I interviewed Daniele Baldelli twice in 2006, once in London in May and a second time in his Italian home in Cattolica, near Rimini, in July. The first interview followed a rare international appearance by Daniele at Plastic People, where his trippy-funky sound and mesmeric mixing combinations blew away a small but ecstatic gathering. The second came during an extended visit to Rimini and amounted to one in a series of interviews conducted with Italian DJs following a request by Maurizio Clemente, the Italian publisher of Love Saves the Day, that I write a history of Italian DJ/dance culture (Amore salva il giorno?). Although much of the interviewing was fascinating it soon became apparent that I wasn’t going to get around to writing that history . In large part it was because I had too many other books that felt more urgent, beginning with the Arthur Russell biography and continuing with the book that’s become Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-83. As soon as it became clear that the new book wasn’t going to get past 1983 I realised that the Italian book simply wasn’t going to happen, and although that came with all sorts of regrets, I recall also concluding that I didn’t feel that the recording side of Italian dance culture filled me with enough enthusiasm to want to pursue that project; indeed even the Italian DJs I interviewed seemed to have at best fleeting interest in Italian domestic music releases. Along with the challenge of conducting interviews/research in Italian, that seemed to foreclose the Italian history—a history that I hope someone else will write, because there are important stories to be told. But there’s no reason to let all of those interviews gather dust, so I thought that I’d try to publish some of them, beginning with the one I remember most clearly. Electronic Beats agreed to run with the idea and the full version of the interview is available here.

You first started to DJ in 1969 at Tana Club in Cattolica. How did that come about?

In Cattolica there was a little club called Tana club and I was there like a client, a dancer. I think it opened maybe at the beginning of ’69, not before. Tana was the first discotheque in Cattolica. Everyone used to say that the man who opened Tana club worked in Paris for many years and he saw the discotheques there. I was very young. One boy played records and after three months this boy went away and the owner of Tabu asked me if I wanted to play records. He noticed me because I was looking at the DJ all the time. So I started, but the owner of the club bought the records and he told me how to play. He stacked like a newspaper and said, “You start from this and you follow the line and when the line is finished you can choose another line. He made the programme. There were no headphones, no mixer, no monitor. You just put the record on at the beginning and when it was finished you started the next one. It wasn’t a problem if there was silence between the records and there was no issue around b.p.m. At the time the people were used to dancing to a song and then stopping and then dancing in a different way to the next song.

What music did you play?

Most of the music was rhythm and blues. Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Rufus Thomas, Ann Peebles, Arthur Comely. This is what we called black music but there was also white music, from UK more than the States, so I played the Stooges, Atomic Rooster, Pink Elephant “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin’”, Desmond Decker “Royal Lights”.

So what year were you born?

In 1952.

And you lived in Cattolica?

Yes.

Were there other clubs in Cattolica?

In 1969 there were dance halls featuring live groups that played music. But after Tana club a lot of little clubs opened. The Adriatic Coast was was full of little clubs in that period. You found one every kilometre. At the time everyone liked to go to clubs. They were something new. Either you went to the cinema or to the club. Because Cattolica was a tourist spot there’d be 15 clubs open in the summer and three in the winter.

From Tana you went to a club called Tabu—is that right?

Yes, maybe in November or December 1969. I went to this other club and the owner of the club never bought records. I said, “Listen, we need more records!” It’s always the same, so I told him, “Listen, you pay me more money and I buy the records.” So all the money I got I spent on records, because I was going to school, so it was a passion. I spent more on records than I made playing records. I didn’t like things that sounded very commercial, so if I bought a top ten record it was because I liked the B-side. Nobody told me what to do. This was my instinct. If I liked something I followed it. I played at Tabu from 1970 until 1976. The technology was also developing. During this period I started to use a mixer with two slides, which was a novelty. I don’t remember when I started using headphones. But I had two turntables. ELAC is the name—it’s a German turntable. It was automatic. You pushed a button and the arm went by itself. So we had to think how much time it needed to get to the record. Then came the Lenco turntable. It had a little lever for 33, 45, 78 and 16! After a short while I learnt that if I took the lever not exactly on 45 and a little bit nearer 78 it turned faster, so I tried to adjust the speeds, just to reduce the difference between the tempo, but without mixing.

What was the dynamic of the night at Tabu?

At the beginning all the DJs played not only fast but also slow music for slow dancing. The method was to play five fast records followed by three slow records, all through the night. After one year, by maybe 1971, we played maybe ten fast and three slow, until we arrived at a part of the night where we would only play fast records, with one break in the middle of about ten or fifteen minutes where we played slow. Baia degli Angeli opened in 1975 and there they played fast music all night long. So we started to do the same around 1975 or 1976. We played like this because it was normal to do it like this.

What music were you playing at Tabu?

