Antonello Venditti - The things of life

Introduction

Let's start with a scene from "La Grande Bellezza". Jep Gambardella is having dinner with Ramona at a sumptuous Roman restaurant. He exchanges a greeting with someone sitting at a nearby table. It's a well-known Roman singer-songwriter: Antonio (later Antonello) Venditti. A cameo that is also Paolo Sorrentino's tribute to that slice of Roman identity that the former Folkstudio ace has embodied over a long career, which began at the dawn of the 1970s and continues to this day.

Venditti was born in Rome on 8 March 1949, International Women's Day, under the sign of Pisces. His life would be told, like a serialized diary, through his songs, always rich with biographical snapshots and memories of childhood and adolescence. “Mio padre ha un buco in gola” (The things of life, 1973), for instance, is the raw, unflinching recollection of a difficult family background: his highly decorated father's war wound, after six years as a prisoner in Kenya, his mother, a stern teacher of Latin and Greek, severe in every circumstance, his overly devout and overbearing grandmother, his weight issues... It's a deep, troubled bond that the young Antonello had with his family, especially with his mother, Wanda Sicardi. The complicated relationship between the two would become the subject of the autobiography “L’importante è che tu sia infelice”, written by the Roman artist in 2009, right after his mother's death — she is said to be the source of the book's infamous title phrase. “I would never have written this book if she hadn't died,” Venditti has recounted. “She left me a trunk full of her diaries, which I don't have the courage to open, because I'm afraid I'll discover a different person from the one who never had a kind word for me. She wanted to control me, she hoped for my failures, for the end of my relationships with women. She never once told me one of my songs was good. I owe to Wanda's harshness my claim to freedom, the journey I took to find myself. Maybe my voice is hers.”

So, with minimal effort, we can also imagine who lies behind the lines of “Robin” (“E suo padre lo voleva avvocato/ E sua madre per lo meno professore/ E sua nonna lo sperava un altissimo prelato”), another bittersweet family snapshot among the grooves of Buona Domenica (1979), while the boys of the famous opening lines of “Notte prima degli esami” (Cuore, 1984) are none other than I Giovani del Folk(studio): Ernesto Bassignano, Luigi Lo Cascio, Francesco De Gregori and Antonello Venditti, nicknamed “Il Cicalone”, the only one with a “piano on his shoulder” among those seasoned guitarists. Not to mention “Giulio Cesare” (Venditti e segreti, 1986), the name of the high school in the Trieste district attended by pupil Venditti, born on Via Zara, where “Eravamo trentaquattro quelli della terza E/ Tutti belli ed eleganti tranne me. (…) E mio padre una montagna troppo alta da scalare…”. In “Che fantastica storia è la vita” it would be his turn to open the parade of the many stories and faces of the new millennium: “Mi chiamo Antonio e faccio il cantautore/ E mio padre e mia madre mi volevano dottore/ Ho sfidato il destino per la prima canzone/ Ho lasciato gli amici, ho perduto l’amore”.

Life and songs intertwined in the journey of an artist who left his mark on the history of Italian singer-songwriter music: a prolific and politically engaged 1970s, culminating in his undisputed peaks, the following two decades spent amid adoring crowds and chart-topping success, and a current artistic retirement, enjoying tributes from younger generations and the affection of those who have followed him since the beginning.

Part One: The 1970s

Venditti's musical story begins right away with two remarkable feats in Roman dialect, “Roma Capoccia” and “Sora Rosa”, both written at just 14 years old, on the family piano. An approach to the instrument born above all out of loneliness, if not outright despair, as the young Antonello was forced by his teacher to spend two years on solfeggio.

Legend has it that back then, as he wandered around Corso Trieste, our man always carried a tape recorder to let people hear his early compositional efforts.

Of middle-class origins, yet always attuned to the humblest and most dramatic stories of his city, Venditti knows how to convey vivid, powerful images, accompanied by his inseparable instrument and an impetuous vocal timbre that has become a true trademark.

To this day, "Sora Rosa" burns – and burns is the right word – with a rare rage and intensity. The sincere confession and the idea of suicide as the only possible relief ("A Sora Rosa me ne vado via/ C'ho er core a pezzi pe' lla vergogna"… "Sai che ti dico, io mo' me butto ar fiume/ Così finisco de campa' sta vita") give way, as the musical climax looms, to a glimpse of hope delivered through an image that is at once brutal and noble:

C'è solo questo de vero pe' chi spera

Che forse un giorno chi magna troppo adesso

Possa sputa' le ossa che so' sante

And what can be said of a song that transcended itself to become the symbol of an entire city? "Roma Capoccia", however, is no promotional jingle, no neatly packaged postcard. Steeped in melodic fervor, Venditti perfectly captures the contradictions of the Eternal City, where decay and squalor ("Un robivecchi te chiede un po' de stracci") walk hand in hand with beauty and History, lashing the portrait with his own pessimism ("Roma capoccia der mondo infame"). The many small glimpses and snapshots of life in the Capital at dusk unfold one after another in a passionate ballad, in which Venditti's vocal range – a "tungsten larynx", in producer Lilli Greco's effective phrase – stands out sharply against the soft guitar accompaniment typical of so many Roman stornelli. The choice to sing in Roman dialect makes both compositions feel even more authentic.

With these songs (plus "Viva Mao"), wrapped in his trusty duffle coat, Venditti auditions at the Folkstudio. The legendary Trastevere venue, run in those years by Giancarlo Cesaroni, was the cradle of the era's most interesting new voices and can also boast the legendary appearance of Bob Dylan in 1962. That stage shaped artists such as Mimmo Locasciulli, Edoardo De Angelis, Luigi Grechi, Stefano Rosso and Rino Gaetano. Giovanna Marini, future guardian of Italian folk music, also passed through there, as did a young Francesco Guccini, who would record part of his "Opera Buffa" there.

Amid political song, folk (naturally) and plenty of jazz, it was precisely at that venue on Via Garibaldi 59 that the term "cantautore" (singer-songwriter) was coined, by the famous record executive Vincenzo Micocci.

Venditti, hunched over the piano, made the club's walls shake with his overbearing, booming voice. "Antonello is kind, generous, a show-off just like the Cicalone he'll always be" – as Ernesto Bassignano portrays him in his book "Canzoni pennelli bandiere supplì" – "Even back then he's half communist atheist and half believing Catholic, because he's basically the historic compromise made flesh. They call him Mifune because he really does look like the famous Toshiro from 'Seven Samurai'. He arrives after parking his black Beetle and immediately launches into his new joke of the day, fresh off the press: he's inexhaustible. Always in his duffle coat, also black, with a well-groomed beard and hair that is his cross to bear. Just touch it and he panics: 'Nooo, it'll fall out, leave it alone, damn it!'"

