Vasco Rossi - The parable of an Italian rocker

Vasco Rossi was born in Zocca (Modena) in 1952, to a housewife mother and a truck-driver father; as a child he won the "L'Usignolo d'Oro" singing contest, and later graduated as an accountant.

In 1975 he founded "Radio Punto Zocca", one of the first private radio stations in Italy, and made a name for himself as a DJ, but he dreamed of being a singer-songwriter. He wrote songs in his bedroom and, little by little, shyly began playing them around town, until in 1977 Jeans produced his first single, and the following year came the album Ma cosa vuoi che sia una canzone, distributed only in Emilia Romagna, which went practically unnoticed. Vasco Rossi's debut is a fine record; halfway between acoustic psychedelia and singer-songwriter rock, it tells with equal passion of difficult girls, of loves that have ended or are about to end, of dreams, and also of social issues. "Silvia" and "Tu che dormivi piano" are sweet, dazed, dreamlike sketches of that female world which the (almost) young Vasco tries to understand amid reverb and acoustic arpeggios; on the other side, there's the biting social irony of "Ambarabaciccicoccò", and the bitter resignation of its angrier counterpart, "Ed il tempo crea eroi", Italian-style country flavoured with proletarian rage. And then there's "Jenny è pazza", seven minutes of melancholy, a psychedelic ballad with a long closing moog solo à la PFM, telling another hard story of misunderstanding and unease.

The following We're not exactly the Americans (1979), released on Carosello, repeats the same formula, with a few more nods toward a raw, guitar-driven rock and a markedly more salacious tone. It's another good effort, perhaps even better than the previous one, and much more "acidic" in its lyrics: you can sense it right from the cover, with a stars-and-stripes flag... in white, red and green, and from the memorable "Fegato fegato spappolato" and "(per quello che ho da fare) Faccio il militare", anthems to total disaffection and a touchstone for a generation - the one leaving the Seventies behind and approaching the Eighties - that had lost every point of reference and every ideal, finding itself grappling with its own individuality and individualism, caught between sarcasm aimed at the bigoted, provincial mindset of conservative little Italy and the nihilism of lines like "La sera che arriva non è mai diversa dalla sera prima/...ci vuol qualcosa per tenersi a galla sopra questa merda/ e non importa se domani mi dovrò svegliare ancora con quel gusto in bocca". But if this record is where Rossi starts to get noticed, it's above all thanks to one of its most rock and at the same time most tender tracks, another example of a song-as-analysis of that female world Vasco observes with such wonder: that "Albachiara" which, within a few years, would become a stadium anthem, turning the rocker from Zocca into an icon of Italian popular music.

The third album came out in 1980 and is titled Colpa d'Alfredo. The "Vasco persona" was beginning to take shape, gradually moving away from the image of the naive, somewhat sullen and angry young man, to give life to that of the politically incorrect, cocky, dissolute rocker. The title track, in certain passages almost a lift from the Who's "Baba O'Riley", tells a story of women - fewer and fewer innocent or difficult girls, more and more "whores" (sic) - and of "negroes" (sic) in the outskirts of Modena (sic): grotesque to say the least, and certainly never heard before in Italy. For the time, it's quite a gut punch, but Rossi could still afford to sing whatever crossed his mind without feeling the weight that, within a few years, would come with having become an icon for younger generations. As for the rest, the album is evenly split between rock numbers that are sometimes genuinely hard-edged ("Asilo Republic" is raw, untamed hardcore-punk) with ironic or nonsensical lyrics ("Alibi" above all, with its hallucinated atmosphere) and tear-jerking ballads (the achingly sweet "Anima fragile" for voice and piano, the dreamy "Tropico del Cancro" inspired by Beat literature). The album was a huge success, helped along by some scathing reviews from critics: memorable among them Nantas Salvalaggio's, after a TV appearance: "Vasco Rossi... To describe him, I'd need the pen of a Grosz, a Maccari: a fine halfwit, in fact a rather ugly halfwit, unsteady on his legs, with the smoked zombie glasses of an alcoholic, of a junkie who's 'stoned' [...] People from TV, from the press, from the government - but when we do a serious study, a rough count, of all the young people who have gotten themselves 'stoned', who have procured themselves a passport to the next world, following in the footsteps of the bards of heroin, like that certain Lou Reed, whose name in Milan is rightly pronounced 'Lurid'?".

