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Rating: Torment is a preamble that must be taken seriously.
It is both a beginning and a clue. A beginning because from there on, you're screwed; a clue because if you're lucky with a bit of introspection you'll come back to yourself, otherwise uninvited presences like panic, anxiety, depression, and finally pain make their way.
Mauro Repetto caught the warning signs of torment head-on at full speed, losing his license points in an amen.
A preamble the world knows or at least believes it knows: Pavia, mid-80s. Mauro Repetto meets the repeating student Max Pezzali. They like each other. The first is a bomb: he wants to form a group, he wants to sing, rap, get known, zero dignity. The second, more introverted and reluctant to adventure, is convinced by sheer insistence.
Repetto starts bothering Cecchetto, Jovanotti, and Warner. He calls every day, relentlessly. Sends demos, organizes stakeouts, travels endless kilometers. Pezzali is a distracted passenger: he's ‘in’, but without bleeding his soul and tempering his dreams.
After a false start dated September 1988, where Jovanotti hosts them on “1,2,3 Jovanotti” and presents them as “Pop” and in which they deliver to a section of screaming teenagers an improvised piece called “Live In The Music”, in 1991 an undeterred Repetto shows up at the reception of Radio DeeJay with a cassette tape containing the demo of “Non me la menare” begging it to be presented to Cecchetto. Who is dazzled by it and instructs faithful Pieroni to call the boys: “Come, come on. Quick. We're making the album. And why not, even a second one.”
From there you know: 883, Castrocaro, then the Spider-Man, then You're a Myth, North South, and whatever.
The project works: stadiums fill up, records sell in the millions. However, from the very beginning, an ambiguity arises, or perhaps it is fate presenting the first inconvenience. Pezzali, until that moment a sidekick and secondary character, sings better. Or, if you prefer: Repetto can't sing. Naturally: Max grabs the microphone and reluctantly takes the stage, becomes the frontman: it is foreseen by customs and traditions, he is the singer, period.
And what do I do? At first, Repetto makes it easy, as usual: I study Janet Jackson's moves and dance. He sings, I dance. I can't play, I can't sing, so what do I do? I dance.
Yeah. Torment, it arrives almost immediately. What happens? Our man loses weight, cries for no reason, becomes an automaton. Dances, composes, because he must, because it's right. But the dream is over. He's not well, collapses without realizing it.
Until, around Easter, year 1994, he tells his friend - colleague: I'm going to Miami, I don't know if I'll come back.
In America, he strings together a series of mishaps, creates a self-destructive manual, improvises beyond all human decency. In a nutshell, he sets off to produce a film with a model he fell for at a fashion show, returns broke and with an album that God, forgive him because he doesn't know what he's doing.
The myth takes shape from there. Where does he go? What does he do? And then? Eurodisney? Mask? France?
I'm not talking about 'myth' for no reason. I'm talking about it for good reason. He has become a myth only for those who did not want to investigate, know, seek. He simply let himself die. Die, to be reborn, one hopes.
We find him today, a fifty-five-year-old with a nice appearance, slightly chubby but happy. He explains, responds, takes up the guitar, and sings. Oh, if he raises it by a tone he misses, but he knows it, and we know it too.
But he is happy. If you listen to him speak, you notice: there is still something, something that torments him, something that tells him: go, explore, get busy. But he is aware of it and perhaps, with these assumptions, pain becomes more bearable.
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