Antonello Venditti

Anniversaries and coincidences dominated by the number 8. On March 8, 1978, his twenty-ninth birthday, Antonello Venditti released the eight tracks of the eighth album of his career: "Sotto il segno dei Pesci". Exactly forty years ago. Almost another era, another Italy, another world. Pinochet, Acca Larentia, Aldo Moro, the abortion law, Renato Curcio, John Paul I, and plenty of Lead in the streets. How did music respond to all this? That year's chart tells the story clearly: if we set aside the top two spots, dominated by cinematic phenomena (the soundtracks to "Saturday Night Fever" and "Grease"), the rest — between pop and singer-songwriter fare — reads like an anthology of Italian music. In order we find: "Una donna per amico" by Battisti, "La pulce d'acqua" by Branduardi, "De Gregori", "Zerolandia", "Figli delle stelle" by Sorrenti, "Boomerang" by Pooh, "Riccardo Cocciante", "Tu" by Tozzi, "Rimini" by De André, "Com'è profondo il mare" by Dalla, "Amerigo" by Guccini. All of them trailing behind the best-selling record: "Sotto il segno dei Pesci". Beyond the numbers, to ask a question that gets even closer to the point: who was the Antonello Venditti of "Sotto il segno dei Pesci"?

A songwriter in a state of grace. "Sotto il segno dei Pesci" is the culmination of the journey begun in the early Seventies and the peak of Venditti's discography. From "Roma Capoccia" to "Lilly" and on to the "Modena" of the historic compromise between the Communist Party and the Christian Democrats, that decade would remain, for him, an intense one, full of great moments. The Eighties that followed brought even more resounding success, some good work ("Cuore", from 1984, plays almost like the tracklist of a greatest-hits set) and a gradual settling into the Olympus of mainstream Italian pop, with only rare moments of real substance. Nothing comparable to his records of the Seventies. Is it the fault of his success, of his innate, limpid pop instinct — factors that only in Italy count as a strike against an artist rather than a virtue — that this Roman singer-songwriter is so often left out when people talk about the founding fathers of Italian song? Everyone agrees on citing the Holy Trinity of Guccini, De André and De Gregori, but why not Venditti too? Perhaps we've grown used to judging and pigeonholing him based on the usual radio staples and his less-than-inspired later work, yet looking beyond the eternal teardrop Ray-Bans and the easy nods to Roman identity (football included), a more thorough, honest look reveals a body of work of rare importance — especially today, when no shortage of bands and songwriters, coming from the most varied backgrounds, openly declare their devotion to the Roman musician.

Antonello Venditti's music is made of people and events. A great story interwoven with the everyday "cose della vita", complete with thoughts, reflections and emotions. It's a music of dates, first names and surnames. A remarkable balance in which the author's social and political mission (always aligned with the Communist Party, albeit with an unusual Christian streak) goes hand in hand with an ongoing narrative of feelings. More than "Roma Capoccia", the true touchstone song of his early years remains "Sora Rosa", written — so legend has it — at fourteen, like the previous track. In a sincere, heart-wrenching dialogue, the voice confides in this woman who embodies the common people, and aches over the ills of the times. It's all there: the strong Roman imprint (in the choice of names, setting and certain dialect touches in the lyrics), the indictment of Italy's vices, and a powerful sense of unity and solidarity, woven between the keys of the faithful piano, which can barely contain its mounting fervor.

Annamo via, tenémose pe mmano,

c'è ssolo questo de vero pe cchi spera,

"that perhaps one day whoever eats too much now

may spit out bones that are saintly."

An epic conclusion revisited by Tomas Milian in what has since become a historic monologue in the celebrated "La Banda del Gobbo" by Umberto Lenzi, testifying to how immediately and widely the musician's work was embraced across the most varied contexts. From "Theorius Campus" to "Sotto il segno dei Pesci", the list of great songs is long: "E li ponti so' soli", "L'ingresso della fabbrica", "Ciao uomo", "A Cristo", "Lilly", "Lo stambecco ferito", right up to the peak of that private-social pairing that would reach its summit in the masterpiece "Modena", on "Buona Domenica". But let's stick with the question: who was the Antonello Venditti of "Sotto il segno dei Pesci"? An artist who had established himself as a leading voice on the Italian scene, active in and involved with major collaborations: Mia Martini, Mario Schifano, Lucio Dalla, Ivan Graziani, to name just a few. "Ullallà", released in 1976 after the success of "Lilly", is a desperate record and marks his first commercial flop, followed by a break that interrupted his previously steady one-album-a-year pace. Then, in 1978, "Sotto il segno dei Pesci" arrives, and everything changes. Forever.

The album makes clear a particular gift of the Roman songwriter: the ability to read his own times, to understand and analyze society, to filter events and characters and render them unforgettable. "Sotto il segno dei Pesci" is a collection of photographs. Snapshots by Venditti, snapshots of Italy, and in those stills we too are captured. The intro still gives you goosebumps today: it manages to breathe in the air of the demonstration, of the street full of young people, the ideals and ideas that drove them. A memory tinged with a sense of bitterness, with the realization that the present is not the future they had fought for.

