A few days ago, on November 6th, Marco Villotti, aka Jimmy, was on stage with Capossela at the Duse Theater and wrote in a post on Facebook: “It’s always nice to play with my dear friend Vinicio.”
The beginnings in the 60s
Today, Wednesday December 6th, Jimmy Villotti left us. During the night, at the age of 79, an illness took him away. A life on the strings of a guitar that traverses musical genres without too much artistic paranoia. In the sixties he was with the Meteors and then with other beat bands. In the early seventies he stood together with Fio Zanotti under the name Jimmy MEC and released a 45 RPM single for Fonit Cetra called Il messia clear prog rock origins. His guitar was requested by many colleagues and friends, e.gbecause his creativity and his friendliness are extremely contagious.
Collaboration with the big names of Italian music
In the midst of the punk explosion, he wrote the rock opera Giulio Cesare and a few years later he produced an album by Italy’s most famous crazy rock group, Skiantos, the album is “Pesissimo”. He has now worked with Lucio Dalla, Francesco Guccini and Andrea Mingardi. His skills are so immense that the list of artists looking for him is growing immeasurably: Claudio Lolli, Sergio Endrigo, Ornella Vanoni, Luca Carboni, Gianni Morandi and Stadio. He was Paolo Conte’s guitarist for around ten years and the lawyer from Asti even dedicates a song to him, Jimmy, dancing, which concludes the 1987 album Aquaplano. Villotti began to devote himself to his passion, jazz, and recorded several solo albums in the 1990s. A first approach had already taken place in 1984 with “Jimtonic”. His irony in the 1993 album of the same name and in “Si fidi c ho il fez” from 1995 is still considered today by record companies and producers as a reference when it comes to giving an example of a great musician who knew how to communicate with the instrument and with the audience without restrictions of the musical genre.
Writing with the book “Onyricana”
In recent years Jimmy has devoted himself to writing and describes the beginnings of his career in Bologna, but also the world of dreams. “Onyricana,” the book published by Il Calamaro in 2019, introduced Villotti with the following words: “Dreams have neither logic nor duty, let alone finality; Perhaps they only have the representation of the paradox and that is where I find myself… smelling the scent of the archaic dream, among the last trees, beyond the hills.” A book with a cover designed by Paolo Conte and an introduction by Francesco Guccini: ” Every time I write an introduction to a work by Villotti… I point out that it carries with it the stigmata of genius, because superhuman abilities, He manages to cross his legs by placing both feet on the floor … Marco Villotti, known as Jimmy, is my friend and that makes my life happier and less painful. Villotti is no longer here. Bologna loses a living monument. Italy loses a brilliant musician. The world is losing a person who understood the meaning of life.