By now he was drawing decent crowds to his shows, backed by Massimo Riva and Maurizio Solieri's Steve Rogers Band. But it's with the following album, Siamo solo noi (1981), that Vasco Rossi's name really starts being on everyone's lips, or at least on the lips of young rock fans: leaning ever more toward hard rock, both in the harder tracks and in the ballads, the album repeats the success of its predecessor, thanks to the power of the title track, a generational anthem built for stadium singalongs with some of his most direct and compelling lines, a declaration of war on bourgeois life (“Siamo solo noi/ che non abbiamo più rispetto per niente, neanche per la mente/ Siamo solo noi/ che non abbiamo più niente da dire, sappiamo solo vomitare/ Siamo solo noi/ quelli che ormai non credono più a niente, e vi fregano sempre”).

With his next work, Rossi attempts the big leap. I'm going all out (1982), the album's title track, is a lopsided reggae number with a rock refrain and utterly nonsensical lyrics, with which he presents himself, swaying on his feet (genuinely drunk, or an actor playing the part?), on the stage of the great temple of Italian pop song, the Sanremo Festival. He finishes last - behind a debuting Zucchero - which is only right; the goal is achieved regardless, as Vasco Rossi breaks out of his cult-artist niche, and now everyone knows there's this disreputable character out there you'd want to keep your kids away from. It must be said that I'm going all out is one of Vasco's finest records: momentarily setting aside the excessive hard rock roughness in favor of more "commercial" tracks that are never too pandering, with lyrics that are as ironic and irreverent as ever, sometimes openly provocative ("Splendida giornata" alongside the title track), it also contains some genuinely successful ballads ("Canzone", moving in its air of resigned melancholy, "La noia" and "Ogni volta").

Rossi returns to Sanremo the following year, this time with a slow number that would become his most famous anthem (he'll fare just as badly on the Riviera: second to last, though Vasco will go on to win the Festivalbar). Taken from the new LP Bollicine, "Vita spericolata" needs no introduction; its most famous lines, “Voglio una vita maleducata/ voglio una vita come Steve McQueen/ voglio una vita che se ne frega/ che se ne frega di tutto sì”, a celebration of provincial nihilism from this kid raised on punk and Catholic youth clubs, become shared common ground for anyone struggling to feel at ease in the glittering, now fully-fledged Eighties (and the title track nods to one of the new generation's symbols, the Coca-Cola of the paninari... though if you want to be mischievous, a few double entendres can be found in there too). And it hardly matters that good old Vasco, by now considered "the" Italian rocker, is comfortably sinking into the vices and glitter of these Eighties; it's the persona that counts, it's his still-thin, worn-out figure, showing up on stages across Italy in ragged t-shirts, looking like a street junkie (how far off those future clown-like getups still seem...), unkempt hair and sunglasses even at night, clinging to the mic stand and screaming his lines into it, often jarring in their intimate revelation of the fragile man beneath the cocky public image ("Una canzone per te" is exemplary in this regard).

The ferocity of these shows is captured on a genuinely excellent record, the live album Va bene, va bene così (1984), which, besides the new atmospheric slow number that gives the record its title (yet another difficult story, another love-that-isn't-love dragged along with melancholy and resignation), contains eight of the most representative songs from this first phase of Rossi's career, played with grit and passion by a band at the peak of its powers. The show is genuinely hard-rocking, guitars dominate throughout, and Vasco screams like a man possessed...

