Paolo Carù was not a man of many words, he just knew. He knew hundreds of artists, his was the world of American rock and country, of Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and the Grateful Dead, and the shop was his support ship, crammed with records and CDs, years of his magazine “Buscadero”, founded in 1980 and reaching number 478, with Richard Betts on the cover, edited to the end together with the director Guido Giazzi.
Paolo passed away in his sleep (read here), and the people of Gallara have not seen the shop reopen in the square, for the first time in decadesbooks on one side, records on the other, separate but intercommunicating worlds, a factory of culture and dreams.
Lo I interviewed only once, in 2008, on the occasion of the 300th issue of the magazine, which took its name from “The Last Buscadero”, the famous film by Sam Peckinpah with Steve McQueen and Robert Preston, and asked for advice on a good record to listen to, he immediately pulled the newly printed CD by Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis out of the drawer, “Two men with the blues” and gave it to me as a gift, but not before providing me with his personal and very learned “listening guide”.
His shop he was a point of reference for the European rock world, as his father’s had been for classical music, with the writer leaving Varese at the age of sixteen in “Ciao” to go shopping the Canadian pirate Rococos of Celibidache, but Paolo Carù didn’t mind, showing himself “from the waist up” behind the counter similar to a noir author, of stories set in the American provinces like on the moors outside Malpensa, but also to a bluesman from Louisiana or a poet from the East Coast, with his shirt untucked and a slightly unkempt, unkempt beard.
«I had known Paolo since we learned to play the piano together at 10 years old, then we were high school friends. When I returned from my travels around the world I brought him first-hand news of our singers abroad, and he used it for his newspaper. I remember that as kids we anxiously awaited the packages of records that arrived from England and then we went to listen at his house or in the first, small shop in Via Verdi. In 1963 the legendary “She Loves You” was released, a 45 by the Beatles and we were almost shocked by its rock strength”, says Adelfo Forni, writer and former record producer.
«Despite being emotionally affected by the illness of his wife Anna, photographer, historical memory of “Buscadero” and cultural organizer in Gallarate, Paolo opened the shop every day, helped by three collaborators, always ready to advise and find new ideas for the magazine. Until a few years ago he left for America in the summer with his wife to attend rock and country festivals and meet friends and collaborators.”
A newspaper, his, a friend of readers and artists, made with passion, competence and a pinch of madness, capable of selling up to 20 thousand copies without subsidies or state aid: «We create many articles just for the pleasure of meeting people, of doing what others don’t think», Carù had told us, with the smile of someone who knew a lot. In the shop in Piazza Garibaldi you immersed yourself in another erawith the vinyls and the possibility of listening to the possible purchase and talking about it with Paolo, or perhaps with another customer, because passions intersected there, sometimes giving rise to heated debates.
In the name of music and culture, a a combination that Carù has always defended, as well as freedom of expression.
