Leave all sadness, ye who enter here. San Siro Stadium, the other night. Max Pezzali sweeps everything away, anxieties, anguish and worries of “accountants in double-breasted suits full of stress” and let’s see if there is anyone who can deny it. It was not another “night of wolves in the Bronx”, the concert the other night, but a party lasting over two hours, a sitcom of well-being for 54,400 people (tonight 2 July last of 3 dates at San Siro) who do not have a specific age given that at the stadium there are forty-year-olds who grew up with the 883 but also kids with the “Max Forever” bandana but were not even born when two unknown Pavia people not even too sexy (Pezzali and Repetto) brought provincial stories to first place in the rankings. “Doing my first stadium tour is an indescribable emotion and it’s even more so to do it at 56 years old” explained Pezzali who always keeps a low profile but at the moment, with Vasco and other champions, is one of the few able to fill three consecutive San Siro (over 150 thousand spectators) without even having released a new album in recent years, without having announced his farewell, without guaranteeing anything other than “making the audience go home happier than when they arrived”.
Honestly, come on, the mission was successful and it’s not often that you see a San Siro full of people singing from the first to the last song and then leaving without a voice. “It’s a big party with all the elements that have always inspired me” he had said. And in fact. On the stage there are puppets and signs, on the mega screen a terrifying symbol of the Nineties appears, the Arbre Magique, while the whole stadium, women, men, children, sings at the top of their lungs Sei un mito with a harmony that makes the seats tremble. After all, let’s face it: Max Pezzali’s strength is not that of a consummate and overwhelming performer. His strength is that he brings a way of being to the stage and does so with the naturalness of someone who really is like that, a passionate nerd, a resolved man who has not let himself be consumed by success but has remained faithful to himself and his passions. And from the initial Viaggio al centro del mondo through the surprising La radio a 1000 watt to the much-sung La regola dell’amico and La dura legge del gol, Pezzali’s concert is not a “dive into memory” but a catwalk in the Nineties that still hold up today. The songs are often, yes, over thirty years old but they capture what the Gen Z kids are still looking for today, leaning up there on the balustrades of the stands: serenity, love, true friends and evenings that end with an appointment for the next day. So there is less nostalgia than you might think, in the two hours of a concert that will tour Italian stadiums until mid-July.
Perhaps only the new Discotecheabbandono (already adopted by fans) looks to the past. All the other songs photograph an era that cyclically returns and that Pezzali has fixed in his music. They are called the Nineties but, judging by San Siro, they can easily be lived in 2024.