Long before his Oscar-crowned consecration in Sorrentino's visionary Eternal City, Venditti's bond with cinema had already been born in Rome, albeit in a very different setting: in Umberto Lenzi's "La Banda del Gobbo" (1977), a classic poliziottesco of the era whose soundtrack also featured "Roma Capoccia", and in which a passionate Tomas Milian could be seen, machine gun in his arms, reinterpreting a line from "Sora Rosa". Venditti, in short, is sensitive and politically engaged, but also very popular and direct. That's why he is the true ace for the mass audience forged by the Folkstudio factory.

His first LP, Theorius Campus (1972), is credited jointly with his lifelong colleague and friend Francesco De Gregori. But while the latter – guitar around his neck – looks to Bob Dylan, Venditti, seated at his inseparable piano, draws more on masters such as Cat Stevens and the Elton John of "Tumbleweed Connection" and "Madman Across The Water". The two are polar opposites in temperament too: one shy and reserved, the other exuberant and visceral. Yet together they work, just like a well-matched pair.

Theorius Campus is a made-up name, but it suits this collection of eclectic, singular songs perfectly, suspended as they are between folk, popular song and songwriting. At the helm is Italo Greco, known as Lilli, a former RCA producer who brought together a team of English musicians for the occasion: Derek Wilson on drums, Dave Summer on electric guitar, Donald Meakin on acoustic guitar, Mike Brill on bass, plus Maurizio Giammarco on flute and, of course, our own Venditti on piano and De Gregori on guitar, with sporadic six-string contributions from the returning Lo Cascio.

The recordings were made in just one week at Rome's small Studio 38, where other emerging young artists of the time, such as Riccardo Cocciante, Rino Gaetano and Fiorella Mannoia, were also passing through. A Moog was also in the studio, making a furtive appearance in a few tracks. The album, its cover graced by Shakespeare's Ophelia as painted by John Everett Millais in 1851, is split (almost) down the middle: six Venditti songs, four by De Gregori, plus two shared ones. Francesco himself was quick to explain the imbalance: "I sang worse. Venditti was the singer; he also had better, more listenable songs, while back then I was writing ballads on two chords."

Venditti's songs, marked by an often rhythmic use of the piano, are powerful and passionate, striking even when they retreat into the Roman microcosm. De Gregori's songs, on the other hand, are never quite so direct: they are small stories, dense with hermetic, elliptical turns of phrase, chiselled with a dry, essential fingerpicking style.

Cryptic from the title and cover onward (where not even the authors' names appear), Theorius Campus highlights the full communicative power of Venditti, a "popular intellectual" (as he likes to call himself) who, while lacking the poetic refinement of the far more elaborate De Gregori, was immediately embraced as the new voice of Roman identity, as well as a potential goldmine in the eyes of record executives.

The album opens with the existentialist "Ciao uomo", a dialogue between two astronauts who, over a synthesized backdrop, chase after "una cometa che viene dell'Est" [a comet coming from the East], in which we might read the political leanings Venditti has never hidden. But the record also draws substance from "La cantina", which blends love with a memory of the past; "È caduto l'inverno", another diary of romantic torment built on a fine melodic idea that takes flight in its instrumental finale; and "L'amore è come il tempo", where Venditti unveils another fine lyric, even if he doesn't quite manage to fully harness his vocal potential.

"Dolce signora che bruci" (by De Gregori), sung as a duet, instead hints that the unlikely tandem, while not quite an Italian version of Simon & Garfunkel, wouldn't have looked out of place at all: smooth and ironic, it sketches another disarming female portrait.

Finally, the only two tracks co-written by the pair: "Vocazione 1 e ½" offers a half-serious portrait of a priest, drowned in celestial choirs and mystical effects, while "In mezzo alla città" is little more than a divertissement - even "the ugliest song we ever wrote", according to De Gregori, who recalls it this way: "It was an attempt by me and Venditti to write a commercial song with a suitably crappy lyric. A real cop-out, and in fact the record executives quite liked it at the time".

If the Theorius Campus collaboration had come about essentially for economic and competitive reasons - almost like a duel between the two rising stars of Rome's singer-songwriter scene - the personal relationship between Venditti and De Gregori would prove to be one of the most tormented, even novelistic, in the history of Italian music. From the Hungarian tour of 1970 to the deep freeze that lasted for years, by way of more or less explicit mutual jabs and allusions (from Venditti's "Francesco" to De Gregori's "Piano bar"), the two Folkstudio companions always displayed two human and artistic personalities that were polar opposites, yet viscerally bound together. The two men would reconcile in 1996, during the campaign for the general election. "This morning I called Francesco and asked if he fancied the idea of being there, to say hello to Veltroni. He called me back and said: yes Antonello, but if we go we sing together", Venditti would later recall.

A gradual process of reconciliation would follow, including public apologies, such as the one De Gregori offered his friend in 2003: "Antonello, I have to confess that when you wrote Roma's anthem, I was thrown - unpleasantly so - acting the socially-conscious songwriter with his nose in the air, the songwriter with a capital letter. But it's actually an extraordinary song. I sing it at certain amazing moments for Roma, how could you not sing it...". Venditti would even go back to duetting with De Gregori on "Io e mio fratello" in 2003 and would take the stage at Teatro Garbatella during the residency of the man behind "Rimmel". And so it went, all the way up to the duo concert at the Olimpico, planned for summer 2021.

After that double success, in 1973 Venditti released his first proper solo studio albums, L'orso bruno and The things of life.

Although he's often identified with the great sentimental pop hits that, from the late Seventies onward, secured him lasting fame, and is almost never associated with the generation's "politically engaged" singer-songwriters, Venditti actually made social and political commentary a defining trait of the first part of his career. A far darker and more complex phase, one that likely ended up overshadowed by the success of what nonetheless remains one of his masterpieces, Sotto il segno dei pesci, which many even mistake for his debut album. This misconception would weigh heavily on how Venditti-the-artist was perceived, ending up obscuring just how much precious and original material he'd managed to pack into the first phase of his output, which is very often completely unknown to his detractors.

Well arranged and rich in orchestral touches, L'orso bruno offers further episodes inspired by social and political issues, such as "L'uomo di pane", a bitter snapshot of marginalization and loneliness, "Sottopassaggio", the portrait of a blind beggar, "Lontana è Milan" (on the theme of migration to the North) and "L'ingresso della fabbrica" (co-written with De Gregori), a ballad about the contradictions of women's labor that opens with a piano quote from Elton John's "Your Song" - a key reference for the Roman singer-songwriter, also paid tribute to in the title track, which winks at "Indian Sunset" (from the aforementioned "Madman Across The Water"), for a song with strong environmentalist leanings that would even earn Venditti the chance to play a concert for the WWF.

