Adamo
I Successi di Adamo

In the early '80s, only the luckiest had a car radio in their vehicle.

Others made do as they could, with some not listening to anything while traveling, some singing their favorite tunes, and others adopting (not without practical sense, and, after all, Necessity is the Mother of Inventions, as the Zappa fans know well) a tape player to listen to their favorite music directly in the car.

My family was no exception, in the sense that there wasn't enough money to afford an accessorized car, and in the early '80s, especially during summer, on the long journeys that took us from north to south for holidays at my grandmother's house, we listened to plenty of songs on the tape player that temporarily adorned my father's blue Golf (first model).

Among the various cassettes that were part of my parents' collection, and which I unknowingly absorbed in my early childhood, a cassette stood out with the profile of the Italian-Belgian singer Salvatore Adamo, a Sicilian expatriate who became an idol of the French-speaking community in the '60s and, some said with malice, a bit more than just friends with the then Princess Paola of Belgium.

Those pieces marked me, and with the feeble excuse of making my mother a nice gift, some time ago I bought the CD version of the old and worn cassette of Adamo to listen to it again as one of the soundtracks of my childhood (which, incidentally, almost entirely coincided with the career of The Clash, whom I blatantly ignored back in those days, except for the stickers plastered on the white Vespas of some suburban bullies).

Now I come to review this collection for the benefit of DeBaser readers.

An atypical singer-songwriter, a bridge between Italian melody and French songwriting, Adamo was an artist who made cosmopolitanism and stylistic elegance the essential hallmark of his songs. Each of his singles stood out for its essential and yet elegant melodic lines, for absolutely not trivial lyrics even when addressing worn-out themes such as budding loves or broken loves, and for arrangements that mixed orchestral elements and minimalist inserts with ease, always giving a touch of color to the individual tracks. Furthermore, the singer-songwriter's voice was particularly clear and clean, honoring the bel canto his ancestors had surely been nourished on before migrating to Belgium to extract coal deep underground.

A fine example of Adamo's style can be found in the opening ""Sei qui con me"", a sentimental text in which the singer exclaims the beauty of a lover's return after she had been lost: memorize the poignant refrain and the discreet instrumental accompaniment, with an interesting central guitar insert; the sweetness of the author's songwriting also stands out in the following ""Lei"", another love song for a woman who has left her man: note how, in Adamo's work, the woman lives—in the mid-'60s—a dimension of full autonomy, no longer being just an object of love but a fully free subject choosing her own path, her own stories, her own life. Greater dramatic emphasis, both in the lyrics and in the singing and effective arrangement, is found in the following ""La notte"", perhaps the best-known piece by the artist, where Adamo tells of the end of a love, destined to return like a nightmare in the mind of the one left behind ("… for a moment you reappear/you call me you extend your hands/but my blood turns to ice/when you walk away laughing/the night drives me crazy… ").

More playful and with an almost vaudeville rhythm is the next ""Vous permettez Monsieur"", with timid hints at a generational contrast between parents and children. The string accompaniment distinguishes ""Amo"", a romantic—and somewhat saccharine—melody, dedicated to yet another fleeting protagonist of the singer-songwriter's pieces. A persistent guitar arpeggio introduces ""Una ciocca di capelli"", a sensitive melody with sudden rhythm breaks singing of past memories and symbols evoking, almost like a relic, the past and what once was, and the possible lost happiness, if it ever actually existed ("… I felt my memory ready to tell me everything/but I already knew the story/I preferred to dream… "). Also quite known in Italy is ""Affida una lacrima al vento"", a frivolous and suggestive track, where the sentimentally styled text is diluted in elegiac tones, rather than dramatic ones like in previous songs, leading the audience to identify with the singer: possibly the only truly pop piece by Adamo. Excellent is the following ""Non voglio nascondermi"", a song centered on the perspective of a woman's current secret lover, destined to remain in the shadows in contrast to her official mature relationship, or to leave her forever (""… I don't want anymore/as a lover to steal/your kisses/that are his… " "but you keep me as a reserve/you're afraid to leave/who makes life convenient for you/for a guy like me… "). The background organ accompaniment is very refined, giving the song an almost bluesy tone.

Of disconcerting modernity is "Inch'Allah", dedicated in filigree to the Palestinian-Israeli issue and marked by one of the author's most touching melodies, emphasized by an almost theatrical arrangement. A dynamic hard beat characterizes "Ho tanti sogni nel mio bagaglio", with a catchy refrain, yet far from reassuring, as it discusses the gradual sunset of hopes, the end of dreams, and the awareness that the past represents, in the narrator's life, the predominant part of life, more so than the remaining future. Cadenced instead is "Non tenere il broncio", where the theme of the past emerges with almost Joycean echoes: the current lover cannot share the author's past but can at least hope to be his future. The collection concludes with the splendid ""Non sei tu"", the last jewel left to us by the Italian-Belgian singer-songwriter: here he sings of the disillusionment of love, of the awareness that one's woman is different from the model—or stereotype—imagined and hoped for. Dreams die and make way for life, made up of its cruelties, its grudges, and its disappointments, but also its redemptions.

I did not realize any of this during my childhood, aboard my father's blue Golf. But I would have all the time in the world.