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Rating: 'Many think that I don't exist, that I am an urban legend.
Some have spotted me like a UFO in unlikely places.
Some swear they've seen me wandering with Jim Morrison at night in the Paris cemetery among the tombs.
Some saw me dressed like Goofy at the entrance of Disneyland, welcoming those arriving.
Someone said I went crazy because I left 883 and threw all the clothes on the street from the tenth floor.
Some people don't know who I am.
I am, very simply, someone who dreamed and doesn’t want to stop dreaming. Someone who sang and danced on his dreams. Someone who has lived, erred, laughed, cried, loved.
A visionary.
Someone who grew up fast and never grew up.
Someone who is a mix between Ulysses and Nando Mericoni alias Sante Bailor.
I'm just a Jack Sparrow on the Ticino.
You need courage and guts. Say no even to destiny, if necessary. Understand that sometimes life tests you. You must distinguish between temptations and necessities. Understand false movements. Breathe deeply, breathe long. Look your years in the face until you see their outlines. Remove the shadows. Surgically remove what hurts you. Turn your back and leave even the dream, because the dream has rotted and already smells bad. Distance everything that takes serenity from you and put it in a box, which you then close and seal with a writing and a prayer: past, amen.
The past is something that has happened. A past participle. Something you look at and cannot, and should not, deny, but that cannot condition you in any way. I look at my past as one watches a movie. The video is always in front of me, but I don't always turn it on. Sometimes it's better it stays off. Other times I press play, but I see myself as if I weren't me. I’m always me, but at the same time, I’m someone else, because today I’m a different person. I split. I am simultaneously protagonist and spectator. Sometimes I look at myself tenderly, other times I see passages that leave me indifferent or that shake me. I never get angry. I never think I could have done differently. After finishing one set, another begins. And if you lose one game, there’s always another one in front of you. Eventually, you win.
I have no problem talking about my past, about what I was. Also because it seems to me that in my old pages there is a nice dynamism that led me to be what I am. And there's continuity between one life and another, between one period and another. I don't see tears, only evolution, even if in the eyes of others something may have appeared as involution. It’s not like that. Only those who have lived them can really judge their steps, know how it felt to walk with boots, sneakers, or sandals. But I always walked. In short, if I were the director of the movie of my life, I would not cut any scene. What God gave me in destiny is fine this way. And then I like to think we haven’t even arrived at the second half yet. Actually, to be honest, we are at the pilot of a TV series. I eagerly await the broadcasting of the first episode.
Sometimes it has been difficult to explain. I had difficulties making my choices understood by my family. Even now at Disneyland Paris there are Italian colleagues who look at me like an alien. They love me, respect me, but you can clearly see what they think. And what they think is: “This guy is crazy. What made him throw everything away?” The fact is, I didn't throw anything away, except the superfluous. I kept what was needed to continue walking without ever stopping.
I never told Max: “I’m leaving 883.” I just said: “I’m going to Miami and I don’t know if I’ll come back.” It’s different. The focus was on the future and what I wanted and needed to find, not on what I was leaving behind.
There have been many diagonals in my life. Arrows to be launched that cut the wind in two. The first: in search of the dream. The second: the dream realized. The third: the dream shattered. The fourth: the new dream. The fifth: the dream of becoming a ghost. The sixth: the dream of returning to living fully. The seventh: the dream of tomorrow.
But, if you look closely, there’s also another diagonal. I was the engine, the fuel, and the energy that had to bring me and a very nice and amiable desk mate from point A – dreaming of making records – to point B: handing over a cassette to Claudio Cecchetto and stop just dreaming. Accompanying the dream into reality, believing in it so strongly that it made our noses bleed, as Fabrizio De André sang. Then I had other dreams: Hollywood, a record in America, love, beauty, happiness. Some came, some didn't. What matters is to keep pedaling. I was both the leader and the coach inside the 883.
In the beginning, it was me pulling, tearing, shouting at Max that he had to follow my wheel; then he became the captain and I stayed behind. But it was right that way.
These are my diagonals, this is my story.
A story that no one has ever told. A story that are two stories. My story is that of 883, of which little or nothing has been written. I was there, even if sometimes only in body. The mind, some days, was elsewhere. I have always been one and two. I am a diagonal pushing constantly towards something. A straight line aimed at the sun, even beyond the clouds. On the other side, at the bottom of the diagonal, there I am. It's as if I can never reach myself, reunite with myself. It doesn't weigh on me, on the contrary, it makes me happy. It’s beautiful to continue seeking and finding yourself.”
