By Zeljko Vujkovic & Oresama Chan


SANDRO OLIVA with NUAGE

Thank you very much for your time Sandro. Can you introduce yourself please? Something about Sandro Oliva before music career. Just recently you started to write new page in your rich music career with new label Go Go's Music but before fresh news from you I would like to find out more about your music beginning. Tell me please, when you got in contact with music for the first time?
Thank you for allowing me to be interviewed through Internet. There have been many biographies about me but none was complete. This will be a way of completing the work undertaken by others.
Music has had a fundamental role in my life. My love for music was almost inborn in me. It was already in my childhood that while standing in front of a gramophone I was trying to understand how a song could be composed. Therefore, as soon as I could, I joined a Conservatorium and got a diploma in contrabass. (That was so many years ago that I don’t even remember how many have gone by). Then a sudden passion for the electric Basso and many concerts all over Italy with Neapolitan groups. I love and have always loved the dances of the 70s, even if, generally, I love music at 360°.I like spending hours in studio searching for a different line for my passages. People say that I waste too much time, but I like it my way. I am not after quantity but quality. I am very much married and have three very beautiful children impassioned of art, music and show The youngest, Philip is only eight years old and plays the violin!

In 1984 and in the following years you started to work with the most famous and best people in italo disco music. Can you tell me a little bit about them in particular about Mauro Farina and Giuliano Crivellente (my favorite producers), It seems you had great cooperation with them and you were very often in their Factory Sound Studio? You together made a lots of italo disco songs.... how you met them?
Mauro Farina and Giuliano Crivellente have been the maestros of all the producers of “modern” Eurobeat. What can it be said? I met them in the 80s when, by chance, I went to their studio to produce a group I was playing with. Mauro asked me to cooperate with them, which I immediately accepted. I must say that that was an enjoyable period of my life having learnt to work in a musical sector with two great producers. I shall be forever grateful to them.

Can you tell me also about Gianni Corraini, Stefano Cundari, Alessandro Zanni etc.? My first „contact“ with your name was with the song Hey Hey Guy by Ken Laszlo. As far as I know Mauro Farina brought that song to you, right? Can you tell me more about that song please? Does it have anything with Mauro Farina call to Memory Records about offering the song to Memory?
Gianni and I have always been friends. He was the singer in one of the groups whom I was playing with. Cundari and Zanni, who were the owners of the Memory Records, offered me a contract for the first passage by Ken Laslo: “Hey Hey Guy” that was entirely written by me. Mauro Farina were not part of the project. I wrote it and produced it, and Memory Records published it. Mark Tower voiced the song. As far as I know, Mauro Farina was never part of Memory Records I, therefore, don’t understand what you are referring to when you say that Memory’s remembering refers to Mauro.

I thought that vocalist in Hey Hey Guy completly was Gianni Corraini (Ken Laszlo), not Mark Tower at all?
Mark Tower is the guy at the telephone with Ken Laszlo. The Singer of the song is Gianni Corianni.

Have you sang any song in your italo disco career? If so, which one and if you didn't did you wish that but had no chance?
I have never sung in my life and I wouldn’t have wanted to because I am a musician and not a singer.

Did you like Italo Disco music or it was just a job?
I liked it very much and I would like that the whole world went back to listen to the dances of the 80s. I consider my work a pleasure, as I shall continue to consider it so, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do it.

Can you tell me your favorite italo disco song(s) and artist(s)?
Easy Lady and all the Ivana Spagna’s productions during the 80s ! A myth in those years.

What do you think about Italo Disco in the 80's?
It has been a really constructive and happy period for the Italian music. At long last we have been afforded the possibility of letting the world know that we also exist: An example of international export FU RAF with “Self Control”

Did you have wish to work with some other italo artist and you didn't have the chance? Do you regret because that?
I reiterate that every thing I have done was exactly what I wanted to do. I have no regrets whatsoever.

I have read recently that one italo fan is searching for info about Stefano Cundari, he heard that he is dead!? Do you know anything about him these days?
Stefano died of cancer in 1990. We were bound not only professionally but also by a very deep friendship. It has been a great blow for every body

You were collaborating with legendary Gino Caria for many years for various labels like Memory Records, Saifam, Time, Flea to name a few. He was such a great singer with his own unique vocal style as well as a great song writer/producer. Could you reminisce a little bit about those days with him?
Gino had great creativity and was a great singer. He was a very particular person, full of new and innovative ideas. We were very good friends and have cooperated for many years. It has been a great loss for all those who loved him, and believe you me when I say there were plenty of them

Gino Caria sang so many songs as well as Ken Laszlo. I think they both had so huge impact on music you were working on and they are both so much recognized„icons“ of italo and eurobeat.. Can you dare to compare the quality of each other between two of them? They both are so unique...
It is impossible to compare them because they are very different people even if united by a great passion for music. Ken Laszlo was a great interpreter in those years endowed with a unique likeability in his kind that sometimes led him to bungle a little. Gino was a very thorough person and even a little pig-headed. A quality, (not a defect), that led him to become a great singer and a great professional person.

