Biography
Born in Bologna, Italy, Roberto had his musical start on classic guitar with the help of Maestro Luciano Brunelli... Thanks to his brother Paolo he soon got caught by the rock bug, switched to electric guitar and founded a band, which, after several adjustments, turned out to be Danger Zone...
Danger Zone’s first studio effort “Victim of time” was released shortly after, on vinyl, and a video (“I’m waiting for you”) was on heavy rotation (Videomusic TV)... R.P kept taking lessons with Maurizio Solieri and Moris Fabbri... After demo tapes and gigs all around Italy, in 1992 D.Z. moved to Los Angeles and recorded an album for the U.S market...
Producer Jody Gray, whom Roberto worked with during the D.Z. sessions, soon offered him the opportunity to compose instrumental music for radio and TV-oriented sound libraries...
By the end of 1993 he is back in Italy, still keeping steady work with Radical Entertainment (which later will release his first solo CD, called “Under Control”)...
In 1994 he is an in-demand session player, recording for several artits as well as jingles and themes for Raiuno and Zecchino d’oro He plays also in Nomadi’s “Tributo ad Augusto” CD....
In September he is on a high-profile tour with popular pop band 883, 37 gigs and lots of TV appearances... Shortly after the end of 883’s tour he is back on the road with Eugenio Finardi for his summer tour and to record several guitar tracks on E.F’s “Occhi” CD...
In 1997 he cuts tracks on 883’s “La dura legge del gol”, doing live-TV shows and leaving on tour for their “ottottotour”...
In 1998 even more TV shows and another tour in support of 883’s greatest hits “Gli Anni”...
The tour closed with an incredible concert in Piazza Duomo (Milan-Italy) in front of an astounding 100,000-people audience...
In 1999 he plays on 883’s new single “Viaggio al centro del mondo” and starts teaching at Music Academy 2000...
As the long-time collaboration with 883 comes to an end, in 2001 he releases his own instrumental solo CD titled “Avoid yawed flight”, featuring Michele Luppi on vocals on two tracks...
He keeps working both as a musician-teacher and as a recording and mastering engineer engineer in his own PriStudio...
Between 2005 and 2006 he co-founded two different rock bands: Sunsetskool and Morphology...
Sunsetskool covers strictly Hard-Rocking tunes from the 80’s, paying an unusual tribute to a musical scene rather than a specific artist, and representing a true homage to the genre in which band members grew up...
Roberto shares the stage with long-time friend Max Magagni (guitar) and with Danger Zone lead-voice Giacomo “Giga” Gigantelli, another link to his musical past...Roberto Galli (bass) and Gabriele Palazzi (drums) round out Sunsetskool’s line-up...and soon they follow Roberto Priori and Jamma Rocchetti in a new project called Morphology.
Their artistic career began in 2007 with the production of their self-titled album "Morphology", which was made up of 12 covers taken from the pop/rock catalogue of the 80s and 90s. The original songs were literally distorted and totally remade, with only the melodies remaining intact. This infused the songs with a breath of fresh air and a very personal atmosphere. Two original songs, "Green Wall" and "Gravity", which would become the prelude to their next work, were also included on the disc.
The initial intention to make an album to sell at their concerts, which during that period keptthe band very busy, was quickly overcome after the band signed with JATO Records.
Only a few weeks after the release of the album, the single "Such a Shame" began getting heavy radio play for more than two months on the most important Italian radio stations like Virgin Radio and Radio 105, which also added "Johnny Come Home" and especially "Green Wall", one of the two original tracks on the CD, to its rotation.
This exposure was noticed by a famous music magazine, "Tribe" (30,000 copies per press run), which attached a compilation to its December 2007 issue made up of covers rearranged and performed by artists such as Korn, Tears for Fears, Avril Lavigne, Jeff Buckley, Paul Youngand others. Morphology's "Such a Shame" was positioned as track number 1 on the compilation.Making an album of only original songs quickly became an almost inevitable objective for the band which had always wanted to express itself through original songs, having always had the
sensation that they could offer something extra as songwriters. In the beginning of 2009 they began working on their own material, producing and finalizing the album "Overlord Masque" over the course of the following years, released by ZetaFactory Records on Jan 28th, 2014.
In the meantime, the return to Bologna of the original Danger Zone drummer Paolo Palmieri trigger a series of events that in a few months made possible the release of the never published record "Line Of Fire" and the return of Danger Zone. After the reunion tour, the band started immediately to write new songs and worked hard to release the long awaited return album "Undying" on Nov. 2012.
While keeping doing records as Engineer and producer at PriStudio, the live activity with DZ is growing, thanks to the release of two new records called "Closer To Heaven" in 2015 and "Don't Count On Heroes" in 2019. DZ are currently acclaimed as one of the best european Hard Rock bands. With the growing of the digital products for guitar, Roberto starts in 2018 a new company called RockProfiles dedicated to the release of digital profiles for the Kemper Guitar amp profiler.