Banco del Mutuo Soccorso

The piggy bank

Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, English Bank of Mutual Relief, was founded in Rome by the brothers Vittorio and Gianni Nocenzi on keyboards; sources date the founding to 1968 or 1969. Italian Wikipedia says the 17-year-old Vittorio got an RCA audition, that the name was reportedly invented on the spot, and that the band rehearsed in a converted stable in Marino nicknamed the Stalla. A first RCA album recorded in 1969 or 1970 went unreleased and came out in 1989 as Donna Plautilla. The lineup settled in 1971 with Francesco Di Giacomo on vocals, Renato D'Angelo on bass, Pierluigi Calderoni on drums and Marcello Todaro on guitar, and they tied for first with Circus 2000 at the avant-garde festival at Villa Pamphili in Rome in June 1972.

The debut, released on May 3, 1972 on Ricordi and produced by Sandro Colombini, is nicknamed Il Salvadanaio (the piggy bank) for its die-cut cover. They followed it with Darwin! the same year and Io sono nato libero (1973), with Rodolfo Maltese replacing Todaro, then moved to ELP's Manticore label on Greg Lake's suggestion for Banco (1975) with English versions, and Come in un'ultima cena (1976). A 1976 European tour supported Gentle Giant, and in 1978 they made ...di terra with the Orchestra dell'Unione Musicisti di Roma. From 1979 they recorded simply as Banco, with shorter, poppier songs, and played Sanremo in 1985 with "Grande Joe"; the full name returned in the 1990s, with tours in Japan, Mexico, the United States, Brazil and Panama, and Nudo (1997, recorded live in Japan on May 25 and 26).

Francesco Di Giacomo died on February 21, 2014, aged 66, and Rodolfo Maltese on October 3, 2015. Tony D'Alessio joined as singer in 2016. Transiberiana (May 10, 2019, Inside Out Music) was the first all-new album since Il 13 (1994), followed by Orlando: le forme dell'amore (September 23, 2022) and Storie invisibili (February 28, 2025). In 2022 they played the debut in full for its 50th anniversary in Rome on May 29, Verona on June 12 and Bordighera on August 5. Treccani counts them among the leading Italian prog acts with PFM and Le Orme.