Black music and white music. I lived in Cattolica so I bought 7" singles in shop in Cattolica. I was working for 2,500 lira a night and at that time one 7” cost 600 lira, so if I worked one night I could buy three 7” singles. An album cost 3,300 lira, but it was very dangerous to buy them, because you couldn't listen to them, so we spent a lot of money hoping that there’d be a good song to play, sometimes buying an album because it had a nice cover and we thought that maybe there’d therefore be a good record inside. The shop in Cattolica wasn’t a specialised shop. It just sold the hit parade—I was bought records like Desmond Dekker “Israelites”. But at the same time, my crazy mind was looking for something different and so—I don't remember how—maybe the boss of Tabu, Renzi Lino, told me, “I know a shop, in Switzerland there is a shop, Radio Lugano, where they have import records.” He took me there in his Porsche. Maybe he was going there anyway to see some girl and thought it would be good if I bought records. I ended up going back maybe three of four times by train. The records I found in Radio Lugano were very different. In Cattolica 90% of the shop was Italian pop. But in Radio Lugano I found disco. Then in about 1975 a big shop opened in Rimini, the Dimar. It was a big shop and they stocked everything—a lot of classical music, pop, indie, polka, rock, disco, everything. But you couldn’t listen to the music. You just had to look at the covers and speak with the salesman. You’d say, “Hey, do you think this is good?” And he’d say, “Of course, this is very good!”

Can you remember some of the records you played during this period?

Some records from this period are important. For example, “In Zaire” is an African song from Johnny Wakelin. I played this in Tabu and then later in Cosmic and I still play it today. I also play today Johnny Taylor “Who’s Making Love”. I also play Rufus Thomas, Earth, Wind and Fire, the live album [Gratitude]. And of course there was James Brown. In Tabu I played a lot of James Brown. Tabu had close circuit TV and the first video recorder, a huge machine. It was the only place where they transmitted live concerts, so we recorded a live concert of James Brown and I played the concert on the TV and people danced. I played the audio and the video exactly as it was. You can dance to everything by James Brown.

Was this period important to the way you developed as DJ?

I was doing everything instinctively so I didn’t think a lot. But when Baia opened we saw for the first time these two DJs executing mixes. Of course at that time mixing meant mixing maybe three or four beats, and sometimes they just cut.

This is Baia degli Angeli, right? Can you tell me how you heard about it and what made it different?

I went to Baia some months after it opened because everybody was speaking about it. I heard about it first when a young barman at Tabu was contacted and asked to work there, so I knew something very big and very different was coming. We also started to see all over Cattolica and maybe also Rimini the logo of the club, the angel, without any writing. So we looked at this and thought, “What is this?” Then after a few months everybody started to say, “Now Baia degli Angeli is opening!” It was also a beautiful club. Everything was white, whereas in Tabu everything was dark. Because of that the spotlights were very effective; if there was a green light then the whole club turned green. Seeing the whole club change colour had a really big effect. And another thing that was different is it was the only club that stayed open until 6am, even 7am; all the others closed at 3am. Then the other big difference is they had these two American DJs, Bob Day and Tom Season. They came from New York and for at least the first six or eight months they had music that we’d never heard before because import/export hadn’t started. They had everything from TK Records, the Philadelphia Sound, a lot of 12” singles, a lot of free promotional records that nobody knew.

So Baia created a big impression.

The first time I went was the summer of 1975. Then in the summer of 1976 I went regularly. I worked until 3am and then at 3:30 I went to Baia and stayed for one or two hours. I looked at 2,000 people—beautiful people, beautiful girls—and I also became friends with the DJs. We thought Bob and Tom were crazy because they played with records that were warped. One afternoon they came to Tabu when I was playing. I was afraid and at the end of the afternoon Tom came to and said, “You are very good, but why don't you take away the rubber?” To mix with your hands you have a slip mat but when you buy the turntable there is rubber and the vinyl can’t slip, so you take away the rubber and replace it with a slip mat. But at the time you couldn’t buy slip mats, so they took away the rubber and put a 45 single instead. This was why their records were all wobbly.

How come they came to Baia?

Because Giancarlo Tirotti was rumoured to be lovers with Carmen D’Alessio [a New Yorker who worked in fashion and became Valentino’s PR chief in Rome]. He went to New York and met Tom, who was a friend of Carmen’s. At the time there were a lot of little underground clubs in New York and Tom and Bob had maybe played the first hour in some important club. Tom came to Baia because he was known by Carmen and Tirotti. Bob came two months later because he was a friend of Tom. They were both gay men and they mixed records, and it was the first time I heard this. Sometimes the mixes were good, sometimes not, but this was their style.

Did they have a mystique about them?

