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As a child, I used to go to the sea in Sturla, which was like a village inside a city: its beach was surrounded by houses and had five or six modest beach resorts, not the sort of places in Corso Italia, for the rich, nor the postcard ambience of Boccadasse, which could still be reached by swimming from there. After the sea and games, from the 'Dalla Vittoria' baths, with red and yellow painted cabins, we sometimes crossed Via del Tritone, all in swimsuits and barefoot, stepping on the sand veil over the scorching asphalt, and we’d go to the back of the "Gianni di Sturla" restaurant, in front of the baths, the only place for scignuri to eat in Sturla, to spy on the moment the cook tossed the live lobster into the boiling water and then run away when we heard the shrill cry of the crustacean dying boiled... and off to bother the bartender, the ladies in the sun, and the lifeguard, since I was the nephew of Carlin, an institution in Sturla.
The owner of the restaurant was the father of one of the New Trolls, Vittorio, the dark one, with lots of hair and the loud shirts that seemed made with grandmother's upholstery. The girls liked him, even though they appreciated better the finer beauty of Giorgio, the bassist, or the swimmer's muscles of "Ombra", that is Gianni, the drummer. Nico, the strong guitarist with Hendrix in his heart and horse teeth, did not, among the girls, garner any success, that's life. My uncle told us that occasionally u De André, the anarchist poet, would come by, and there were very heated discussions, let's say, between anarchists and Marxists, which then ended with that good little wine and minestrone with pesto.
Vittorio was always there, already playing in the Trolls but drooling for three chords to play with Fabrizio, and there Fabrizio asked him and Nico, inseparable guitarists, to set his and Riccardo Mannerini's, the anarchist seaman and instinctive poet's, texts to music: there was "Senza Orario Senza Bandiera" at stake, a little thing, in short.
Vittorio was not a nice guy, he was polite and educated but a bit chilly up to the point of being arrogant, the figgeu de Stürla preferred to make fun of Nico or Gianni, with their very long hair and always ready for a joke and fun.
In the evening, when he was in Genoa, he would sometimes return to his family, leaving his sports car, I think a Maserati, and after dinner, at the back of the restaurant, he would take a guitar and play one, with us children coming from a day at the sea who listened to him from outside or from the entrance, and Bunny, the painter-philosopher who had drawn the cover "du paggiassu" of "Senza Orario Senza Bandiera", who watched the behinds of ladies and girls all focused and bent to listen to u Vittoiu singing in ingleise. Paoli entered, Reverberi entered, so to speak, other Trolls entered, Franz di Cioccio entered.
Years go by, the Trolls are rarely seen in the city, they drive in fancy cars with stunning girls, some are even someone's wife, and damn, if they're repulsed, unpleasant. They split and reform, it's a mess.
Then, in the late seventies, they come to the Palasport, new formation, once again selling records by the bunch, new music that makes us wrinkle our noses and a new clean and shiny image.
I'm fifteen and I'm in a tiny "free" neighborhood radio station, it's known that I already got the ticket for the Trolls and the older ones laugh and tell me "Let's see if you have the balls to jump into the back stage and get some statement from those damn sellouts...".
I organize myself. Gigi, the neighbor's son, is in the military with the Carabinieri and they assigned him to public order at the concert, I extract a promise from him to let me pass into the dressing rooms.
After the concert I stick a radio sticker on my shirt, I find Gigi in uniform who gives me a nudge on the neck and lets me, my brother, and two friends pass into the back.
We catch Giorgio Usai, the new big-mustached keyboardist, I know him by sight and I know his folks, I ask him to ask the others if they grant us a few words. He enters the dressing room, then comes out and says, "Few questions, we're tired and we gh'emmu also famme..."
We dive in and turn on the cassette Grundig with the connected microphone.
I try to be professional like the city’s free radio reporters when they interview the mayor, I fumble, regular.
