Linus, director of DeeJay radio, now becomes a playwright

Linus side A: one of the best known radio hosts in Italy, perhaps the best known. For forty years at Radio Deejay, of which he has also been artistic director for thirty, and where his younger brother Albertino worked for a long time before moving to Radio m2o of which he is currently artistic director- photo | video

FAMILY LEXICON – Then, since 2007, responsible for the entire radio sector of the L’Espresso Group (now Gedi). Linus side B: «A good guy», 66 years old, married since 2001 to the graphic designer Carlotta Medas, «someone who leads a normal life», who has two children and a dog, Ilde, Labrador breed, the only one left in home, because Filippo, 28 years old, the eldest, moved from Milan to Rome where he found a job in a company that deals with international relations (“Seeing my child in a suit and tie still makes an impression on me”) while the twenty-one year old Michele attends university in London, «where he also works in a radio station and plays records in a couple of clubs. The bastard went abroad on purpose to avoid being told: you’re Linus’ son.” Two sides that Linus tells in his first theater show, Radio Linetti Live, from 29 April to 3 May and then, again, from 8 to 11 May at the Teatro Alcione in Milan. With the idea of ​​other appointments around Italy later. Him and a turntable on stage.

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Ready for your debut? «Eh, debut is a demanding word, it implies the fact that there will be a continuation. While I believe that this experience begins and ends here.”

In the show he will talk about some of the protagonists of the music scene he met and interviewed for the radio. Can you tell us any story? «Well, for example, the time I met Lucio Battisti at the airport, at the gate of a flight to Rome. He was dressed as a businessman. Among people in the entertainment world there is a habit of greeting each other even if you don’t know each other personally, so I smiled. But he glared at me coldly.”

More friendly encounters? «The experience with Celentano as the author of the program 125 million bullshit from 2001 was beautiful. Even if a little frustrating because in the end he always does what he wants. I will never forget the day we met at his house in Galbiate: Michele Serra, Luca Bottura, Carlo Lucarelli, his wife Claudia and me. Adriano had broken his leg during an episode and was there in a vest, with shorts and cast. He asks: “What song can I do this evening?”. I insist on Love story which, in my opinion, is the best I’ve written. And he: “I don’t remember it”. And it’s true, because he has done very few concerts, he is not used to singing and re-singing her songs. “We see…”. He took the guitar and made it just for us.”

Have you ever brought it to the radio? “No. I’ve tried lots of times, but he lives in his own world and then he knows that if he said yes to one then he would have to give himself to others too. But I have interviewed Francesco De Gregori, Pino Daniele, Francesco Guccini, Lucio Dalla and many others several times. I can say that I was also a friend of Lucio. He was fantastic, crazy as a horse. His specialty was to get you involved in something and then disappear.”

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Guy? «I did two New Year’s Eve shows on Rai 1, one in Naples, the other in Catania, because he insisted. Both times, at the last moment, he was no longer to be found. Lucio, although he gave the impression of being scruffy, was actually very careful in his dressing. He wore very soft and very expensive cashmere jackets that he had a habit of taking off and dropping to the floor with a stripper gesture.”

The first record you bought? «Wish You Were Here of Pink Floyd in partnership with two other guys because it was a small investment. We listened to it at the house of the only one of us who had a record player. When I was a boy not everyone could afford it. I studied at the technical institute with the idea of ​​being able to find a job immediately after graduating, my father was a small craftsman, there was little money. I come from that world.”

Did he make compilations to woo girls? “Of course! I even won my wife over this way. She still remembers a little box that I gave her with Duran Duran, things like that that she liked, but I didn’t like at all. But I continued making compilations until about fifteen years ago: a CD once a month that I distributed to friends and relatives.”

At home, when you were little, did you listen to the radio? “Very, very much. It was my father who passed this passion on to my brother Albertino, my sister and me. He was a failed musician. As a boy he played the trumpet in village bands in Puglia, and as an adult he continued in the Paderno Dugnano band, near Milan, where we lived.”

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His sister Antonietta is the only one who doesn’t work in radio. «She is three years older than me and she was the leader at home. She introduced me to music. She listened to the Beatles who, in the Sixties, were a boy band for her, four cute boys who made girls of her age dream about her. The first radio station I worked for was in Cinisello Balsamo. However, I didn’t have a car and she was the one who accompanied me. Since she was very pretty, it also worked as a pass: no matter what time I showed up, they let us in. For years she acted as my taxi driver, she advised me. Even today she is a bit like my mother and Albertino’s.”

His parents are no longer here. «Mum was born in 1923 and she died at 66, the age I turned just in 2023, and I admit that it worried me a little. Besides, we look a lot alike. My father, however, died at the age of 76, about twenty years ago.”

His wife posted a black and white photo of her as a baby on Instagram. What kind of child was she? «Terribly good. Just a little reckless like all the kids on the outskirts of Milan in the 1960s where every 50 meters there was a tower block under construction. I have this memory: it’s Sunday, I go out with new shoes, I go to play on a construction site and I end up in fresh lime. If my mother didn’t kill me that time it was a close call.”

They asked her several times to get involved in politics, to run for mayor of Milan. Could it happen one day? «Maybe I would even be good, but I’m not suitable from a character point of view. I’m someone who feels bad when he is attacked for something he did in good faith.”

So let’s add touchy to his reputation as an asshole. “If I were really an asshole I wouldn’t let anyone tell me that.”

Who would like to sit in the audience? Even someone who is no longer there… «It would be fun if my mother were there, because she had the typically Apulian ability to bring people back down to earth in two words. In my first moment of gentrification, I had bought a large car, a Volvo. I arrived at the house, rang the bell and said: “Come on in”. And she: “Stinky! You should have bought a bigger one!’

If he had seen the Porsche he later gave himself, what would he have said? «More than anything she would never have gone up there. I’m struggling. When you have the money to afford a sports car you no longer have the body to get into it or, even worse, get out of it. The few times I use it, I roll out.”

Enrica Brocardo