In January 1972 Storia di un minuto went to number one on the Italian album chart a week after release, which no Italian album had ever done. In November of the same year, PFM put out another one. Same label, same producers, same cover artist, almost exactly the same length, and five more tracks of some of the best music anybody made in Europe that decade. Italians have been arguing about which of the two is better for fifty years and they are not going to stop. Nothing about that argument is a criticism of this record.

The short version

Their second album, released in November 1972 on Numero Uno in a fold-out sleeve, five tracks, thirty-four minutes. Franco Mussida plays acoustic, twelve-string and electric guitar, and a mandolone; Flavio Premoli plays piano, harpsichord, Hammond, Mellotron and Moog and sings lead; Mauro Pagani plays flute, piccolo and violin; Giorgio Piazza plays bass; Franz Di Cioccio plays drums. Everybody sings. The band produced it themselves with Claudio Fabi arranging alongside them. Two of the five tracks run past eight minutes and there is not a wasted bar on the record.

Two albums in one year

The label was Numero Uno, which belonged to Lucio Battisti’s circle and which in 1972 could do no wrong, and the strategy was not damage control — the debut had gone straight to the top. It was simply a matter of using the moment while it lasted and showing everything this band could do, which is exactly what Numero Uno did with Battiato and what Banco’s label did with Banco in the same year. The cost was borne by the listeners, who had to buy twice, and by the records themselves, which have been chained together ever since: Storia di un minuto and its permanent younger brother. Then in 1973 Pete Sinfield took pieces from both, wrote English words over them, and PFM became the first Italian band anyone outside Italy had heard of. Half of what went to England came from here.

The sound

Denser and more angular than the debut, and that is the whole of the dispute. Storia di un minuto flows; this one is built in blocks, and where you stand depends on whether you want an album to carry you or to keep surprising you. Premoli is extraordinary throughout — harpsichord, Mellotron, Hammond and Moog handled with a fluency almost nobody in Europe could match — and Pagani’s flute and violin do the work that makes PFM Italian rather than a very good Genesis. The vocals stay gentle and unshowy, which is rare in RPI and part of why this band travelled. The comparisons are unavoidable and mostly fair: early King Crimson, ELP at their most pastoral, and Gentle Giant, whose ghost some Italian listeners hear in every corner of this album. PFM never share Gentle Giant’s compulsion to fracture everything. They just do the hard parts quietly.

The songs

Appena un po’ opens at nearly eight minutes and is the piece most people would put on a PFM anthology — it became a staple of the English version and has never left the live set. Generale is the short one at four and a quarter. The title track runs five and a half. Then side two goes long: Il banchetto at eight and a half, the banquet, harpsichord-led and reaching openly for early Crimson, with an improvised middle section that divides listeners exactly as Moonchild does — some hear the album’s peak, some hear it stall. Geranio closes at eight, quiet and lovely at the start, and with an ending that a fair number of people, including admirers, find genuinely odd. Five tracks. Two masterpieces, two very good songs, and one argument.

Reception and legacy

It made them. The debut had topped the chart at home; this one is the record that put PFM on the map, and the band still play every track on it. Abroad, the material went out through Photos of Ghosts and did what no Italian progressive album had done before. The reservations are worth knowing: it is short, it is patchier than the debut, and there is a school — a minority, but a serious one — that says Storia di un minuto is a single unbroken thing and this is a handful of stones dropped on a table. Giorgio Piazza left after the following album and did not play for nearly forty years; when he came back, in the 2010s, what he took on stage with a group of young musicians was this material.

The verdict

Essential. Storia di un minuto first, always, and then this immediately — they were made ten months apart and they belong together whatever the argument says. Play Appena un po’ and Il banchetto. Then L’isola di niente for the band with Djivas and more range, Banco’s Darwin for the rival throne, and Photos of Ghosts if you want to hear what Sinfield made of all this in English. Two albums in one year, both of them very nearly perfect. It was a good year.

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