Måneskin puts rock ‘n’ roll back in the limelight

“Shut up and behave,” is what “Zitti e buoni”, the song with which Måneskin won the Eurovision Song Contest two years ago, told us to do.

Singer Damiano David, however, was the first to break his own rule, when he snorted a line of coke during the scoring for the song contest – or so everyone thought, because surely the front man leaned forward and moved his head about on a table filled with bottles of beer and wine, hadn’t he? Social media were on fire, news channels stumbled over each other to share the images. Rebels is what they were, those Romans! Rock ‘n’ roll had risen again! Or...not, as it turned out. A glass had broken – shards bring good luck – and David was neatly picking them up, the polite man that he is. More than that, he claimed that he was against drugs and would take a drug test at the spot to prove his innocence.

The test proved negative, what did you expect, but the damage was done: the Italians, as the ugly duckling in the Eurovision pop circus, had brought rock ‘n’ roll back to life. Just as the mainstream had neatly filtered out guitars, not to mention hip hop. A whole new audience of young people who, God forbid, had never been exposed to guitars on TikTok, took to the new sound, and to a frontman with a rock star charisma the likes of which we had not seen in a long time. Songs raced to the top of charts, albums were awarded platinum. A rock ‘n’ roll mania followed, as if a new Fab Four was born – not in Liverpool, but in Rome.

How did a band from a country with no real rock tradition, which participated in both the Eurovision song contest as well as X Factor – competitions that aren’t very “rock ‘n’ roll” – manage this? In any event, Måneskin are not doing anything new: their “variety rock”, as Alex Callier of Belgian Eurovision entry Hooverphonic smirkingly called their music when the group won, can be traced back to major currents in rock history over the past half-a-century. A dash of eyeliner from early 1970s glam rock, a lick of swagger from Led Zeppelin and a heavy dose of sex from Iggy Pop. The latter sent David and co a message begging to collaborate, which they did in “I Wanna Be Your Slave”. The new generation of rock fans will not care much that it all has been done before (and often better). It is only old, white men who once worked as roadies for Keith Richards who’ll whine about that.

Rock ‘n’ roll has always been more of an attitude than a style: it is the lifeblood of the outsider. Rock ‘n’ roll is being able to be free in what you think and feel – in short, who you are. That is exactly what the members of Måneskin do. They don’t care whether they are a rock ‘n’ roll pastiche or not, as long as it is exciting. Their exuberant, sex-dripping image only reinforces that free-spirited status. The idea that rock ‘n’ roll is all about throwing TV sets out of hotel rooms or doing drugs is a thing of the past. The fact that on the new, third Måneskin album, Rush! (that is sadly enough not devoid of clichés), David sings, “Cocaine is on the table / Don’t care we’re rebel rebels,” should be read as tongue-in-cheek. We hope, at least. Incidentally, someone looked for, and found, that broken glass after the Eurovision Song Contest scandal.

Måneskin 2 & 3/3, 20.00, Forest National