Forty years of Heart, forty years of Night before exams. Antonello Venditti celebrate at Caracalla’s thermal bathsin the Rome which has always cradled and cuddled him, forty years of an album that has entered the history of Italian music. But without nostalgia, without regrets. «I am one of the lucky ones who has always carried his story with him – says the singer-songwriter backstage, just before going on stage -. My songs are still contemporary, timeless. I am the anthem of Rome – she underlines proudly – and I have written songs that will remain forever. In fact, in a few years, they will forget about me and the songs that will become by an ‘anonymous Roman’ will remain.”
Among the many songs written, consider Sister Rosa his masterpiece: «I was 13-14 years old when I wrote it. I would have been happy to just write that, everything was already there.” On the stage of the ancient baths, Venditti will bring the songs from an album to which he is particularly attached and which marked a fundamental stage in his career. «Heartwhich is very difficult to sing because you leave your voice behind, it’s my comeback album in Rome, after two years of Brianza, of anguish, of the desire to end it all – says Antonello -. Once he arrived in Rome he disappeared in an instant. Rome cradled me, it fought the darkness that I used to live and that has no longer been in my life. It was my drug, and she helped me not to take drugs.” What convinced him to return to his city, which he had left after the separation from Simona Izzo, was a meeting with Lucio Dalla in a truck stop. «There I understood the extreme value of friendship, which has no boundaries, no sex, no political or economic division. Love is an imperfect friendship, because in some cases it is extreme selfishness and reaches violence, al feminicide. Friendship rarely creates violence, on the contrary it muffles it. The watershed is the sexwhich some confuse with love.”
In the warm Roman evening, Night before exams will have a particular flavour, a few hours before the start of the 2024 state exams, the soundtrack of the students of the last four decades (and for which he prepared a “saint” which portrays him as the protector of graduates and what he will be distributed tomorrow in ten high schools of Rome and Milan). «Night before exams is a dream, something visionary. It is a hymn not for those who have been, but for those who will be. I don’t remember much about the night before my written exams, but I do remember the night of the oral exams: a friend of mine and I went on a motorbike to Florence. We returned just in time for the opening of the school doors. Like everyone, for years I had the nightmare of having to retake my high school exams, even though I did well: I had an average of 7. When you live your youth it seems like hell, when you remember it it’s paradise.”
It’s better to gloss over politics «because every little word today is political. And it is more noticeable than a good word. Satire has never been popular with politicians, they have always considered it unbearable, and therefore it is a good means of expressing themselves. I’ve never had friends and I have often suffered discrimination». But someone saves him: «They were the real revolutionaries Berlinguer on the one hand and Moro on the other, that they really wanted to change things. True revolutionaries risk and lose their lives. But we must not give up our rights, such as abortion. It is our conscience that decides.” Venditti appreciates today’s music, but the old lion puts his paw on it: «These young people are good: I know how to do what they do, but they don’t know how to do what I do. Unlike us, they are pierced by deadlines, they are afraid of being forgotten. And take Annalisa: she is a very good singer, but she was forced by the market to become something other than herself. Also Angelina Mango. Fantastic performers and then there is someone who decides the sound for everyone.”
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