Yes, of course. In Italy everything that was not Italian is the best. The United States was the leader in disco and rhythm and blues and was very important. Italian music is rooted in Pavarotti and the waltz. We don’t have a tradition of blues music, rhythm and blues, and funk, so all the music we got we got from the States or the UK. Only after did us Italians become better, ha ha!

So was Baia the most important discotheque on the Adriatic coast?

I think this club really changed nightlife in Italy. It was the first club that created this kind of musical situation that nobody had heard before, it was open until 6am and it was also this fashionable place. Everybody came from all over Italy. After that big, beautiful clubs started to open all over, but Baia was the first.

Where was it located?

Gabicce, which is a little hill near Cattolica. It's a little tourist town. There’s Cattolica, then Gabicce. It’s a very beautiful spot. You can see all the Adriatic coast. I cycled there! It was only two kilometres. Baia was opened as a high end restaurant and sporting club, then it became a disco. The disco came later when Tirotti concluded that the restaurant wasn’t busy enough. It was a restaurant with a small disco. There was a swimming pool inside as well as outside, and the inside swimming pool became a dance floor.

What happened to Bob and Tom?

I don't know exactly. Maybe Giancarlo was tired of what was happening. He thought of Baia as a club for people who loved music but it changed. It became too crowded and there were too many drugs, so he sold Baia. The club was finished and one of Tom and Bob had a boyfriend in New York and the boyfriend wanted him to return, or something like that, so they decided to go back to the States. When Tom and Bob were about to leave they came to me and said, “We have said to the new owner the you can go to work for him.” At the same time someone else spoke to Mozart [Claudio “Mozart” Rispoli], who had also started to DJ, so we found ourselves together. They asked me if I had a problem with Mozart. I said, “No, this is good,” because I was afraid to be the sole successor to Tom and Bob. Before Tom and Bob left I asked them to give me their copy of Loleatta Holloway’s “Hit and Run”. I said, “Give it to me, please, I can’t find it anywhere!” Everybody was looking for this record. They gave me their copy, autographed.

What drugs were going down?

Heroin. Before people went out they might smoke, maybe take a bit of cocaine, but when the club became famous all over Italy a lot of people came from Veneto and Lombardia. All of the drugs came from Holland—the north—Holland then Germany and then Brennero, Bolzano and Verona. Verona became one place where drugs came into Italy, so people from Vernoa started to experiment and they came to Baia and at Baia there was a heavy heroin and cocaine scene. This wasn't in the mentality of Giancarlo. He didn't want to create a drug hangout. He wanted la musica. Personally, I didn’t take the drugs. I smoked a joint and I was sick. I tried cocaine and I couldn’t have sex. I drank and I was sick. So I took nothing.

So you started DJing at Baia.

I started in October or November 1977 and I stopped in August 1978 when Baia closed for good. I was together with Mozart and then Mozart had to leave for military service in February 1978. He came back after three or four months, so I played alone during that period. After it closed it reopened in 1979. At that point it was just Mozart and it lasted only one summer.

How did it work with Mozart when you played together?

We usually worked one hour or 90 minutes and then changed. We played midnight to 6am so we place twice each. I played 1977 and 1978.

What were you playing?

I was playing different kinds of styles—disco music but I didn’t play records with a lot of vocals or melody. I played more instrumental records, more aggressive records. Also, I don’t know if all the songs I played were disco. For example, I was even playing a song by J.J. Cale, “She Don’t Like, She Don’t Like Cocaine”. He’s like a country and western singer. This song was very popular. I also played Timmy Thomas “Africano”. John Forde was also a hit, and so was “New York City” by Miroslav Vitous, “Ju-Ju- Man” by Passport, “Spaciula” by Dogs of War, “Gluttony” by Laurin Rinder and W. Michael Lewis, etc. etc.

Was your taste different to Mozart’s?

At that time Mozart was maybe more funkier than me. But I also played funky records. When I played all night by myself I played ”Bolero” from Ravel, the long version of Kebekelektrik, a group from Canada - they made Bolero of Ravel the whole side of an LP, 15 minutes, and when I played this song as the last song of the night I introduced a lot of effects from Pink Floyd, Jean Luc Pontoon, some African chanting. The sound was disco, funky disco, some Eurodisco, some electronics. One of the records I played was Bunny Sigler, “Baby It’s Time to Twist” [from the album Let Me Party with You]. Another was The Destruction of Mundohra by Final Offspring, which was a disco track that sounded like it was the soundtrack for a space film. I called this “space disco”.

So if this is 1977 was Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” a big record for you?

Yes, in the beginning, but if a record like that ended up being played on Italian radio then I would play it for a month or two before being attracted to something different, something more strange, something not so easy. I like everything—everything—but what attracts me is always something that’s different. When The Destruction of Mundohra came out it was really different to the other records I was playing and this appealed to me. “I Feel Love” was a good song but it wasn’t as emotional for me as “Love to Love You, Baby”. Also, we were used to playing songs that were three-and- a-half minutes long, so when “Love to Love You, Baby” came out on the whole side of an album it was like listening to a whole story.