Nico is the friendliest, very simple, I compliment him for the distorted solo at the end of the concert, he thanks and laughs, drinks a lot and laughs a lot, while the others make a mess. Ricky Belloni, in his underpants, yells that this is the good year, he, Milanese, claims that Inter will take the scudetto, Gianni throws a wet towel at him that, however, hits Giorgio Usai, the big-mustached, straight in the face.
In the chaos my brother pulls out a copy of "Searching for a Land" and gets Nico, Gianni, and Vittorio to sign it. Not Ricky, D'Adamo, and Giorgio Usai though, they weren't on that record.
Vittorio laughs and tells me, benevolent, to address him the questions, that the others are beasts and don't know how to talk. Damn, it’s Vittorio I have to interview, well, I’m here, I might as well go on.
So I do, I ask him obvious things, about the audience, the great sales, the genre change, the legendary Carimate recording studio.
Here his eyes light up, see what a mixer, he tells me, a spaceship, he who has a recording studio in Genoa, but nothing compared... then I ask him about de André, he tells me that as a kid he lurked for him at the Lido, under the blazing sun, to let him hear his ideas for some songs, and that's where a friendship for life started. He gets bored, he's tired, others talk to him and he gets distracted, I insist.
From some details we slip into, he realizes that I know him in some way, and the stories of Sturla come out, for a moment he melts when I tell him that as his mother cooked... sends greetings to my uncle who saw him as a kid and makes me understand that we have to get out of there, especially my brother who can't take his eyes off D'Adamo’s Fender bass and the flamboyant girl who talks to him softly in the ear.
The tape of the interview was edited on the radio and broadcast a couple of times, then disappeared like the radio managers with about twenty of my records and many others from contributors, poof, all gone in one night.
I saw De Scalzi a few times over the years, I handled the rehabilitation of his younger daughter after a knee injury, shortly before she left this planet due to a cerebral thrombosis that left her no escape. So I saw another Vittorio, a lost man, a desperate father, a tired face. Then I found him kind, smiling, always smiling, patient and understanding, another Vittorio from what I remembered.
Music and above all family gave him a way to react to the calamity, he composed in Genoese and Italian, he even composed for a minor Genoa football team, of which he was a super fan, reformed the New Trolls, and re-fought with Nico, with whom years ago he had even come to blows during a concert in Venice.
They hated and forgave each other, met and hugged again, then sent each other back to hell once more.
But when a trucker spilled a load of corn on the highway at night and Nico, in the car behind him, spun over and over from one guardrail to another, the world for the two old companions regained the right shape and Vittorio, the cold, the arrogant Vittorio, regularly brought a tape player and left it on Nico's hospital pillow, intubated, in a coma for more than a month, with the New Trolls songs at low volume, with his solos and the high vocals that had always characterized him.
After his awakening, some time later, when he regained some speech, Nico reproached him: "Belin, though, always 'sti niutrolls, at least you could have let me hear the Beatles..."... "But look, you're the same old jerk..." Was Vittorio's terse reply.
That's what Vittorio de Scalzi was, besides being a great musician, arranger, multi-instrumentalist, very versatile singer... a Man who, contrary to what often happens, was able to improve after misfortunes, rather than worsen. The adversities had softened his character and for some time I saw his smile not as a circumstantial, educated, and detached event, but as a sincere smile of a gentleman who had lived in contact with Art and Talent, squandering them, using them, dispersing them and then making them anchors of salvation for life's adversities.
When, after recovering from Covid, the pulmonologist tells him that the aftermath would be a pulmonary fibrosis, describes the treatment to him, with no possibility of recovery, and asks him if he also needed a psychologist. The laconic response: "I need a guitar, doctor...". He was so used to sunsets, him.
Unknown to most but respected and adored among music connoisseurs for fifty years, he leaves this valley of tears just a couple of weeks after his last concert, sitting in a wheelchair in front of a polyphonic keyboard, with oxygen at his nose, singing his songs with a voice only slightly less powerful than a couple of years ago but equally expressive and colorful, still with a smile at the end of the song.
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