california forever - upcoming song
Many, many years ago (around 2016), I remember practicing on bass in my apartment in Milan, Italy. I remember I moved from my hometown to Milan to be with my partner, but after a few years I wasn’t in a happy place, as our relationship ran its course and I went from living with my partner to living on my own. I was also not having any shows, as the scene in Milan was very tough to get into, even after some networking.
I remember I just bought a new bass, a Lakland Skyline Deluxe 5502, but since I had no shows I would end up just playing in my apartment.
Here I was, just fiddling with it, and at some stage, after listening to Jaco Pastorius’s “Portrait of Tracy”, I started playing with harmonics. I wasn’t half as good as I am now, so it sounded very “amateur”, but I sort of locked in what I thought to be a quirky pattern for certain harmonics, and I thought “this could actually be something”, so I tried to add dominants. At the time I was obsessed with the 1-2-6-4 sequence, so here it was: Dmaj - Em - Bm - Gmaj .
That was the hook, the “chorus” of the song, but I left it at that, as in my creative process, I felt like I “haven’t gone through enough emotion” to continue writing.
I didn’t know, but that summer, I would fall in love again. Not with a person, but with a city: London. I’ll write more about it in a different entry, because there is a lot to say about it. For now, let’s say when I finally moved there, I started playing around like crazy, almost had no time to sit down and give birth to any new song.
It was only in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, when I decided to come back to that “old, familiar riff”. I just moved to the States, and in the first year I was not allowed to work at all, on top of being in lockdown.
I found another pattern of dominants and harmonics to use as “verse”, but this one was more complex, and although sounding great if well executed, my self doubting nature was preventing me to see it finished.
As a composer, I was also aware that there is no such thing as writing a piece willy-nilly: what was the feeling behind it? Was I just trying to impress with my technique or did I want to convey an emotion? I knew the latter would be the answer, but that would have required inspiration.
Life got harder in the States at some stage, and alcohol abuse was my way to cope with the things I had to go through. Some time after divorcing from my ex wife, I remember I started going out with another girl, and although I never had such feelings as infatuation or what we call “romantic attachment” for her, she was really very good looking and unique: her sense of freedom from constructs, and the way she enjoyed simple things such as going to music shows, getting new tattoos or even going out for drinks. I somewhat was jealous of not being able to be like that, but this finally gave me the drive I needed: the longing for happiness, but also happiness as something to be achieved and the journey to it.
She used to have some funny “catchphrases”, like “chaos is only exhausting for amateurs” and others, but there was one that would stick out for me, as I felt it encompassed the compound of feelings and emotions aforementioned: she used to say “California forever (and goodbye)!” in a lot of her Instagram posts.
No brainer for me: “California Forever” would have been the title. And I now had something to build upon, a feeling. I recorded the bass track upon a drum machine I programmed, then I started wrtiting parts for strings, and it was good, but not enough: I knew there should have been a point in the song where the “light” had to come out of the darkness: so I started writing an entire orchestra section with percussions, woodwinds, strings and horns.
Now, that can be a daunting task that rerquires even more inspiration: and it finally came some time after I sobered up.
After finally getting sober from alcohol and substances, I did achieve that level of happiness I longed for, here in Long Beach, California. It was the last piece of the puzzle, and that’s when the song itself became something else: the hymnal to my healing journey, the forgiving and letting go of the past versions of myself, the broken pieces finally coming together. “California Forever” is not just a song, it’s a deep dive and a testament of the light that awaits when we finally get rid of the things that hurt us, it’s meant to shine a light in the darkest of places. The light is there.
As of now, the song is mostly mixed. There will be more tracking, mastering and promotion, before its release. Just follow this space to know more!
