“My son Dante’s autism and us, left alone by the State. Feiez died before our eyes, a piece of me went away.” Elio from Elio e le Storie Tese, born Stefano Belisari, talks about himself on the pages of Corriere della Sera in an intense interview given to Walter Veltroni. And he begins by immediately putting to rest the rumors about the alleged dissolution of the group:
“But no, we like to mimic the big groups that break up easily and then maybe do one last reunion tour that lasts ten years. Even smashing instruments on stage, like Jimi Hendrix did, is something that intrigues us. We did it. We would get cheap guitars and smash five of them together.”
And then we move on to the memories of the band, also retracing the story of the song The land of persimmons, with which the band almost won Sanremo, “in fact maybe we had won”, says Elio. There was even a judicial investigation:
“I was interrogated, I was very proud of this, and they asked me things that were genuinely senseless, like whether Pippo Baudo had interfered with the composition of the song. At the end of the interrogation the policeman told me, off the record, that we had won, that bleached ballots had been found. Giorgia told me that they had told her the same hypothesis too. The mystery deepened. But we didn’t care. We went there to break the lie and we succeeded.”
Speaking instead about the worst day experienced by the frontman and the group:
“When Feiez (band member, who passed away in 1998, ed.) died. He was before our eyes. I don’t know how many have seen a friend die like this, someone with whom you shared days, dreams, hopes, anger. He was 36 years old. When he collapsed, playing, I had the feeling that a piece of me was gone, that nothing would ever be the same again. It happened on December 23rd and I remember the surreal atmosphere of those days, between mourning and celebration, with the gifts and dinners mixed with the death of a friend of yours. All surreal. But unfortunately it’s all true.”
Then Elio talks about his son Dante’s autism:
“We noticed this very early […] We saw that Dante had an obsessive attention to spinning tops, he also spun around and never stopped doing so. He paid attention to things and not to people. Autism can lead to serious relational difficulties, including mental, motor and cognitive delays […] Now he is 14 years old, he is aware. Even too much, she says it all the time. He did an impressive job, a heartbreaking effort. Even in this, autistic children pay a price compared to their peers. For him everything was effort: putting on a shirt, going to the bathroom, talking. He was taught everything. He worked hard, but we were able to allow him to be followed. But who doesn’t have money? Here too, just when the public hand should rebalance the differences, instead social inequalities are accentuated. There are associations, but they are private. There is nothing public that addresses the problem of autism and is close to families.”
