LIFE WITH THE MAESTRO
Ennio Morricone passed away on 6th July 2020. Famous for Spaghetti Western scores such as The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, and Hollywood blockbusters like The Mission and The Untouchables, Morricone was renowned for writing unique guitar parts. Jason Sidwell talks to Ennio’s guitarist Rocco Zifarelli, about recording and performing with a music legend.
GT: How did you get to work with Ennio?
“Then Ennio came over again, took the part off the music stand and said, ‘I don’t give a shit about the part, play whatever you want!’”
RZ: I worked with Ennio Morricone from 1997 until he passed away in 2020. Our work was initiated while I was an external member of the Italian RAI TV orchestra;the bass player and head of the orchestra, Nanni Civitenga, received a call from Ennio, asking him if he knew a good guitarist. Luckily, Nanni mentioned my name. Our first work was a recording session for a movie soundtrack and when I received the call, I was both surprised and terrified. Ennio was renowned for his intolerance towards mediocre musicians and I knew he had been quite hard on previous guitarists. He was always very particular with players who performed his music. The first guitar part to record was a double melodic line: one to be done normally and the other one with harmonics, some natural, some artificial. The group was small, just guitar, bass, drums and piano. We were to play above the recorded orchestra with a reference metronome. Ennio was directing from the control room and we started reading the parts only; initially I didn’t know what he wanted as there was no information on the part. So I used a very wide and ambient sound as I thought that was the best option to blend well with the
