by Alexandra Mrozowska
— Senior Columnist —
Countless Rock songs we all know referred to childhood as a period in one’s life when the dreams are big and possibilities seem endless. But you don’t need Pink Floyd or KISS telling you that.
Regardless of what happened to their dreams afterwards, childhood was the period everyone dreamt about becoming a President, an astronaut or a Rock star, of meeting their basketball heroes or learning how to fly. Or perhaps… not everyone?
What about those whose childhood is dreaming mostly about recovering from serious diseases they battle? “They should have fun, share good times with friends or, why not, even dream about their future thanks to music or sports,” but “they fight to survive instead”, says an Italian musician and event manager Fabrizio Troiano.
His sentiment becomes especially clear this year, when almost everyone all around the globe experienced isolation, discomfort and fear for their life – something seriously ill people and especially kids face every day. That’s why Troiano launched a Cultural Association Metal For Kids, United with the aim of helping the suffering kids. The all-star charity jam was held annually for a few years – and then 2020 came along.
But even the COVID pandemic wasn’t able to stop Metal For Kids, United. Instead of organizing another concert, Troiano invited his guests – including David Ellefson (Megadeth, Ellefson, Altitudes And Attitude, Metal Allegiance), Scott Ian (Anthrax, SOD), Ralf Scheepers (Primal Fear, ex-Gamma Ray), Brian O’Connor (ex-Vicious Rumors), Rafael Bittencourt (Angra) and more – to take part in a lockdown video. But before you watch “Burn2K20” and consider a donation to a noble cause behind this initiative, find out more about Metal For Kids, United and the man who put it all together…
Hardrock Haven: First of all, could you please introduce the idea behind Metal For Kids United? In which circumstances did it start?
Fabrizio Troiano: I got the idea back in 2016. I wanted to create something special and related to music – more specifically, to Heavy Metal. I have to say that until then I’ve never been involved in producing concerts. Of course, I’ve been a metalhead since I was eleven years old and I’m also a guitar player in a band, so music is very important to me, but I haven’t done anything related to music in terms of producing events. My daily job is working in an event company, so I do organize events, but I usually do this for other companies and consumers… Anyway, me and my band Timestorm released the album [Shades Of Unconsciousness] back in 2000 and I had this crazy idea of making a sort of reunion with the band and doing a concert and I wanted to create something interesting for the audience. Of course I knew that probably my band didn’t have much following anymore anyway, as it’s been twenty years in between, twenty years of not being around… Still, I had a lot of contacts as a fan and an amateur musician and I started making invitations to people I knew. For a long time, I’ve been friends with Brian O’Connor, who at some point [1997-1999, 2001-2005] was a lead singer of Vicious Rumors and actually replaced their late singer Carl Albert [with the exception of the 1996 album Something Burning featuring the vocals of the band’s guitarist Geoff Thorpe] when he died. I got to know him in 2003 during the Vicious Rumors’ European tour with Savatage and we became good friends, so the idea was to meet and invite him to sing in Italy and perform some Vicious Rumors’ songs as well as cover songs. I also had the opportunity to get to know Edu Falaschi [ex-Angra, Almah] around the summer of 2015. He’s actually a cousin of a friend of mine from the university years, so I was introduced to Edu when he was touring Italy. So I asked him, if I was going to organize a concert, would he like to join? He said “yes”. I also became friends with Maestro Mistheria [Mistheria, Vivaldi Metal Project] and he became involved in the first Metal For Kids event too. I started inviting them to play, but it soon became clear to me that I wanted to do something special for Rome.
Hardrock Haven: Any particular reason why?
Fabrizio Troiano: Because geographically, Rome is in the middle of Italy and there are not so many Heavy/Power Metal concerts here. Of course, it’s usually even worse if you live in the southern part [of Italy]. But back in the day when I was fifteen or even twenty, I’ve always had to travel up to Milan or Bologna to meet my heroes and see concerts. And at the same time, there are a lot of cool Italian bands like Labyrinth, Vision Divine, Rhapsody and others which are around for a very long time now. Most of them are located in regions north from Rome and usually don’t play here ‘cause costs are too high and the audience isn’t as big nowadays as it used to be in 2000 or 2010. So I wanted to do something for Rome and I decided to invite just a few key musicians instead of whole bands and make a backing band out of very cool and talented professional Heavy Metal musicians from Rome. I thought about a long all-star jam, so the musicians would play the most important songs of their careers and a few rare songs also, to make it more special, plus the covers of the classics from Hard Rock to Heavy Metal. One or two days into doing that I said to myself, “I have to do this for charity.” It didn’t make sense to make money out of it – perhaps we’d not even make enough to cover the concert – so as long as I do this myself, I want to do it for charity. It’s really a personal dream come true to organize this concert and invite all those musicians and also to prove to myself that my daily job of event organizer can be utilized to do something that I really care about – Heavy Metal, music in general and eventually, the kids.
