40 years after its release, Antonello Venditti returns to talk about «Night before exams», one of his most successful songs, now the soundtrack of the final generations’ final exams. Speaking to Radio Deejay, the Roman singer-songwriter born in 1949 explains how much deeper the meaning of that song actually is than you might think. And because he published it several years after his high school exam: «I think it’s a peculiarity of mine, historicizing what happened to me after a few years. It happened to me with Classmate, which was from a few years earlier. I carry with me my whole life and the history I have lived, which I realized is quite interesting and crazy, also because I realize that it is the history of Italy.”
«My mother wanted me for herself»
However, Venditti also reveals some details about his private life. Starting with the relationship with parents. For example with the mother: «I’m lucky, I can say I have thick skin. My mother told me “The important thing is that you are unhappy”. My mother’s idea was that I should never have a woman, the woman of my life had to be her. I would have been one of those who would then go to my mother’s to eat every Sunday. She wanted me for herself.”
Venditti on his relationship with his father
Relations with his father were no better. Venditi remembers of him: «My father is a person I don’t regret, he is always with me. I carry the stigmata, I am my father. Five minutes aren’t enough to describe it. I realized late that I was a continuation of him, there was always a very dialectical relationship, even a strong one. We fought. At a certain point my father wanted to give me a big slap, I moved my elbow to defend myself and broke his hand. But he is a person like they don’t make anymore. He died in ’99, when I was almost 50 years old.”
