“We just want to say to the whole of Europe, to the whole world… ROCK’N’ROLL NEVER DIES!”
If you were placing bets on where the next great rock’n’roll band would come from, the Italian entry to Eurovision is unlikely to have been top of your list. But with frontman Damiano David’s hollered words of victory in 2021, that’s exactly how Måneskin – kohled eyes glittering, half-naked, stylish, tattooed, resplendent – put a platform heel through the received wisdom.
“It was very emotional for us,” David tells The Big Issue, when the band join us from their Barcelona dressing room ahead of yet another date on their post-Eurovision global perma-tour, “because we were coming to a point of our career where we were having a lot of struggles getting our music accepted by the people that were working with us.” Piled in around him on a suddenly super-glam sofa, the rest of the band – Victoria De Angelis (bass), Thomas Raggi (guitar) and Ethan Torchio (drums) – nod vigorously.
“We had a very harsh year trying to convince people that what we were doing was actually worth it,” David continues. “And so, winning it was like shutting down all the shit. It was
