Roberto Vecchioni
Per Amore Mio

For My Love (The Last Days of Sancho P.)

After the commercial failure of "Ippopotami", the long partnership between Vecchioni and the historical producer Michelangelo Romano broke up with "Milady". Romano had been assuming a role that went far beyond that of a producer, especially with the latest records. His influence was increasingly dominant in both the lyrics and the album covers.
We can indeed notice in an album like "Ippopotami" how Romano's hand is predominant, as eight out of ten songs are co-signed by him, and the cover is also done by him, along with Andrea Pazienza.

With this album titled "For My Love (The Last Days of Sancho P.)", Michelangelo's figure is definitively replaced by Mauro Paoluzzi, who appears not only as a musician but also as a producer, and as a co-author in two tracks of the album.
The central theme of the album, as in much of Vecchioni's discography, is "the dream", meant as a real completion of every man's life.
Vecchioni can therefore be defined as a "great dreamer," or much more specifically, consistent with his professional choice as a high school teacher, as a "Master of dreams." A man, therefore, who chooses as the mission of his existence to impart and teach his students "the magic of life" and his passions, like poetry, literature, myth, novels, tales, and many other dreams that make life an amazing journey in search of oneself.

Having said this, I would like to recall the last moving passage of a recent song by the professor that wonderfully explains this concept: "dream boy dream, I left a sheet on the desk, only one verse is missing in that poem, you can finish it". (Sogna Ragazzo Sogna 1999)

Vecchioni thus defines and crafts the bases from which to embark on this wonderful journey towards existence, which starts with the animalistic "Horses", a song full of zest for life, in which a horse, always the favorite animal of the professor that perfectly mirrors the combative and troubled spirit of many men, starts to learn from his father the first rudiments of life and its amazing beauty: "In the end an invisible finish line, because winning is dreaming, and he ran and ran, 'Move your legs,' he shouted, 'Let's see what you can do'". In "Theme of the Eternal Soldier and the Herons" the profound themes of war and the reason for so much evil in the world are touched upon. It tells us the story of a soldier who has fought in all battles, indeed eternal, from Waterloo to Marathon, from Alamo to Crimea, but who has never understood the true essence of all that and why all these sufferings. Similarly, to him, the herons are unable to fully understand the vastness of the sky. The answer seems to exist and seems to be found in a mysterious feminine aura, but it turns out to be only an illusion or rather a dream, created by the soldier himself to exorcise this existential malaise, as one can also deduce from the last verses:

"September will pass, November will pass, I will not return, it wasn't close no it wasn't a game I won't embrace you, love love it's useless I invented you and you aren't there"

The truth of the eternal soldier is therefore sought in a similar female figure, considered in the context of the album as a symbol of innocence and wisdom, and thus as the only possibility of escape and salvation from a mad world, steeped in wars and killings, of which we humans ourselves are the cause with our greed for power, glory, and money.

Dedicated precisely to this female figure is the song "Little Women Grow Up" which shows us the historical conflict that has always plagued men and women who, as we said, are the only source of wisdom on this earth:

"Little women grow up, little men hide under skirts, they write History pages that never die, then they swallow them / Little women love, little men masturbate under skirts, maybe they envy them the secret of giving birth and they destroy themselves"

Among all these conflicts, the protagonist of the song says to remember the only moment when there is an equal meeting between man and woman, a sweet kiss long awaited and dreamed of.

Even the patriotic commitment of the Knight protagonist of "Lament of a Knight of the Order of the Rosy Cross" recognizes in the feminine universe that ability to look beyond the events of the world: "My lady, you are the only idea within this madness, on the night that the roe disappears".
Woe therefore to lose this inexhaustible source of dreams, lest you end up regretting it:

"What to say of her now that time no longer has caresses. . . / what to say now that she is no longer near nor far. . . / and what to say of me that I close my eyes and only you are real" (What to say of her)

It seems instead as if he just jumped out of Cervantes' novel, the Sancho Panza protagonist of the title track who comes to tell us about his amazing feats accomplished for the love of himself, life, and Dulcinea, almost wanting to take revenge against the true hero protagonist of the novel, a certain Don Quixote.

Heartfelt dedication is instead "Tommy", which tells us about a dentist friend who committed suicide to whom Vecchioni was very attached. The pain of this loss is expressed directly to the highest, to whom one asks to give love and consolation to this sad soul. If you are wondering why of such an insane act, the lyrics of the song speak for themselves: "Tommy had nothing to dream of, he had already passed all his future, in his garden of crossed trees where pains are not marked"

Ultimately, human beings can be divided into two major groups, "Those beautiful like us", eternal dreamers, capable of traveling and flying through the mind, capable of never losing hope, and continuing to believe in life and "those ugly like you", without dreams, ideals, or hopes anymore, "always awake at breakfast, always ready for an emotion that you will never feel".   After all "The important thing is who has the greatest dream" ("The Great Dream" 1984)