Piero Ciampi
Dentro e fuori

In post-punk England of the early '80s, there was a band that didn't achieve the success it deserved. I'm referring to The Sound. Their most famous song was "I Can't Escape Myself". It was written by the band's vocalist and guitarist, Adrian Borland, who, after a life characterized by an exhaustive and unequal battle with the mental illness that afflicted him throughout his adult life, chose the most radical way to escape this insurmountable inner pain: suicide. To be precise, that of the body, ended up torn apart under a train at a London station one day in 1999.

The subject of my review, however, is not Adrian Borland, but another man, also a musician/songwriter, who was likewise haunted by a relentless malaise, with the full awareness that he could never overcome it. He also chose the path of suicide, but of the soul, allowing himself to be engulfed by a harrowing, devastating descent into alcoholism. This man was Piero Ciampi from Livorno, also a man who spent his entire life trying to flee from himself, from everything and everyone, leading a wandering, unhappy life marked by utter precariousness and disorder, without any respite, in search of something that cannot be found, and if found, cannot be possessed.

This tendency of his to flee from the nothingness he possessed and the total inconsistency of character, intentions, and goals is evidenced, first and foremost, by the biographical snippets that surface here and there. Snippets that tell of his arrival in Paris at age 23, carrying only a guitar and the clothes on his back (but then, how long did he stay in Paris? No one knows, it's unclear... and who did he meet? Some say Celine, some say Brassens... certainly Leonard Cohen, as hinted in a recent interview with Antonello Venditti). Or of the fact that after a first failed record, he obtained (thanks to the good offices of Gino Paoli) a contract from RCA with a lavish advance used to suddenly disappear in search of his wife who had returned to England and left him stranded with their newborn son. Certainly, he didn't find them, getting perpetually drunk on the streets of one country or another, from which he sent postcards to friends.

And then there are the testimonies of those who knew him briefly or at length, fleetingly or intensely. Some describe him as belligerent, others as selfish, generous, rough, cultured, lovable, or unmanageable. Certainly, though, devoted to three passions: poetry/music, wine, and women. And it is almost incomprehensible how he managed to find a balance in making the first somewhat constructive while being inevitably consumed by the other two. Yet he did it, in the only way possible, taking into account such premises: by laying down all armor and defenses, baring his soul in his miseries. As no one else in Italian songwriting has ever done, does, or will do. But without protection, it is impossible to emerge unscathed from such a world. Ciampi knew this and paid dearly for it with his skin. And in this desperate consistency lies much of his artistic greatness.

All this hurly-burly for what? To review his last unreviewed album on Debaser, "Dentro e Fuori," dated 1976. Looking at his discography, it's the fourth in the series, thirteen years after the first. And already, this suggests how much his self-destructive tendencies cost him many opportunities, the possibility of being more "focused" to write and publish many more songs. By his side, as in "Piero Ciampi" of 1971 and "Io e te Abbiamo Perso la Bussola" of 1973, is the loyal Gianni Marchetti, who handles the musical framework of the songs, their instrumentation, and arrangements (here more delicate, caressing melancholic, and tiptoe-like than ever).

As previously stated, in Ciampi, more so than many others, the songs reflect his soul. And thus, even more so than in previous works, one notes dealing with a man who knows his days are numbered, who is conscious that his self-destructive process is at its final stages and thus must say as much as possible in the little time left. In fact, none of the lyrics can reach the incredible capacity for synthesis expressed in pieces like "Il Vino" or "I Sobborghi," but instead, they unfold richer, more abundant, and hermetic. While twenty years of excessive drinking and cigarettes (strictly unfiltered) take their toll on a voice worn, raw, often on the brink of discordance. A voice that cannot sustain the rapid pace of certain past songs and can only rest, almost always whispering with heartbreaking melancholy, on slow music that, when necessary, can also ripple and/or soar.

The two manifest songs of the album are none other than "Uffa che Noia" and "L'Assenza è un Assedio". The former on a sunset of a day as bitter as many others as an occasion to reflect on one's existential failure, saturated with disillusionment and awaiting the end of "this squalid ruse between life and death". The latter with an extraordinary first stanza that surgically describes his existential condition and with an impressionistic arrangement that sends shivers down the spine. However, the soul of the album and also the crux of this review are to be sought elsewhere. Not in the literary nods to Cervantes and Camus in "Don Chisciotte" and "Raptus" (which betray the fact that he was cultured indeed). Not in "Va", which stands out for one of the best marriages of his career between melody, arrangement, lyrics, and singing. Not in "Cara" that ends with a glorious and melancholic theme made of mellotron and strings. And not even in the individual psychodramas of "Canto una Suora" or "Disse: Non Dio, decido Io". But in the Livorno of "Sul Porto di Livorno", understood as a home loved with profound nostalgia, but in which it is impossible to "replant" after a wandering life, with a soul "mortally wounded" by too many disappointments. In "Viso di Primavera", where the mystery of the mother is unveiled, a fallen Montenegrin Jewish noblewoman, afflicted by mental issues and literally left to die in an asylum (that of Volterra, ed.). And in "L'Incontro", perhaps the most emotionally devastating track of his career. Improvised, with Marchetti’s free chords on the piano, violins as cold as blades, and Ciampi singing lyrics about the impossibility of restoring a relationship with his second-born daughter, rich in verses that feel like punches in the stomach for how real their pain is.

Livorno, the mother, and the daughter. Three ghosts standing as wrecks among the many, too many things lost along the path of a man's life who tried to escape from himself, unable to compromise with his pain and with a sensitivity so intense that it made it impossible for him to conventionally fit into a society devoted to cynicism and indifference then as now. Failing. As it is impossible to escape from oneself. Unfortunately or fortunately.