As a writer, I try to remain as objective as possible and not inject too much of myself into what I review. Yet, as we all know, it’s impossible to completely divorce yourself from a reality: music hits differently. How any piece of music affects you has to be informed by the contours that shape your life. For the longest, I’ve tried to avoid writing about Max Meazza’s Nighttme Call – not because it doesn’t hold a special place in my collection but exactly for that reason.
For me, Nightime Call right now seems intimately tied to a particularly raw moment (or moments) in my life. This album appeared to me, at the start of 2022, seemingly, attaching itself to the year my father’s health took a wrong and final turn for the worst.
In the beginning, I was drawn to the mystery of Nightime Call’s atmospheric title track. A moody, quasi-jazz ballad, something about when I took out this album and put on this track, spoke to a certain aura of helplessness I felt knowing just how much I couldn’t do for my dad. The more I became fixated on Max Meazza’s album’s cover, the more I felt a kinship with whatever that feeling he was trying to express. Waiting for that “night time call” meant something deep to me.
Songs like “Sweet Little Mystery” and “Gas Service Station”, gorgeous “grown-folks” minimalist, jazz-blues ballads, hit me with pangs of nostalgia, conjuring long dormant mental images and memories of leaner times I spent with my father and my mother. As my dad’s own cognition and memory had begun to fail him more and more, as the year progressed, my turntable’s needle kept consistently dropping on these pointed grooves.
However, even now, as I write, I find it entirely difficult to explain my deep connection with Max Meazza’s “Complicated Life”. For me, it’s still tied to those final days, hours, and minutes, I spent trying to find ways to comfort my dad, to share the music I love with my dad. By the time my father passed away, and I finally got my night time call on Christmas Day, I understood and learned another meaning to this song. In my quietest, loneliest moments, it’s a track that became infused with tears.
Originally written by Max as a tribute to Nick Drake, a hero and a large influence of his, it embodied in spirit (and loving memory) all the things that uniquely bind us to some of the most complicated figures in our life. What was a graceful intimate jazz ballad in the span of months transformed into something just as powerful, in equal measure, as an elegy for me to someone dear to me. Like the best tracks, that contain all sorts of multitudes, only later would I learn that this song and this album would be more intimately tied to my experience.
There’s no story that can describe to you or guide you through how to deal with death. As I heard the meditative “dead cat” bounce of Max’s “Angel Of The Night” I felt that intimate dance of grief that only one dancer can walk out of. As much as my father was gone, part of my life had gone with him (as it had when my mother passed away years before). It was this idea of something mirrored and refracting further through Nightime Call’s “Nervous Everytime It Rains”.
As the rest of the album planted its hooks on my lived-in experience, I began to understand the pain of this Dylan-ish soul number, “Shoes Full Of Rain”. All those buckets of rain coming out between my ears, rendered daily through songs like “No One Cares” began to slow to a drip. And as the year moved on, and I found myself in better state, I’d go back to a song from Nightime Call like “Get It On” and hear something else in the album: a profound sense of hope behind all those tears.
It would take time before I mustered the courage to dig into just what had made me so dependent on Nightime Call. In it I could hear so many styles I admire come together and go to some surprising places elsewhere. On the road to acceptance, my state of depression had shifted towards something else: trying to understand what Max thought about his work. Incredulous as I was, I reached out to Max, first to express what this album and his music meant to me. Gracious as Max was, he entertained questions I peppered him with about his life and work…and which I’ll share his answers to.
Either way, whatever was my original impetus to thank Max for his music, in hindsight, now I understand came out of a good place. It’s a place that took me nearly a year or more to finally express what it was, what it meant to me and what it could speak to others. For years, I’ve dedicated one post to highlight an album that spoke to me the most each calendar year. More than a year later, and better late than never, here’s a small window propped open to let some air inside this world, our world with Max Meazza.
[Editor’s Note: I’d like to thank Max for his time and his music (which I can’t recommend enough). You can find him online here and on social media.]
Max Meazza Interview
F/S: What sparked the creation of this album? I feel that this marked some kind of turning point in your career.
Max Meazza: I recorded the Nightime Call album in 1986. I called well-known Italian jazz musicians, the best in my opinion, and they helped me with my songs. Even if there are also pop musicians like Amedeo Bianchi (sax player for Antonello Venditti band) – a long-time friend, and members of a band produced by Claudio Fabi like Beppe Gemelli on drums, Piero Gemelli on guitar (unfortunately both passed away), and Franco Cristaldi, a great bass player. Monica Magnani (from Eros Ramazzotti’s band) provided female vocals.
F/S: Can you provide some background into the label, Solid Air? Was this your own label? I do recognize the influence of John Martyn, obviously.
Max Meazza: Solid Air was indeed my own label.
F/S: I recognize that you’re Italian by birth, yet your music from that period has this vision that has deep roots in the vast swath of “American” music — jazz, country, and even disco — linking it to everything from AOR to Balearic. To cut a long story short, what are your ties to America (where I’m from) and its music?
Max Meazza: I was born in Milan, but my mother’s siblings are settled in California. I have cousins out there, and my roots are in American music. I listened to a few English bands and songwriters but never bought a Lucio Battisti record, sorry, it’s not for me. The only two Italian artists that I like are Mike Francis (Francesco Puccioni passed away too young, a sad loss as he was a friend) and Fabio Concato. We recorded for the same record company, Polygram. Fabio on Philips label, and me with my band Pueblo on Polydor label. At that time, the La Bionda Bros. were my producers.