When you were playing at Baia did you pre-programme what you were going to play for the whole night?

Yes, I prepared a lot of things but I also left space for improvisation. The first night I prepared a track list and maybe during the night I realised that the dance floor wasn’t really appreciating what I was trying at one particular moment, so I changed what I was playing, of course. In the end I developed a lot of track lists but changed from one track list to another, depending on the mood of the dancers. I don’t know why but I was crazy about mixing. I always wanted to make the perfect mix, but this was sometimes impossible, because the records were recorded live and tempo was always changing. It was a really big problem and meant that some records were terrible to mix together. So at home I would put one record on a turntable and on the other I would try a hundred records, looking for the perfect mix, not just in terms of the beat but also what was musical to the ear. I would make notes on the speeds and how records would mix together. When musicians play they write down the music. I mixed in this way.

Can you tell me more about the crowd that went to Baia?

For me the people in Baia were classy but also freaks. They had good clothes but they danced for me. They came for the music. Later, maybe when I started to play with Mozart, there were more working class, people were wearing more casual clothes and there were more young people. But the danced with the same energy—although not the ones who took heroin, of course.

And there must have been a seasonal rhythm…

That was the case with most of the clubs on the Adriatic cost during this period. In the winter they were only open on Saturday night, although some of the smaller clubs also opened Friday and Sunday. During the summer all the clubs were open every night during July and August. Only Monday nights would be quieter. During the winter people would come from Verona and Brescia and Bologna and Rome, even Germany and Holland.

Can you tell me more about Mozart’s style?

When we were working together maybe he was a little bit more funky than me. But he also played disco. Afterwards we both changed a lot. After one year I went to Cosmic—this was in April 1979—and then in 1980 I changed everything. During that time he was maybe more into electronic music and jazzy funk, like Don Cherry. But after Baia we lost touch with each other. I played at Cosmic for four years and he played all over.

How did you get on with Mozart while you were at Baia? I hear there was a rivalry.

We became friends at Baia because we were working together. We didn’t have a problem with each other. I remember I appreciate his style. He was more immediate. Whereas I was better prepared he just came and played. I think he had studied piano for five years, so maybe for him it was easier to mix. I didn’t have a musical education so I had to teach myself how to do it—writing, preparing, listening, trying the mixes. So I found my own way. As for the competition, that was created by the people.

How come Mozart played alongside you at Baia?

There were five owners of the second Baia. Bob and Tom introduced me to one of the new owners. At the same time another boss of the club heard about Mozart. I remember them asking me, “Daniele, do you have a problem if you also play with Mozart? I said, “No, no, OK, OK,” because I had seen him play at New Jimmy’s and he had come to Tabu.

So your last night in Baia was in August 1978. Was there a big last night party?

No, because nobody knew that Baia was going to close. The next morning we woke up and were told that we had to close. By this point there was a new owner—Diego Leoni. The people said, “The police have been up there and arrested Diego Leoni.” I was only thinking that now I’m without work. I had in fact a bad period, until January.

What did you do during this period?

I played a few gigs but really it was a bitch. I was playing what they wanted to hear just to get some money. So in December 1978 or January 1979 I was spoke with Lino Renzi, the boss of Tabu, and he said, “Why don’t we make a party here in my club with you?” “OK, OK, OK, yes, yes, yes.” So I made a few calls to friends from Bologna and Modena, and I said, “Hey, now I play in Tabu again, come on, come on.” For the first night 600 people came to Tabu club. For the second Saturday, 600 people come to Tabu and 600 waited outside because the club was full. The third Saturday, 1,200 people. The police went to Renzi Lino and said, “You close by yourself, or we make you close.” So the story finished again.

So how did Cosmic happen?

I was working in Tabu, in one of these parties, and a big man came in with his wife and some friends. They introduced themselves to me. They said, “We are from Lago di Garda, Verona. We are opening a new club. We listened to you during the summer in Baia and we like your style. We would like you to play in our club. We'll open in the spring.” This was December, I think. And I said, “OK.” At that point it was something strange, because at that time if a DJed worked in a club he was the resident for life. But I said, “OK, I’ll come. I want the money you’re offering and I want a house. Please, not an apartment, a house, because I have too many records.” And so they found a little house by Lake Garda. I made about 50 journeys in my Citroen to take everything over.

So you moved to Verona.

Yes, because I was thinking, “Listen, if I play for you, I want the same money for the winter and the summer. I don’t care how many nights you're open. I need this money because I buy the same number of records in the winter as the summer. Then, if you’re open every night, 365 days a year, I don't care. This was my approach. And I said, “I want to work for me and my girlfriend; - she was my girlfriend and she became the girl of the cassa, the cashier.

