Vasco Rossi

With a good dose of cynicism, one could argue that if, in 1985, cocaine had tragically caused the death of Vasco Rossi instead of his arrest, today the Emilian rocker would be lionized by the very same radical chic crowd that competes to sling mud at him. An unfair pile-on, given that while today's Vasco - bloated and thoroughly mainstream - is frankly embarrassing (though far less so than other idols of the average Italian who, unlike him, either never produced anything artistically significant or, when they did, managed it only for very brief periods and with far inferior results - see Ligabue, who prematurely vanished after three promising albums), the Vasco straddling the late Seventies and early Eighties redefined the very concept of both rock and Italian singer-songwriting, gifting us at least five masterpiece albums and, like it or not, imposing a way of writing and performing songs that has become part of the collective imagination (wonders like "Albachiara" and "Vita spericolata" can only be pretended not to know by heart). He was also a sweeping influence on countless Italian pop and rock artists (to name a few at random: Cccp, Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti, 883, the Pelù-Renzulli-era Litfiba, Le Luci della Centrale Elettrica, Dente, Brunori Sas...).

Another product of Emilia's 1977, he would, like Gaznevada and Skiantos, make for a wholly credible soundtrack to Andrea Pazienza's comics - his songs are steeped in the same post-ideological burnout as a Pentotal or a Fiabeschi, even if his ostentatious fragility keeps him at a distance from the cynicism of a Zanardi. Staying with the comic-book comparison (a fitting one, given that the character Vasco was the protagonist of Massimo Cavezzali's fine comic strips), the provincial world sketched in his songs closely resembles Silver's McKenzie farm, albeit weighed down by the alcoholic, psychotropic and sexual excesses absent from the Lupo Alberto strips.

Five masterpieces, as I said: setting aside the singer-songwriter-style debut "...Ma cosa vuoi che sia una canzone" (worth reassessing, but decidedly not "vintage Vasco"), one could have picked at random among "Non siamo mica gli americani", "Colpa d'Alfredo", "Siamo solo noi", "Vado al massimo" and "Bollicine" without fear of being wrong.

In the end, the winner is the 1979 record (the same year, as it happens, as Alberto Radius's "America Goodbye"... though unlike that album, for Vasco the USA isn't an object of reflection but an implicit yardstick used to underline the differences with provincial Emilia and, more broadly, with Italy - "Non siamo mica gli americani" ["We're not exactly Americans"], indeed! And that's precisely why our rock can't help but be different), not just because it's the first record where all the elements that would define the man's sound and philosophy make their appearance, but also because it contains two towering masterpieces like "Fegato, fegato spappolato" and "Albachiara". If one must find a flaw, it lies in Gaetano Curreri's arrangements, which partly dilute the urgency that would find full release in later work (in particular, "Colpa d'Alfredo" is a punk record to its core, even in ballads like "Anima fragile" and "Tropico del Cancro" or in seemingly innocuous little rockers like "Non l'hai mica capito").

The opening track begins with an arpeggio that might suggest continuity with the Battisti-esque style of the debut; however, after about a minute, "Io non so più cosa fare" swerves sharply into rockier territory, while the lyrics recount the mental gymnastics of a narrator who, faced with his partner's explicit advances, pretends to be asleep. And it's crystal clear to the listener that his amusing excuses ("magari è femminista/ e non vuol farsi certo violentare/ ma vuole gestire" ["maybe she's a feminist/ and surely doesn't want to be forced/ but wants to be the one in control"]) mask, at best, laziness, and at worst, insecurity about his own abilities. Many of his stylistic hallmarks already emerge in this track (the sung/spoken delivery unmoored from the rhythm, à-la Jannacci, the boozy, filler-word-laden flow, the telling of personal stories to communicate something at least generational) as do his recurring themes (the battle of the sexes, in which the man inevitably loses or at least comes off badly: Vasco Rossi is an Italian rocker who, contrary to the clichés about rockers and about Italians, shuns any form of machismo and recounts his own weaknesses with a sincerity utterly free of rhetoric).

"Fegato, fegato spappolato" deserves to be handed down to posterity as a snapshot of Italian youth in the late Seventies (when youth movements had been drowned in the blood of police repression and terrorism). With nothing left to believe in, all that remains is alienation and alcohol, assuming the latter is even worse than ideology. Ten years later, Cccp would sing "Tedio domenicale/ quanta droga consuma" with this song in mind. What Giovanni Lindo Ferretti's group would lack, though, compared to their forerunner from Zocca, is the light irony and narrative joy that allowed him to sketch this vignette of provincial life over a possessed funk-rock groove - complete with a closing quote from the Sex Pistols's "God Save The Queen".

"Sballi ravvicinati del terzo tipo" and "(Per quello che ho da fare) faccio il militare" are two ballads, both built on voice, guitar and minimal effects, yet they're opposites: the first, psychedelic and dreamlike, hides behind its sci-fi theme a touching declaration of atheism (a point on which Vasco has always been consistent - which, given the times we live in, sounds almost revolutionary), while the second is simply the best song ever written on the subject of mandatory military service: instead of the usual victim narrative (think of Litfiba's songs on the topic), the man plays the card of rowdy humor, perfect for describing the theater of the absurd that, beneath a veneer of solemnity, was compulsory conscription ("ma non ci si può rilassare/ i russi possono arrivare ognora/ e se ci portano via le armi come la facciamo la guerra, dimmi, coi bastoni?!" ["but you can't relax/ the Russians could show up any moment/ and if they take our weapons how are we supposed to fight a war, tell me, with sticks?!"]) - and with that brilliant title he makes clear that, deep down, life outside the barracks probably didn't seem any less absurd to him.

Side two of the LP opens with the danceable rock of "La Strega (la diva del sabato sera)": the track, which nods to T. Rex's glam right from its lazy, insinuating vocal delivery, tells the story of a self-centered, easy small-town girl, and serves as the perfect counterpoint to the following "Albachiara". This latter song deserves a rightful place among the ten greatest in the history of Italian music - and let's set aside the fact that it's been overplayed to death and that the average Vasco fan has always done everything possible to make it unbearable. It's a watercolor portrait of a shy, unassuming girl caught at the blossoming of her adolescence. The narrative - simple and gentle (even in its reference to masturbation) and, perhaps for that very reason, incredibly poetic - is set in balanced opposition to a piano ballad that suddenly gives way to heavy rock, with a riff that sounds like it came straight off Glenn Tipton's guitar (the fact that Judas Priest were an influence on Vasco would emerge even more explicitly on "Dimentichiamoci questa città", which echoes "Livin' After Midnight" to the point of near-plagiarism). The song's success, especially once it began being used to close all of his concerts, would eventually lead the entire album to be reissued under the title "Albachiara" (with a different, more anonymous cover than the original).

"Quindici anni fa", another disco-rock number, is perhaps the only filler on the record - though a pleasant one, with an interesting progressive coda - while the closing "Vabbè, se proprio te lo devo dire" is a talking-jazz number in a Dixieland vein, with witty lyrics that pay homage to Enzo Jannacci (alongside Lucio Battisti, Vasco's main Italian influence).

The record would turn Vasco Rossi into a cult figure of the Italian rock scene, a status he'd hold onto until the massive success of the late Eighties. That success, it should be said, was always pursued with consistency, and its achievement was down to a string of albums of undeniable artistic worth. The fact that it was later cemented and built upon with increasingly mediocre work, right up to today's embarrassing state of affairs, takes nothing away from the greatness the man once had.

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08/07/2012