Piero Ciampi

“He's got all it takes/ to be an artist

he shares his dinner/ with blind painters, deaf musicians/ unlucky gamblers, maimed writers”

Piero Ciampi paints his own self-portrait, poet, vagabond, chansonnier, drunkard, lone wolf; and he does it with the same blunt, amused simplicity that would define him for his whole life.

“Nothing scares him/ least of all a bully

between a kiss and a goodbye”

Born in Livorno in 1934, from a young age he was drawn to music and poetry, but above all to a way of living life with passionate fury, with overflowing impetus, a restlessness that was never appeased and that would drive him throughout his life to wander and to discover.

His first escape (and perhaps the most important one), when he was barely in his twenties, with nothing but a guitar and a few cigarettes, took him to France, where he spent time with Céline and went to hear Georges Brassens perform live in the clubs.

He drank like a sponge, but like a sponge he also soaked up everything he experienced; when he returned to Livorno and, thanks to his friends Gianfranco Reverberi and Franco Crepax, managed to make his first recordings, he brought back not only the nickname he'd been given in France ("L'Italianò", later Italianized to Litaliano), which he would soon drop, but also the singing style he'd absorbed watching Brassens perform.

His first album was not a success, and although he wrote songs for other artists and won the admiration of some fellow musicians and industry insiders, Ciampi remained restless and dissatisfied, wandering and drinking, drinking and wandering: Ireland, England, Spain, Sweden, he even got married and had a son, but he was never at peace.

He recorded two more albums, but the situation didn't improve.

At this point, it's fair to ask: "Why should this globe-trotting bottle-lover be counted among the pantheon of Italian song?"

The answer lies, in perfectly exhaustive fashion, in "Andare camminare lavorare... e altri discorsi", which collects tracks from his previous two albums plus two unreleased pieces, and which showcases the main gifts of Piero Ciampi the singer-songwriter: his bizarre, original compositional streak and his honest, moving poetic flair.

It's not often that Italian singer-songwriter music offers up something like "Il giocatore", with Ciampi's spoken-word delivery as an unlucky gambler, punctuated by frantic strings, guitar and horns, or "Te lo faccio vedere chi sono io", built along similar lines, with the Livorno native this time playing the part of the charming braggart promising his woman a comfort he can't actually afford.

Atypical, loosely structured songs, as in the opening "Andare camminare lavorare", an ironic anthem in which Ciampi, still bordering on talkin', is backed by a male choir and a jazz-rock-style musical bed, amid African-tinged percussion, tight acoustic arpeggios, keyboard flourishes and electronic touches.

"He lives his life badly/ but he does it with great love"

Ciampi, however, was also an extraordinary poet and performer, capable of plunging into intense, touching declarations of love ("L'amore è tutto qui") or anguished tales of love gone wrong ("In un palazzo di giustizia"), just as he could dream up musical fairy tales set between Provence and Brazil ("40 soldati e 40 sorelle") or gorgeous, near-unaccompanied parables ("Cristo tra i chitarristi").

The Tuscan singer-songwriter was capable of truly brilliant flashes of inspiration, as in "Il Merlo", where he stages a composer's creative crisis ("tu, merlo, cantami una canzone/ da portare all'editore/ perché sono senza una lira") with grace and humor ("sono contento di non aver dato/ alcun seguito a quel peccato/ di volerti un giorno mangiar"), or could conceive simple, crystalline masterpieces like "Il vino", a wonderful ode to his true life companion, recently and successfully covered by La Crus.

"Life is a thing that takes, carries and sends"

Ciampi never knew great success, and he couldn't have cared less about so-called opportunities for visibility (interviews, TV appearances, plans for major records).

He'd vanish, or turn up drunk. Then vanish again.

On 19 January 1980, sadly, he vanishes for good.

Piero Ciampi still hasn't had his great success, not even after death. And despite the award named after him established in 1994 in his hometown, the critical reappraisal, and the effusive praise of his colleagues (Gino Paoli first and foremost) or his "disciples" (Nada), even today, in an age of reissues and remasters, the musical work of this Livorno singer-songwriter remains hard to find.

A disgrace for the world of Italian music, to which Piero Ciampi of Livorno, in his short but intense life, gave more heart and genius than many artists in our country have ever managed across their whole long careers.

"This is a miserere/ without tears,

this is the miserere/ of one who no longer/ has illusions"

Ride the wave of great music

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29/12/2008