Crafting Melodies with Jeff Christie and Lorenzo Gabanizza

Jeff Christie and Lorenzo Gabanizza speak to Jason Barnard about their latest collaboration, “I Don’t Want to Live Without You”, their creative journey, influences and experiences in the ever-evolving music industry.

Jason – Jeff, could you share any memorable moments from your time touring and performing with Christie? Any particular shows or moments that stand out to you?

Jeff – So many from the touring days of the ‘60’s and 70’s, ‘90’s and Noughties and too many to include here but a few standouts were touring with Hendrix whilst in the Outer Limits in the ‘60’s when one Ian Kilmister would try and augment his Roadie income by tapping everyone up for a fiver eventually obtaining the name Lemmy as his first line of conversation would invariably be ‘Lemme a fiver pal’. Don’t know if he ever tried it on with Jimi.

Outdrawing Santana in Bogotá in the 70’s and then being supported on tour by upcoming crooner and heartthrob Julio Iglesias. Having to have Oxygen cylinders on stage with two nurses at some of our stadium shows in Columbia due to the high altitude. After every other number we’d have to take a few steps to the side of the stage to get a blast of O2 from the nurse who duly administered it through some kind of breathing mask like the WW 2 pilots had to wear and then bounce back for the next number. Touring Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Columbia then rolling on to Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala in the early ‘70’s. Also being one of the first bands to play in Poland-whilst that country was still under communist rule from the Soviet Union. We did a TV Spectacular from Sopot that was beamed via satellite right across the USSR in 1970 and when we (Christie) played in Russia in 2001 people were coming up to me saying they’d seen us on that same Sopot TV Show in 1970 and had waited all that time to see us performing live in Moscow and St Petersburg. That was a memorable and unforgettable experience, humbling also.

Jason – Lorenzo, I have some questions for you as well. Firstly, what inspired you to collaborate with Jeff – how did it come about?

Lorenzo – It’s been my wildest dream since my childhood, and when I was an adult, this dream has never abandoned me. That’s because I had the presumption to know him, as a man, as an artist. Of course, It’s a presumption that many fans have concerning their idols. It started from that admiration, back in 1970, and it grew bigger after I started to create my own music. I felt that he would have given to my music something like completion. I always thought we were the perfect fit, as a duo, and now that we are at the third single, I can say without fear of denial, that we really are. I covered some of Jeff’s songs in 2004, and in 2016, but we really started this collaboration in 2020, when my Mother passed away. She loved so much his music that I thought that the best tribute to her, would have been to sing a song I wrote for her, just together with our common idol. Well, listen at “You’re Not There” … it’s a great song and I think my Mom is proud of us and she’s still clapping her hands above us…

Jason – Lorenzo, can you walk us through what inspired you to write “I Don’t Want To Live Without You”.

Lorenzo – I already said it comes from my Emily Bronte’s passion. Could I say symbiosis? There are some poems of her which really could have been stolen from the deeper corner of my heart. She felt passion, love, pain, the same way I do. So yes, I experienced love, loss, desperation, but I did in a personal way that I saw reflected in how Emily described her feelings in letters, poetry or “Wuthering Heights”. That pool of emotions was what brought me to write the song. I think the second verse after the refrain is the most “Bronte”: “The window glass is broken, and the night is a never-ending moan” …Isn’t this a perfect image of loneliness? Add the fog to it, the whistling wind. Could you see now Heathcliff and Cathy walking on the moors?

Jason – Jeff, what songs from your career are you the proudest to have written and why?

Jeff – Yellow River has been a song that over the years has brought forth all kinds of mixed emotions. There was a time when I wished it hadn’t been the monster number 1 global hit because it’s such a tough thing to follow and every song that comes after can be seen in some quarters as a failure if it isn’t a chart topper. Then I got over it when I saw how many big artists either recorded it or praised its worth and that gave me the time and distance to view it as so many others have done and what is now generally perceived in the music industry to be a classic from arguably one of the greatest popular music eras. That said I am proud of what I feel, is to have over the years progressed my ability to write good songs that have their influences firmly rooted in a golden age of song writing that I was fortunate enough to be allowed access to. I have recently just completed an album of original songs over the last 3 years that I am very proud of and as I’m the strictest quality control enforcer I know and trust, at least in my mind, it says something, at least to me, that I can still get that all important buzz listening to them. Some of the other older songs I’m proud of would be Freewheeling’ Man, Inside Looking Out, Pleasure and Pain, For All Mankind, If Only, Until The Dawn, Fool, Set Yourself Free, Wild Grows The Heather, Troubadour, Back On The Boards, Another Point Of View, Turning To Stone. All these songs are previously released and available on Spotify and other digital platforms as well as CD and Vinyl by either Christie or Jeff Christie/Outer Limits.