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Lacuna Coil Interview!
Written by: Stacey McCarthy, Tim Lein, and Maria Figliomeni We arrived at The Chevrolet Theatre in Wallingford, CT about 15 minutes early for our interview with Cristiano Migliore of Lacuna Coil. After contacting their tour manager, we walked to the back of the building to the backstage entrance and waited for him to meet us. After about 10 minutes, I realized that something wasn’t right and called him back. We had gone to the wrong entrance and had to walk back to where we started from. Tim, Maria Teresa, and I quickly walked to the loading dock area. As we walked past the tour buses, we wondered aloud which one belonged to Lacuna Coil. Tim was hoping to catch a glimpse of Cristina. Once inside the loading dock area, we could see the stage. While we were waiting, Cristiano walked past us! He looked like he was busy so we didn’t say anything to him. Then the tour manager came out and brought us to him. We followed Cristiano to the tour bus and saw a beautiful brunette girl talking to Marco Zelati in the dining area of the bus. For a second, we thought it was Cristina. We stood around awkwardly for a minute and then Maria Teresa broke the ice by speaking to them in Italian. I didn’t even realize that she knew Italian! Maria to Marco:"Piacere" (Pleasure to meet you.) Marco: "Siete Italiana" (Are you Italian?) Maria: "Si, miei genitori sono dall'italia" (Yes, my parents are from Italy.) Marco: "Parlate bene italiano" (You speak Italian well.) Maria: "Poco." (a little) Marco to Cristiano: "Intervistate sempre la gente belle" (You always interview beautiful people.)
Tim: Thanks a lot. How’s the tour going? Cristiano Migliore: Very well. Tim: How’s it touring with Stone Sour and …? Cristiano: Really, really good. Lot’s of people every night. Tim: This year you were on the main stage at Ozzfest. That was cool, I was there. It was a great show. You guys kicked ass. And I’ve seen you guys at The Webster. You guys are awesome no matter what size the crowd is. Do you guys have a preference? Do you like playing the bigger crowds? Cristiano: It’s a different thing. When we play smaller clubs, there are less people and it’s more intimate. When we play huge stages like Ozzfest, there’s so many people but it’s not really that different. When you play festivals like Download, it’s crazy. Tim: You guys had a big year last year. It’s seems like you have been touring nonstop. Cristiano: We started touring right before the album came out and we haven’t stopped. We had a short break. Like three months around Christmas. We stayed home. Tim: Will you be touring after this? Cristiano: After this, I don’t think we will be doing much more. Just some summer festivals in Europe. I don’t think we will tour for this album anymore. Tim: I’m really happy to come to this show tonight then. Tim: Do you have any plans for a cd coming up in the future? Are you writing anything now? Cristiano: We’ll start writing as soon as we go back to Europe which will be like June. We’re going to take a short break. Tim: You guys deserve it. You’ve been on the road for a long time. Cristiano: This was a chance we couldn’t miss. Being with Stone Sour and Shadows Fall was such a big tour was a big chance… Stacey: I was reading online the different interviews that you’ve done in the past, and it seems as though you know so much about the technical aspect of your equipment and about music. Some of the stuff I was reading, I didn’t understand. Cristiano: I don’t understand it either. (laughs) Stacey: How did you gain all of your knowledge? Cristiano: Basically I did what everybody else does…you go through the equipment and instruments and you just keep on playing the stuff that you like… Through playing Ozzfest, you have a chance to get in touch with companies like Ovation and ESP and they gave us the chance to try all of the equipment that we have so we could decide what we will use. Stacey: So, because you were involved with Ozzfest, the companies… Cristiano: Well, the thing is that in Europe it works a bit different than here. The distributors or the big music companies are not really interested in giving out endorsements. It’s something typically American, unless it’s a very big name. So, as soon as we started touring over here.. all of these companies started noticing us. “Oh, you’re on the radio and doing Ozzfest, you’re doing this, you’re doing that.. Are you interested in using our equipment?” Before you had to go and buy all of the stuff you wanted to use and now the companies trying to make you use their equipment. It’s kind of cool. For one, you don’t spend a lot of money and you have the chance to try out a lot of different stuff. Tim: It makes you realize that you are getting big. Cristiano: That’s one thing for sure, but also it’s weird. I come here and play and there’s all of these companies trying to give me free stuff. Once you get to that point that you don’t have to buy all of the stuff that you need to play. That’s what we did for almost eight years before we got endorsed by all of these companies. Tim: It’s funny how it works. You get to the point when you can afford the equipment. You could have used it before! Cristiano: If we had to buy all of the stuff we have on stage, it would cost us a fortune. I am not even sure we could afford it. We don’t make so much money. Stacey: It’s got to be expensive bringing your equipment around and the tour bus itself. Cristiano: Sure, the tour bus, the crew, everything like shipping equipment around. Basically, we have two backlines; one in the States and one in Europe. Because otherwise it would be so expensive to ship it back and forth. Stacey: I was going to ask you about that. Cristiano: We did that in the beginning. We had part of our equipment in Europe and part in the States and we had to fly in and out all of the stuff we were using. And finally since we were endorsed, we could have a double backline. One here and one in Europe. So we didn’t have to ship it back and forth. That really saved us a lot of money in the end. Maria Teresa: The fan base in Europe, is it different than the United States? Cristiano: It’s not really that different… Rock is not as popular in Europe as it is in the United States When people think about rock bands they always think about the bands coming from the US or the UK. So they tend not to listen to local bands because they think they are not as good. I think it’s bullshit. Not because there are not good bands over here or whatever, but because a good band can come out of anywhere. It doesn’t matter where you are from. In the beginning, it was really hard for us to become popular in Italy because everyone thought, “Oh they’re Italian, they’re not going to sound good.” Because of the success we have over here, it’s reflected in the success we are having in Europe. Tim: Thank you for your time. We’re looking forward to the show tonight.
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