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Rating: The 883 from 'Hanno ucciso l'Uomo Ragno' to 'La dura legge del gol' were the soundtrack of the generation born in the '80s (mine).
Despite having varied musical tastes, I loved the songs from those albums a lot. But there was one thing that saddened me: not being able to be like certain cool guys I admired who had the right girl or friends, who listened to or could potentially listen to the songs of failure and friendship from our own, even though they (unlike me) were lucky and I was not.
After 'two decades' (20 years), I discovered this book at the 'Feltrinelli' in Genoa and read it with great curiosity; three years ago, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the start of my beloved catering school (where the aforementioned sadness was palpable in its own way), I decided to order this book to learn more about the history of the 'last original songwriter since the time of Domenico Modugno' (as I refer to him in terms of writing style and content), having been instructed by a highly respected journalist like Edmondo Berselli, who in a '99 book ('CANZONI - Storie dell'Italia leggera') analyzing the sociological and anthropological value of certain figures of Italian music (Mina and Celentano, Lucio Battisti, Vasco Rossi and Claudio Baglioni) in society, dedicated an entire chapter to Max Pezzali, defining the type of generation represented by his songs as 'without fathers or teachers' and of Italian as 'poor yet beautiful in the Postwar period with the dream of America in the heart' (I don't remember the exact words): to put it simply, a generation of 'anybodies'.
This book is not the first in the small production of our own: an initial autobiography ('Stessa storia stesso posto stesso bar') and a novel ('Per prendersi una vita').
This autobiography was released after the twentieth anniversary of a career from 'Hanno ucciso l'Uomo Ragno': Max recounts his childhood as a child sometimes left alone by parents who worked all day in the flower shop, his adolescence as a loser without being considered by the lucky ones with the 'chicks' (but managing to find a way to happily live his adolescence), his school failures, the discovery of music, the meeting in high school with Mauro Repetto (very different from him in character and intelligence) and their friendship, the first musical experiences through the discovery of Claudio Cecchetto and Radio Deejay, the tough period in the early '90s before getting to 'Hanno ucciso l'Uomo Ragno' and a whole story of successes with the group and then as a solo artist.
In the midst of a story of a common person but with a plethora of potential and actual misfortunes, he also tells in the early chapters about the city where he grew up, Pavia, after the political clashes of the '70s, with no opportunities for youth gatherings, of musical style and look-related youth tribes, economically dedicated to Tertiary and here and there even of Italy (in a chapter narrating the release period of the first two albums, our country explained as a society that, after the victory in the '82 World Cup, experienced widespread well-being, but only perceived - the Italy of Craxian influence, where there was a lot of money flowing, but also corruption).
A book that keeps you glued until the end, thanks to the simplicity of writing and Max's ability to immerse in his own life as if telling it in person.
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