Enzo Jannacci
30 anni senza andare fuori tempo

“30 years without missing a beat” is a double live LP released in 1989 for the thirtieth anniversary of the career of Dr. Enzo Jannacci, surgeon. On the cover, a smiling Enzo is singing while making the "umbrella gesture."

A mad genius and artist with an extraordinary personality and immense artistic depth, he was capable of crafting beautiful music with his surreal and melancholic stories. Those songs with the “cheerful music” that have always brought us a bitter smile, the smile that Enzo never denied to the desperate, to the last. Jannacci was comedic and dramatic, sweet and bitter, in and out of time with that wonderfully ungraceful voice of his. That voice we can hear in this extraordinary live record, naturally little known, recorded with excellent musicians like Claudio Pascoli on reeds, Giorgio Cocilovo on guitars, and Lele Melotti on drums. Among them, a very young Paolo Jannacci, intrigued and hypnotized by his father's way of making music, went on to become his arranger, producer.

It's impossible to cage the doctor in a single musical genre, and this album is proof of that, even if, although it's a double, it does not contain other gems of Enzo (like “Giovanni telegrafista,” “Sei minuti all’alba,” “L’Armando,” “Il primo furto non si scorda mai”…). But we settled for it back in 1989, after all, the setlist was truly remarkable. The album's sounds are well-calibrated and Jannacci starts immediately with “amami e sgonfiami,” a surreal tale of “Silvano” among the most requested tracks along with “Ci vuole orecchio” and his most poignant song: “Vincenzina e la fabbrica,” where the despair of a young southern girl deciding to work in a factory to emancipate herself is flipped by the artist's own despair who suddenly slips in the line “zero a zero also yesterday, this Milan here…” into the lyrics.

You can't cage someone like Jannacci. Already said, he would have replied…

Crazy songs, surreal but also poetic and sweet. Jannacci is unclassifiable, out of the competition. A wildcard who also appeared in snooty environments like Sanremo, where he sang about drugs and mafia while in the country of flowers Toto Cutugno and Al Bano and Romina reigned. He was an alien, with difficult songs...“30 years without missing a beat” is a work full of wonders. Pieces that superficial listeners have classified as commercial or “easy,” like the catchy “Vengo anch’io no tu no.” The music entertains, but the lyrics hit you like a punch in the stomach. An anthem for the excluded where the character encounters a series of no's to all proposals, even before actions can take place. No, regardless! And Jannacci, the doctor, was also with the last. He dedicated himself with great passion to treating the sick, even ending up in South Africa with Barnard's team, the first doctor to perform a heart transplant, or in America to perfect himself and work in Harlem hospitals. So he had a job! That's why he sang for the love of making songs. And he didn't care whether they would be liked or sold many copies. And you can hear in the record that he sings for pleasure, like in “Faceva il palo,” where in a band of wretched thieves the lookout was squint-eyed and deaf enough to take a tossed coin by a passerby who mistook him for a pauper as an advance for the loot. Genius. And last among the last ”El portava i scarp del tennis,” as intense as Vincenzina, a poignant tale of a homeless man in love, found dead under a heap of cardboard. “Roba minima, roba da barbon.” Abandoned by all but not by the doctor who loved the forgotten by the State and the church, the defeated. Like “Veronica” was defeated, prostituting herself for a few coins in a cinema (the “Carcano”) doing it “on foot,” standing, or “Mario” whose only good deed in life was not bringing children into the world (“so you don't rip off the world”). Jannacci played on his own turf. On the record, recorded at the “Sforzesco” castle in Milan over two memorable evenings, you can listen to Giorgio Gaber, who with Enzo founded “I due Corsari,” sing that lemon slice we have loved and still love so much, and Dario Fo with whom he intones “Ho visto un re,” the peasants' ironic diatribe against the powerful who cry at the slightest touch on their interests while the peasants couldn't even do that because if they cried their “crying hurts the king, the wealthy, and the cardinal”…

This and much more can be found in this live work. More pages would be needed to recount the “s’cioppàa” like a dinghy nibbled by a doberman or the thing in Lombardy, and at least a whole day to read all the “quelli che...” written in the last 40 years. Enzo's heart was certainly on the left, but he was a disenchanted man, anti-fascist like his father, or anarchist like De Andrè. Eh yes, you couldn't even cage the doctor politically…

If you are my age, you love him at least as much as I do. But if you are young and think that today's singer-songwriter scene is adrift, you need to approach this wonderful man, so you, too, will be among “those who listen to Jannacci.”

"This man should have been frozen to be gifted to future generations” (quote read on YouTube).

How can you not love him?