Maybe you didn’t know that these songs were written by Vasco Rossi

“I’m still here, yeah”, sang Vasco Rossi in 2011. Twelve years have passed and he continues undaunted to fill musical chronicles and stadiums with concerts that are collective rituals for an army of aficionados for whom songs are a lifesaver, a piece heart, an untouchable fixed point. But Vasco is also a pure author and did his utmost to entrust his pieces to other singers. Sometimes the result is not that great, and it is also normal when working on commission, sometimes the songs are so strong that they would not have disfigured in his repertoire, so much so that Vasco has recovered them for some best of, perhaps regretting having sold them with too easy.

Be that as it may, here is a sampling of these songs, pieces sometimes known and sometimes less so that demonstrate that Vasco Rossi also knows how to put himself aside to give full voice to the artists with whom he collaborates.



In 1981 Vasco’s group tries to do something personal. And I challenge: in the lineup there are important musical individuals such as that of the guitar hero Maurizio Solieri and the rhythm guitarist and singer Massimo Riva, “joker” and Vasco’s right-hand man in live performances, both precious co-authors of many of Blasco’s songs. Outside of the work with Vasco, the band can express itself more in the hard rock field, which slowly – in the following rehearsals in which the break with Vasco is definitive – will touch glam metal. In this case Rossi is still in the game, he supports them by writing the lyrics (side A and B) of the first single. Black snow it’s a rocky stomp with still some punk/wave influence that probably plays with double meanings: on the one hand it evokes apocalyptic scenarios by touching the button of ecology and environmental pollution, on the other it’s hard not to think of an allusion to the deterioration of the quality of the drug with its fatal effects and in fact the future diffusion of black cocaine or heroin tar makes the piece more topical than ever. The B side Grab and run instead it is more ironic, a picture of petty crime made up of robberies, improvised couriers and assorted street stuff with the grotesque attitude that has always been the characteristic of Vasco. The single is not a success, but it is in any case the first cry of the Steve Rogers Band, which will continue to rely on the author Vasco. After the interest in the first album, the group will “betray” him by doing everything by himself with the tamarrissimo Lift up your skirt. Great response from the public, but ephemeral: soon the band members will return to Zocca’s rocker as prodigal sons, partially putting the original dream team back on its feet.

At the beginning of his career Vasco practically did not write for anyone outside the Steve Rogers Band, but he made an exception for Valentino, with whom he formed a strong friendship. Today no one remembers this singer from Campania who, driven by a passion for music, decides to run away from home and try his luck first in Rome and then in Milan. The two are united by the outsider attitude, and Vasco puts him in the world of discography. In 1981 he wrote him the first 45 (Tell me that is And I only like you), with pieces worthy of Vasco’s repertoire and in fact Valentino stands out at Saint Vincent Estate. But it is when Vasco is in a state of grace also commercially that he entrusts to Valentino Tomorrow is Sundaya real catchphrase in the summer of Festivalbar 1983 and Reckless life. A song that has all the possible Vasco-sound and a text that fits into the rich songbook on the theme “comparison with the female universe”. Rossi participates in the voice, giving it an edge. It seems that the partnership between the two could spark, but when in 1984 Vasco wrote the definitive song to bring Valentino to Sanremo, this was rejected. It’s about Can you imaginewhich recycled into the album What happens in the city becomes a Rossi instant classic. The sensational decision of the commission displaces Valentino who presents in his place Moon night by Sergio Basile, winning the Una Canzone per Sanremo competition, but losing the direct line with Blasco, perhaps disappointed by the Sanremo crime. The fruits of one of the truest and most inspired collaborations in the history of Blasco remain.

To confirm that the alliance with Valentino was the source of great songs, there is It will be betterinitially part of the Campanian repertoire but which in 1985 passed from side B of Tomorrow is Sunday a flagship piece presented by Fiordaliso. Biting voice, physique du rôle and personality to spare, Fiordaliso transforms It will be better in a female anthem, reversing the roles of the song but maintaining and perhaps enhancing the meaning: making dreams come true does not mean destroying reality, especially when it comes to love. It is one of the most beautiful love songs of Vasco, perhaps a little sister of All right, all right, poignant enough to bring a tear. A demo he recorded in 1983 will be included in the 2003 collection It will be better, effectively introducing it among his classics. There will be controversies against the rocker’s former label, Carosello, guilty of having used the demo to promote the unofficial collection.

