7 March 1949, in Pedrengo, province of Bergamo, Severo Lombardoni was born - the man whose name appears on the covers of hundreds of Italo Disco singles but who recorded almost none of them himself. He was not a producer or a writer; he was a label owner and a publisher. By the time Discomagic Records closed in 1997 the company had grown into Italy's largest dance label with dozens of sub-labels, and Severo had sold the catalogue to Bernhard Mikulski of ZYX Music. This article is about how the son of a Bergamo musician built a publishing machine that raised a whole genre.
Before Discomagic: the record shop and the conservatory
Severo was the oldest child of Francesco Lombardoni and Francesca (née Nava). He had three younger siblings - Anna, Ornella and Vittorio - all of whom later ended up in the music industry. From 1960 to 1963 he attended technical college in Seriate, and in 1969 graduated from the Milan Conservatory "Giuseppe Verdi". He played trombone, piano, accordion and guitar; as a student he performed in local bands, including the Bergamo city band "Banda Gaetano Donizetti" and the rock group "Il Comitato" (1970-1974). He spent a year as a primary-school music teacher. As a young man Severo also regularly took part in local cycle races.
In 1974 Severo opened a record shop in his home town of Seriate. In 1977 he moved to Milan and set up a record-wholesale business. By the end of the decade he could see Italian pop turning toward disco - and decided it was time not just to sell other people's records but to release his own.
1979: DiscoMagic and Lombardoni Edizioni Musicali
In 1979 Lombardoni established the record company DiscoMagic and the publishing company Lombardoni Edizioni Musicali. The headquarters were on Via Mecenate in Milan, which became the main centre for music wholesalers and producers in northern Italy. Compared with Baby Records, Discomagic was the "more experimental" label in Italo Disco: Severo gave the go-ahead to projects others would have judged too risky.
Alongside the main label Severo created dozens of sub-labels for different genres: Out, High Energy, Sensation Records, Out Records, Trash Records, Yellowstone Records and others. Discomagic also distributed releases from outside labels - Time Records, DWA, RARE, GGM. In effect Via Mecenate turned into a distribution hub: small Italian labels came to Lombardoni because he had the logistics and the German connections.
The model worked like this: a production team (often the Farina-Crivellente team, whose projects came out on many Discomagic sub-labels) recorded a track, Lombardoni released it through one of his sub-labels and distributed it to Germany through his network. The same track could come out under different names on different sub-labels, covering different market segments. More on this model in the Mauro Farina breakdown - one of the chief producers in the Discomagic catalogue.
Each sub-label was positioned for its own segment. Out Records held "classic" Italo Disco and is linked to Radiorama and Valerie Dore. High Energy Records (1989-1991) moved into Eurobeat and Hi-NRG - faster tempo, straighter beat, aimed at the Japanese market, which by the late 80s paid more for Eurobeat than the European one. Sensation Records and Trash Records covered niche and experimental releases. So one headquarters on Via Mecenate serviced five or six different genre streams at once.
1983: the year everything lined up
1983 is the turning point. Three hits that would enter the genre's textbooks come out on Discomagic almost at once: "Dolce Vita" by Ryan Paris, "Happy Children" by P. Lion and "Don't Cry Tonight" by Savage. All three are produced by different teams, but all pass through a single publishing network - Lombardoni's. He did not write or produce them; he gave them market access and distribution into Germany, where Italo Disco sold better than in Italy.
Among the composers Severo worked with: Pierluigi Giombini, Paolo Pelandri, Domenico Ricchini, Manuel Curry, Luis Garcia Perez. These are not random names - Giombini wrote "Dolce Vita" and "Happy Children". Lombardoni acted as a music publisher: he took the rights to a composition, secured its release and took a share. Without that layer no Italian producer of the 80s could have taken a track beyond Milan.
The three 1983 hits - "Dolce Vita", "Happy Children" and "Don't Cry Tonight" - came out almost simultaneously and set the tone for the whole subsequent Discomagic catalogue. Ryan Paris with "Dolce Vita" reached #1 in Germany and international success; P. Lion with "Happy Children" repeated the formula of "synth bass + melody + English lyrics"; Savage (aka Roberto Zanetti) with "Don't Cry Tonight" closed the year. All three were different production projects, but all passed through one distribution channel - and that "shared pipe" was Lombardoni's real business, not studio production.
