Franco Califano

Francesco Califano, known to everyone as Franco, was one of the most original Italian singer-songwriters and lyricists, as well as a writer and actor.

Born in Pagani, a small town in the province of Salerno, Califano - soon nicknamed "Il Califfo" (the Caliph) - came into the world between the seats of an airplane over Libyan skies on September 14, 1938. After completing compulsory schooling, he was forced to attend evening classes in accounting, since nightlife had so captivated him that he could never manage to wake up early in the morning. He was drawn to the good life and to women, who were drawn right back. He split his time between school and boxing, homework and dance halls. And while his education gave him the grounding to avoid falling into the clutches of manual labor (this was the South during the post-war boom), his nights wore down his dreamier desires and ambitions.

So, determined to give meaning to his nature as a "man against the grain," he set off for Rome, where he made a name for himself in the world of photo-romance magazines. But that wasn't enough. These were the years of Dolce Vita, and Via Veneto was teeming with stars and sinuous beauties. Federico Fellini invented the paparazzi and pinned down papal Rome in its worldly "decadence." Califano loved music and sang. His hunger for novelty led him to test himself across different musical genres, from popular ballads to American standards. And when a stunning actress of the day was about to slip the "noose around his neck," after a night of soul-searching, Franco made his final choice: music. Destination Milan.

He was young but clear-headed: "practice must win out over theory," so he gave free rein to instinct and friendship. His circle of artistic acquaintances led him to collaborate with various in-vogue artists of the time, who appreciated his way of thinking. He wrote his first songs, though, paying his dues as a newcomer, for a long while he limited himself to writing for others. He alternated between songwriting and his first recordings, which before long finally reached a wide audience. Years of great success followed, culminating in an LP sung entirely by Mina.

Once a defining period of our musical history had run its course, "Il Califfo" inevitably had to reckon with the rise of the singer-songwriters. While some of his colleagues chose to entrust Italy's political and social destiny to a guitar, he kept on writing about love and friends, about everyday life. He bristled at the rise of those he would not hesitate to call "false messiahs and mystifiers," and, not without pain, carried on along his path without losing himself.

A figure who went against the grain, and who for that reason was condemned to pay dearly for every choice he made, Califano made headlines for a string of relationships and "habits" that the society of the time, even as it was complicit in them, refused to tolerate. Califano became the monster, the degenerate. After the youthful trial-run of boarding school, now he was forced to endure the humiliation of prison too. Just one more lash - among the many that would keep coming over the years - of the kind "that bend you but don't break you." Despite the scandal and the money spent on lawyers and hugely costly trials, like a phoenix Il Califfo rose again, even managing to record an album by turning a caravan into a recording studio, and climbed back to the steep peak of success.

His spoken-word monologues, interwoven with songs of great emotional impact, became his trademark. Roman dialect, dismissed by some as merely a dialect, became through him a language in its own right. Certain lines from his songs turned into genuine catchphrases, entering everyday speech. The media had a field day, and he reveled in it: "the Prévert of Trastevere," "the Roman Brel," "the Pasolini of song," "the Belli of our time." Then there's Califano's philosophy, the magic of a line that gives a song its title and hands it down to eternity - perhaps the most "overused" line in his entire repertoire: "Tutto il resto è noia" ("everything else is boredom").

An artist too often misunderstood and misjudged, Il Califfo released more than twenty albums and wrote something like a thousand songs. He put his name to a multitude of emotions that others carried to success: from Mina to Renato Zero, from Lando Fiorini to the Vianella duo. Worth remembering, for instance, are "La musica è finita" and "Una ragione di più" (Ornella Vanoni); "E la chiamano estate" (Bruno Martino); "Un grande amore e niente più" (Peppino Di Capri), "Minuetto" and "La nevicata del '56" (which became signature songs for the unforgettable Mia Martini).

The Califano universe has recently been rediscovered by a new generation of artists, as shown by the tributes paid by hip-hop figures such as Articolo 31, Frankie Hi-Nrg and Piotta.

Franco Califano was awarded an honorary degree in Philosophy by a New York university "for having written one of the finest chapters in Italian song," as the citation read. For the record, before him the same university had conferred the honor on Eduardo De Filippo and former Italian President Francesco Cossiga.

Franco Califano died at his villa in Acilia, on the outskirts of Rome, on March 30, 2013, at the age of 74, of cardiac arrest. On his gravestone, at his own request, is the phrase "Non escludo il ritorno" ("I don't rule out a comeback"), the title of the song with which he took part in the Sanremo Festival in 2005.

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