tenor sax) and Portera (lead guitar).

He is a founder with Gaetano Curreri of Stadio, with whom he also tried his hand as a singer on the songs Un fiore per Hal (featured on the group’s first album and on the Borotalco soundtrack) and La mattina (featured on the Q disc Chiedi chi erano i Beatles).

A historical collaborator of Lucio Dalla, he has also been a guitarist for Ron and other Italian authors such as Eugenio Finardi and Loredana Bertè. Dalla wrote and dedicated to Portera the song Grande figlio di puttana, which became, in 1982, Stadio’s first major hit.

After leaving the Stadio he continued his career as a session man collaborating with Nek, Samuele Bersani, Massimo Bozzi, Robert Cara (produced by Dalla). He participated in the Sanremo Festival in 1996 alongside Paola Turci for the song Volo così and in 2006 with Anna Tatangelo for the song Essere una donna.

In 1990 he released his first self-titled solo album. Saxophonist James Thompson and Giovanni Pezzoli of Stadio collaborate on the record.

In 1996 he returned to work with Dalla in the studio and live, after almost a decade apart. In 2007 his second solo album, Ci sono cose, was released, in which he also reprises the Stadio classic Canzoni alla radio, written in 1986 together with Luca Carboni.

For the occasion he reassembles the original nucleus of Stadio, Giovanni Pezzoli on drums, Marco Nanni on bass, and Gaetano Curreri. The same year he received honorary citizenship of Mistretta, in the province of Messina, his father’s hometown.

At the initiative of a local youth association, a guitar school for beginners and non-beginners, taught by the artist himself, was opened.