Vasco Rossi
Cosa Succede In Città

And what happens in the mind of the reviewer…? Sometimes talking about Vasco has become, at least, useless. Everyone has their own ideas, and they are more or less always the same. Summarizing: “he's washed up,” “he's a genius,” “he was never a genius,” “he's unbearable,” “I adore him,” “the early stuff was better,” “the later stuff was better,” and so on… with judgments that, at best, are just generational cannonballs that are unaware of being so or unwilling to admit it.

Yes… because looking at one's own judgment and realizing that it is, or was, the result of a generational and deeply human sentiment, although absolute, like adolescent infatuation, is a difficult task, requiring the rare qualities of modesty and self-criticism. So, I will try to find what is good and bad in an album I loved very much, and that still, when I listen to it, gives me a mysterious instinctive pleasure, a primordial enjoyment, almost like a big gulp of an elixir of eternal youth. Something that, alas… is not. It’s important, as always, to historically contextualize the event. We are in the mid-80s. On the “pop” front, there was an explosion of everything: electronic drums and keyboards pouring down like rain, new romantic, voluptuous girls in tiny dance outfits, men painted like nightclub dancers looking maliciously at you and, at times, delivering excellent works (among them all, obviously Prince).

On the singer-songwriter front, which is Vasco’s other half compared to the “pop” side, the situation was strange. Battisti was beautifully halfway between the tsunami of criticism for “E Già” and the accolades of “Don Giovanni,” Faber had just produced the incomparable “Creuza de mä” with a helping hand from Pagani, Guccini was creating his masterpiece of maturity, “Signora Bovary,” and all the others were more or less getting by. De Gregori, in particular, was experiencing a midway between “W L’Italia” and “Scacchi & Tarocchi,” a dark period for some, but for me obviously brilliant (but we were young… weren’t we?). Vasco, on his part, had already churned out, at an enviable speed, the first very peculiar “Ma Cosa Vuoi Che Sia Una Canzone,” a beautiful and definitely underrated album, and the ideal trilogy “Albachiara” – “Colpa D’Alfredo” – “Siamo Solo Noi,” which, put together, undoubtedly make his best work, and the still nice “sanremate” of “Vado Al Massimo” and “Bollicine,” albums of raw and groundbreaking genius, but still absolutely valid. To close this period, which I would dare to call “genius,” characterized by irony, undertones, Jannacci-like humor, brutal conflicts, and unexpected seriousness, is the live album “Va Bene Va Bene Così,” an important work because it’s a good concert first of all and because it definitively closes (in hindsight, it proves it beyond any reasonable doubt) the first wonderful chapter of Vasco's history.

Right after these albums and a bit of jail time, which legend says ended with the phrase, addressed to the supervising magistrate, “Mr. Judge, I’ll draw a big line over this whole story” (… !!), comes the first work of the new Vasco. He too, on the cover, is different. He already resembles the man we would come to know later. Receding hairline, a few extra pounds, and less gleeful light in his eyes. The album sounds (to me) pleasantly eighties. Drum sounds that existed only then, lots of keyboards, in truth none entirely useless nor excessive, and above all solos (at that time, despite what people say… they dared even in “pop” albums), many of guitar and a lot of saxophone. All beautiful, well-thought-out, and not offspring of the usual presumptuous pentatonic scale. The songs are written and performed in a very direct manner. Probably the result of a period of dwindling and surely approximate inspiration (just consider the relentless comparison between “Una Canzone Per Te” and “Una Nuova Canzone Per Lei”…) where it was preferred to talk about how easy it is to write a song, with words that come out like soap bubbles or how nice it would be to cut her throat if she doesn’t return the radio… (and here, truly, there is a bit of goliardic spirit…).

The only true minimalist pearl of the album, surreal and very modern, the result of an on-the-fly genius that was evidently not completely extinguished, “Toffee”, a melancholic spoken dialogue, not sung, to a “she” who evidently is there for a little while, who would make a really good wife, and this is understood from the fact that she has already prepared the coffee… That’s what Vasco was like, and he would be for just a little while longer. Already, he was surrounded by a bunch of vultures, an unnecessary and harmful infinity of co-authors, and above all too much attention.

Who knows why, but often when the masses enter through the door, the genius exits through the window…