Preface by Vincenzo Cerami
Adriano Celentano could sing the phonebook, Mongelli’s Italian rhythmic dictionary, mythological and religious glossaries, and he still would enchant us, just like a rattlesnake before it attacks. He’s lethal. With that muffed up smile he’s still telling us that whatever happens to the world, singing can still make up for 50% of our life. “Esco di rado e parlo ancora meno” (tn: “I hardly ever go out or talk anymore”) which has a very Mogol-like feeling to it, is the most recent composition of a man who leads a consummate and secluded life and who, once again, is willing to gamble his heart.
Everybody knows that Adriano lives on a far and mysterious island, which probably isn’t even on this earth. We imagine him surrounded by green, indigo, or amaranth, in the company of polyester-clad Martians. Or maybe he’s strewn over a bunch of cartons in the middle of a remote globalized metropolis while figuring out who the passersby are by their shoes. We also imagine him on top of tree-lined hills where horny birds and Disney-like deer roam about. His world is azure by day and black by night, the moon appears and disappears as it usually does, and songs come out of hiding. Even if Adriano continues to voice his fury about the terrible things that are being done to our planet and expresses his weariness for imagined and hopeless loves, planes still fly over his head leaving white trails and going nowhere. No one ever listens to the words of an artist.
But actually what Adriano is naively and religiously asking of us is no simple feat. He’s asking us to be Happy. He yells it in this direction, but the world heads in that direction. Since his poor and joyful adolescence, He (who can see God above the flying airplanes) while still smelling of Marseille Soap and Bakelite, first in black and white and then in color, never stopped giving rhythm and melodies to the rage and the abandonments of the mid twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first. He’s got the pure and simple heart of those who can’t tolerate misery and pain and who can’t be indifferent to the attacks of bullies.
The world hasn’t changed for the better and this breaks his heart. And, like the rest of us, he has to accept that once those huge, hideous cement boxes are put into place, they’ll stay there forever like unhealed scars, like the melanomas of the earth.
But even amongst all this horror, Adriano, the Citizen and Artist, maintains his Civic Duty of shaking his head and singing about the beauty of life. When his lips approach the microphone, his heart starts to race and he becomes outspoken, direct and frank. In the past he sang about the “Via Gluck”. Today he sings about “Il figlio del dolore” or Fossati’s “L’uomo libero”.
Celentano is now inside Italy’s DNA. He’s that jovial, hard-ass, crafty brother who likes to spend time repairing watches and creating screws of every shape and size. He’s an adult who has escaped adulthood. As soon as he appears or is heard, our collective memory envisions him as a funny-faced, flexible clown, and a bully with colored suspenders worn over an old undershirt.
A mocking and dumb Ringo, a big-toothed women tamer.
He knows how to act happy but when he sings serious songs he’s poker-faced and lets his voice convey his woes through tones, breaths and swagger.
No one has ever seen him wearing a sad face, not even when he sings about a woman who was raped by a pack of witless adolescents. He takes everything very seriously and that’s why he doesn’t have to make believe he believes in what he’s saying. That’s Celetano’s true strength: his sincerity.
Once, a peddler at a market in Naples was heard yelling:
“Buy my apples, they’re as genuine as Celentano!”.