But the former Folkstudio protégé also took musical risks, experimenting with the back-to-back long tracks "Il mare di Jan" and "Dove", before the closing "Il sottopassaggio". These are episodes, though, in which you can also spot the record executives' ongoing attempt to turn Venditti ever more into "Trastevere's Elton John", resorting to an (over)production that's a touch too polished and pompous - something the singer-songwriter himself would object to, calling it "Sanremo Festival stuff".

What stands out here is another harrowing tale set in the Capital: "E li ponti so' soli", the story of an old homeless woman living on the banks of the Tiber, closing out an ideal Roman Triptych that also includes "Roma Capoccia" and "Sora Rosa".

While L'orso bruno still marks a step forward from the ideas glimpsed on Theorius Campus, the stakes rise drastically with The things of life. We might borrow the cinematic term reboot and consider the record a second debut, since it also coincides with Venditti leaving It Records and moving to RCA, the crucible of quality Italian singer-songwriter music of the era, under the stewardship of Ennio Melis and Vincenzo Micocci.

The things of life is a true compositional concept, in which Venditti strips himself and the song form bare, supported only by voice, piano and electric piano. At the root of the record lies a rejection: as already noted, the Roman musician was unhappy with Vince Tempera's work on the previous album, and so he opts for the starkest possible contrast - shelving good old Elton John and pushing the obsessive drive of his piano parts to the extreme, with vocal performances that grow ever more restless and unsettled, and lyrics that are, accordingly, even harder and more direct.

Striking, for instance, is the brutal honesty with which Venditti talks about himself, his life, the murky sexuality of "Mariù", a tale of youthful voyeurism that sounds almost like an "Albachiara" ante litteram (in this case, in front of a window), but also the furious portrait of his own city, no longer at sunset but ablaze (the searing "Brucia Roma", built on just two metallic chords). And the vibrant reinterpretation of "E li ponti so' soli" hits with unusual force as well.

The title track of the album, then, sounds almost like his first manifesto:

For you who don't respect me

And aren't bothered by what I say,

I don't have much more to tell you

Beyond what I've already said

I'll keep singing about the things of life.

There's no difference when shifting from the social sphere to the private one. Venditti always hits hard, without mercy, whether it's the generational clash of "Il treno delle sette", the class struggle of "Stupida Signora" (a murky tale of sexual slavery), or the love story of "Le tue mani su di me", a twisted hybrid of the intimate and the political, with lines that leave little to the imagination: “È difficile chiamarti amore/ Quando il mondo sta vivendo sul tuo corpo innamorato/ La sua vanità/ Una foglia stupida/ Cade a caso sull’asfalto e se ne va/ Una fabbrica occupata sulle nuvole/ E un fucile che rimpiange Waterloo”.

An anger that keeps building in the Roman singer-songwriter, leading to results that are even paradoxical.

When we picture famous musicians arrested over their songs or lyrics, our minds jump to the most iconoclastic punk acts or the most transgressive rock stars. Yet that fate befell our man too: for the song "A Cristo", on Quando verrà Natale (1974), he was given a six-month suspended sentence for religious contempt. Just reading the lyrics is enough to see clearly how the whole affair was the product of a massive act of mystification and bigotry. A carabinieri marshal, present in the audience at a show at the Teatro dei Satiri, decided that the line "Ammazzate Gesù Cri', quanto sei fico" (which on record would become "Ammazzali Gesù Cri', quanto so' fichi") deserved punishment, misreading both the phrase and the meaning of the song, which is not in the least offensive toward religion. Instead, the whole thing plays on a typically Roman vein of irony, descending directly from Belli and Trilussa:

M'hanno detto

che Cristo è stato a Roma

e janno detto pure

ma 'ndo'vai, quo vadis?

ariccojete tutto, stracci e idee

ma a Roma no, nun ce torna'

Voj anna' forse

finì morì ammazzato

da st' bboni centurioni che tu sai

che te pregheno

e te fregano tutti i giorni

in nome della loro autorità

Updating the figure of the Redeemer for his own time, Venditti brings in political figures of the era, such as Israel's Moshe Dayan, and the painful conflicts in Ireland and Vietnam. If the tone of the song is easygoing and irreverent, in the ending a glimmer of unprecedented hope also filters through, especially when compared to the stark drama of "Sora Rosa" a couple of years earlier:

E nun ce facciamo l'affari nostri, nun ce li facciamo pe' carità

Mo nun te fa' l'affari tua – finché la pace non verrà

E nun te fa' l'affari tua finché la pace non verrà

Nun te fa' l'affari tua

finché la pace non verrà.

The call to refuse resignation, to actively protest, is the real message of a song that is as naive as it is sincere and vibrant. As for his relationship with religion, in Giampaolo Mattei's book "Note su Dio, i cantanti e la fede", Venditti would state: "I'm a communist and a profoundly devout Catholic, I firmly believe that Christ and the Cross lie at the foundation of our lives." In short, the fateful "historic compromise" that Bassignano liked to poke fun at.

Quando verrà Natale is the missing link, the meeting point between the two debut records. The arrangements remain spartan and the voice-and-piano setup still reigns supreme, but keeping the immovable core of the compositions company is the return of other musicians, in this case the members of the band The Cyan plus other collaborators, such as Turin-born guitarist Luca Balbo, violinist Carlo Siliotto and multi-instrumentalist Pablo Romero.

The notorious opening track begins with a breezy guitar figure, followed by the intense portrait of "Marta", the first female name in Venditti's vast gallery of women, her life balanced precariously between school, work and an overbearing father. Venditti doesn't just offer support and closeness to her rebellion: putting himself in her shoes, he also takes the chance to reckon with himself:

Io, io non sono niente

ma ho vissuto come te

sempre chiuso nello specchio

waiting for another me.

Rome also makes a return, named specifically through two squares: the first is "Piazzale degli Eroi", a historic stronghold of the right wing with its “too many black words, black on the walls”; the second is "Campo de' Fiori", home to the monument to Giordano Bruno: for Venditti, fresh off a conviction over “A Cristo”, it seems a symbolic place to vent all his anger and his longing for freedom, in a vibrant tour de force introduced by Pablo Romero's charango and built around the slow, stretched-out tolling of the piano (the song would also be re-recorded by the Schola Cantorum, Edoardo De Angelis's vocal group).

After the dystopian, alien “Figli del domani” (which ponders “a very strange machine that never smiled”), the album closes on an entirely different mood with its title track, built around a mantra of hope: “Tutto il mondo cambierà, tutto sorriderà”. Just a few words, repeated like a rousing, infectious slogan.

The next step, Lilly (1975), with its red cover and a woman's face built out of newspaper clippings, is even more inspired and ranks directly among the highlights of the Roman singer-songwriter's career. His voice rises even further to the fore, towering over the instrumental backdrop.

