The singer-songwriter, about to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the album “Cuore”, talks to “Corriere della Sera” about love, family and politics
Family, love, politics. Antonello Venditti it is told in 360° in an interview granted to Corriere della Sera without hiding some of the most difficult moments of his life, including the suffering following the end of love with Simona Izzo: “Lucio Dalla saved my lifeat the time of my separation”, he explains, “it was he who understood that I had to move away from Rome, and so for two years I lived at the castle of Carimate, in Brianza”.
In that period the singer-songwriter developed a “fear of myself. Of my fragility. And also to go on stage. He is afraid of not being loved” and he reveals that he has had dramatic thoughts: “Several times I thought I’d end it. Maybe crashing in the car. Then I was afraid of hurting others. I could have hit a tree. But I drove too well…”. Colleague and friend From the it was also fundamental for him in understanding that it was time to start living again: “After two years Lucio understood that it was time for me to return to Rome: the city where Simona and my son were. Tremendous anguish. He found me a house in Trastevere. And he convinced me to resume concerts ”.
Concerts that Venditti still holds throughout Italy today with great success. Fresh from a live performance at the Verona Arena, on June 14th the artist will celebrate the 40 years of the album Heart, the same one that contains the classic Night before exams“a song in which we are all involved: mothers, fathers, grandmothers, brothers, Dante, Ariosto… there is Italy […]”.
If as a child the relationship with the motherprofessor of Latin and Greek, was controversial (“He bullied me. He told me I was silly and that I was fat as a pig […]), in his youth Venditti closely observed the reality of terrorists: “I knew them. Adriana Faranda was my neighbor in Circeo. Giusva Fioravanti was in my high school, Giulio Cesare. In the 1970s Pierluigi Concutelli wanted to meet me, and it is possible that we met for lunch. I have also always frequented those of the far right […]”. What saved him from becoming like them, he says, was an awareness: “I didn’t become a terrorist because I understood the great deception that was behind ’68.”
On the today’s political climateinstead, the singer-songwriter explains: “I don’t like. I hoped that the right would be satisfied with the electoral victory. We have returned to a pre-Berlusconi situation, at the time of the Social Movement […]”. And of the Premier he says: “she wakes up in the morning and tries to repair the damage and abuse due to the obvious unpreparedness of many around her. The stop of the train. Censorship on public television. More generally, a castor oil mentality, a permanent warning: be careful how you speak and the face you make, I’ll make you stop wanting to say what you think, because anything could happen to you… We live in terror”.
