Franco Falsini

This is an exerpt from an interview with Franco Falsini of the italian electronic psych band Sensations Fix. It was lifted from the blog called It's Psychedelic Baby. Thanks to them...

Franco:
I arrived in America the 15th August 1969, the day that Woodstock started but...I didn't go to the festival. My mother in law was dying of cancer and those were her last days. I remember playing guitar for her, she had remarks on my accent, but like the sense of hope of the music I played to her on an acoustic guitar. I met Keith Edwards in the record shop he was working. He was a great drummer and had a wide musical knowledge. He was the one who turn me on to LSD, that night I was jamming with him in a farmhouse where a bunch of hippies were living. He was surprise that I couldn't function on that condition, but for me the whole scene was to study. I didn't want to get waisted like many others. Little time later me and Keith were playing and living together in a big house in Alexandria.We formed a band "Sally Duck" with Jamie Wilson on bass and a wizard on electronics Carl Grossman, a freaky guitar player that could learn musical parts on the fly.
On the basement of the house I managed to put together something were we could record our experiences with Jamie. We had modified a 4 track Teac to give it a sync capabilities way before the company realized the future of multitrack on a large consumer scale. Also with his help I was able to get a MiniMoog before it came out officialy on the market. I was obsessed to go beyond the sound of the guitar, but there weren't so many choices beside the distortion and echoplex, so the Moog came out at a perfect time, it was the missing link of the sound knockin on my head. Our band was performing mostly out in woods where we would bring our instruments and play for hours without ever stopping. This kind of attitude and the fact that the house was always full with people turn us into a cult band amongst the kids in the area. But tighten up the control of the local police. I was always keeping a low profile as I was struggling to find any possible alternatives to use of substances from egg machines to form of meditation, but Keith was working in a shop selling drug called paraphenalia and was exposed to get in trouble. In fact, one day after police bust a Tracker's Stop, the place he was working, he was arrested because some clients had left on the floor a bag full of grass. I had to bail him out of jail and went trough a lot to prove his innocence. I went back to Europe for awhile and England was always a good place to regain music equilibrium. In London I met David, an Italian promoter that was doing business with a small label for krautrock called "Virgin". Some of the cassettes brought from the American basement session were submitted to them. Then I meet Simon Draper from whom I got his friendly advice to submit the same tapes to some Italian labels. The people at Virgin were really nice. They were on a strike of success that will soon turn them into one of the most influential label of our modern age, not only I got all their excitement but I was also able to be in their guestlist at some of the concert they were sponsoring, were I remember seeing Faust and Can. The tapes did end up in the office of Polydor in Italy , but I received no reply. After coming back to America, big problems started to happening at the house. Sally Duck broke up and everyone had different planes. I had become father and I was working on 9 to 5 job making braces for handicapped people, but still playing all night with very little sleep, so I decided to go back to Italy . I shipped a container full of equipment, and it was not easy to explain to custom that all that stuff was personal a lot of the merit for this, has to be given to the owners of Space Electronic'. Their venue was even bigger then when I left and in there I was booked to play as one man band, using the nickname of a famous medieval italian painter "Paolo Uccello". Suddenly I received a phone call from the A.R of Polydor. The company finally heard the tapes and in a business meeting in Milan after showing them the latest sound developments, they proposed me a 5 year contract. I signed the agreement thinking that the tapes I submitted were just demos and started to put together a band to eventually record the albums at Polydor Studios. Keith Edward flew in from Virginia and another American guy that was living in Italy Richard Ursillo was selected to play bass, to complete the 3 piece band that started to perform as Sensations Fix To practice and record without problems created by the loud volume, the band went to live out in a country, miles away from Florence.