Do you remember that street? It was you and me. And people running and shouting together with us.

But all I want is simply love and unity for us.

These are the Years of Lead: '68 is already a bitter memory, and eight days after the album's release the Red Brigades would kidnap Aldo Moro. And yet the song still holds that irrepressible longing and need for love, a theme Venditti would go on singing about - with varying degrees of inspiration - throughout his career.

Eighteen years old is too young to promise yourself the future.

That eighteen-year-old is Venditti himself, and after him come the other characters, drawn from real lives and friendships: Giovanni the Engineer, Marisa the teacher.

They aren't the only ones in "Sotto il segno dei Pesci". Among the snapshots - with Mario Convertino's iconic cover art - two of the quintessential women of Venditti's body of work take center stage: "Giulia" and "Sara". Two women, two stories at opposite poles: while we still smile fondly today listening to the everyday struggles of this teenager dealing with pregnancy (a subject that was nothing short of taboo at the time) and her far-from-idyllic relationship with the child's future father, Giulia is caught up in a far more complex and ambiguous triangle. Where "Sara" is pure innocence and pop freshness, "Giulia" is the aching Venditti ballad that tells of this ruthless, calculating lesbian feminist, capable of stealing away the narrator's beloved, driving the story and its musical arc toward an unforgettable climax.

Then comes "Francesco"... De Gregori. Who were the four boys with a guitar and a piano slung over their shoulders in the famous "Notte prima degli esami"? They were the kids from the Folkstudio on Via Garibaldi: Ernesto Bassignano, Giorgio Lo Cascio, Francesco De Gregori and Antonello Venditti. The last two would make their debut together with "Theorius Campus", an invented name, a kind of shared alter ego. As we know, their paths would gradually diverge: "Francesco" and "Bomba o non bomba" represent the two opposite faces of that relationship. With the piano's sound painting the mood and colors awaiting us each time, "Francesco" opens with a solemn, melancholy air.

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

We're looking at someone trying to understand how a relationship with a friend and "colleague" could have broken down. The dialogue opens with the hardest word to use in these situations: sorry. What matters isn't knowing the real facts, but appreciating how a Venditti who has reached this point still cares about that relationship, and above all regrets how things turned out.

Francesco, vedi Francesco

possiamo ancora suoniamo ancora l’ultima volta

senza rimpianti, senza paura

come due amici antichi

and nothing more, more, more.

Only the story's happy ending (Venditti would even return to duet with De Gregori on “Io e mio fratello”, from 2003's “Che fantastica storia è la vita”) manages to soften the chilling bitterness of the finale.

“Bomba o non bomba” opens cheerful and lively, set on recounting the duo's on the road adventure. The road traveled is both the literal one of countless tours, bizarre encounters and grim news from the rest of Italy, and the figurative one leading toward success, toward home, toward Rome.

The Venditti of “Sotto il segno dei Pesci”, though, is less and less Roman and increasingly Italian: proof of this comes in “Il Telegiornale” and “L’Uomo Falco”. In the former, with an almost prophetic touch, the singer-songwriter sets to an amused melody a long line of news broadcasts, just before the end of RAI's monopoly and the rise of Fininvest, sketching out news formats far closer to low-brow entertainment than to genuine outlets for information and in-depth reporting. He wasn't far off the mark...

Il telegiornale

così spettacolare

il telegiornale

così obiettivamente imparziale

il telegiornale

la rapina te la dà in diretta

il telegiornale

salva la povera vecchietta

News at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, night news…

“L’Uomo Falco” still lends itself to many interpretations today. Herein lies the greatness of an author capable not only of shaping a devious, opportunistic figure easily applicable to countless politicians or well-known personalities of the time, 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.

In an album with so much beauty and quality, there's no way the early Venditti could be missing. The neorealist, protest-driven Venditti, capable of adding the unforgettable “Chen il cinese” to his gallery of portraits. He too comes from the streets, from the neighborhood, and because of a life of crime (he's “the one who changed the bar's sign” and “the grass he sold got sweeter and sweeter”) things aren't going too well for him. He seems to have vanished, maybe fled or worse (“Excuse me, have you seen the mute murderer? He's the one who gave him that ticket to Rome”): despite the bleak, grimy setting, 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.

Musically, “Sotto il segno dei Pesci” boasts nothing less than illustrious collaborations. On this front Venditti always treated himself well, surrounding himself with prestigious names: from Vince Tempera to the already-mentioned Ivan Graziani. On this record – produced by Michelangelo Romano – he writes, as usual, all the lyrics and music himself, but joining him in support are Stradaperta – a cult name in Italian prog of the 70s – and none other than Mr. Goblin Claudio Simonetti on mellotron & Roland System 100, as the album's artwork credits state.

A symbol and high point of a glorious era in Italian music, “Sotto il segno dei Pesci” is the Antonello Venditti album where all his different souls coexist in a magical, inspired way. There's no more past, present or future: just a road still to be traveled, perhaps together and in love. Children of an old song.

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25/03/2018