Måneskin’s frontman Damiano David stares out into the vastness of the O2 Arena, raising his eyes to the seats at the rear, so high up that tickets come with a warning about vertigo. “Fuckin’ ’ell,” he says, almost to himself. “This is a big-ass venue.”
David is not a performer much hampered by reserve – it takes him two songs to strip to his waist, and a couple more to start grinding his crotch against the microphone stand while singing “I want to fuck” – but, for a moment, he seems genuinely taken aback. Few rock bands have taken such an unlikely route to arena-packing success, involving busking on the streets of Rome, Italy’s version of The X Factor and Eurovision, a pathway that doubtless says a lot about the by-any-means-necessary approach an Italian rock band has to take to get noticed internationally and may also tell you something about the ongoing collapse of old-fashioned ideas about credibility and authenticity in music.
