Mauro Paoluzzi is a name that embodies multi-dimensional personalities and professionalism. As the most zealous aficionados and listeners know well, Mauro Paoluzzi’s signature includes an incredible number of overwhelming Italian music successes, from the 70s up to today. A musician who has evolved over the years into composer and record producer, Paoluzzi has contributed to the consecration of iconic and revolutionary artists like Gianna Nannini, the first Italian rocker to garner acclaim not only in Italy, but also abroad. Nannini triumph with the song ‘America’ is inextricably linked Paoluzzi, an authentic blend that absorbs and amplifies the creativity and talent of the artists he met during his long and prolific career.

A goldmine of anecdotes and sensations about the Italian and international music-scene protagonists, Mauro Paoluzzi leads the scene, drawing on an inexhaustible wealth that leads him to new challenges: past and present blend with a broad and forward-looking vision of the future that feeds on the desire to continuously give emotions to lovers of poetry of quality musical compositions.

You are a composer, producer, record producer, drummer and guitarist. What roles make you feel the most comfortable?

I was born as a drummer: I played the drums from the ’60s to the’ 80s, then I evolved into guitarist and composer in the ’70s, thus discovering my compositional vein. From the ‘80s to today I am a producer and composer. Today, my favorite instrument is guitar, even if the drums remain in my DNA. My most comfortable role today is that of producer, because it gives me creative space to express my ideas more completely, with a total vision the composition I am working on.

‘America’ by Gianna Nannini is certainly high up amongst your successes there is certainly, and was a song and a record that, starting from the cover, was a clear attack on conventional beliefs and society. How did you come up with the idea? Was it just a provocation?

Surely provocation was a key ingredient for the album’s mood and the cover was its natural consequence. In the midst of a male-dominated rock scene, the song ‘America’ composed by me, with lyrics by Roberto Vecchioni and Gianna Nannini, was an alternative style. The song hit in Germany first and then in Italy. A free feminine spirit was being born and Gianna was its spokesperson. In fact, the feminist movement had been struggling since the mid-1960s and the concept of an America as the land where everything is possible, and dreams can come true are what the much-celebrated “American Dream” reaffirms.