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Rating: Here is a captivating title for a sincere account of a truly extraordinary life: "What Will I Do When I Grow Up. My First 90 Years". With the valuable collaboration of journalist Daniele Bresciani, Gino Paoli puts in writing the odyssey of a musician and artist that he has been so far and, God willing, would still like to continue to be for at least a few more years.
What led me to purchase the book and read it voraciously was my utmost regard for someone like Paoli who, along with other renowned musicians, contributed to rejuvenating the world of Italian song (in distant times when the absurd definition of "light music" was used, as if they were trivial ditties). As the author himself recalls in the book, growing up in the Liguria of postwar reconstruction, embarking on an artistic career was not exactly easy, but due to a series of favorable circumstances, Gino Paoli was able to harness his musical compositional vein, signing with Ricordi at the dawn of the '60s. From there unfolded a career filled with successes, certainly, but above all with memorable tracks (among which, my favorite remains "Sassi", one of the best Italian songs concerning the theme of love and life). All marked by his tendency to favor introspective tones in the lyrics (the so-called Ligurian school echoed the style of French chansonniers), while his lifestyle could provoke some scandal given the mentality of the time (a truly reckless life as Vasco Rossi would later sing and live).
And inevitably, as recounted in the book, at the peak of success (summer 1963), Gino Paoli experienced such boredom with everything that he attempted (without success, fortunately) suicide. There was great media attention to the fact (relations between Paoli and journalists have never been idyllic) and the legacy of a bullet that is still in his pericardium. At least, as reported, "it no longer bothers him by setting off the metal detector, it must have rusted."
Many are the memories of such an intense life of a man and artist (also adept in painting) who is essentially shy (at first glance a reserved Ligurian) but loved by women like Ornella Vanoni, Stefania Sandrelli. Connected to friends and artists like Fabrizio De André, Luigi Tenco (strong is his regret for his suicide at the Sanremo festival 1967), Lucio Dalla, Umberto Bindi, Bruno Lauzi, today Paoli might appear (especially to the younger ones) as a survivor of a golden age for Italian music, rightly under certain aspects an irregular as was later the rocker Vasco.
After having journeyed through such intense decades, remaining faithful to his contrarian nature, he himself seeks a synthesis of his lives (perhaps nine like the beloved cats, no less than dogs) and rightly writes: "there is no answer. Each of us is everyone and no one. Love remains, perhaps, to tell us who we are". I sincerely hope that his compositional vein accompanies him a while longer.
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