After “Marta”, this new female portrait takes on decidedly darker, more dramatic tones, recounting the harrowing tale of drugs and self-destruction told in the title track. Across the six minutes of the folk ballad “Lilly”, Venditti seals a complete identification with the stories and characters he narrates. It opens with a light guitar, then the brutal yet compassionate description of the odyssey of a friend devastated by heroin. The lyrics and vocal delivery are built entirely around the repetition of the protagonist's name, alternating with the dramatic reconstruction of the feelings and thoughts of those who stood by her: pure pathos, without an ounce of rhetoric. The pain of remembering happier times (“Studiavamo insieme/ Viaggiavamo insieme”), the anger (“Li dovevano arrestare!”) and a merciless, hyper-realistic chronicle, played out over an instrumental crescendo and a sequence of flashes that remain indelible, like panels of an imagined Via Crucis:

Four holes in the skin

Newspaper sheets

Naked and barefoot

White, and not in a hospital

No chains

No teeth to eat with

A mountain of waste.

“Lilly was real, her name was Patrizia, I just hope she's still alive”, Venditti revealed a few years ago. The song remains among his absolute classics and was also used in the closing scene of the eighth episode of the second season of the TV series “Romanzo Criminale”.

After this masterpiece, the album measures out the author's signature ingredients to perfection. The working-class spirit of Rome and the battle in defence of the downtrodden return in the impassioned “Santa Brigida” (a farmers' prayer to the saint to protect the harvest), where the lush orchestration by Giuseppe Mazzucca and Nicola Samale matches Venditti's fervent singing. History also resurfaces, told in his own way, through the story of “Attila e la stella”, in which the king of the Huns is stopped by Pope Leo the Great. And the Roman singer-songwriter's caustic irony reaches its peak in the acoustic “Penna a sfera”, an invective against the press and in particular Enzo Caffarelli, the Ciao 2001 journalist who had attacked him alongside De Gregori over the usual accusation of a supposed conflict between the musicians' comfortable lifestyles and their political activism — essentially the same charge that would soon be levelled at Francesco [De Gregori] during the famous “trial” at the Palalido.

There's also room for fresh turmoils of the heart, told in the spare style typical of '70s singer-songwriters, in “L'amore non ha padroni”, a sorrowful, deeply felt ballad, underpinned by stark piano chords before the drums arrive to carry the second half.

Another cornerstone of Venditti's output is the school setting, and "Compagno di scuola" is its most famous and touching example. It's a dazzling snapshot of a past brimming with feeling and emotion. The spirit of those years is fixed forever, like an old newspaper clipping, like an archival news report. "Compagno di scuola" belongs to the realm of poignant, unsparing nostalgia-pieces that settle accounts with the past, never lulling itself in sentimentality but calling everything into question, starting with the narrator himself. It's a reckoning that, in this case, implicates an entire generation and its ideals, more or less shelved or disowned. We move through flashes of adolescent life (“Davanti alla scuola, tanta gente/ Otto e venti, prima campana… E spegni quella sigaretta/ E migliaia di gambe e di occhiali di corsa sulle scale”), childish heartbreaks, and the bitter reckoning with '68 and the political movements of the time. That season has bitterly faded away, but the song's power remains intact:

And your commitment that grew ever stronger in you

Compagno di scuola, compagno di niente

Ti sei salvato dal fumo delle barricate?

Compagno di scuola, compagno per niente

Ti sei salvato o sei entrato in banca pure tu?

Adding further luster to Lilly is another of Venditti's loftiest compositions: the spectral, nearly ten-minute voice-and-piano tour de force of "Lo stambecco ferito," inspired by the controversial case of businessman Felice Riva (the "ibex" is the system embodied by the wealthy, exploitative industrialist who attempts to flee to Switzerland leaving 18,000 workers ruined, while the "poacher" who wants to kill him embodies proletarian justice). Behind the interplay of slow, wrenching, cryptic verses, visually powerful and evocative, lies the coexistence – dramatically present in those years – between violence and political struggle: “E due fabbriche chiuse in Calabria/ Aspettano il pane/ La polizia, malgrado gli sforzi/ Ha perso le tracce”. So the man with the rifle is ready to take justice into his own hands:

Io lo spio mentre il vino

Mi gonfia le vene

E il fucile imbracciato

Aspetto stambecchi

Gradually we reach the reckoning. The hunter has taken aim, but it's the police who are hunting him. A gunshot, and the bitter closing lines seal the outcome of the hunt, sublimated by a spectacular, almost jazz-inflected instrumental piano coda. Even in his live introductions, Venditti has always refused to offer precise interpretations of the song; if anything, he has leaned into the work's ambiguity, closed out by the instrumental section "La morte del bracconiere," a genuine authorial signature for an anthology-worthy track. Riva the businessman, meanwhile, would return to Italy without ever serving a sentence for aggravated fraudulent bankruptcy.

A mature album from a singer-songwriter who had found a winning balance between the folk instincts of his early days, pop instinct, and a surprising experimental streak, Lilly would win over both critics and audiences alike, even landing two flattering number-one spots on the charts (the title track among singles, the LP among albums).

After tying his name even more closely to his city by co-writing with Sergio Bardotti the epic "Roma (non si discute, si ama)," anthem of the giallorossi football team (of which his uncle was among the founders), Venditti released Ullàlla (1976), his darkest and most political record, on which he was backed by a young Ivan Graziani, who brought along his exuberant, rock-leaning guitar work.

Almost as if feeling guilty for his predecessor's commercial success, the Roman singer-songwriter puts his own face on the line – starting with the cover shot, taken by Carlo Massarini – and devotes himself entirely to civic, social and political commitment.

The harrowing "Canzone per Seveso" recalls the infamous disaster of July 10, 1976 at the Icmesa plant in Meda, whose toxic dioxin cloud poisoned the homes of Brianza; the delicate subject of prostitution takes centre stage in "Strada" and in the even more uncomfortable "Maria Maddalena" (about the exploitation of minors); while the historic compromise and a reflection on '68 resurface in the caustic "Nostra Signora di Lourdes" and in the guitar-driven "Jodi e la scimmietta", with its harsh, biting lyrics (“un giorno vide il presidente/ la sua stella d’oro sopra il petto/ e lui capì che lo doveva uccidere/ per ridare alla scimmietta un nuovo modo di vivere”).

"Per sempre giovane" closes the record just as "Quando verrà Natale" did: with a simple message, repeated throughout the song.

Ullàlla is an unlucky episode, one the author himself partly disowned, unhappy with the post-production choices, to the point that he left Rca. And yet, listening back to it years later, it slots neatly into Venditti's perfect decade, even if it lacks the knockout punches of its predecessor.

After five albums in three years, a pause arrives, broken only by a collaboration with another longtime colleague and friend, Lucio Dalla, with whom Venditti writes the music for the episode directed by Nanni Loy in "Signore e Signori Buonanotte". But the definitive consecration is now just a step away.