Hardrock Haven: Why did you decide to help children specifically?
Fabrizio Troiano: It’s about [other children] having the same dreams I used to have when I was a child. When I was eleven years old, I bought my first Heavy Metal albums – Killers by Iron Maiden and Blow Up Your Video by AC/DC. Soon I totally fell in love with Heavy Metal. Of course, at the time I used to listen to Europe too, ‘cause it was the period of the big success of The Final Countdown and it [an album] was probably a present given to my older brother. If you were invited to a birthday party in Italy in the ‘80s, you would give a cassette, an LP or a single as a present. So, I got familiar with Rock and Heavy Metal this way, and since I turned 11, I became a real metalhead. Even though I was still a child still going to school, I was a metalhead – probably the only one around. Metal For Kids… is a dream of a child which comes true and I’m lucky to do it, ‘cause I’ve got a job and I earn enough money to put a show on and do it for charity.
Hardrock Haven: Speaking of that, could you please give more details about a specific children charity you support these days – the Peter Pan Association?
Fabrizio Troiano: Now it’s the second year we are supporting Peter Pan Association which offers free hospitality to families who come to Rome to have their children treated for cancer at Child Jesus Hospital. The association works very seriously and strongly supports children since 1994. I find it very unfair that children have to deal with cancer at the very young age while they should have fun, share good times with friends or, why not, even dream about their future thanks to music or sports. They fight to survive instead. I was a lucky child and fulfilled many of my childhood dreams. Now I’m paying it forward. As a reminder, you can help the children at Peter Pan in three ways: donating at: https://www.gofundme.com/metal-for-kids-united-against-kids-cancer, purchasing Metal For Kids United merchandise at https://metalforkids.bandcamp.com and subscribing to our YouTube channel and streaming the new #BURN2K20 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIfWn1C4jbw.
Hardrock Haven: It is unfair indeed, and support is much needed in such a situation. Anyway, back to the story – what are your memories from the very first Metal For Kids… show?
Fabrizio Troiano: Honestly, the first show was a big success. I didn’t expect it. It was more than thirty musicians, two opening bands – my band Timestorm and another one – plus musicians from Secret Sphere, Eldritch, Vision Divine, Labyrinth, Edu Falaschi, Fabio Lione [Angra, Rhapsody, ex-Vision Divine], Brian O’Connor… It was a huge success and that’s why I kept on doing it also in the following years. At the beginning, the only way to collect money to donate for charity were concert tickets. So basically we had three hundred people around at the first show, which is good for Power Metal, which is the kind of music we usually play. Some Progressive Metal and classic Metal too, but mostly it’s Power/Speed Metal, especially that there’s a lot of guest musicians coming from the German music scene – like Ralf Scheepers [Primal Fear, ex-Gamma Ray], or Italian guitarist Luca [Princiotta] who plays with Doro Pesch, or Roland Grapow [ex-Helloween, Masterplan]. So it was tickets and the number of audience that were the signs of success for a concert like this. Of course we’ve never planned to bring in whole bands like Stratovarious or Rhapsody, but single musicians coming to play with others and jam. That’s why it was very hard to promote it, especially for the first time. Nobody knew me back then – I wasn’t a big name like Live Nation, All Access or other big concert booking agency or promotion company. I really started from scratch and used the Internet. I guess I didn’t even pay for any sponsored advertising on Facebook then… It was mostly promoted in Rome, but also thanks to the social media it was also promoted, we could say, worldwide.
Hardrock Haven: Did this kind of promotion reflect in the audience?
Fabrizio Troiano: We actually got a few people coming even from Israel for the first edition. It’s no wonder as it was really special. Take Fabio Lione – his history before joining Rhapsody includes a stint as the first singer of Labyrinth and during the show, we actually played the songs from the very first album that were never ever played live before. He went onstage with most of the Labyrinth guys – including the original guitarist and the band’s founder Andrea Cantarelli… so it was very cool, very rare and unique. Also with Secret Sphere, there was their original singer and Aldo [Lonobile], the band’s founder and guitarist. A little bit of reunion, you know? It was probably also one of the last concerts of Fabio Lione with Vision Divine. Anyway, honestly speaking, the line-up was very cool and it was the first time in Europe that Fabio Lione and Edu Falaschi sang Angra’s song together. They used to do this quite often in Brazil, doing some shows together, but this never happened in Europe. That’s something I feel very privileged and really honored to contribute to. Anyway, for the first two years, it was only collecting money from the tickets. Only the last time – last year – I decided to start the campaign to try and find more people to donate. I thought about those who cannot travel to Rome to see the concert, but they want to contribute. Or people who are interested in contributing and donating money to kids but don’t like Heavy Metal – people who just find it interesting that a music concert, especially a Heavy Metal concert, brings something good for the less fortunate.
