The evening is splendid, but there's not a soul in the street. Only one man wanders through the eerie silence of a summer night, lost among the lowered shutters, occasionally startled by the roars coming from the windows of the houses. It's July 11, 1982, 36 million Italians are glued to the TV for the Italy-West Germany World Cup final, but Vasco Rossi has no idea that "Vecio" Bearzot's Azzurri are about to become world champions. He doesn't see Tardelli's roar live, nor President Pertini cheering in the stands. In truth, he doesn't even know the World Cup is being played. He's been on amphetamines for days.
The dark nights
Paradox of paradoxes: the artist who, more than any other, at that precise moment, embodied the spirit of 1980s Italy, while the country was experiencing one of its happiest moments, was floating in a parallel world of dark nights, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and self-destruction. Vasco was absolutely certain he would die young. And yet, here he is: having survived drugs, his obsessions, even his own legend. At 74, the hero of the reckless life, one of the most iconic songs he wrote in Cagliari and which was anything but a pose, continues to rock stadiums and prepares for a double concert on June 12th and 13th at the Olbia Arena.
The father
Born in Zocca on February 7, 1952, his name says it all. That's what his father, Giovanni Carlo "Carlino" Rossi, named him. He was a professional truck driver and a survivor of another hell: among the more than 600,000 Italian soldiers who said no to Nazism, he was interned in a concentration camp in Dortmund, Germany, from which he returned weighing 35 kilos. Vasco was a fellow prisoner who saved his life: "If I have a son, I'll name him after you," Carlino told him, and in January 2020 he was awarded a Medal of Honor.
The mother
It was his mother Novella Corsi, a housewife, who sensed that her only son, so shy and awkward, had something special : she enrolled him in the Giovanni Bononcini music school in Vignola, in the province of Modena, where he began to strum his first notes.
His women
Shy and awkward, yes, because young Vasco is anything but the provocateur he will become. Raised between his mother and aunts, he quickly develops a feminine sensibility that he will always be proud of, allowing him to capture the world of adolescents better than perhaps a woman is capable of. Vasco draws his "Silvia," who "has a little lipstick on her lips" and "looks at the mirror unconvinced," or Giovanna from "Albachiara," that little girl he sees every day taking the bus to school. Years later, he'll confess it to her, but she doesn't believe him: "She thought it was a ploy to pick up girls. So I wrote: 'A song for you, you weren't expecting it, but here it is...'"
Free radios
At 15, he arrived in Bologna, where, first at school and then at university, he discovered the exhilarating freedom of the Osteria delle Dame, where Francesco Guccini played but anyone could take the stage and recite poetry. Vasco wanted to study music at the DAMS (Drama and Music Institute). "We were at the table," he recalls, "and dad, without batting an eyelid, looked up from his plate and said peremptorily: 'Dams? What is Dams? I only know Economics and Business, and that's what you'll do.'" He obeyed, but six exams away from graduation, "the radio light bulb came on, the opportunity of my life." 1975 was the year in which, with Marco Gherardi, he founded Punto Radio, the first free radio station in Emilia. Then came the DJ gigs, the ramshackle bands, the first experiences in a province dreaming of becoming a metropolis. And the first 45 rpm single, "Jenny/Silvia," in 1977: 2,500 copies were pressed, marking the unexpected beginning of everything. From 1978 to 1985, he released an album a year, even in 1979 when his father Carlino suffered a stroke and died at 56. "Colpa d'Alfredo," "Siamo solo noi," "Vado al Massimo”, “Bollicine”. Record after record he sells more and more.
The Beautiful Country
These were incredible years for Vasco, who, consciously or unconsciously, found himself vividly representing the transition between two Italies: one bloodied by lead and the other chasing prosperity, consumption, and advertising. He immersed himself in alcohol and drugs ("all except heroin," he claimed), fueling his frenetic and inhuman tours: a life unruly even for the excesses of the '80s, the opposite of that of the successful singer-songwriters of the time . Brash and over-the-top, offstage he continually fueled the legend, and every controversy from the press, which spared no criticism, ended up increasing his popularity.
Forever
1984 marked a watershed moment and an unexpected opportunity to get clean. Arrested for drug possession, he spent five days in solitary confinement, then another 17 days in prison, visited only by Fabrizio De André and Dori Ghezzi. Those who hate him, those who consider him a panacea for all ills, rejoiced: it was finally over. Nothing could be more wrong: three years later—during which he would become the father of Davide and Lorenzo, and then Luca in 1991, all born from different love affairs—he returned with his ninth album: "C'è chi dice no": eight songs in less than 40 minutes that sold over a million copies and went platinum ten times. "A high-quality and mature work," critics wrote. The sounds and arrangements approached perfection. On the cover, Guido Harari immortalized him with a clean-shaven face and his hair slicked back. Incredibly, fans didn't feel betrayed: the album stayed at number one for twelve consecutive weeks and would be the bridge until the definitive breakthrough of "Liberi Liberi." After that, everything changed, and nothing changed. Vasco became huge, monumental in the 2000s, and legendary in the 2010s.
Today, as he performs yet another historic sold-out tour that will include Sardinia, he is no longer the boy running toward the precipice, nor even the nostalgic relic of a world gone by. The last immortal is the narrator of his own survival, a priest of the only temple he knows and on which he hopes to bid farewell to this world: the stage.