Under the Sign of Pisces (1978), released on the new Philips label, is the culmination of the path begun in the early '70s and probably the discographic peak of Venditti's career. The album makes plain a gift of the Roman songwriter's: the ability to read his own times, to understand and analyse society, and to filter events and characters into something unforgettable.

Under the Sign of Pisces is a collection of photographs, of snapshots, and we too are imprinted in those stills. The intro of the title track still gives you goosebumps today: it manages to let you breathe the air of the demonstration, of the street full of young people, the ideals and ideas that drove them. Venditti is the eighteen-year-old, and after him come the other protagonists inspired by real lives, lifelong friendships: Marina the teacher who "lives unhappily and unsatisfied", Giovanni the engineer who "works at a radio station" and "burned his degree"...

They aren't the only ones in Under the Sign of Pisces. Among the snapshots — Mario Convertino's iconic cover among them — two of the quintessential women of Venditti's output step into the foreground: "Giulia" and "Sara". Two female figures for two stories at opposite poles: while we still smile tenderly today listening to the everyday life of this teenager grappling with pregnancy (a subject that was nothing short of taboo at the time) and her less-than-idyllic relationship with the future father, Giulia belongs to a far more complex and ambiguous triangle. If "Sara" is pure innocence and pop freshness, "Giulia" is the aching Venditti ballad that tells of a ruthless, calculating lesbian feminist capable of stealing the author's beloved away from him, carrying the story and the music to an unforgettable climax.

Then comes the return of De Gregori in "Francesco" and "Bomba o non bomba", representing the two opposite faces of the relationship between the former duo. With the piano's sound painting the mood and the colours awaiting us each time, "Francesco" opens solemn and melancholic.

Sorry, Francesco

they deceived me

they took my memories away

as if time were a slave and the two of us were kites torn apart

In this reflection on the story of a fractured friendship, the dialogue begins with the hardest word to use in such cases: sorry. But perhaps that isn't enough to fill the void of regret and nostalgia, for a relationship that seems to have been lost in misunderstanding.

Francesco, vedi Francesco

possiamo ancora suoniamo ancora l’ultima volta

senza rimpianti, senza paura

come due amici antichi

⟦Q1⟧

Only the story's happy ending manages to soften the chilling bitterness of the finale.

"Bomba o non bomba", on the other hand, opens cheerful and lively, intent on recounting the couple's on the road adventure (⟦Q1⟧). The road travelled is both the literal one of countless tours, bizarre encounters and grim news from the rest of Italy, and also the journey towards success, towards home, towards Rome. In the background lies an ironic reflection on the ever-present risk of "ideological" misunderstanding that the singer-songwriter's trade faced in those years (⟦Q1⟧).

The Venditti of Under the Sign of Pisces, however, grows ever less Roman and more Italian: "Il Telegiornale" and "L'Uomo Falco" prove it. In the first, with an almost prophetic air, the songwriter announces, over a playful melody, a long line of news broadcasts, just before the end of RAI's monopoly and the arrival of Fininvest, sketching news formats far closer to low-grade entertainment than to genuine vehicles of information: another far-sighted prophecy. "L'Uomo Falco" still lends itself to many interpretations today. Here lies the greatness of a songwriter capable not only of shaping a devious, self-serving figure easily applicable to many politicians or well-known personalities of the era, but of foreshadowing far worse ones to come.

He's a good guy

and if someone accuses him

he washes his hands of it because…

Because he wears a tie

the brightest smile

he's got a bank waiting for him

and a plane always ready

and he keeps flying higher and higher.

On a record full of beauty and quality, there's no shortage of the early-years Venditti, the neorealist, protest songwriter, able to add to his gallery of portraits the unforgettable "Chen il cinese". He too comes from the people, from the neighbourhood, and because of a life of crime (he's "the one who changed the bar's sign" and "the grass he sold kept getting sweeter") things aren't going too well for him. He seems to have vanished, perhaps fled or worse still (⟦Q1⟧): although the setting appears grim and leaden, Venditti still manages to stamp it with his poetic signature, that touch that lifts the song to another level. Chen belongs to that world, but he still has a soul, a heart: "He used to sing fantastic love stories" and the grass he dealt was grown in memory of an old love never forgotten.

Adding further polish to the record are some illustrious collaborations; on this front Venditti has always treated himself well, surrounding himself with prestigious names: from Vince Tempera to the already-mentioned Ivan Graziani. On this work — produced by Michelangelo Romano — he writes, as usual, all the lyrics and music himself, but keeping him company and lending support are Stradaperta — a cult name in Italian prog of the '70s — and none other than Mr. Goblin's Claudio Simonetti on mellotron & Roland System 100, as credited in the album's artwork.

A symbol and a peak of a splendid era in Italian music, Sotto il segno dei pesci is the album by Antonello Venditti in which all his different souls coexist in magical, inspired fashion. There's no more past, present or future: just a road to keep travelling, perhaps together and in love. Children of an old song.

The following year Venditti produced another great classic of his discography, Buona Domenica (1979), sealing a one-two punch that closed out a decade that was, sadly, unrepeatable and unforgettable, in the best possible way. The 1979 album tries to follow in its predecessor's footsteps right from the cover, again designed by Mario Convertino.

After the shouting at the start of the track, the sound of the piano keys on the opening title track is as crisp and compelling as that of "Under the Sign of Pisces". The Stradaperta are still backing the singer-songwriter, but compared to its predecessor the album is less cohesive, and not every passage comes off fully, as in the case of the pallid "Kriminal".

The high points, though, rank among the absolute peaks of his output: not so much the domestic snapshot of the famous, aforementioned "Buona Domenica", but above all "Modena", probably his definitive masterpiece. The private-public, sentimental-political pairing coexists here with rare mastery and poetry, across seven goosebump-inducing minutes. The sounds of laughter and car horns from the first song give way to the voices of people attending a Festa dell'Unità. But this is no ordinary event, because we're in the midst of the fallout from the historic compromise between the PCI and the DC. The piano notes and a female voice carry us far from the anger and reflections of the past: now there's only a deep sense of regret and disappointment ("Con le nostre famose facce idiote, eccoci qui/Con i nostri sorrisi tristi, a parlarci ancora di noi/E non c'è niente da scoprire, niente da salvare/Nelle nostre parole"). As if the author's formidable vocal performance weren't enough, Gato Barbieri's brilliant sax interjections – distorted, piercingly high, searing – send chills down the spine, heightening the song's dramatic climax. Because for Venditti this isn't just a political reckoning, but a personal one too:

Quanto valeva, aver parlato già da allora,

Quando tutto era da fare e tu non eri importante

Even after so many years, "Modena" never fails to leave you stunned, eyes welling up. Disorienting and painful. Like "una nuova tenerezza o un dubbio che rimane".

The whole album is tinged with the bitterness of an almost insurmountable personal crisis. In 1975, in fact, Venditti had married the actress/voice actress Simona Izzo, but the marriage lasted only three years, plunging him into deep despair. Their union produced a son, Francesco Saverio, who would go on to try a film career and also appear in some of his father's music videos ("Dalla pelle al cuore", "Unica", "Regali di Natale").