And you ended up marrying her?

Yes.

Did you meet at Baia or before?

In Tabu, in Tabu. We were very young—18, 16. She was the girl who danced all night long, you know? She was crazy about music.

What's her name?

Margherita.

And when did you get married? Or if you are married?

Yes we are married from ‘85. We wait a lot of time. We just married because we had a son. And you know the grandmother they have, uh, tradition [laughs]. We just do it in five minutes, with not big ceremony [laughs].

So who was the owner of Cosmic?

Enzo Longo, and his wife, Laura Bertozzo. Enzo Longo is the son of a well-off family. His father was a famous dentist. He is also dentist. At the time he was 33 years old and he worked with his father. Laura Bertozzo had two Fiorucci boutique shops, one in Verona and one on the Garda lake. They opened Cosmic because they went to Baia and they liked it. They found this place in Lazise, which is the name of the town on Garda sea. This club was called the Mini Piper. The story he told me is that he bought this club, he left it closed for one year because he wanted all the people forget what it was before, and then he started to build Cosmic. He was thinking about it being a dance club—he liked to say, palestra da ballo, a dancing gym. The club was maybe for 700 people, and the dance floor was for 600 people. There was no place to sit down; only the dance floor and the bar.

Was it unusual to have a club without a place to sit?

Yes, very. And another very unusual thing is that because he really wanted to make something clean, for the first year no alcohol was served. So there was no alcohol and no place to sit down. The sound system was made up of a Macintosh amplifier and GBL loudspeakers. The lighting equipment was also very good and the dance floor was like the one in Saturday Night Fever. The DJ booth was like the helmet of an astronaut. After two years he made a new book that looked like a starship.

So Cosmic opened in April 1979. What can you tell me about the opening? What were your impressions? How was it different from Baia?

The music was similar to what I was playing at Baia, so funky disco. The only memorable thing is that the opening was scheduled for a Thursday. So many people came that there were maybe 1,000 people inside and 1,000 standing outside, so they gave the people who couldn’t get in a ticket and said, “With this you can come to the opening night we’ll hold for you on Friday.” On Friday so many people came again they organised another opening for Saturday. Then they did one on Sunday as well.

How did the atmosphere compare to Baia?

I was nervous, but I'm always nervous when I work. The booth was low, so I could only see the 10 people standing in front of me because the DJ booth was on the same level as the floor. The second booth was a little bit higher.

So you were the only DJ at the beginning?

Yes. Then at the start of 1980 I had to leave for military service, so the boss of Cosmic asked me if I knew someone who would work with me and substitute? I knew this guy, Claudio, Tosi Brandi Claudio, who called himself TBC. He was from Riccione. I asked him to come and they gave him the same treatment—a house, a job for his girlfriend. He also had all my records at his disposal! After two years we fought with each other and so for six to eight months another guy called Marco Maldi worked with me and TBC went away. This was in 1982. Then after six, eight or nine months Marco Maldo stopped DJing and then TBG came back. We worked together until the end of 1984, when the club closed.

How long were you in military service for?

It was supposed to be 24 months because I was in the navy, but I was 28 years old when they called me and I told them, “Please let me work.” I did a lot of illegal things to not to be a soldier. It was all fake. I stayed in the hospital pretending to be ill, pretending to be a drug addict, because the last thing they wanted in the army was a drug addict. I said I was toxic dependent. They said, “How?” So I made holes with an empty needle to make my arms violet and said, “Look!” I also took a drug that put me to sleep during the day and another one to keep me away at night. In hospital I would run out and go to work. You could make a soap opera about my military service. After 6 months I was discharged but for five I was always finding a way to go back to play. When I was away for that month I know that they made a party for one night for Mozart, Rubens and Ebreo—just one night.

So were you aware that there was this backlash against disco in 1979?

I didn’t understand what had happened. I was working every Saturday night and during the week I stayed at home on this nice hill with a beautiful panorama—all of Lago di Garda—listening to records. So how I went from disco, funk and the Philadelphia Sound to Depeche Mode, Gary Numan or Klaus Schulze, I don't know. I didn’t care what was happening outside. I was living on my hill, listening to music.

So the backlash against disco passed you by…

Yes, but what I think is that the music of disco in fact is really different. Until 1978 disco was a good sound. But then they started to mass produce records and it became different. It wasn’t as beautiful as before. But I think Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Klaus Schulze, Brian Briggs, Jean Michel Jarre, Phil Collins, Mike Oldfield, or Sky Records—they didn’t make music for the dance floor. They made music just to make music. So this is how music came to me and once I had it I played it in the club.

Can you tell me more about how your music selections changed in 1980?

