Giancarlo Bigazzi was born in Florence on 5th Sept 1940. His father Renato was a policeman at the Florence Central Police Station, a firm, decisive man; his mother Tina was a primary school and piano teacher, who tried in vain to teach her son the musical notes but who was in any case perhaps responsible for Giancarlo’s musical sensitivity. After the war, Giancarlo returned to Florence to the house in the Campo di Marte district, where he spent the rest of his childhood and adolescence. He got his high school leaving certificate from commercial school and, to the great joy of his father (who had in fact imposed it on him) he enrolled in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce at Florence University.
He could not be said to have been a model student. Instead of preparing exams, Giancarlo only went to the university to play in a kind of small orchestra which he had set up; this consisted of four elements, all as odd as himself, probably the prelude to what was to be Squallor. The bluff of the fake signatures on his university exam mark card did not last long. At a certain point, his father Renato discovered how things stood and took his son out of university. Giancarlo was sent to Rome to stay with an aunt and work as a bank clerk. Renato had no idea that this decision was to definitively change his son’s life for the better.