For Venditti, the separation is a wound that never fully heals. Many famous hits in his catalogue would be explicitly dedicated to his ex-wife: "Dimmelo tu cos'è", "Ricordati di me" and "Ci vorrebbe un amico", where the line "e tutto il resto è vita" seems to refer precisely to Izzo's new partner at the time, Maurizio Costanzo, who used to say that very phrase on his TV shows.

The traumatic end of their relationship also leaves its mark in the lyrics of "Donna in bottiglia" and "Stai con me", with its fine change of pace, while the autobiographical "Robin" is a fresh tale of memories, between family expectations (“E suo padre lo voleva avvocato/ E sua madre per lo meno professore/ E sua nonna lo sperava un altissimo prelato”) and first encounters with the stage, duly supported by friends like "Marian, la rossa", who had a "degree in classics" and "worked at a school in Milan". A breezy tour through the stops of a musical journey that passes between the "piano dusted off by an aunt's memories" and "the crossing on via Tiburtina", then home to Rca.

Venditti's relationship with Rome resurfaces in "Scusa, devo andare via (un'altra canzone)", while the lighter "Mezzanotte" recounts, with an amused touch, his adventure in the United States, where part of the album was recorded.

Even at the artistic peak of his career, at the turning point of the decade, Venditti had to face a heavy personal crisis with unpredictable outcomes. Fortunately – as he himself has recounted – it was his friend Lucio Dalla who got him back on track.

Part two: the Eighties and Nineties

After the release of Buona Domenica, Venditti followed the lead of many fellow artists and founded his own label, Heinz Music. The first release was In the Rain (1982), whose main drawback is simply coming after the two aforementioned masterpieces. With Alessandro Colombini producing (a fixture behind the console from here through to Tortuga) and crisp guitars underpinning the choruses, another interesting, unjustly overlooked chapter of his discography takes shape.

The title track opens in a lovely dreamlike mood, punctuated by insistent guitar riffs, offering yet another grainy parade of images of the Italy of the time, which even finds room for an affectionate dedication to Sandro Pertini (“Il presidente dietro i vetri un po’ appannati/ fuma la pipa/ il presidente pensa solo agli operai”). A calm mood, steeped in hope ("quella colomba piano piano volerà/ sulle nazioni e le città"), also returns in the renewed piano declaration of love for "Torino", "l'altra faccia della stessa Roma", told with an approach similar to that of Dalla's "Milan", though without reaching the same poetic heights ("Torino vuol dire Napoli che va in montagna/ Torino è un dirigibile verso la Spagna").

Next come the aching "Fellini", the many vices and few virtues of Roman girls in "Le ragazze di Monaco", and the danceable, merciless divertissement "Italy", an evergreen catalogue of national flaws. Then, once again a woman and once again an ugly drug story: "Lilly" was heroin, now "Eleonora" is cocaine. The flight of the fearsome "Stukas", the Luftwaffe's Junkers Ju 87 bombers, is instead woven into a decidedly explicit critique of his city:

Living in Rome is always a problem

Especially if you get an idea

For one night of glory, a thousand sleepless nights

And no one lends you a hand

The sentimental lessons of "Dimmelo tu cos'è" – perhaps the record's real hit – offer another glimpse into Venditti's tormented autobiography, a desperate search for a dialogue now broken forever.

In 1983 he writes "Eva dagli occhi di gatto" for Milva, while his beloved As Roma's league title win gives him the springboard for a new anthem ("Grazie Roma") and for a championship celebration, complete with a commemorative live album, Circo Massimo, whose only new track (though it's really more of a terrace chant) is the one that gives the live album its title. The following year, after the Champions Cup final defeat to Liverpool, the celebration fades, but the occasion returns with the Roman side's third league title, celebrated in the same venue and captured on Circo Massimo 2001, which also features the new song "Che c'è".

At this point we could play a game: turn on the radio, or listen to a few random tracks from an Italian Pop or Indie Spotify playlist, and see how much they resemble a song from Cuore. But what so many successful performers of today's new Italian scene (from Thegiornalisti to Coez) now take as a model was actually the result of a radical and controversial musical shift in Venditti's career.

In the mid-80s, in fact, the Roman singer-songwriter fully embraces the decade's sound, veering towards a glossy synth-pop. Many link this genre change to the start of his career's decline. And yet, beyond the musical form, the quality of his songwriting remains notable, giving rise to a collection of hits destined to feature in every future "best of" of the former folksinger. Starting with the hugely famous "Notte prima degli esami", almost a generational passing of the torch, in which Venditti once again highlights one of the defining traits of his work: singing his own life while simultaneously singing the lives of those around him. So embedded in collective memory that it even became the title of a film (a fate that would befall other songs of his too), "Notte prima degli esami" is in effect a mini-film, a musical short in which each verse is a vivid scene and the cuts from one frame to the next are connected in a magical balance: the past at the Folkstudio, the political climate ("E gli aerei volano in alto tra New York e Mosca"), Rome, the meeting of two young lovers, and a circular ending, where the budding musician of the opening lines is now surrounded by his fans. The song features what we might call the typical "Venditti crescendo": without overusing the chorus, the singer and his trusty piano – as had already happened in the past – repeat a particular passage, building it to a peak that here explodes in "Si accendono le luci qui sul palco…".

Accompanying "Notte prima degli esami" on the single is the equally famous "Ci vorrebbe un amico", another synth-pop episode with distinctly 80s colours, where friendship becomes the only possible remedy to keep from slipping "nel dolore e nel rimpianto". But scattered through the album are other songs that time and listeners have turned into instant classics, such as "Piero e Cinzia" – where the love story of the two protagonists flows into an account of Bob Marley's historic Milan concert – and "Stella", which in recent live shows has been dedicated to Falcone and Borsellino, but which above all is a poignant secular prayer: “Proteggi i nostri figli puri/ Nella vita quotidiana/ E salvali dall’odio e dal potere”.

In between, there are fresh pop moments such as "Mai nessun video mai", "Non è la cocaina" (featured in the soundtrack of "Troppo forte", the film by his friend Carlo Verdone) and "L'ottimista", one of his last political flashes, openly and venomously dedicated to Bettino Craxi (“Lui frequenta gli ambienti più strani/ Basta solo che siano mondani/ Ha per tutti un solo ed unico discorso/ Viva l’Italy dal garofano rosso… è un ottimista/ Dall’aria vagamente socialista/ E poi non sbaglia proprio mai”).

The new student-days reminiscence is the moving "Qui", where the acrid smell of political trenches and the intense friendships of '68 return: “Valle Giulia ancora brilla la luna/ E Paola prende la mia mano/ Caduta per sbaglio sui nostri vent’anni/ Tesi come coltelli, come fratelli/ Perduti forse qui architettura/ Albe cinesi di seta indiana”.