Vasco has always been a friend of true musicians, and among these Dodi Battaglia dei Pooh stands out. Before being the guitarist of the most famous pop group in Italy, Battaglia played with the Judas, a group from Bologna that beat the Pooh in the 1960s and then in 1978 produced one of the first punk oriented records of the peninsula. With this curriculum, he is called to play and arrange guitar parts on Rossi’s epochal pieces such as A song for you, All right, all right, Toffee. Dodi Battaglia in 1985 writes a solo album and asks Vasco for a text on a particularly “angelic” rock ballad and he prepares a song in which he attacks the concept of religion, resulting in an atheism for which the only reason for living is ‘Love. Further up there is “nothing you thought but now there is a woman, a woman for you”. As high as it gets is a romantic appendix of Vasco thought on the theme of the afterlife, made explicit in Some say no in a much more pissed off way. Vasco also participates in a vocal cameo, and once the song came out, he admits that he wished he had recorded it first. In 2016 he finally recorded his version of him by putting it in the collection VascoNonStop. In his interpretation, it becomes one of the most beautiful hymns to life in the history of Italian music.

Vasco has always cared about the authorship of his works especially if written for others, but in one case things went differently. Let’s talk about Foothe song by Zucchero who in the golden 1987 of Blues will become a earworms very successful. Vasco and Zucchero in that period are friends and party companions. They begin to write this piece together, inspired by the vicissitudes of Zucchero, in crisis with his wife and above all with this friend who is trying to steal her from him in a treacherous way. Foo it is an effective, direct song, if we want rather simpleton in its rhythm and blues flavor, but it hits the mark. The refrain comes from a teasing of Pippo Baudo while the two are drunk together at Vasco’s house, who proposes to go to Sanremo to percularlo. Vasco finishes the text at night, once Zucchero has returned home. The next day he is almost surprised of his existence as he had completely forgotten about it. Zucchero is enthusiastic and goes to record it, calls Vasco and offers him to make a duet to take to Sanremo as per the curtain above. Vasco declines the invitation saying that he was joking. In the end – precisely because it was born as a joke – he renounces authorship of the piece, handing it over to Zucchero, who however will not fail to remember its origins. A clear example of how a divertissement and nothing else in Vasco’s hands can become a hit.

The Sharks are a hair metal band produced by the Ruggeri-Schiavone couple who slowly get closer and closer to an American AOR sound (Enrico Ruggeri and Vasco apparently not only have the keyboard player in common). Vasco writes the text of Temptations, which is presented in Sanremo and has some success. The band is even chosen by Blasco to open the dates of the 1989 tour and will support Deep Purple. Yet the singer Dario Fochi does not do justice to Temptations. Like all of Vasco’s hermetic texts, the intention in the interpretation counts. In this case the theme is almost à la Uncontrollable urge by Devo, the protagonist tries to get down a dangerous “monkey” (which can be drugs, sex or any other addiction), which would make the whole concept very interesting. Wasted opportunity, so much so that the Sharks will end up on the back burner after a period of aurea mediocritas.



Finally, let’s start from the beginning, at the dawn of the singer-songwriter Vasco and his first collaborations. Parallel to the release of the first single Jenny, Rossi participates behind the nickname (which is a whole program) Wasto on the debut 45 laps of Giancarlo Mandrioli, a disc jockey from Bologna who had shared the activity in private radios with him. In the piece, under various pseudonyms, we find the whole gang: Curreri, Solieri, Riva, the drummer Gilberto Rossi of But what do you want a song to be. And it’s curious, because there’s no trace of rock in this example of proto techno pop: on the contrary, you go fired up in a space disco studded with electronic effects, a bass drum of four and Teutonic gloom. In its own way far ahead of its time, impossible to categorize in a minimally marketable category, it is to all intents and purposes an experimental episode of a collective of hallucinated people in search of new paths, at the same time as the development of the Bolognese new wave (perhaps a prodrome of Deviations). Yes, fine, but what does Vasco write in this case? Well, he’s not credited but the phrase he repeats in a manic loop with his voice counterfeited by a distorter is clearly his own, a simple, hermetic, very clear manifesto of Blasco’s generosity in “giving away” songs to others: “Hey Mr. DJ, this song is just for you!”.