It won’t be a “triello” like the one Sergio Leone created for the finale “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”. But a powerful challenge between true friends, to the sound of high notes and songs we’ve all been humming and part of our lives for half a century. Al Bano, Gianni Morandi and Massimo Ranieri (in strict alphabetical order) fill in Wednesday evening, February 8th sanremo. Their project has been on the back burner for years, tells us Al Bano, who has just entered a certain year as he crosses the 80 finish line. Al Bano, but you don’t look 80. She has an energy that you rarely find anywhere else… “In fact, next May 20th I won’t be 80, but four times 20”.
Back to the Ariston with two of his old cronies: a marketing operation?
“In general. Gianni and Massimo are two real men and two friends. And then the festival is an adrenaline rush, there’s always a special thrill, it makes me a boy again and gives meaning to life. Once in the dressing rooms I saw that great Ray Charles before a performance, shaking like a leaf and saying to me: I’m scared, I don’t know what’s going to happen to me tonight.”
Al Bano-Morandi-Ranieri: the three tenor players?
“The project is 30 years old, but we always put it off. Thanks to Morandi for bringing us together».
One day Morandi said: “With this voice Al Bano will blow me through. And with him also Massimo.”
“Nonsense. Gianni is a great artist. I’ve always admired him, also as a person: when he was in a crisis in the ’70s and had the merit of starting from scratch, he showed that one in a thousand really can do it».
What connects a Bolognese, a Neapolitan and an Apulian like you?
«Our origin and our stories. We come from this healthy poverty of an Italy that in the 1950s only raised the work and those who wanted it.”
A message for today’s lazy Italy?
“The three of us breathed the same harsh atmosphere of that time, but we did it by rolling up our sleeves: we are hard workers and this must be an example. It is important that we also represent the country geographically. Gianni son of an Emilian shoemaker, I of a farmer from the south, Massimo of a poor Neapolitan family».
You played on the Sanremo stage in ’68, right?
“Yes, I sang La siepe, a song about immigration, today a very topical subject that many jump on”.
You mean you were a busy artist too?
«Socially yes. Then, in the 1970s, a certain kind of recording and political power took out most of the artists who were strong but not performing. And they lived through dark years».
And Al Bano?
“Romina Power and I had to emigrate abroad and it was a stroke of luck: in France we sold a million copies with the song We’ll live it all again, then Dialogo was successful all over the world”.
Don’t play the victim…
“What sacrifice? Back then I met artists who took sides politically just to sell records. I never”.
The most beautiful Sanremo?
“I made 15, but the one I won with Ms. Power in 1984, with It will remain special, remains special: we collected 3,900,000 votes”.
The saddest?
«Sad no, of rebirth. In 1996 I presented a piece that was a musical autobiography: It’s my life. He told about the personal anxieties of that moment, from Ylenia to the end with Romina ».
What are you doing at 80?
“I’m going on tour. The show will be called It’s my life.
With Romina?
“No. This is my life. Ours was like the Western Roman Empire: one day it collapsed».
So the second divorce, and this time artistic, from Power?
«But no… If the opportunity arises, we’ll go on stage together again. Maybe in the Verona Arena. Music connects and people want to see us on stage together to ask questions.”
What is true happiness for you?
«Waking up at dawn, getting on the tractor and checking the fields and vineyards on my Cutriprizzi estate. i am a farmer I’m from Earth.”