Premiata Forneria Marconi made two albums in 1972, Storia di un minuto and Per un amico. The next year several of those pieces came out again in English, on Photos of Ghosts. That is where my book starts reading the records side by side.

Premiata Forneria Marconi: The Story of a Progressive Rock Band from Milan is part of my Portraits series, one band to a book. It follows PFM record by record, from the sessions its first members played in the late 1960s to I Dreamed of Electric Sheep, released in 2021. If you want a PFM biography built on release pages, credits and track lists rather than on legend, this is it.

I read each record as a document: the label, the catalogue number, the track list, the durations and the credits as its release pages print them, edition by edition. Where a record came out in different forms in different countries, each form is read on its own page; where a record carries two languages, the two discs are read as two discs.

What is inside the PFM book

• Storia di un minuto and Per un amico, the two albums of 1972, and the session years before the band had its name
• Photos of Ghosts and The World Became the World, read beside the Italian albums they came from
• Live in U.S.A. and Cook, the title under which the same concert record was issued abroad
• Chocolate Kings and Jet Lag, with Bernardo Lanzetti on vocals
• The concerts with Fabrizio De André, released as his two live albums of 1979 and 1980, with arrangements by PFM
• The records of the 1980s, from Suonare suonare to Miss Baker
• Ulisse in 1997, ten years after Miss Baker, then Serendipity, Dracula and Stati di immaginazione
• Emotional Tattoos and I Dreamed of Electric Sheep, each with an English and an Italian disc

Free with the book: a downloadable reference card. A two-sided bonus sheet, reached by a QR code at the back of the book, lists the studio albums and the live records the book reads, each with its label, catalogue number and year, and the line-up of each studio album as its release page credits it. You can also download the free PFM reference card here.

How the book works

Every judgment is attributed in the sentence that carries it: critics in Prog, Classic Rock, Rolling Stone Italia, Relix, Linkiesta and Rockit, and the reviewers of ProgArchives. The musicians’ own accounts come from interviews and from the band’s website, and they are given as theirs. Where two sources disagree, I say so. No lyrics are reproduced and no artwork is described.

The private lives of the musicians are not the subject of this book: it is about the records. This is an independent work, not authorised by the band, by its members or by any record company.

Where the book fits

It stands on its own and assumes no other reading. If you want the wider picture of Italian progressive rock, my Beyond the Alps tells it in full; see the Beyond the Alps page. For the other bands I have written about, see the Portraits series.

PFM on Prog Atlas

The site has full guides to the band, its records and its musicians. If you want the whole story told in one place, this is the Premiata Forneria Marconi book.

More: which edition to buy of Storia di un minuto and of Per un amico, and the best prog rock albums for listeners of PFM.

The musicians: Franz Di Cioccio, Franco Mussida, Flavio Premoli, Mauro Pagani and Patrick Djivas.