A life made up of highs and lows as high and as deep as an abyss, a luminous career, made of timeless music and lyrics, collaborations and turns from pop to jazz, a free path in which emotions and feelings were always at the center: Gino PauliThe singer-songwriter par excellence is 90 years old and in an interview with the Italian news agency ANSA, he confesses: “I never imagined I would reach this age”. Born on September 23, 1934 in Monfalcone, he lives in hiding with his wife Paola and surrounded by his loved ones. A bit pessimistic, sometimes rough, but frank and honest like few others, Paoli smiles as he turns 90, “A day like any other, I will celebrate it with my loved ones and with the people I love. And then – he smiles – 91 will arrive, if I am still alive…”.
Not a target for everyone, given the details of the bullet that has been lodged next to his heart since 1963, when he shot himself to end it but the bullet stopped in his pericardium even if he “no longer bothered to sound the metal detector”. “It must be rusty,” he joked in his autobiography What Will I Do When I Grow Up? The First 90 Years of My Life. “I wanted to present it as a book that cannot be read because all my mistakes are inside,” he says again. “I never wanted to wear masks, but they are what made me grow and I will do it all again.”
Unforgettable songwriter, he wrote more than 200 songs, from Sapore di Sale to A long love story, Heaven in a room, The cat, Four friends, What is it, Without a fine, Gino Paoli made his debut with the record company Nanni Ricordi. In 1959. Al Cantagiro, Sanremo, Cats, The sea, The great friends of Tinco, Luzzi and De Andre, the first fathers like him from the Genoese music school, then the women, Ornella Vanoni, Stefania Sandrelli and his beloved wife Paola Penzo.
From his hermitage, surrounded by the passions of life, he observes the world with its rapid changes and conflicts. If you ask him if he sees people, their eyes, their sensibilities have changed, Gino Paoli answers with the usual depth from which his usual non-conformity shines: “Yes, everything seems very changed to me, as if the conditioning had been taken away from him.” “The personal vision these days, you look at things that someone has already looked at, and you no longer face reality as it is, in a personal way, but in a way that arrives already chewed and translated by someone else, and that is of no use.”
On the musical level, the scenario is clearly not exciting. “Right now – answers Pauli – we are not producing things that will remain, in my opinion, I couldn’t point to anything in particular, but I don’t know what will remain of this music today, I don’t see a future”. “I don’t know how to see it”, he notes.
Ornella Fanone He turns 90 on September 22, a day before. A partnership that continues in some way, in parallel, without end, an artistic bond as important as it has been in recent years, with Danilo Rea, with whom Paoli’s understanding on stage, on piano and voice, has always been exceptional. While Ornella announces new projects, Gino defines himself as a “lazy lover of his couch” although he says: “The relationship with the public is something you miss and you can’t give up. Paola always tells me that I need it”.
Paoli’s wishes to Fanoni via ANSA are naturally in line with her style: “Ornella is as strong as quartz, she doesn’t need good wishes, she knows how to go beyond all expectations. With this freedom that her age gives her she can say what she wants, she is very intelligent and no one has the courage to oppose her and I don’t think anyone thinks they can. What I can tell her is ‘Ornella, continue as you are!’
We don’t know where and when we’ll see Paulie on stage again but there is some good news: “I’m writing new songs – he reveals – I have five or six songs that I love and I’m working on them.”
Reproduction © Copyright ANSA
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