"Executive producer": what Lombardoni's name on a cover means
On many Discomagic releases Severo is credited as writer or executive producer - alone or with co-authors. This does not mean he wrote the music or sat at the desk. As the Discogs profile itself notes, "as owner of Discomagic Records he usually appears as author and/or producer of the tracks, but this doesn't mean he is part of the project". This is a common confusion in discographies: the label owner's name on a cover is a publisher credit, not a creative one.
Detail: that is why the "producer" credit on Discomagic hits cannot be trusted without checking. "Dolce Vita" was produced by Giombini, "Don't Cry Tonight" by Claudio Cecchetto, and Severo stood behind release and distribution. More on the label is in Discomagic Records: how it all started.
Lombardoni's model: he did not record music, he built a pipe. A producer brought the master tape; Severo gave it a catalogue number, a sleeve, distribution into Germany and a share of sales. Without that pipe Italian Italo Disco would have stayed a local genre.
1988: Germany and the top-10 publishers
In 1988 Lombardoni founded Lombardoni Musik GmbH in Germany - the second pillar of the business. By 1990 the company ranked among the ten most successful music publishers in Germany. That explains why half of Discomagic's "Italian" hits ran through the German charts: Severo held not only the Milan end but the German one too.
Among the label's later successes: "Shanghai" and "Sayonara" by Lee Marrow (1985), "Don't Stop The Music" by Lee Marrow (1987), "So Close" by Savage (1988), "Yeah Yeah" by Sabrina Salerno (1990). And the biggest commercial strike - "Ride on Time" by Black Box (1989) from the album "Dreamland", a huge hit across Europe and the US, though the success was marred by copyright disputes: the vocal sample on which the track was built was taken without permission, and the rights holders got a share after the fact.
1997: closure and the sale to ZYX
By the mid-90s Discomagic's financial position had worsened - the Italo Disco market had collapsed, Euro-house was rising through other labels, and debts were mounting. In 1997 the company ceased operations. Lombardoni was forced to sell the main label, "Disco Magic", and its catalogue to Bernhard Mikulski, owner of the German ZYX Music - a label that had itself been licensing Italian releases for the German market for years.
The sale to ZYX was not just a commercial deal but a symbolic act: the German label that had for years licensed Italian releases for its market ended up swallowing the source. Mikulski paid for a catalogue he had himself been distributing. The sub-labels owned by Mauro Farina and Giuliano Crivellente went to their own company, SAIFAM - and so the "Farina-Crivellente" part of the Discomagic catalogue continued elsewhere.
From the late 90s Severo worked with his son Matteo from his first marriage, releasing compilations and reissues of 80s Italo Disco hits under the "Hitland" label. This segment - retro compilations - turned out to be more durable than attempts to release new dance music. A full look at why 80s Italian labels broke down on one model is in the economics of an Italian label breakdown.
The legacy of the name: why the blog is called Disco Magic
The name Discomagic Records outlived Lombardoni himself. After the ZYX sale, the sub-labels owned by Mauro Farina went to SAIFAM; Dance World Attack (DWA) is a separate story. But "Disco Magic" as a brand stayed in collectors' memory as a synonym for classic Italian dance music of the 1980s. This blog carries the same name for a reason - it builds on the legacy one man from Bergamo constructed.
The fate of the sub-labels after 1997 varied: High Energy Records (an Italian Eurobeat/Hi-NRG label of 1989-1991, one of the Discomagic sub-labels) managed to release around 62 titles; Out Records, closely linked to Radiorama and Valerie Dore, passed into other hands. But the central catalogue - "Dolce Vita", "Happy Children", "Don't Cry Tonight" - stayed with ZYX and is still reissued as a retro series.
The last years
Severo had a son, Matteo, with his first wife and a daughter, Francesca, with his second, Adriana. On 13 February 2012 Lombardoni died in Milan of an intracranial haemorrhage. The funeral was held at the church of Madonna Aiuto dei Cristiani in Milan, and he was buried at the cemetery in Pedrengo near Bergamo - where he was born.
The man who opened a record shop in Seriate in 1974 was, eighteen years later, among the ten biggest music publishers in Germany. His label released "Dolce Vita", "Happy Children", "Don't Cry Tonight" and "Ride on Time" - four tracks without which the history of European dance music would be different. Severo's name on a cover meant "this record will go out through my network" - nothing more, nothing less. Sometimes that was enough to change a genre.