History - Video & Audio
In early 94, Sabrina was finally ready to make her comeback after a two-year enforced absence. Indeed, the break with her former manager-producer and the case that had followed prevented her from working in Italy for months. If she hadn't disappeared completely, participating from time to time to a few TV programs, Sabrina had made herself very rare after 5 years of media omnipresence in Italy. One of the first shows she chose for her official comeback was Harem hosted by Catherine Spaak and which was broadcast on April 14th, 1994. On this occasion, Sabrina talked with humility and clearness about the difficult times she had crossed as well as her years of success, explaining why she had to stand on her own two feet. Obviously, those almost two years of legal battle had been very stressful for her and, for the first time, Sabrina appeared sensitive in front of the cameras, far from the aggressive image she had shown till then. Nobody interviewed her better than Catherine Spaak. She knew how to get her to open up and Sabrina never confided so much in an interview. But she also showed herself as a survivor, optimistic and full of hope for her comeback which in fact would turn to be a new start. Optimistic but terrorized as she admitted it. Indeed, Sabrina knew that nothing was certain then. She had fought for her artistic freedom and she had already paid its price. Many persons, who had supported her till 92, were boycotting her from now on. Many TV sets, festivals and record companies shut their doors on her. Besides, even if she wasn't alone, for the first time Sabrina was managing her own career which was stimulating but also stressful. Indeed, until then she had been in the hands of her manager. If she had endured this situation for years, she also had benefitted from it: his influence and the numerous contacts he had in the Show business had helped her to become an international star, something that her jealous Italian rivals couldn't achieve.
From now on, she had to rely on herself but also on the comforting presence of a newcomer in her team, Enrico Monti, who would quickly take a leading importance. The first step was to find a record-company which was more complicated than expected. After many months, Sabrina finally signed with a dance music label, Plastika, while she was supposed to release a rock album as she had confided during some interviews in 1993 in Italy or in Spain. Her team probably advised her against operating a radical change for her comeback. While her fans were getting impatient and, for some, feared a real rock shift, all were reassured when Sabrina sang for the first time her new single, Rockawillie, as a preview on the set of Domenica in March 1994: the rock was only in the title of the song. It was actually a typical Eurodance track, not very different from what she could have done with her former team. The reference to the "rockabilly" was only a pretext in a funny and naughty play on words with "willie", a more explicit and sexual way to sing about boys. Sabrina had co-written Rockawillie and she said it was a solar record, full of energy and made to dance.
Musically, the song was quite similar to Pupunnany, a hit-single by Afrika Bambaataa which reached #3 in the Italian charts in late April of that year. This was not very surprising as both songs had been produced by Fulvio Zafret and his team. While Sabrina had announced working with a new team for her comeback, this wasn't really the case for this first single since Sabrina had already worked with Fulvio Zafret. Indeed, he had been sound engineer on My chico and Gringo and had become an independent producer connected to the label Plastika. He would be successful with his own group MO DO a few months later with the hit Eins Zwei Polizei. Fulvio Zafret collaborated in many eurodance projects with his friend Sergio Portaluri who co-wrote Rockawillie. Zafret and Portaluri had even created their own "factory", De Point Production, with David Sion… who had co-written Yeah Yeah, Love dream and Domination on Sabrina's third album, Over the pop. Through these collaborations, Sabrina tried to feel reassured before the release of her first real single in Italy since Siamo donne (1991).
It seems that Rockawillie was released on April, 22th (or 15th ?). If this date can't be confirmed, the single was released before summer. This time of the year had always been successful for Sabrina who had launched all her summer hits in May/June from 1986 till 1990. But this year, she wasn't invited to perform at the Festivalbar. Was she boycotted? It's hard to say but the doubt remains. However, Sabrina didn't look downcast. Didn't she dedicate this record to those who had not believed in her and who had given her the strength to continue? She made quite a lot of promotion on Italian television and toured from the end of May. However the distribution of the record was not as strong as Sabrina had expected, condemning the chances of success of the single. She was thus discovering the independent distribution the hard way. Indeed, Plastika, her new label, only edited Rockawillie on 12" while the vinyl had almost disappeared in the mid-90s. A song which wasn't available on CD had no chance to enter the charts.
Nevertheless, Sabrina was back. If her new single didn't sell so well, she was again present in Italy and abroad. Indeed, Rockawillie was licensed to different labels in Germany, Finland and especially in Spain where Sabrina made quite a lot of promotion during the summer of 94. In this country, the record was published by Blanco y Negro, the label of her heyday in Spain: 87/89. But even there, it seems that only a 12" was released. Rumours about a CD single or maxi CD have never been confirmed. Indeed, an official listing of the productions Blanco y Negro created a shock among the fans when it appeared on the internet in the early 2000s… In Germany, ZYX released the song on maxi CD and 12" and Sabrina promoted the single only once on German TV. In Finland strangely, Rockawillie was available after Angel boy. This release was ultra-confidential not to say non-existent. The maxi CD is nowadays so rare that it can be said that it was poorly distributed. If the single was released nowhere else, the song featured in different dance compilations in Brazil, Poland and Canada.
Rockawillie was supposed to be the lead single of an eponymous album announced for September of 94, a release which was repeatedly postponed and finally cancelled. Anyway, it's not certain that Sabrina's new Eurodance single would have fitted in with the other songs planned to feature on the album and which were only released in 2008 on the second CD of the album Erase / rewind.
Sabrina had tried to benefit from the promotion of her comeback-single on Italian and Spanish TV to sing some tracks of her then-forthcoming album: Stay a while, a cover of Kim Wilde that she performed several times, as well as some new songs Maybe your love, Now it's the time, You lie to me and Skin on skin that announced a real rock shift. Some of these songs were later re-recorded in Italian for the album Maschio dove sei, released in 1995.
Meanwhile, another (excellent) Eurodance single was chosen as successor to Rockawillie at the end of 1994: Angel boy. For Sabrina, it wasn't so easy to leave Dance music...
Note: Sabrina omitted Rockawillie for the release of her comeback album Erase / Rewind in 2008, a compilation which featured Angel boy.
"Rockawillie" on Spanish TV (Hola Raffaella, TVE1, 1994)
Some similarities with Africa Bambaataa's "Pupunanny"...