I would select “Bolero” by Ravel and on top of this I would play an African song by Africa Djolé, or maybe an electronic tune by Steve Reich, and I would mix this with a Malinke chant from New Guinea. Or, I would mix T-Connection with a song by Moebius and Rodelius, adding the hypnotic-tribal; album of Cat Stevens, and then Lee Ritenour, but also Depeche Mode at 33 instead of 45, or a reggae voice by Yellowman at 45 instead of 33. I would play a Brazilian battucada record and mix it with a song by Kraftwerk. I would also use synthesizer effects on the voices of Miriam Makeba, Jorge Ben, or Fela Kuti, or I would play the Oriental melodies of Ofra Haza or Sheila Chandra with the electronic sounds of the German label Sky. I was continually listening to the records at Disco Più in Rimini. Maybe I saw the new record by James Brown. I would say, “OK, James Brown, I know him, I’ll listen to this record,” and I would think, “It’s quite good.” But then I’d listen to a record by Gary Numan and I would ask, “Who is this? Ah, this is nice. It sounds strange and beautiful. I like it. It’s got a very nice break. I’ll buy it.” I bought a lot of records in this way. Also, I started to buy records for little parts that I could loop and re-edit using a Revox—a reel-to- reel tape machine. So I started to make tracks by cutting together 15 seconds of a record.

Did you buy the Revox in 1980?

Yes, I started this in Cosmic.

Did you buy the Revox specifically to do this?

I bought it specifically to make edits. I had been to studios and seen the way they were doing this and I thought I could do something similar. From the album Perfect Love Affair by the Constellation Orchestra on Prelude Records there’s a record called “Cosmic Melody”—it’s a disco record. It had the line, “Cosmic-cosmic- cosmic-cosmic, me-lo- dy, me-lo- dy.” I thought, “I need this sentence for Cosmic, you know?” But it was also too much fast—maybe it ran at 130 bpm. So I recorded it with the turntable at minus-10 and then I looped it together many times, so it lasted for three minutes. I also made these tapes and on every tape I included “Cosmic, cosmic, cosmic…”

Did you start to use any other electronic gadgetry at Cosmic?

In 1982 or 1983 I also bought a drum machine and because the brother of my wife is a musician I said, “Please set up the bass of Richard Wahnfried’s ‘Time Actor”, so he programmed this line for me. Then I asked a friend who was a drummer to create a specific pattern for me. I would play the drum track and mix in maybe 30 records—Antenna, RAH Band, others—so the drum machine and the record were playing at the same time. I never left the drum machine to run alone. When I took away a record I was immediately ready to put on another one. It became like a little show that I did for maybe three years, but only for ten minutes. If I did it for an hour people would say, “Go back home!” So it was like a little show during the DJ set. I’d also bring in some keyboard effects; I was making keyboards. Then when the first sample keyboards came out in 1983 or 1984 that opened a grande apertura, a big door. When I went to the shop where they sold musical instruments the boy said, “This is a sample keyboard?” “What’s that?” “You can record your voice and then you play your voice with the note.” So I said, “You mean that if I make, ‘One, two, three, four, James Brown,’ then I can play, ‘One, two, three, four, James Brown?’” “Yes, you can do it.” “OK!” So when I was playing 1984, 1985, 1986, I took my own turntable, my own mixer, my own monitor, three keyboards, two drum machines and two sample keyboards. I was really a DJ band! It’s for this reason that I always had a big car…”

What drum machine were you using?

The Roland TR-808 and also the TR-909, which I bought in 1982 or 1983. At first I used the Korg, which was like a typewriter. This drum machine only had preset loops and you could only manipulate the speed control. So you could choose “rock” and it played a rock pattern or “cha cha cha” and it would play a cha cha cha pattern. But you could speed it up or slow it down. I used to play a pattern from the drum machine, just to introduce something strange, something different.

And you also bought a keyboard in 1980?

Yes, a Yamaha CS-10, and because TBC was a little bit more musical than me—he could play the guitar—I said, “Hey, if I buy a keyboard maybe you can do something?” But I also wanted to be able to play and so I went to the brother of my wife and like a child learnt how to play, learning some parts to play in songs that I liked. I would say, “Teach me this melody!”

Did you introduce any other technical innovations?

I started to play with four turntables but I needed a partner to do this so I did it with TBC. I played the first turntable, mixed the second record with the second turntable and then had TBC put on a third record. When the three were playing together I would prepare a fourth record and then take away the first, so there were always two or three records playing at the same time.

And what music were you playing at this point?