From this point on, something starts to crack. The triggering event is his arrest for drug possession (yes, the very same coke from "Bollicine"); Vasco seems to have gone too far and decides to clean up his act (also because, after all, this is Italy, and being a druggie here has never been cool - and anyway, 22 days behind bars do nobody any good). What's Happening in the City (1985) veers toward chart-friendly pop-rock, with a fair dose of funk rhythms and the inevitable couple of old-school power ballads; thanks also to lyrics that are, perhaps for the last time, more playful and ironic than anything else ("Ti taglio la gola" is truly a masterpiece in this regard), the album is pleasant enough, but you can already feel the absence of the grit and cockiness that had defined Rossi's output in the years just gone by. And the following C'è chi dice no (1987) confirms the trend: the number of reflective tracks increases (arguably the most successful ones, including opener "Vivere una favola" and the ballad "Ridere di te"), pessimistic and gloomy lyrics appear for the first time, and atmospheric keyboards take over. Vasco definitively leaves behind his past as an angry young rocker and slips on, just look at the cover photo to believe it, the clothes of the introspective singer-songwriter, moving from more or less successful musings on unspecified dark troubles plaguing the world to bittersweet thoughts on the passing of time, with few forays back toward the rock of old ("Lunedì", at least enjoyable, but also the pointless "Blasco Rossi").

Liberi liberi (1989) is perhaps the weakest record so far, with only a couple of good ideas ("Dillo alla luna", "Tango della gelosia") and everything else scattered among rock-revival attempts and harmless little pop numbers.

As is customary, the watering-down of his musical output's authenticity corresponds to ever-greater success, leading him to fill stadiums on the 1990 tour; alongside the first generation of fans of the Emilian rocker, who keep following their old idol, a new crowd of devotees joins in, hungry for easy slogans and catchy one-liners, things Vasco now seems to produce with considerable ease between one "oooh" and one "eeeh". The triumphant tour is documented on the live album Fronte del palco, which, compared to its predecessor from just six years earlier, "Va bene va bene così", is but a pale imitation, for all the grandeur of this new phase.

After a brief pause, Vasco returns in 1993 with Gli spari sopra, an album that on one hand is saddening for its attempt to "rejuvenate" the musician's image with an implausible biker-hard-rocker look complete with long hair and bandana, boots and ripped jeans, leather jacket and sunglasses, but on the other is somewhat heartening on the musical front, containing some of the finest songs of his "second period" ("Vivere", "Gabri", "Stupendo!", "L'uomo che hai di fronte") across a remarkable variety of styles and sounds, backed by a notably tight-knit band (the Steve Rogers Band had left him a few years earlier in search of glory of their own).

It is, sadly, the old lion's last roar; the following Nessun pericolo per te (1996) is lackluster, Canzoni per me (1998) starts to become irritating, and Stupido Hotel (2001) and Buoni o Cattivi (2004) are unlistenable.

Between compilations, live albums and celebrations of every kind, Vasco is in these years adored by massive crowds filling racetracks and stadiums, and plays to perfection his role as a wealthy middle-aged entertainer - perhaps with less arrogance than some of his peers, even if not necessarily less stature. He nonetheless deserves credit for having opened the doors of rock to the masses in Italy, importing and above all mainstreaming among the general public a "rock'n'roll way of life" that had once seemed incompatible with the Italian way of living and thinking.

In 2008 Vasco Rossi released The world I'd like, an album of new material four years on from Buoni o cattivi: among the tracks is also "Basta poco", released a year earlier online. The opening/title track is a rollicking rock anthem, written and crafted to be sung in stadiums: the arrangements are as garish as ever, with a final "lalalalalala" and six minutes of pure hard rock melodicism in the style of "American old-timers". "Gioca con me" is a bit like Aerosmith reimagined by an emo-punk band. This is Vasco today, forced into a corner to please the thousands upon thousands of fans who buy his records, who wear t-shirts with his face on them, who pack the stadiums. Aware of this, "Blasco" stitches together a dozen tracks with everything that's required of him: melody, plenty of melody, guitar riffs for long hair blowing in the wind and the occasional shot in the arm, big guitar-driven anthems with the odd orchestral arrangement, a chorus that's catchy on first listen.