Hardrock Haven: Speaking of that, Metal music isn’t necessarily thought of as family-friendly and there’s a lot of prejudice against metalheads… Do you think combining Metal music with children charity can actually contribute to people changing their mind about that? And do you think it can also show how important solidarity among musicians is?
Fabrizio Troiano: In Italy, I must say that a lot of ordinary people still believe that Heavy Metal is made by demons or Satan (laughs) and that it’s evil music. So they think people involved in Heavy Metal can’t be good people, do charity and have a great show where everybody’s playing together and jamming without any competition between bands. That was one of the biggest challenges for me. You know, I don’t dress in a Metal style during the day, ‘cause I work in the office, but you can be sure that my heart is one hundred percent Heavy Metal. At home or during the weekends, I take my shirt and sweater off and put my Iron Maiden or Helloween t-shirt on. And I still have ordinary people looking at me in a way that’s not nice at all (laughs). So I really wanted to fight this bad reputation by demonstrating and proving that we really can be messengers of positive values, solidarity and charity and I can honestly say that I’m getting more and more good feedback from this. I had a very good interview a few weeks ago [done] by the Italian journalist and he ended the interview by saying to all the audience that if Italy was a civilized country, Metal For Kids United would be advertised on TV news or in newspapers regularly, ‘cause it’s good and worth it and deserves to be spread across the society. Regardless of the fact that it’s not mainstream, it’s still a good thing and that’s what I’m doing for the last five years now. This year was a big challenge as you may understand because of the virus.
Hardrock Haven: Absolutely. So did the interest grow gradually year after year?
Fabrizio Troiano: Actually the show hasn’t grown as much as I would expect through the years, but it’s probably for some objective reasons too. At first I thought that advertising or promotion was a bit weaker than needed to make this very cool event and motivate people to get out of their houses, jump into their cars and come to see the show. That’s what I was trying to fix when it comes to promotion. But also, I have to say that the venue we’re doing our show at is a bit on the outskirts of Rome, so it takes a while [to get there] and if you’re not really, really motivated or if it’s raining or cold, you may be too lazy to go and see the show. The venue was actually a compromise as I wanted to do the show elsewhere – in a very cool venue… We always want a big stage with two big drum kits, as you may see in our videos on YouTube, because the jam session and the grand finale of the show involves all the musicians on stage together. Some of them, like seven to nine people, are playing and the rest is cheering, jumping and keeping the audience involved. So, in order to do this big, good quality show, I needed a good venue. Venues like those weren’t really available in Rome, ‘cause big venues don’t want to have Heavy Metal concerts on Saturday or Friday. They offer shows on Thursday or Sunday, which is something I cannot do – most of the musicians I invite travel from other cities or even from abroad and we need one day of full rehearsals with all the guests – which is about thirty or forty people… We also like to break the ice and get to know each other and create a very good relationship with each other, so that we feel like a family. The only venue [where it was possible] to do the show on Saturday was located in a place which might have been fifteen or even thirty kilometers from the centre of Rome. On the other hand, there are people travelling from abroad, like France or Germany, from Sicily or the northern part of Italy… These are not the majority of course, but still they find the concert being worth it. Also, I can say that every year I see different people in the audience. Most of the audience are the same people based in Rome, but there’s also a turnover, so if there’s a year when everybody who’s ever been at our show comes and brings one of their friends, we can grow bigger. We’ve grown obviously, but as I said, not as much as I expected. The average is about 300 people – last year the audience was the largest, so I was happy, but still not as much as I would like to be (laughs). We had the likes of Roy Z or Gus G and so on, and when you have this really cool line-up, you really expect a lot of people to show up… Unfortunately, this didn’t happen. The 2020 edition, which was cancelled, was planned to be in Rome in a good venue – a Sunday show though, so it was still not so sure that people travelling from other cities would go there on Sunday. Of course, I know what would be the best idea – a Saturday, a cool venue downtown Rome… or maybe doing this in Milan, which would be cool with the audience perhaps, but also a betrayal of the loyalty of the people from Rome. So probably in the next years we’d make a Saturday show in Rome and Friday show in Milan… I don’t know. There’s a lot of ideas, also because of the show is totally self-financed and produced by myself. I get some help from sponsors, but they never cover full expenses of the show, so it’s not very easy to do it.
Hardrock Haven: You’ve mentioned that promotion of the show was perhaps not as good as it should be, so do you have any idea how to develop this aspect? And do you feel Metal For Kids United receives enough coverage from the media, especially music media?
