Adriano Celentano
Storia d'amore

In 1969, Celentano sang his “Storia d’amore,” probably my favorite piece by the iconic performer.

The song was written in collaboration with Luciano Beretta and Miki del Prete, two key figures of the famous CLAN. This trio penned other of Celentano’s most famous songs: ‘Chi non lavora non fa l’amore’, ‘Mondo in Mi 7’ (with Mogol), ‘Sotto le lenzuola’ and ‘Viola’.

Celentano, at the time, was at the peak of his success. The year before, he had released what can be considered, alongside ‘Il ragazzo della via Gluck’, his most famous song: ‘Azzurro’ with the music by the ingenious Paolo Conte and the lyrics by Vito Pallavicini, a stalwart lyricist of Italian pop music of those times, who called Adriano one day and told him, “I had a crazy idea, but we need to meet because I have to explain it to you in person. I've written the lyrics to a song on music by Paolo Conte that you just can't not record because it will be the anthem of the Italians.”

He was spot on. Azzurro was an immediate and overwhelming success, the best-selling 45 RPM record of 1968, considering that the B-side was nothing less than ‘Una carezza in un pugno’, another standout hit of his.

However, the following year, Adriano Celentano was so enthusiastic about his upcoming love story that he went as far as to declare that this song would even surpass the success of Azzurro (but he was wrong).

Anyway, I can’t blame him for that unfounded prediction because this song is truly exceptional.

A wrong, cursed love story, it will end badly… but it’s a story in every sense. Beginning, development, end. A tale in 3 minutes and you have everything before your eyes. A typical Italian love story of those years, the 60s that were about to end… but the song is gritty, tough, and cursed, modern... already typically ‘seventies’.

They meet at the sea. On the beach, he, to show off in her eyes, acts the fool, but she seems to pay attention to everyone but him… why? Because it was him she really liked... Did she love him then? Or did she hate him? Why to make him jealous, that night on the shore did she go with the other?

We are not told, but we know she will marry the other, who with his money bought her body, certainly not her heart. Perhaps ours is too extravagant (a clown), perhaps he is penniless, perhaps she is a shabby bourgeois, who knows, I see it more or less this way.

One day the other goes to him and asks about her, his wife, she’s gone and is nowhere to be found… You should have seen it coming, he tells him, she was dying for me! And where else would she run away to if not to return to him, finally in his arms, finally his in his room? But he rejects her even if she was so beautiful (she looked like an angel), so warm, with her body so close to his. He plays the tough guy, remains unmoved and, indeed, even gives her a good slap and sends her back to her husband, kicks her out.

He is now alone again, on his bed, sleeps, dreams, cries… he relives in his dream the scene in the room but in the dream he kisses her; he doesn’t slap her on that pretty face. And the scene that repeats even in the words, where only the ending changes, is accompanied by a female choir, dreamy, doleful.

The song has an insistent, dark, perilous pace right from the start, we sense it will end badly. Voice and piano, a threatening, leaden march. Then the guitar comes with two muted snaps that precede the famous chorus. The rhythm accelerates as the percussions join in.

Towards the end, as already mentioned, he relives the scene of the room in a dream accompanied by the female choir and strings, which seem to fly nervously around the room like a swarm of mosquitoes. And when it’s all over, it’s the accordion that carries away, in a magnificent and delirious solo, this cursed love story that never was due to money and pride.

Dedicated to @CosmicJocker who asked me to write a music review and to @SandroGiacobbe, a great author of reviews on Italian pop music of this period.