In short, Vasco Rossi does what's expected of him. It's by now a blood pact between him and his audience. He gives them an album of new songs every 3-4 years and a dozen or so concerts each summer. They return the favor by buying anything bearing his name. In Italy, with Renato Zero and his circle of devoted "sorcini" fans long faded, he's the only one who can boast this kind of "you scratch my back" following.

This isn't a record of music - Vasco Rossi hasn't made records of music for a long time now (not since the very early Nineties). His are commercial products; he writes songs for advertising and for the fans. That he still manages to do it reasonably well is probably down to an innate melodic talent. And talent isn't something you lose along the way once you have it. Vasco Rossi has it, but these days commerce and self-satisfaction win out.

Meanwhile Vasco Rossi announces "I resign as a rockstar" during a television interview, yet keeps filling stadiums. He is by now so thoroughly part of the national-popular fabric that he becomes the subject of a video-tape somewhere between legal and illegal, broadcast on the final episode of Milena Gabanelli's "Report". Universal, however you choose to read him. He's a totem. And in turn, the totem gives back. He hands out little tunes to sing along to in the shower or in the car, to listen to on your iPod while walking down the street. They're simple things. They have to be simple things. They're the soundtrack for the teenager and the factory worker alike, for the office clerk and the professional. He has to be understood by everyone. It's hardly surprising, then, that he can't escape a certain snobbery that has accompanied, still accompanies, and will keep accompanying Vasco for as long as he wants to get up on a stage. A question that, incidentally, has recently been called into question again, whether for promotional reasons or otherwise.

Rossi today is essentially your average Italian guy, a bit bald, a bit rounder round the edges. He also escapes the criticism of those who'd like to see him as a fallen rocker, like Jeff Bridges in "Crazy Heart". Vasco Rossi is a Battisti who grew up at the tail end of the Seventies and lived cushioned through the Eighties. This is what Vasco Rossi is: he's Sanremo, he's mainstream through and through, even as he plays the role of the outsider, the alternative one, the rebel. But the kind of rebel that even grandma ends up liking. A rebel with a cause, in other words. The family's black sheep, whom everyone loves dearly all the same.

In 2011 came Live or nothing, a new album of original material that was neither bad nor remarkable. The usual Vasco.

The album opens with "Vivere non è facile", a mantra made for singing along, tasty fodder for advertisers, a rhyme to offer up to everyone whose life is going a bit sideways. It's the captatio benevolentiae that pays the bills, baby. It's got all of Vasco in it: the slow pace, the melody, the punchier stride, the hard rock turn, the guitar solo. You feel right at home within a couple of seconds of hitting play.

"Manifesto futurista della nuova umanità": an unusual title, straight out of some deathly boring textbook, the kind you see unemployed graduates reading outside philosophy departments. Pretentious and tongue-in-cheek at once, the title aside, the track features vocal parts that risk leaving him hoarse after a couple of months on tour, but are perfect for the crowd to sing along to. Vasco Rossi knows this too. An album is a tour. A tour is an event. And an event has to get people involved.

"Eh… già": the Emilian singer's all-out onomatopoeia becomes a title. A transcription of today's Rossi, in self-mocking autobiographical form. Discreetly pathetic. A pathos that the video doesn't hide either, portraying a balding, awkward old rooster. "Non sei quella che eri" can't have been written today. It's a sketch suspended between the earliest Vasco and the quirky singer-songwriter style of Rino Gaetano: it's a shame the whole thing then turns into Meat Loaf-style kitsch.

Vasco Rossi keeps writing decent Italian pop songs. The local "artists" can only dream of writing tracks like these at night. They'd sell their soul at the first crossroads for one. They'd cash in for a year and disappear. Vasco Rossi has been doing it for thirty years. With remarkable ease, too. He found the formula. Whether you like it or not is a matter of taste. Either way, he's won. He also seems at peace with himself. Good for him.

Contributions by Pier Eugenio Torri ("The world I'd like", "Live or nothing")

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