F/S: How much did your own personal story, or whatever was occurring in your life then, influence Nightime Call?
Max Meazza: Many of my songs are autobiographical. For many years, I wasn’t able to make gigs due to depression and panic attacks. Even in the early days, when I was on tour with Pueblo opening for Le Orme, I never liked going on tour. It’s a crazy life!
F/S: I’ve read you namecheck the music of John Martyn, Nick Drake, the Eagles, Dylan, and Joni Mitchell (to name precious few) elsewhere, all of them who had their own productive “blue” periods. Did you see some of their influence creep up during the making of Nightime Call? It just has an atmosphere that’s more atmospheric and self-exploratory than your previous work.
Max Meazza: Yes, every artist, I think, had a blue period. The mood of the album is more jazz-oriented and less rock. It’s very different from my first two albums. In that period, everyone made records with drum machines, synths, and so on. I was against the tide!
F/S: Anyone looking at the liner notes would be happily surprised to see the appearance of more than a few impressive Italian jazz musicians like Tiziano Tononi, Stefano Pulga, Attilio Zanchi, and Paolo Fresu — that’s not even calling out the impressive backup vocals by Monica Magnani and Tiziana Ghiglioni. What were the recording sessions like for this album? What kind of history do you have with a few of these artists?
Max Meazza: All these guys are friends and stars in Italy, especially Paolo Fresu. For the recording, I remember Attilio Zanchi suggested these musicians and they arrived in the studio. I’m grateful for their talent!
F/S: How much of what was going on in Italy was making a mark on you? Were you aware of artists like Lucio Battisti or Dalla (the big dogs) all the way to those from the Neapolitan scene like Tullio De Piscopo, Tony Esposito, or Alan Sorrenti, exploring a more Mediterranean-driven, quite rhythmic, sound that could also go deeply introspective? It seems like other artists like Mike Francis and Pino Daniele rode a similar wavelength to yourself.
Max Meazza: Tullio De Piscopo was my first drummer in my first album with Pueblo. I used to go with Tony Esposito to a well-known restaurant (Arlati) because we had two sisters as girlfriends, LOL! I like Alan Sorrenti even if I don’t like his voice, but “Figli Delle Stelle” with Jay Graydon and Toto is great. Pino Daniele wrote good songs, but one more time I don’t like the voice, and for me, it was too Italian, if you know what I mean!
F/S: What kind of reception were you expecting from this album? Did you have much of an audience then yourself?
Max Meazza: As usual, my fans are elite, no big numbers, not big money, but I don’t care. I write what I feel, no tricks! You can find many of these songs printed in CDs like Stormy Noir and Highway 101. In these days, Four Flies Records in Rome published in a collection called Paisa’Got Soul a song of mine “C’è Una Donna Sola” that I recorded in Munich in 1979 for Ariola produced by La Bionda under the nickname Massimo Stella, with super-talented musicians including Stefano Pulga and Naimy Hackett.
F/S: What kind of music had an influence on Nightime Call? I know the touch of jazz was heavy on this album.
Max Meazza: Well, for the most part the musicians on the album were jazz guys, so the sound is jazzy, but I had no particular intention to do that. It came naturally.
F/S: Going back to your label, Solid Air Records, what pushed you to start your own label? I imagine with such a name, the influence of John Martyn must have played some role in your life then.
Max Meazza: The song “Solid Air” is a soundtrack of my life, so I must confess that I’m a little obsessed with it. That’s why I called the label Solid Air.
F/S: I believe you had an aversion to sounding too Italian, was this a product of your connection to both America and Italy?
Max Meazza: Well, I was born in Milan but I grew up listening to American and English music, not Italian songs. My mother’s relatives moved to the States, so I have some cousins in California (Grass Valley) and Texas (near Dallas).
F/S: What kind of music did you grow up listening to? Did your family have a background in music, as well?
Max Meazza: No musicians in my family. As I told you, I grew up listening to my brother’s discs like Elvis, Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka, and stuff like that.
F/S: What made you want to pick up a guitar or start writing songs?
Max Meazza: My mother bought me a guitar when I was 14 years old, and after that day with 3 or 4 chords, I started to write songs.
F/S: Did you have any expectation of becoming a rock star or famous? What drove you then?
Max Meazza: No, never. I’m too lazy! LOL. Only passion for music drives me every day, nothing else.
F/S: What happened in the span of years after Nightime Call? I think it took around 4 years until you released Only Angels Have Wings.
Max Meazza: Well, in those years my father was sick with cancer, and he died in ’89. They were tough times.
F/S: I’m a huge fan of Summer of ’71, as well. Was there ever any interest from any other major label or maybe someone in Japan to publish your music? What kept you going on your own? You must have had some “elite” fans who heard the potential there.
Max Meazza: Me too, I love Summer of ’71, even if it is a little bit naive, but the songs are good. Well, P-Vine Records in Japan published my CD Charlie Parker Loves Me with wonderful guests like Marc Jordan (I adore him), Mark Winkler, Tony O’Malley, and so on. I think I got some “aficionados” out there somewhere. I started with a major in Polydor with Pueblo, my band, and after that, I realized that I’m not built for business. I’ve been independent since 1981 with Appaloosa Records.