“Profondo Rosso” is where Goblin begins. Early in 1975 a young band from Rome was recording a prog album as Cherry Five for Cinevox when the label’s Carlo Bixio brought Dario Argento to the studio. Argento had hired the jazz composer Giorgio Gaslini for his thriller Profondo Rosso and wanted something more rock, and had thought of Pink Floyd or Deep Purple. When Gaslini fell out with the director, the band had to write the rest, main theme included. Claudio Simonetti, at 22 the oldest of them, has said they wrote and recorded the score in about two weeks, and the label renamed them Goblin. The film opened on 7 March 1975.
The theme is credited to Simonetti, Massimo Morante, Fabio Pignatelli and Walter Martino, though the sleeve read “musica di Giorgio Gaslini”. Simonetti calls it a true prog piece in 7/4, and in the complete CD edition’s notes he said the main line is a harpsichord, not a synthesizer. On the LP it runs 3:45, a montage of passages from the film. Released as a single with “Death Dies”, it topped the Italian chart for the last five weeks of 1975.
On 24 June 2013 Goblin announced their first North American tour: Simonetti, Morante and Maurizio Guarini, with Bruno Previtali on bass and Titta Tani on drums. The announced dates ran through October, from Atlanta up the East Coast, into Montreal and Toronto and out west, closing at the Housecore Horror Film Festival in Austin, where they played the Suspiria score. Secret Chiefs 3 opened. At every show with a published setlist the main set ended with “Profondo Rosso”, usually led in by the “School at Night” lullaby, before an encore of “Zaratozom”. A Death Waltz EP of four re-recorded themes, “Deep Red” among them, was sold on the road.
It was that line-up’s last tour. That autumn Simonetti left with Previtali and Tani to form Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin, and in December Morante and Guarini went back out with Pignatelli and Agostino Marangolo. Morante died in June 2022, and in autumn 2026 Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin was back in North America with the Tenebre score. The theme they wrote in a hurry in 1975 was the one they saved for last, night after night, on their first tour of North America.
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