Music was changing. I don’t know if there was a genre like folk or punk but I took from everything. I was playing all the electronic music from Germany and from England. The best label was Richard Wahnfrieds Innovative Communication and also Sky. There were artists like Klaus Schulze, Jean Michel Jarre, and there were lots that were less famous such as Clara Mondshine. Then there were these strange groups like Tri Atma—this was a group of German musicians with all the innovative keyboards or synthesisers, but they introduced also percussion and flute from India, so they mixed their own electronic music with ethnic music which was perfect for me. I also played a song by Paul McCartney, “Secretary”, and I’d maybe mix this with Olatunji, “Jingo” or Cat Stevens Izitso. I also played Brand X, who made a type of electronic jazz. I also played African music like Touré Kunda, Pierre Akendengue, Fela Kuti, Manu Dibango. Then there were elements of Brazilian music—Gilberto Gill, Jorge Ben, Tania Maria. All of this was the style that people started to call the Cosmic Sound in 1980.

I can see why you’d play Gary Numan in 1980 because Gary Numan was new, but how come you started to mix in Olatunji, which was from 1959, or Manu Dibango from 1973?

I did this without thinking, but now I think that music is timeless. It’s not necessary to only play records you bought the day before. I was being these records from Dimar, the famous shop in Rimini, which stocked all kinds of music. And if I maybe discovered a Jorge Ben song that would give me the impetus to look for others and so I had explored all the artists from Brazil—Gilberto Gil and so on. And then maybe I would also buy a record with only shit on it!

So you were still buying music in Dimar?

No, not only. When I was playing at Cosmic in Verona sometimes I would come back to Rimini, to Cattolica, and I would go to Dimar. Sometimes Disco Più would send me packages of records. Then I found a shop in Brescia and then LeDisque, a record store in Verona. Also, I knew this guy, this music lover, would go around the shop, like a collector, and he would come to me and say, “Daniele, I have found this record in the shop, do you want to buy it?” “Let me listen… Oh, this is nice!” When he saw what I liked he started to come to me with a lot of records. He didn’t work in the shop. He was just a collector—like a pusher.

Can you remember other records you were playing at Cosmic?

A lot of Cosmic music came from Japan, such as the Yellow Magic Orchestra—Ryūichi Sakamoto is the keyboard player—and also Logic System. I played OMD “Promise” and “VCL XI”, I played Liasons Dangereuses “Los Ninos” and “Avant Aprex Mars”, I played Tony Banks Charm. In the winter I played darker music and in the summer I played sunnier music—more reggae. I also played Roxy Music “Angel Eyes” slow at 33.

Do you know if other Italian DJs were conducting similar experiments?

I don’t know. At the time everybody was saying that Cosmic was more electronic, Mozart was more funk, Ebreo was more Brazilian. Maybe I was the one who mixed more types of music together. I made this big crossover. The exploration of the past to go into the future chimes with the work of many Modernists. Picasso drew on traditional African art… But a lot of artists have done this. The Rolling Stones recorded an album in Morocco. Try Atma are electronic musicians and they play with musicians India. David Byrne made an album with African musicians. So yes, we want to go into the future, but with the roots of the past—Lamont Dozier, “Going Back to My Roots”.

So how central was African or Latin music to the Cosmic sound? Or was it occasional?

Every year at Cosmic had its own character. In 1980 the music was electronic and dark. By 1983 it was maybe more Brazilian. In 1984 there was more funk, electro and fusion.

Italo music was starting to come through more strongly at this point. Did you play much of that?

I played Gino Soccio “Dancer”. It’s strange but most of the records I bought had an Italian in the line-up somewhere. There’s always an Italian in the middle. But in terms of music made in Italy, I played Klein & MBO a lot when it came out—the instrumental; I played Koto “Tokyo Revenge”—maybe I played the B-side instrumental and played it at 33 instead of 45; I played Easy Going “Baby I Love You”; I played Gaz Nevada “Japanese Girls”, which wasn’t a big track but ran at 103 bpm and was strange enough for Cosmic; and Koto “Chinese Revenge”, which came out in 1983, although this is really an electronic song that happened to come out in Italy. Otherwise I played the Cosmic Sound. I didn’t know what italo disco was. When Italians tried to record disco music it was considered commercial. Of a hundred productions maybe I’d play two. I never played Alexander Robotnick’s “Problèmes D’Amour” because it wasn’t the Cosmic Sound, but I played “Love Supreme” by Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici with Alexander Robotnik. I think people from America and the UK listen to a shit sound from Italy and it sounds new. I know this sounds a bit nasty. But us Italians look abroad and are very influenced this music, so maybe we are too critical. Maybe we didn’t realise that we were also doing something good. I’m also a victim of this. But when I listen to records in a shop the first thing I do is listen to the sound. I wouldn’t say no to something just because it’s recorded in Italy. Generally I thought italo was too commercial.

So how did the dance floor response to what you were doing?

