Roberto Vecchioni
Bei Tempi

How much fun I have playing the filler role! This album is also missing from the reviewed works of Vecchioni. And I've noticed some other excellent omissions… What a pity!

Beyond witty and innocent jokes about the person in question that arise (in the end who cares, it's his business, isn't it!?), I look at the substance, I hear what the insistent needle channeled in the dancing LP on the turntable reads and emits from the speakers and with sobriety and passion I put myself back in the game to offer to your esteemed view, dear DeBaserians who love and do not love our vintage songwriters, my point of view, vivisecting another creation of the Professor.

With this work dated 1985, Vecchioni seems to have definitively left behind the anxieties and sense of inner confusion, characterized by his turbulent love life in the '70s and starts to live more peacefully with himself, mainly thanks to his new partner Daria and his mature stance on the conception of love, which dominates almost the entire album. Evidence of this are “La mia ragazza” dedicated to his woman and “Piccolo amore” in which the eternal archaic sentiment is experienced as a daily occurrence and no longer as an idyllic philosophy. “La mia ragazza è il mio mestiere” is the way to show that Daria is the new muse inspiring his poetic vision. Even the elderly French soldier Gaston painfully recalls love with an Italian companion from the Crusades, in the reflective and troubled “Millenovantanove”, in my opinion, the true gem of the entire album, where the deep torment caused by the absence of the beloved is explored, highlighting the love-hate contrast “If I sleep I dream of always challenging you and making a hole right in your heart, making you feel the meaning of this useless sorrow.” The previous piece “Gaston e Astolfo (La vera storia di)” which introduces “Millenovantanove” is sung in Romanesco by Ornella Vanoni who for the third and last consecutive time, is a guest on a Vecchioni album. Discouragement, on the other hand, accompanies “Fata” (sequel and epilogue to “Il castello” from the album “Calabuig” from 1978 and identical musical structure), who, exhausted from waiting for her warrior, leaves the castle forever, though the last stanzas attempt to do her justice, releasing her from reality and transporting her into yet another dream, a recurring theme in his albums. Roberto seems to identify with this woman who definitively closes with the past. Grotesque and absurd love triangles are instead mentioned both in the tedious “Fratel coniglietto”, and in the playful “Livingstone” (title paying homage to the 19th-century explorer), where even in this case the musical theme of “Canzone in cerca d'autore” from the previous album “Il grande sogno” is recycled. In a carefree channel surfing of blissful youth, in the not very exciting title-track, Laura knocks at the door, a character present in the songwriter's imagination, also in songs from previous works, probably meant as his female alter-ego.

“Bei tempi” does not artistically offer the best of Vecchioni and is certainly not a product imbued with passion and restlessness (with the exception of “Millenovantanove” and “Fata”), which in previous periods had provided the impetus for the creation of more excellent-level products, but gives the idea of an honest artifact with a more naive and carefree atmosphere. The arrangements are well cared for in my opinion, but I would add for the last time, at least in this decade. The following albums, like “Ippopotami” and “Milady”, perhaps victims of an attempt by many songwriters to keep up with the times during those periods, will sometimes offer, in a rather chaotic manner, more space to keyboards and electronics, leaving not a few perplexities for those who have always recognized in the exponents of the singer-songwriter genre, a more folky and minstrel-like artisanal trademark. It will only be in the '90s that we will taste again melodies, however well crafted, but more sincere.