Of
Renato Franco
The singer publishes «Who works too much (doesn’t make love)»: «Women? My shyness held me back. My rival was Gazebo, then he became a very dear friend. Now the radios aren’t playing the new single? They keep me out of the game, who knows why…”
We are republishing Renato Franco’s interview with Johnson Righeira, published in July, one of the most appreciated by our readers in 2025
“Let’s be honest: everyone’s dream is not to screw up.” After all, going «to the playa» has always been Stefano Righi’s dream, which when said like that makes you wonder who he is. And if you add Stefano Rota to it the question mark remains the same. Like Johnson and Michael Righeira, however, it has a completely different effect: they are the couple who wrote the soundtrack of the 80s summers with three songs. let’s go to the beach a Summer is endingwith an interlude suitable for these times (I have no money), a Spaniard from nightlife, from Italians in Ibiza, for an eternal parable that lasted only two seasons (1983-1985). But 40 years later those pieces are still there. They met in high school, best friends, until the magic broke. Johnson Rifeira is unmassed alone. “It wasn’t easy to metabolize our separation, people didn’t want just Righeira, but things have changed some time ago: today I always do my 40-50 evenings a year.”
Don’t do anything. Is this the meaning of your new single, «Who works too much (doesn’t make love)»? A hymn to idleness?
«It’s a hymn to idleness but also to working the right amount, getting paid the right amount. I always say it in my own way, without wanting to philosophize, with that thread of quackery that has always accompanied me.”
The radios don’t play his new single. Is there a circle of elected officials that you are not part of?
“Let’s say they keep me out of the game, who knows why.”
The title is a reference to Celentano.
«Another little nonsense inserted into the piece to immediately evoke a song that aroused controversy at the time. It was a period of workers’ struggles and the meaning was: if you strike, I won’t give it to you. Mine is a reversal of perspective, it’s the opposite concept: working hours must be fair, so one also has time to make love.”
He has always played on contrasts: «Vamos a la playa» talks about the atomic bomb, radiation and the fluorescent sea: the sounds of Italian disco on a disturbing text.
«I recorded the first version in my cellar in Turin in December 1981 and it sounded, even musically, much darker and more dramatic. The La Bionda brothers, however, understood its great potential, they said that it was too sad and that it was necessary to make it cheerful. Their intervention was providential, otherwise we wouldn’t be here talking about it.”
How much does it make them in royalties?
«It’s the piece that pays the most, it’s worth a good pension. In second place there is Summer is ending».
How did you enjoy that first unexpected and incredible success?
«Not much, I was doing the naja».
Military service.
«Around August 15th I was really bursting at the seams, I was realizing that something miraculous was happening to me, but I was somehow excluded from it because I lived a daily office life: I kept a handwritten archive of spare parts for military vehicles, I noted the incoming parts, the outgoing parts, while let’s go to the beach it was a phenomenon.”
Did he simulate a depressive crisis?
«Not entirely invented. I really started to freak out: it was changing my life and I was there, I felt like I was in prison, it was a very stressful situation made up of outbursts and almost hysterical crises.”
How did he get out of the barracks?
«I told lies that turned out to be absolutely ineffective. At that point I brought out my survival instinct. I begged the psychologist, told him I was one of the two of let’s go to the beachthat I needed 20 days leave. They gave me a big speech about how important it was to serve in the military, but in the end they gave me 20 days. And then others. That’s how I came out of it.”
And Michael?
«In the meantime he too had left for the military. In Germany we did a promotional tour on TV with a substitute, as no one knew us yet. Michael was “played” by a dear friend of mine who enjoyed a week of super-fame at the top of the charts across Europe. Today it would be unthinkable.”
«Summer is ending» was intended as a seaside hit but spoke of the end of the season. Wasn’t that a contradiction?
«In fact, within our record company there was moderate concern about how the public would receive it, they feared that people would take the wrong fact that a piece talking about the end of summer arrived at the beginning of the summer. Instead, the eternal themes addressed by the song – the passing of time, the fear of growing up – were understood.”
So much success, so many women?
«I was very shy and still am. I have never been a womanizer. I definitely had a lot fewer women than I could have. But even in sporadic, one-night-stand situations, I have fond memories of the girls I dated and never saw again. Ultimately I’m sentimental, from a text like Summer is Ending it should be quite obvious.”
A story to tell?
«It’s linked to my first single, Bianca Surf. I told a very sad love story that had really happened to me, but I threw it away cheerfully as usual. I thought I’d end up with a girl, but at a certain point at a friend’s house I heard that she was in a room with someone else with a squeaking bed. So I deduced that since I wasn’t there… This ironic-sarcastic component is one of Righeira’s characteristics”
Crazy?
«My lifestyle has inevitably improved, but I have never done anything crazy for the pleasure of doing it. Of course I never accumulated money… I wasn’t even able to get a villa with a swimming pool.”
What was the reason for the first breakup with Michael?
«When we went through that period of difficulty at the end of the 1980s, the failure generated different reactions. I experienced it in a more superficial way, Michael perhaps in a more profound way. The aspect of play which was what had generated the empathy, the harmony of the beginning, has disappeared between us. We began to take different paths, we had different visions of life and this progressively distanced us until we no longer had anything in common.”
Are you feeling today?
«For normal, courtesy or work-related things. We don’t talk to each other to tell each other about our lives, but that hasn’t even happened in recent years, especially on his part.”
Criticism was harsh on you. How did he live it?
«Very bad. I suffered terribly because I was convinced – as many people realized, albeit with a certain delay – that our songs had parallel contents, interpretations and quotes that the critics snubbed, stopping only at a superficial analysis. I suffered: maybe we were first in the rankings, I read a negative review and I got pissed off like a beast.”
Your rival?
«With Gazebo there was a certain rivalry because we were competing for the top spots in the standings, he was rocking in Germany, we were more successful in Italy than him. At the time we rarely crossed paths but then Paul (Mazzolini, Gazebo’s real name) became one of my dearest friends in the musical world.”
An indelible memory of success in the 80s?
«There is a memory that always leaves me speechless when I think about it. We were in Paris for a TV program and we came across Culture Club. Boy George looked at us and started singing Let’s go to the beach, oh oh oh oh. Considering that up until a few months before I was buying his records, you understand what a flash it was.”
December 30, 2025 (changed December 31, 2025 | 10:29)
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