This is one of the deepest and thought-proving interviews I have had with a musician. I am talking about my recent interview with Massimiliano Rix. Maximilian Rix, who was born Massimiliano Rizzo, began his love for music at the age of seeventeen. Later, he was chosen to perform with the band, Candy Seeds, where he learned many new skills. Maximilian took the time to answers some Q & A recently for the magazine. Check out what developed.
Q. What aspect of making music excites you the most right now?
A. Well the thing I like the most of making music is the fact that I can be sincere, and really myself. Sometimes it’s really hard to, you know artists are always complicated persons and sometimes it seems you’re lying to yourself when you’re not. It’s simply the fact that society wants you to put a mask on to survive, you know, in my case I must do a job and see people that have nothing to do with me, my soul, my life. That’s why is so difficult to be yourself in everyday life. The risk is that this mask begins to attach to your real self and destroy day by day the best things inside you. As I said in “Jaded” this mask can eat you alive if you don’t fight back the sickness it brings and other people do not understand you.
Q. What aspect of making music gets you the most discouraged?
A. The problem of being a self-supported musician it’s obviously to make a living of it, and this is really very difficult. Sometimes a lot of musicians give up for cash problems or ‘cause the society’, as I said before, wants you to be productive, wants your soul for her needs and turns you in a mere gear in a machine and nothing else. This is what a lot of us are worried about. How many talented people ends up washing dishes or cleaning up hotel rooms or worse dead end jobs before they can obtain what they deserve if they ever will? And how doing a job like this can change your mind and your feelings inside? The problem to be an artist is not to be understood and supported before the flame that burns inside you disappear. That’s the worst thing that can happen to an artist because, in this case, your whole life becomes a fake, just a comedy to act without any reason. And I do know something about it personally and it’s a terrifying thing to cope with, believe me.
Q. What are you up to right now, music-wise? (Current or upcoming recordings, tours, extravaganzas, experiments, top-secret projects,etc).
A. Actually I’m looking for musicians to support me live. My second record “Falling From Grace” has just come out and I’d like to promote it, but it’s not so easy here for reasons I’ll explain later. I have a lot of ideas for the next one that will probably be out for the end of 2008. I’m trying to cope with myself and probably my next album will be the more passionate I’ve ever wrote. Even if my sentimental life keeps being a disaster I’m really glad with the stuff I’m making now, and weird to say probably this period is the most intense in my artistic life. I’m actually seeing things I thought I had forgotten since ten years ago and that could never reappear in my soul. It’s like I’m awakening from a deep sleep and even if I don’t like what I see around me I finally have the key to transform this negative stuff in music and poetry. And I’m ready for anything not to lose it.
Q. What's the most unusual place you've ever played a show or made a recording? How did the qualities of that place affect the show/recording?
A. I record my material at home and since I started this thing I never played live my songs. Inspiration often comes from place I’ve been in my twenties or memories I have of what happened to me when I was younger. If I had back then the capabilities I have now, I’d be really different and probably happier but I can’t change the past, it’s the future I’m a bit worried. Actually, I feel like I have to go through a tunnel I tried to avoid a lot of time ago. As I said in “Reopen My Eyes”, the safety and the answers I thought I had reached in my life were nothing but a fake and were killing the real me. I’m trying to rebuild myself in order not to lie to myself and to nobody else anymore.
Q. In what ways does the place where you live (or places where you have lived), affect the music you create, or your taste in music?
A. Oh, that’s really, really terrible. Living in Rome, Italy means it’s almost impossible to be noticed and understood. For guys like me this is definitely hell on hearth. I never ever liked Italian music since I was fourteen years old but a few exceptions. This music is ridiculous, stupid, and almost pornographic in the sense that really sucks. The same goes for theatre, television, and live-clubs where only cover bands are allowed to play ‘cause there’s no one interested in something new and different from mainstream. The place I live is really a nightmare for creative musicians but Internet is saving my artistic life. The only answer is looking outside here and Internet can really help ‘cause is the only free place remained on the planet. It’s seems absurd but I feel I’m really myself when I’m on it and a fake when I’m not. I don’t want to end up suffering of IAD but I’m really proud of all the mail I receive from outside this hell. It definitely proves me I’m not wrong but only misplaced. But at the moment, I have to cope with this terrible situation, hoping to have the chances and the time to change it.
Q. When was the last time you wrote a song? What can you tell us about it?
A. The last song I wrote is something really strange, I started with a very simple and sad lyric and curiously the music went in a complete opposite direction. The guitar riff in particular has got that sort of nostalgic spleen inside that gives you a lot of relief when you listen to it. I’m really glad I still manage to do those things at 38 and all I’m worried about is to lose this mysterious feeling that makes you create stuff like that. That’s exactly the direction I’m headed to and I want to follow at all costs. Feeling the spleen and working on it until it lives you with something positive. And helping others who feel the same to sustain this strain. I do not want to seem too pretentious but it could be a mission, artistically. I think it’s a thing only few artists like The Cure obtained in their life. It’s a thing really hard to get but I begin to understand how. I’m so satisfied with this last song that it will be my next single.