One of the big things about Cosmic is people came to listen what I was doing. I think people came with the idea of, “What will Danielle Baldelli make us listen to tonight?” Before I would start to play people would talk and drink. Then I would start with my signal, some electronic effects that I put together—the sound track of Flash Gordon, a violin solo by Jean Luc Ponty, some effects—and they would start to listen and dance. It seems as though you also slowed down the tempo when you went to Cosmic. I did this a little bit at Baia and also in Cosmic. For the first half an hour of the evening I would play slow. It was the same in Baia, because there were some nice disco records that ran at 105 or 108 beats per minute. It was normal to start the evening with slow music and then to go faster. But in 1980, 1981 and maybe also 1982 Cosmic was only slow, by which I mean it never got to 120 beats per minute. At the most it would get to 115. At the start it would be 95, 98, then maybe 100 or 105 for two hours. Maybe it was because era bella, it was nice in this way, and maybe also because of the kind of drugs people were taking. They smoked a lot so they couldn’t jump like little goats. Now, looking back, I think that we played slow because it seemed natural to play slow. It wasn’t that people were smoking. It seemed that after uptempo disco playing slow was new, a novelty. Then there was also a matter of making mistakes, say putting on a record at the wrong speed and realising that it sounds nice. After that I tried this with all the records I bought.

Were you responding to the crowd, or was this where you wanted to go musically? Because a lot of heroin was being consumed, wasn’t it?

No, in that period we played slow because it seemed natural to play slow.

Did TBC play at a higher tempo?

Of course, because I would play for the first hour and leave him at 110 bpm and then he would play a higher tempo. Cosmic closed at 1am so I played 10-11, he played 11-12 and then we played half an hour each for the last hour.

Can you tell me more about the club setting and the crowd?

In 1979 there was no alcohol, nowhere to sit and the people who came to Cosmic were kids of upper-class parents who were mostly well-dressed. The owner of Cosmic said that people from Veneto drank too much and he didn’t want to have fights. During 1979 we didn’t have any problems with alcohol or drugs. Then in 1980, because the club became very famous, everybody came to look from different parts of the north—Bologna, Brescia, Venezia—and during the summer, the holiday season, they’d also come from the south because Garda lake is a holiday resort. People would also come from Austria. After one year the club started to sell beer and because of the music that was coming out at the time, changes in drug culture and changes in the crowd, the club became druggier. But the drug problem didn’t happen inside. It happened outside, because maybe there were 1,000 people inside, but outside there would be 2,000 people in the parking area with tents, loud speakers and so on. It became a place to meet and they would play tapes of my DJ sets.

Can you tell me more about the tapes?

It was a good business. I started doing this in Baia but the real business of selling tapes started in Cosmic. From 1980 onwards it was really a boom. Every week there’d be a new tape and I’d sell a thousand copies. One boy would come from Torino. He never came inside Cosmic to dance. Instead he arrived in the afternoon and said can I meet Baldelli and he came back every couple of months to buy all the tapes. He came back once with a Citroën Pallas and he told me, “This is what I’ve bought from selling your tapes in Torino.” At one point the authorities found someone who had bought the tapes and they made me go to a judge. My lawyer said, “OK, we have to do something but what has Baldelli done? We have to know the quantities involved. To work that out they had to listen to the tapes, find out the titles, ask the labels for information and then make a charge. After four years there was an amnesty.”

What happened to you working with TBC and then Marco Maldi? And how did Cosmic close?

TBC and I fought for the first time in 1982. One evening in the DJ booth he got upset and left without finishing his DJ set. This kind of prima donna behaviour made me cross. And I was even more upset because I let his personality overwhelmed me. Probably there was a kind of jealousy between us because people said that I was “the brain” and he was the showman. So the competition was about this. But the boss didn’t like Marco Maldi so much and eventually he said, “Come on, you and TBC were the perfect combination, so we started again until Cosmic closed. Police had already closed the club once and they shut it down again in 1984.

Baldelli Discography
Alan Parsons Project "Stereodomy"
Tony Banks "Charm"
Bazaar "Oriental Wind"
Birth Control "Hoodoo Man"
Carte De Sejour "Ramsa"
Fuhrs & Frohlilng "Strings"
Gandalf "Journey To An Imaginary Land"
Grauzone "Eisbaer"
Manfred Mann's Earth Band "Chance"
Neuronium "Invisible Views"
Ambrose Reynolds "Greatest Hits"
Irmin Schmidt "Film musik Nr. 2"
Conrad Schnitzler "Con 3"
Robert Schroeder "Mozaique"
Klaus Schulze "Macksy"
Shadowfax "The Dreams Of Children"
Tribute "New Views"
Vangelis "The Dragon"
Za Za "Za Za”

Selected Mixes

Daniele Baldelli interviewed by Tim Lawrence

Electronic Beats has published a shortened version of the interview here.