After the live album with the title track "Centocittà" (with a video featuring Carlo Verdone), Venditti pushes social and political engagement to the margins, becoming, in both themes and choices, definitively mainstream and populist. With Venditti e Segreti he settles permanently into the persona he would never shake off again: it would be too easy to list its defining traits starting with the famous teardrop Ray-Bans, but thanks to Corrado Guzzanti's successful impression – complete with its own catchphrase song – on "L'Ottavo Nano", that effort has already been spared for us.

His voice can still stir emotion at times, but while up to Cuore we could discuss his records as proper albums in every sense, a slow and inexorable decline in coherence and quality would mark his subsequent works from the second half of the 80s. From the 90s onward, riding an ever greater and broader public success, Venditti would produce very little worth saving, aside from the odd scattered radio hit.

In Venditti e Segreti, political engagement appears only fleetingly in the new female portrait "Esterina", while what dominates are fresh heartbreaks, bittersweet memories, and caustic portraits of society's fads, as in "Questa insostenibile leggerezza dell'essere", moving between "La mia Africa", "9 settimane e ½", Roberto D'Agostino and Milan Kundera. Alongside the saxophone and synths, an electric guitar takes on a presence like never before, pushing the beloved piano into the background.

Among the most successful passages is the autobiographical "Giulio Cesare," an ode to his Roman high school woven with fresh schoolboy memories (and the Paolo Rossi of the song isn't the famous striker but a nineteen-year-old student killed in political clashes at La Sapienza University on April 27, 1966). The track has become an essential fixture of his compilations and live shows, so much so that it gets reworked in concert: into the line "Era l'anno dei Mondiali quelli dell'86/ Paolo Rossi era un ragazzo come noi" ("It was the year of the '86 World Cup/ Paolo Rossi was a boy like us"), he grafts in Italy's 2006 World Cup win and Roma idol Francesco Totti.

Although the title doesn't promise much originality, "C'è un cuore che batte nel cuore" manages, in its simplicity, to stir something. There are too many workmanlike tracks ("Peppino," "Segreti," "Settembre") and some frankly bad moments: "Rocky, Rambo e Sting," where an uninspired critique of international show-business superheroes gets sunk by a chorus of "je je je."

We all know the hits of this second phase, and it would be unfair to criticize their effective pop craftsmanship, even though the lyrical content has lost refinement and intensity. These are moments that, unlike the work of the late Seventies and early Eighties, have lost their shine and depth, but are still good enough to carve out a small place in memory after decades. At a certain point, though, even that will be missing.

One quality that can't be taken away from our man is a certain foresight in reading the country's fate and dramas. The mind easily turns to In questo mondo di ladri, a semi-serious prelude to the Tangentopoli era, though it's carried above all by the new sentimental ballad "Ricordati di me" and the anguished "21 modi per dirti ti amo," centered on the humanitarian experience in Eritrea.

The song form here fossilizes into easy tracks, built essentially to showcase Venditti's voice, with the saxophone dutifully added on top. It's painful to hear lines like "Amore amore amore io ti ringrazio/ Di questo tempo e questo spazio" in "Mitico amore" and think back to the poetic heights the same author once reached, not so long before. "Il compleanno di Cristina" is a bland sequel to "Under the Sign of Pisces"; "Miraggi" and "Correndo correndo" fare no better. A glimmer of light appears only at the end, with "Ma che bella giornata di sole," a song in which Venditti reinterprets Italy's Liberation through his parents' eyes.

With the following Benvenuti in paradiso (1991) and Prendilo tu questo frutto amaro four years later, he settles for placing the usual well-crafted singles and wrapping up the tracklist as best he can. Thanks to "Alta marea" and "Amici mai," the early-90s album is the best-selling of his career. The opening track is a cover of "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House, which had already been running through the singer's head for a while. Taking advantage of a car trip to Forte dei Marmi, Venditti wrote lyrics full of doubt and jealousy for a reinterpretation that in Italy would become better known than the original. The usual instrumental setup is joined by female backing vocals, giving us slightly more inspired compositions and a record just a notch above its predecessor.

Benvenuti in paradiso features "Dolce Enrico," the singer-songwriter's posthumous tribute to Berlinguer, where painful Italian historical memory coexists with the recollection of the crowd present at the funeral: “A San Giovanni stanotte la piazza è vuota/Ma quanta gente che c’era sotto la grande bandiera/E quante bugie, quanti segreti in fondo al mare/Dimmi che un giorno, davvero, noi li vedremo affiorare?”.

Prendilo tu questo frutto amaro seems to promise better things thanks to the opening track and first single, "Ogni volta," a classic ballad in Venditti's classic crescendo style. The rest of the album, though, follows the recent script all too closely. "Prendilo tu questo frutto amaro" is a cover of "Bitter Fruit" by Steven Van Zandt, aka Little Steven, longtime guitarist of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Venditti borrows that compelling melody to fit in his barely veiled misgivings about Italy's current political situation. Where in the past every piece of criticism and reflection on such topics was woven into a remarkable creative device, now he goes straight to the point: “È una questione politica/ ‘na grande presa per culo/ in questa nuova Repubblica/ non mi somiglia nessuno”.

Along the same lines is "Tutti all'inferno," featuring a cameo by Verdone, a pairing - musically too - that would recur in the years to come. "Eroi minori" is dedicated to Falcone, Borsellino, their bodyguards, and everyone involved in the fight against the mafia. It's a subject close to Venditti's heart, restated on the 1992 live album Da San Siro a Samarcanda - L'amore insegna agli uomini (the latter being the title of the previously unreleased track), chronicling a hugely successful tour also remembered for its link-up with Michele Santoro's Rai3 show of the same name, to which the musician gave a live gift of "Alta marea" and, above all, "Modena" alongside Gato Barbieri. There's also a video edition of the release, directed by Stefano Salvati, capturing the concert-as-karaoke-night atmosphere that marked the peak of his popularity.

Also in 1992, Venditti wrote "Strade di Roma" for Michele Zarrillo, while on 1997's Antonello nel Paese delle Meraviglie he limited himself to rearranging some of his songs backed by the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra: the only new track, "Ho fatto un sogno," was composed with the involvement of none other than Ennio Morricone.

The Roman songwriter was also keen to put his final stamp on the closing millennium, hence the release of Goodbye Novecento, whose cover depicts the stars and zodiac signs over Rome as the year 2000 strikes. Four years on from his previous record, Venditti presents a more acoustic sound, with guitar as the main support for his voice. Initially, the themes of the opening songs align with the album's concept, offering more singer-songwriter-like, reflective subject matter, far from love themes: the title track opener, "Shake," and the first single "In questo mondo che non puoi capire." It's an inspired lyric, poised between the ills of the contemporary world and hope for a better future, accompanied by a surreal video directed by Radu Mihăileanu. A belated reassertion of authorship.