How and when you met Giancarlo Pasquini (Aleph/Dave Rodgers)? I guess it was in 1986, in Time Records or ...? I think there is no sence to talk about so many songs you and Dave Rodgers made in Eurobeat. You two were working very close on each song and become legends of Eurobeat music. Can you tell me about your relationship and work?
I met Dave at the Time Records’ studios during the “Fly to me” period. At that time I was cooperating with Giacomo Maiolini and mixed all Aleph’s products. Then after a time, in 1990 to be exact, we met and decided to cooperate to the development of new sonorities for the Japanese market. We worked together for many years and both learnt a lot. We grew up professionally and I am very happy to have worked with him.

What is the secret of your huge success in Eurobeat? ?
I have a secret but...I’m not telling! I may be risking to be repetitive but I am sure that anybody’s success secret is due to the fact that if there is enthusiasm in whatever is being done, success will soon or later arrive. It has happened to me, also because I love very much the music I create.

Not just with Dave Rodgers, you were working together in eurobeat also with another great italo disco artist and it's Brian Ice (Fabrizio Rizzollo). Can you tell me anytning about your work with him please?
I met Fabrizio the first time at the “Memory Records” and later at the “A-BEAT C” where I produced and wrote various passages for Brian Ice. What can I say about him? A great professional and a splendid person at human level.

Earlier I asked you have you singing any italo disco song. Well, now I am asking you the same question for eurobeat?
And I repeat “NO! I wasn’t born to be a singer.

You and Domino started your own label, Go Go's Music (http://www.gogosmusic.net/ )
last year. Could you tell us why you decided to establish this new label getting off of
A-Beat C and what your goal would be on this label?

Who got the idea to name the label Go Go's Music? Any perticular reason for that name?

We decided to create a different work team from the “A-BEAT C” when we both were already with “A-BEAT C” because it was just the right time to do it: You may notice that the passages produced by Domino and by myself have a sound and a something particular and very different from the passages produced by Dave. I can say that the right changing input happened when Domino and I created the “Go Go Girls”. In honour of this group so special for us, the idea was born to name the label “Gogo’s Music”

Having listened to some tracks from Go Go's Music, we noticed the difference in sound
from your A-Beat C produce. Could you tell us anything about this? I mean, are you making a
conscious effort to differentiate your new stuffs and A-Beat C's?

I don’t understand what you are referring to when you say “different sound”. Perhaps it is due to us working in our studio and no longer at the A-Beat C. It would be interesting to know what exactly you do hear as it could be a way to improve.
We have purposely inserted in the “GOGO’S” style a kind of “freedom” of sounds and melodies through a great research job that we couldn’t have done at “A-Beat C” due to timing problems.

Recently my friend Mark, from Australia, who's eurobeat fan asked me next: „I was wondering what you thought of super eurobeat. How long do you think they will keep going?“ Well, what I should tell him? ? What do you think in what way eurobeat will evolving?
I can only tell that there will be quality. Eurobeat will never disappear but it will evolve year after year, passage after passage.

Including Domino, you've been working with a lot of vocalists like Tomas Marin, Annerley
Gordon, Elena Gobbi Frattini, Karen Jane Wainwright, Denise De Vincenzo etc. Could you tell us anything about them? Who is your most favorite singer if you don't mind my asking?

I am very fond of all the artists that I have produced and there is no one in particular above the others because, as far as I am concerned, they are all equally special people, they are all different among themselves, each one with one’s own personality, there is one only factor, however, that the binds them all together: professionalism.

What's your favorite songs you produced in Eurobeat?
All the songs that I have written and produced are my favourite, but if I have to rank one than I would give preference to “One night In Arabia” of GO GO Girls

Sandro, would you like to add anything we didn't ask you and it's important?
I think I have said everything

Can you share with us, with your fans, anything from your presonal life? Are you married, where are you living, what are you doing in your spare time etc.
I live in Mantua with my super family, I am married to the woman of my life, I have three stupendous children, I love the sea, the sea and the sea, and if I had time I could have a hobby: sailing in a sail boat to discover the sea’s most hidden corners!

Do you have any message for italo/eurobeat fans?
Hold your horses, big surprises are on the way; GOGO’S Music has arrived!!!
I want to say that you are stupendous people and that your support is just as important as the passion through which we daily create “MUSIC TO DREAM BY”. Help us to grow through your interviews, your doubts and also your criticisms will be our driving force to learn more and to continue creating better songs as time goes by! A big thanks to for just being there.

With these questions we scratched only the surface of your great and richfull music career. For sure, many many questions could be asked but I understand your busy work and life. I am very happy because you gave me chance to scratch that surface. Thank you so much for your time! Wish you all the best.
THANK YOU ALL

To Brian Ice. Thank you Fabrizio so much for helping me to get in contact with Sandro. You are great Fabrizio! :-) And big thanx to Oresama Chan for giving me idea to make an interviewwith Sandro Oliva! Thanx also to italo fans who's participating on Euroflash's forum with always great and interesting topics and putting some infos about Sandro Oliva.

© Zeljko Vujkovic - May 2007