Q. As you create more music, do you find yourself getting more or less interested in seeking out and listening to new music made by other people...and why do you think that is?
A. I’ll always be in love with the authentic rock. Obviously, every artist has some influence, someone said if you steal something to one person is plague, if you steal, to a lot of person is research! Personally, I didn’t have much of those but what I listened to when I was twenty. There is The Cure above all but not because I copy them; I simply feel the same inside after years and years. Then follows Nirvana, U2, Marillion, Pink Floyd and recently Nine Inch Nails and Evanescence. It may seem absurd but the more influences you have; the more you lose your true inspiration. Better to have few but good ones according to your tastes.
Q. Lately, what musical periods or styles do you find yourself most drawn to as a listener? (Old or new music? Music like yours or different from yours?)
A. I like psychedelic and punk period of the seventies, grunge of the nineties and even glam and metal of the eighties. But, for a music maker the question should be: do I have to sound like someone else or simply trying to be myself? Have I got something personal to say? Must I be sincere or not? Record labels damn their souls to find bands that plays like the successful ones and if you look at a big Indie promotional company like Taxi they suggest you this: stop listening to the music you heard when you where young and try to sound just like what you hear on the radio now. I cancelled my subscription soon after reading this enormous bull***t. If you try to sound like someone else ‘cause it’s successful, you will be turned into a fake and you’ll lose your very true emotional thrust that makes you unique as an artist and as an individual. You’ll become nothing but a clone. I mean it’s very hard, maybe impossible to be successful without a big promotional industry behind you but a lot of times there’s a price too great to pay for this and it’s your true artistically identity. Watch the Green Day case for instance: they generated the whole MacDonald Punk stream just because record companies are looking to fast income and nothing more. How many bands sound just like them because they’re a big cash machine? And the next week we’ll have someone else ready to take their place! Another copy of the copy. This is not art but simply market. Please give us back Syd Vicious, when REAL Punk really meant: “No future, I’m desperate, what can I do? I wanna spit in your face my anger ‘cause they’re killing me!” instead of “Hey, look mama, look girls, I look and pose just like a true rebel, o boy what a thing, no one will resist me!” And the worst thing it’s that this is right; no one resists the fakes when they’re well orchestrated. But, as I said before, this has nothing to do with true art. It’s stuff made of plastic, not real sweat and rage.
Q. Name a band or musician, past or present, who you flat-out LOVE and think more people should be listening to. What's one of your all-time favorite recordings by this band/musician?
A. No doubt: The Cure. But, understanding them is difficult if you don’t look deeply inside yourself. I don’t know if others should listen to them. They’re not for everybody, but for people who are ready to lose everything but their true soul and their true scared baby inside. Albums like “Pornography” “Disintegration” and “Wish” lets you look at the world as it really is. When you understand all the lies you’ve been fed up with since you were a baby, you must find a refugee into something, fight the sickness, and find a cure, even if this means falling in love with the romantic idea of death and sorrow that it’s really heavy to sustain. Facing the death of a part of your soul is the first step to regain it with time. If you run away from this feeling or even worse, the whole word pushes you in that direction things will turn even worse. You’ll end up hiding yourself forever and feeding a real monster: insincerity. Here’s the reason why some people should listen to them. Just to recognize and face the truth. Sometimes, when you look at the world, you find people happy and satisfied with nothing and you almost envy their light state of mind. Well, you can spend your whole life trying to imitate them but even if a lot of people like friends and doctors will tell you it’s right it will never work for you. The way out is getting under and through but it’s almost impossible to do it alone, and it’s difficult to explain to others: friends or doctors. Like Avril Lavigne (A great underestimate talent) sung “If I show you, I don’t think you’ll understand, ’cause no one understands”.
Q. What's the saddest song you've ever heard?
A. “Cold” from Pornography. There are a lot of people out there like me who thinks: “Your name like ice into my heart”. When an important relationship you wished to build your life upon goes terribly wrong, this state never leaves you completely and becomes really a curse. The only thing I can do is trying to heal me and maybe doing the same thing for others like me in the same state. My music, as it’s written on my site, it’s not for winners or glamour boys but for the ones who needs relief when they watch the ceiling every night. And I know those are probably the only ones who really understand me.
Photo used in this story was provided by Maximilian Rix.
Junior's Cave Online Magazine/JC Internet Radio Staff Team,