How to sweep all that away in an instant? With yet another saccharine ballad, "Che tesoro che sei," which, unlike the far more deserving previous single, duly ended up in heavy radio rotation and in every lover's dedication. The world of school and political commitment return in "Fianco a fianco," while "La coscienza di Zeman" is an awkward football-flavored "reinterpretation" of Svevo, a hagiographic ode to Bohemian coach Zdenek Zeman, emblem of a romantic kind of football that is (perhaps) lost forever. The dreamy "Su questa nave chiamata musica," on the other hand, is dedicated to Fabrizio De André, who had passed away at the very start of that year. Thanks to a valuable episode of Gianni Minà's Blitz, we also get to discover the friendship and mutual esteem between the two, despite a less-than-idyllic start.

Part Three: The Last Twenty Years

A mournful decline in the final years of a career is the fate that has befallen many sacred monsters of our music. Venditti has undoubtedly not escaped it. This monograph could have ended in the early Eighties without losing anything essential. But since it's too easy to point out the poor quality of late-period Venditti, it's much better to spend a few words on the rare significant moments. The track "Che fantastica storia è la vita" is one of the few things worth saving from his last few decades, and the 2003 album of the same name hovers right at the threshold of decent. The structure of the lyrics echoes the character-driven storytelling made famous in "Under the Sign of Pisces," here enriched by the return of Gato Barbieri's saxophone. Incredibly, the album's real misstep is the long-awaited duet with Francesco De Gregori on "Io e mio fratello": if the title alone doesn't promise anything good, listening to the rest of the song can only leave us wondering whether the union of two heavyweights of Italian singer-songwriting could really have produced this result. The album also includes "Ruba," a track Venditti wrote early in his career and shelved because of an awkward line, back then referring to "tutto il sangue dell'Irlanda" ("all the blood of Ireland"). Rearranged for the occasion, the song also exists in a 1973 version sung by Mia Martini, with whom the songwriter had collaborated on "Il giorno dopo," writing the music for "Ma quale amore" (included on the compilation "Canzoni segrete").

Campus Live, released the following year, captures the images and words from the rehearsals for Venditti's tour, opened up to the public at the Cinecittà Campus. More than for the unreleased "Addio mia bella addio," the release is interesting for the many anecdotes the singer shares with the "interactive" audience between songs.

Venditti would return to the scene in 2007 with Dalla pelle al cuore, whose title track lead single is perhaps the worst of his career: a track like “Regali di Natale” is far better when it comes to that. Once again centred on love stories gone wrong, the album lets a few flashes of his lost verve shine through in “Giuda” and especially in “Tradimento e perdono”, without doubt the most intense moment of latter-day Venditti. On 30 May 1994 – exactly ten years after his beloved Roma lost the European Cup final to Liverpool – the club's historic captain Agostino Di Bartolomei shot himself with a Smith & Wesson .38 Special. The Roman singer-songwriter starts from a tribute to a friend and sporting role model to build a much broader reflection on loneliness and the bitter fate that often befalls celebrities, both in sport and beyond (the lyrics also mention Luigi Tenco and Marco Pantani).

From deep in time like a regret

now you are reborn

that stunned smile even though you won

no longer torments me

it reminds me of Luigi, surrounded by friends

alone and left there

if there were any care for the champion, he'd be here today

if there were more love for the champion, you'd be here today.

Really little else stands out from the last two studio records, Unica and Tortuga. Beyond the usual tracks pushed for sales – or rather, these days they say views – it's far better when Venditti is simply being Venditti without too many pretensions, giving in to his usual trademark ballad, rather than flirting with more contemporary sounds with embarrassing results (“La ragazza del lunedì (Silvio)”, aimed at Berlusconi on the first album, and “Ti amo inutilmente” on the following one).

On the 2011 album, worth salvaging are “Ti ricordi il cielo”, co-written with Pacifico, and “Forever” (also featured on the soundtrack of “La Grande Bellezza”), above all for its beautiful video, in which the singer and Olivia Magnani end their journey through the Capital standing before the monument to Pier Paolo Pasolini in Ostia.

While his latest political compositions lack bite (“Il sosia”, “Comunisti al sole”), Venditti – recently aligned with the Five Star Movement through his support for Rome's mayor Virginia Raggi – does much better “in person”, as shown in a famous televised clash with Matteo Salvini.

Four years later, the author returns to the territory of his youth. No longer able to walk into Giulio Cesare as a student, he decides to linger for a while at the bar across from the school in the Trieste district, the Tortuga, and from there observe the scene with the detachment of maturity. It's amusing to see his wish to appear eternally young, striking rocker poses in “Cosa avevi in mente”, the video/song that opens his latest album of new material, steeped in Rome and nostalgia, and marked by a change in production with Alessandro Canini at the helm. “I ragazzi del Tortuga” and “Tortuga” update his musical autobiography, “Nel mio infinito cielo di canzoni” reflects on his own craft, while the romantic chapter is revived by the aching “Non so dirti quando” and the ballad “Tienimi dentro te”, played on piano by the late Alessandro Centofanti, to whom the album is dedicated.

2018 sees the release of Sotto il segno dei pesci – 40th Anniversary Edition. The first disc of the reissue contains all the remastered tracks, while the second features the previously unreleased “Sfiga”, the French versions of “Sara” and “Under the Sign of Pisces”, plus live versions of “Bomba o non bomba”, “Sara”, “Chen Il Cinese”, “Giulia”, and “Sotto il segno dei Pesci”.

As proof of the public's enduring love for Venditti and for this particular record, the following year also saw the release of a triple album documenting the successful tour celebrating the 1978 release, packed with the most varied (and unlikely) duet partners, from Ermal Meta to Ultimo, by way of Briga and Baby K. Counterbalancing these appearances is the reunited Francesco De Gregori. Together on stage, the two Roman singer-songwriters take the chance to relive the journey of “Bomba o non bomba”, revisit the Prince's song “Sempre e per sempre” (from 2001's “Amore nel pomeriggio”) and dust off the long-forgotten “Attila e la stella”. Hearing them sing “Roma Capoccia” together in the magnificent setting of the Arena di Verona could well be the perfect happy ending, but the two show no sign of wanting to stop, and after the postponement caused by the Covid-19 emergency – as previously mentioned – they have announced the new date for their joint concert at the Stadio Olimpico (17 July 2021).

Beyond the celebratory live shows, the release of his second book “Nella notte di Roma”, countless well-timed TV appearances and dates alongside his “best enemy” De Gregori, Antonio Venditti from Rome leaves us - for now, at least - with a bittersweet musical story, made up of some truly towering moments (well worth holding on to) and others best forgotten. Rather like life itself.

Contributions by Claudio Fabretti

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