One track survived the RAI ban. One. Everything else on this album was unbroadcastable in 1973, and the title is the band telling you so before you drop the needle. Alvaro Fella’s account of it is the least self-pitying thing you will read from a musician: they never regretted the choice, because all that interested them was finishing what they had built, even at the price of only ever playing it live. Fifty years on he says the group is proud of that decision, and the record is still one of the most listened-to of its era — by young people, not just by the ones who were there.

The short version

This is the third and last Jumbo album, recorded at the Phonogram studios in Milan and released on Philips in 1973. Six long compositions and two shorter episodes. Alvaro Fella sings and plays acoustic guitar, electric piano, organ and saxophone, and wrote nearly all of it; Daniele Bianchini plays electric guitar; Sergio Conte plays keyboards, organ and Mellotron; Dario Guidotti plays acoustic guitar, flutes, harmonica and sistrum; Aldo Gargano plays bass and Mellotron. The drummer is new: Tullio Granatello, from Novara, has replaced Vito Balzano. The band lasted until 1976.

Battiato on the VCS 3

The label gave them a rehearsal room on via Benadir in Milan, in the building where every Phonogram record was pressed — they worked inside the vinyl factory. Fella credits the leap directly to the new drummer: Granatello’s style pushed them to attempt musical solutions newer and more complex than anything on the first two albums. And the sessions close with a long collective improvisation over a Fella text, with guests: Franco Battiato on VCS 3 synthesiser, Lino Vaccina on percussion, Lino Gallo on slide guitar and Angelo Vaggi on Moog. That is where the avant-garde element in this record comes from, and it is not decorative.

The sound

Sonic originality completely detached from the anglophone models — Genesis, Gentle Giant, Yes, Van der Graaf Generator — that most Italian groups were working from. What is here instead: Bianchini’s Hendrix-shaped guitars, a powerful and versatile rhythm section, organ and Mellotron, flute and saxophone, and the voice. And the voice is finally solved. Fella’s singing, once overbearing and often over-modulated, is far more enjoyable here and much better blended into the band, thanks to a more calibrated mix than on the previous records. The complaint that dogged the first two albums does not apply to this one.

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The songs

Il ritorno del signor K is exactly what it sounds like: the sequel to Suite per il Sig. K, which had taken up all of side one on DNA. Specchio goes everywhere — Fella’s harsh voice, heavy prog, a formidable guitar and organ jam that gives way to a slower violin passage and then back to the opening theme. Come vorrei essere uguale a te starts bucolic on acoustic guitar and then detonates into a huge groove carried by the rhythm section, with only Fella’s voice above it — and it is the one the RAI let through. The words throughout are uncomfortable by design, and the question mark in the title is doing real work.

Reception and legacy

The Italian verdict is close to unanimous: their masterpiece, their artistic summit, the album of Jumbo’s maturity for its sincerity, imagination and production, and a milestone of Italian progressive music. Of the three Italian bands you could call angry, these were the angriest, and this is where it lands — one listener calls the record extraordinarily raw, sincere and disturbing in its beauty. The dissent is worth hearing too: some find it too concentrated on the words and on the singer’s emphasis, and prefer DNA, where the balance between music and lyrics leaves more room for the other soloists. Fella’s voice can be harsh and may take getting used to.

The verdict

Essential, and know what you are putting on. Come vorrei essere uguale a te first, since it is the one the country was allowed to hear. Then Il ritorno del signor K, and then go back to DNA for the first half of that story. Then Specchio, when you are ready for it. In 2023 Fella, Guidotti and Conte reformed with Marco Croci of Maxophone and two players from Consorzio Acqua Potabile, played the Prog and Frogs festival and released a live album from it. Fifty years after a record almost nobody was allowed to broadcast, they went out and played it to people who had chosen to come.

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