A where are you on the ladder?
I don’t know, there was a list going around yesterday. But then they told me he was a fake. In Sanremo Giovani, when I brought Destinazione Paradiso, I was called last. There was Baudo presenting and while he said the names I thought: “With the bad luck I have, imagine if I’m inside!”. Then instead when he mentioned my name, I immediately: “Shit, what an ass! But really?!”.
Well, in any case a song that has had some success, we can say…
Among other things, I had already sold 60,000 copies before I went on television. Which goes to show, even though they said back then that I worked because I was handsome, that wasn’t the reason. Still I was handsome, huh? Know it. However many people had thought it was a piece of Ron. Ah, Ron would have loved it! No joke, I would have liked to duet with him!
Many pieces of your repertoire have entered the collective memory…
Thank you for saying that. When I started writing, I wasn’t known yet. So for me the music made an illogical sense. However there was grunge which meant being famous and out of style. Which will happen to me soon, I think. You too are an extraordinary generation, with all the talents that come from the web. I had to be slapped, I wasn’t venerated. And I knew it. This despite my presumption…
However justified by the age…
Yes indeed. Even when today’s kids tend to come across as a bit presumptuous, I always justify them because at that age you don’t have a conscience. And you don’t know that you have to die, remember that you have to die, as Massimo Troisi said: “Let me sign it”. This sentence here is a bit of the feeling of the song I wrote and I’m bringing to Sanremo this year, When you miss your breath.
What feeling is it?
Of the feeling that one feels in life when he realizes he has to die or, metaphorically, that life has given him a real slap for the first time. Like Liam Gallagher, he got this slap once: when his brother left. Liam is truly a miracle that he is alive. That slap there he got, well… then he fucked up, he got it all. Not me, because the slap came when I was five years old. That same slap is repeated several times in life, but the first is the most bitter. Although it is also the one that lightens you. And this I think is the real leitmotif of the song. In fact, I’m pretty sure of it. I didn’t just write about my father in the song, I wrote about myself as well.
Yes, it is clear…
Not to everybody.