(from the book)
We had gotten used to Max Pezzali being the only '883', after Mauro Repetto's departure before the third album ('La donna il sogno & il grande incubo' – the one with 'Una canzone d’amore', 'Tieni il tempo', and 'Ti sento vivere' – from '95), about which Max never talked much, not even in the autobiography 'I cowboy non mollano mai' from 2013, released after the tour for his 20-year career.
Then one day in the second half of September, the autobiography of the former co-writer and second voice and dancer on stage was released almost 30 years after the fact (1994), written with a music journalist, Massimo Cotto, where he tells about himself like a torrent and reveals what led him 'to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs' with that choice.
A Mauro 'restless' since adolescence, with a Rock attitude of 'throwing everything away and starting anew', having experienced bad company and brief experiences with drugs, who met the repeating student Max Pezzali in the third year of high school and with whom, through a strange question and a clever and intelligent answer from him, a friendship was born. And after two important moments lived together, the interest in music also blossomed.
Realizing that music would be their future, Mauro took it upon himself to introduce him and Max as future Rap stars to three important figures, one of whom was from the entourage of the American rapper Afrika Bambaataa, in this case with a curious outcome.
Later, they both tasted success with a broadcast of their English Rap piece on 'Radio Deejay', thanks to Jovanotti, and a performance in a music TV program hosted by him, all thanks to the radio owner, Claudio Cecchetto.
But the experience ended there, with Cecchetto's broken promise to let them record an album, which Max attributed to their lack of other pieces.
In the disappointment of this, they got the idea of writing Rap songs in Italian (later adding Rock), sampling (i.e., extracting) instruments from existing songs and writing lyrics that narrated their daily experiences in Pavia, their city.
With the desire to present themselves as authors and performers of their songs, Mauro mistakenly contacted a publishing company (which deals with authors) instead of a record label, securing a contract for himself and Max as authors.
But experiencing an enormous period of frustration because every piece submitted was rejected with the reason of 'there being no idea'.
A situation that didn't put them in good light with friends and, for Mauro, with his parents and from the sensations of discomfort during this period, many songs were born, including ‘Hanno ucciso l'Uomo Ragno’ which indirectly told of their difficulty in making it in life.
The last attempt to break into the music world was the delivery of the demo for 'Non me la menare' (which would later open the first album, note from the reviewer) on a cassette to 'Radio Deejay', but not before deciding on the group’s name to write on the tape’s label, which had the track title: the name was '883', from a model of 'Harley-Davidson', a brand Max really liked.
And surprisingly, the call from Cecchetto to head to the radio and record the track.
From there, the explosive success of the first two albums (‘Hanno ucciso l'Uomo Ragno’ and 'Nord Sud Ovest Est' – with the classics 'Sei un mito', 'Come mai', and the title track), but a crisis for Mauro regarding his role, especially on stage, given the lack of specific skills to complement Max’s performer role.
An ever-stronger malaise that after creating the first song for the third album, 'Gli anni', led him to inform Max of his departure for the Easter holiday to Miami, without knowing whether he would come back or not.
A disastrous adventure of Mauro’s in Miami searching for a model he was in love with, in Los Angeles with a movie project that went up in smoke, and in New York with the broken recording of his English Rap album due to the producer’s disinterest, entangled with a dirty personal matter.
Wanting to rebuild his life and leave everything behind, Mauro decided to move to Paris, where he earned a degree in Letters, and later at his mother’s urging, started working at ‘Disneyland Paris,’ later building a big career, and some years later, while waiting for a train back to France from Italy, he met his future wife Joséphine.
An exciting story of a Mauro Repetto on form, even in some TV interviews and book presentations in major Italian city bookstores (both visible on 'YouTube'), from which remains not only the public involvement as in a concert from the legendary 883 years, but also a segment in the interview on the Rai Uno program 'Da noi...a ruota libera', where the hostess, Francesca Fialdini, recounted many reviewers advising to let young people read this book to learn how to fight for their dreams, as Mauro did explaining on the occasion that 'one might win in at least twenty matches' (at least) 'one or two'.
A book that marked my 2023 after the one by Gialappa’s and even before that by Francesca Michielin the previous year, and even before that one by Alessandro D’Avenia, all reviewed by me.
And adding that this year I relived the memory of Paola & Chiara strengthened by my call to teach at the hospitality school where I developed my passion for them and other things (refer to the review of 'Per te') and their relationship with 883, after Repetto’s departure, I found myself in a wonderful atmosphere, which I missed for a few years.
Their concert in Genoa on June 28 and my trip to Pavia for a day on September 30, recalled by Max’s story (and curiously the 30 years of 'Nord Sud Ovest Est'), I lived a tale suspended between reality and imagination.
This book for me closes everything.
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