Luigi Tenco
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The year was 1966, Tenco had this beautiful song up his sleeve but couldn't decide to record it in the studio, finding it not suitable for his style because it was probably not committed and bitter enough for his introspective and polemical vein. Or, more plausibly, he was not accepting the text contributions provided by the ever-attentive, active, ambitious, and never disinterested lyricist Mogol, who nevertheless managed one evening to drag him into a Milanese studio and make him record this gem, piano and voice and nothing else (along with another forgettable tune whose title escapes me).

The song in question is impeccable, among his best: few words to describe, in a dry and simple manner, that great theme of life which is forgiveness in love, a challenge that sooner or later everyone faces and hopefully overcomes if they want to move forward and remain serene without too many psychological and perhaps even psychosomatic troubles. The melody of the track leans on a delicate sway between major and minor chords, demonstrating the great preparation and musical sensibility of the late Piedmontese composer.

In February of the following year, Tenco died, shot, during the Sanremo Festival under widely suspicious and generously cloudy circumstances, as is customary in Italy. Without wanting to make inescapable and indiscriminate judgments, given the actual distance from the facts of the so-called "man on the street" who represents all of us, my personal feeling is that his French colleague Dalida, with whom Luigi had a relationship and who was keeping him company in the hotel those days, was heavily involved - no wonder she repeatedly tried to kill herself later, ultimately succeeding... twenty years later! - and at that point, some big wheeler-dealer, of which we always find here, had arranged things in a way to save the singer's butt and especially the show (must go on). And this, maneuvering the scenario and mass media towards a supposed lesser evil, consisting of portraying Tenco as a psychotically depressed who committed suicide because the usual nonsense sung by Orietta Berti (on the occasion "Io tu e le rose") was promoted to the final while his "Ciao amore ciao", a beautiful story of emigration and emotional distance, was instead discarded by the "jury." Bah.

Tenco was thus no more, but the record carousel cynically moved on, and so the song officially emerged to the public at the subsequent Disco per l’Estate of 1967, sung competently, even if certainly less excitingly, by the at least in-tune and solid voice of Wilma Goich. For the record, it ranked third, preceded by two inevitable stupidities of Italian light music this time performed by Jimmy Fontana and Gigliola Cinquetti.

The aforementioned carousel went on again, because the world is full of greedy people like Mogol, and this original interpretation of the author did not take long to be published, unfortunately devastated by adding a mannered and obtuse orchestral and choral arrangement with trumpet inlays, Mexican mariachis, and useless 4+4 choirs by Nora Orlandi, something that if Tenco had still been alive, he would never, ever have allowed... it's almost better to listen to the Goich version! Over the years, the usual vibrant parsley Mina also came around to give it a spin... the sacred monster who, from her home in Lugano, between one meal and another, has indulged over the centuries in covering everything, just everything... she just lacks Limp Bizkit and Tony Tammaro.

Tenco was great, truly great... a real shame that his life and music were cut short at twenty-nine: he deserved a career like Lucio Dalla or De André, he was perfectly up to their level.