Fabrizio Troiano: Yeah, sure. Last year we got some advertising in magazines, like Rock Hard. Some of the magazines or major webzines support us for free, some of them ask for money – but if I have the budget, I put the budget… I also did some sponsored advertising. This year, I got a full Press/PR agency for the video [“Burn2K20”] – three different outlets for the US, Europe and Italy, so that was a bigger investment just to promote the video. And of course, I’ve had sponsored advertising on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Anyway, it totally depends on the money, ‘cause not all the musicians who’d be the key people to promote the show do this. Some of them are very good at social networking, but some of them are just lazy and they don’t do self-promotion. So we still have to work on this and keep people engaged. And I think it’s good with the media, but still not enough so far. Anyway, we are doing our best to spread the word. Recently we have been doing some press and radio interviews and reaching more people.
Hardrock Haven: How do you usually get new artists to take part in Metal For Kids United and is it difficult to convince them to it? Is there anyone you would love to see participating in the project but who haven’t been a part of it so far?
Fabrizio Troiano: Usually it’s a direct enquiry via Internet (social media, the artist’s official website or management) but when it’s possible, I prefer to wait after concerts and try to speak to them in person or via the introduction by other musicians I’m friends with. The decision to join such a charity event is fairly easy when I explain the type of event I have in mind. Now after four editions, I believe we have great case histories to tell and show the musicians. In the beginning, I was very lucky that most of the people who didn’t know me at all trusted my professional approach as I’m a pro in the company events’ business. And about the artists – of course, too many to mention. I’ll tell you the bands I have in mind… any musicians from Iron Maiden, Helloween, KISS, Europe, Anthrax, Megadeth, Queensrÿche, Galneryus, Blind Guardian, Running Wild, Scorpions, Nightwish and lots more…
Hardrock Haven: Quite a wish list, but keeping my fingers crossed! Now fast forward to 2020. As you’ve already mentioned, due to obvious circumstances, the annual charity gig of Metal For Kids United was out of question. Please give us some more details behind an all-star video jam “Burn 2K20”.
Fabrizio Troiano: I wanted to capture the magic of our live show, so it was necessary to involve people who already experienced the energy and the fun of it. The line-up can be seen as a “best of” from the past editions with the extraordinary addition of some of the guys whose appearance was planned for the concert in 2020, like Thomen Stauch [Blind Guardian], Jens Ludwig [Edguy], Mistheria, Roberto Tiranti [Labyrinth] or Olaf Thorsen [Labyrinth, Vision Divine]. As a cherry on the cake, I managed to get David Ellefson [Megadeth], Scott Ian [Anthrax], Syu [Galneryus] and Rafael Bittencourt [Angra] involved and I was very enthusiastic about it. As for “Burn”, I believe the energy and the name of this song was the main inspiration to me. “Burn” for us is like a manifesto: our flame and passion for Heavy Metal and life never stopped “burning” during the stormy times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, I believe this was the best way to celebrate our commitment to the charity campaign in favor of children with cancer at Peter Pan houses.
Hardrock Haven: What was the feedback after the video jam saw the light of day and how did it translate into donations for Metal For Kids United?
Fabrizio Troiano: Feedback is great so far. Both audience and musicians involved seem to love it. So far, we raised EUR 4.000 since October 5th for this specific campaign with the aim to reach EUR 7.000 until end of June 2021. Basically, Metal For Kids Untied produced the video and launched it on major digital platforms for free streaming. We know it’s hard times for families’ economy right now, so we encourage people who love music and want to support us to donate whatever amount they can afford.
Hardrock Haven: Alongside your work for Metal For Kids United, you have your band Timestorm. What is the band up to these days? Any news?
Fabrizio Troiano: Well, thanks for asking. Since our last concert supporting Vision Divine in March 2019, we have been silent but working backstage. We another singer – although we haven’t announced him yet – and we are working on pre-production. So far, we have nine songs that are ready and hope to complete one or two more songs before entering the studio in 2021.
Hardrock Haven: Sounds exciting. So, speaking of the future, what are your plans regarding Metal For Kids United?
Fabrizio Troiano: Honestly, I don’t know if we’re ready to come back with a live show in 2021. To do it again, we must be 150 percent sure we can have the most people in the audience, national and international musicians free to travel to Rome, and no risks for cancellation. I guess we can evolve and explore more jammed music recording either covers or original tunes. We will see. For sure I want to keep the MFKU alive and keep on doing charity.
Hardrock Haven: Didn’t expect any other answer but that. So is there anything you’d like to add in the end?
Fabrizio Troiano: Thanks for reaching out and giving us a big chance to talk about Metal For Kids, United to a new audience. We want to encourage all people who liked the video to donate, no matter if it’s worth just a coffee. We believe in Metal music and want to show its power of solidarity and brotherhood to the common people. Please help us share the video with all your friends and follow us on our social networks and website: www.metalforkids.com.
Photo credits: Annalisa Russo
