He performed at Lodinein the province of Nuoroyesterday, Sunday 28 December. Ivan Cattaneo it was told to New Sardinia starting from what he dreamed of doing as a child (“The painter. Already at 12-13 years old I was picking through, painting, cutting out, making eyes, mouths…”), passing through the arrival of the passion for music (“At around 16 years old I started playing the guitar…”) and up to his coming out: “It wasn’t even called coming out, the term didn’t exist. I did it because it was unlikely not to. I was a character of that type, I had a political conscience on those issues. I was the singer of Fuori, the homosexual revolutionary front. I and Mario Mieli we were among the founders of the gay movement.”
Then the memories of ‘swinging London’ where he says he met David Bowie: “One afternoon in Portobello, he was supposed to meet with Mark Edwards (producer, ndr) and I was with him. He wasn’t very famous yet. I don’t have a good memory of it, very unpleasant. He was jealous that I was dating Mark. Great artist but humanly I never understood him. Better Cat Stevens.” Again, success with Police sex (“At the time there were no precise models on loves that today we define as fluid, LGBT. There wasn’t that type of model that there is today and I borrowed a Freudian term. Musically it was born with overlapping voices which Mina then took up for ‘Plural and singular’”) and up to the turn towards the world of reality TV: “I made ‘Music farm’ because there were no more music programmes. I have a wonderful memory of it: there were Bertè, Riccardo Fogli, Ricchi e Poveri. I made Big Brother and Isola instead for money”.
When asked if there is a new Ivan Cattaneo around, he replies without doubt: “I see many imitations around: Achille Lauro, Maneskin, Rosa Chemical. But it’s not that they imitate Ivan Cattaneo, but that era that will never be repeated again. They are all signed from head to toe, we dressed ourselves. Maybe Lucio Corsi reminds me and Camerini a bit. The rest is just a fashion factor.”
