An interview with Fabio Golfetti – May 2024 – the backstory…
Part Three – Invisible Opera Company of Tibet
Part Four – The Glissando Guitar
Over the next couple of weeks I will be publishing, as part of the Canterbury 2.0 series (an exploration of largely international musicians who have been influenced by Canterbury scene music), a multi part series on Fabio Golfetti.
Fabio is a Brazilian guitarist who has been a member of Gong for the last 12 years, but who prior (as well as alongside his time in Gong) has devoted the last 40 or so years of his life to projects very much within the compass of these pages, not least as bandleader with Violeta de Outono and the Invisible Opera Company of Tibet (Tropical Version). His association with Daevid Allen had also stretched back 20 years prior to Daevid inviting him to join Gong in 2012.
A little background to this interview and its origins. At some during the first iterations of Facelift the fanzine, probably in the very early 90s, I received my first ever correspondence from Brazil. Memories are sketchy, but I am guessing the package contained a single cassette, entitled Violeta de Outono, and the music performed by what turned out to be a guitar-based trio was bite-sized, punchy, stripped down, and I wasn’t entirely sure where it fitted into what I was writing for Facelift. There were clear Beatles influences, early Pink Floyd too, but also something more akin to the contemporary indie sounds coming out of the city I was living in at the time, Manchester. It slowly ate into me, I found myself listening to it more and more and picking up on more obvious references: the glissando guitar, hints at Gong and Caravan… Then further correspondence followed – there were more cassettes, a flexidisc entitled Opera Invisivel, and packs of promotional material including some very Daevid Allenesque artwork, a Pete Frame-style family tree – I was hooked!
One of the many pieces of music Fabio sent me in around 1995 really made me sit up and listen – it was another cassette, this time of the band Invisible Opera Company of Tibet performing live a set of eerily familiar music (‘Live At Brittania Café’). I raved about it in Facelift issue 15 (a review which started with the sentence ‘Good vibes know no geographical limits’, which could almost be the byword for the Canterbury 2.0 set of interviews Facelift is currently publishing.
This review which ended up as the album’s sleevenotes when it appeared on CD through Voiceprint in 2004, by which time Facelift was dormant and myself and Fabio had lost touch… But that release triggered new correspondence, and we’ve been back in touch ever since. Fabio joined Gong in 2012, initially with the band still led by Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth, recording ‘I See You’, and then he has become a key member of the current line-up which has carried the torch for Gong fans following the death of both Allen and Smyth.
I finally met Fabio in 2016, at my first ever Kozfest, appropriately enough just inside that festival’s Daevid Allen stage, and we grabbed a quick chat. That’s been a tradition we’ve continued after the dozen of so subsequent Gong gigs I’ve been to – which has encompassed gigs in northern powerhouse venues in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield, as well as more unusual locations – a Northumberland village hall in Allendale, the ‘Perfumed Garden’ at Beatherder, back at Kozfest and a few miles down the road in Hebden Bridge.
There’s a bit of personal significance for me here: the 2016 Kozfest catalysed me to start writing again after a 18 year break, and the first ever Facelift blog article mused about, amongst other things, Fabio’s version of the Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, which not only, as we will see, launched the career of Violeta de Outono, but, at the time of that blog article was exactly 50 years since the original.
Since joining Gong, Fabio’s movements have become increasingly complex with him flitting backwards and forwards between Brazil and the United Kingdom (and wherever the band’s gigs might take them). The band recorded that initial album with Daevid Allen before carrying forward the Gong torch with a further 3 studio albums with further live performances also catalogued (some released, some pending); they have been the backing musicians for Steve Hillage’s highly successful resurrection of his 1970s band; Fabio also works as a producer (including for the astonishing Brazilian progressive rock band Stratus Luna, which includes his highly talented son Gabriel); whilst continuing projects with Violeta de Outono, the Invisible Opera Company of Tibet and solo work with Renato Mello (‘Frame of Life’ volumes 1 and 2), and son Gabriel (Lux Æterna), plus further solo work of his own.
Whenever we met, we always talked about spending time undertaking a proper interview, which would encompass his career with Violeta, The Invisibles, the Gong Global Family, solo work, his love affair with the glissando guitar; and a new lease of life with the resurrected Gong; but also upbringing, musical influences, and the realities of being a Canterbury/Gong fan and musician in Brazil in the 1970s.
This became reality in May 2024 when Fabio stayed with us for 24 hours in our home in West Yorkshire. He demonstrated the art of glissando guitar for our son, Joe; and performed a number of songs for our daughter, Ella, including her favourite Violeta track ‘Jupiter’. As for the interview, well we just let the tape machine roll, forgot all about it and what transpired was around 8 hours of conversation which has been distilled into a few separate sections: Fabio’s upbringing, his musical education and first steps in the music business; the stories behind his major projects Violeta de Outono and the Invisible Opera Company of Tibet; his study and love of the art of glissando guitar; and his relationship with Daevid Allen that helped to shape the last dozen or so years spent with Gong. We hope you’ll enjoy what he has to say…
For Part 1 of the interview click here
The Canterbury scene(zine) continued.... 
Long overdue! Thank you Phil and Fabio!
LikeLike