You can love him madly or hate him like the few spectators he appeared in front of at the end of the 70s, but it is not difficult to admit that a performer like Vasco Rossi has never existed in our country. It's a question of intellectual honesty. Mind you, I am well aware of the indisputability of tastes; in fact, the discussion makes no reference to the artistic side, to Vasco as the author or to the quality of his musical proposal. I don't even make it a question of tickets sold, records broken, number of songs that have become generational or various technicalities. To paraphrase Jimmy Page, “I'm not talking about technique, I'm talking about emotions”.
Many have forgotten, but much of the myth that still revolves around a single Vasco concert was born in 1984 with the release of one of the most important live albums in the history of Italian music (here yes, I'm going out on a limb without fear ): Okay, that's okay. However, it is not easy to understand the importance of a record like that today. After thirty years of Front of the stageImola, Modena Park and neverending tour it's hard to think that Vasco hasn't always been that thing there. And for anyone born in 1990 or later, Vasco is that thing. For everyone else, however, the only way to hear him in concert was this live testimony titled as the only studio song present in the collection. After all, going to one of his concerts was difficult even then: today because tickets sell out three minutes after they go on sale, at the time because going to see Vasco was dangerous and your parents didn't take you to see him like they do today with Anna Pepe. The places were small, many more people began to show up than the capacity of the premises, and outside people were puncturing themselves on the steps. It was thus discovered that the generation of upset people was much larger than what society imagined or wanted to see. It is often said that the Beatles invented youth. The category already existed, of course, but the Fab Four showed the world the disruptive force of youth. Here, in the same way we can say that Vasco has invented a different audience, no longer linked to political clashes nor to simple musical enjoyment tout court. An audience without saints or heroes, precisely.
Vasco became the spokesperson for a part of the population to be erased from sight, just waiting for the heroine to do it, even in a material way. They were asking for it anyway, right? And unlike someone like Kurt Cobain, who had been reluctantly given the role of leader of the people, Vasco really took those people on his shoulders, giving them something to hold on to. Those who went to see him knew that what he sang was what he really lived, without distinction between the two aspects. It was not artificial. Today Vasco himself, who over time has perfected his ability to use puns, on social media could say that he was, if anything, “art-made”.
Okay, that's okay opens with the studio song that gives the album its title. A choice halfway between brilliant and a rip-off, because in the end the live pieces were few and the choice of a single album already greatly limited the space available. But then Dodi Battaglia's guitar line starts and everything realigns: here's the genius of putting a piece like this, heartbreaking, sincere to the point of physical pain, before making you feel like the animal. To understand the importance of this work for subsequent generations, to understand how many of us grew up with Okay, that's okayjust think of one detail: the lyrics of the songs sometimes differ from the studio versions, as can sometimes happen. What is surprising is that from then on everyone would continue to sing them like this. Even today, when Vasco in It's just us he sings “let's have breakfast with toast, after all”, the audience shouts “often”, just like he does in his first official live show.
Photo: Red Ronnie
The truth is that, beyond the many classics that he would have composed especially in the following twenty years and which clearly could not be present here, Vasco would have become Vasco even just by publishing Okay, that's okay. And if then, for understandable reasons, only the most representative songs of that era were included in the album, the new edition which celebrates its 40th anniversary adds everything else, to form the prototype of the perfect live album: a double album with inside it is an unprecedented piece of absolute value. In fact, it would have happened again with Front of the stage and the epic Watch where you're goingor with The usual onesalso included in a double live (Live Kom 011), to close an ideal circle with It's just us thirty years later. Beyond the book attached to the reprint, which gives a good idea of how made of flesh a character who today might seem unattainable was, what is winning is the choice of not having changed the album's tracklist, but simply adding a second album with what was left out at the time. Thus, more uncomfortable songs such as What do you do, I like you because, Asilo republic or Valiumalong with early songs like Our relationship And Silviawhich would certainly have pushed us to buy his debut album a few years in advance But what do you want a song to be. If it is therefore true that changing a historic album in some way is always a risky operation, especially for those who are used to knowing every groove, the joy of being able to listen to one more part of it can only be infinite. In addition to giving both those who love him regardless and those who hate him the opportunity to realize the existence of a Vasco before the Kom.
Ps.: Vasco spoke for the first time on television about the imminent release Okay, that's okay by Mike Bongiorno. In a clip that has now become legendary online, the good Mike defines, as only he could, the album as a potpourri. Then adding, in a flash of foresight from idiot savantthat those like Vasco, who had come down from the mountains and made themselves, were destined to last a long time. An extra-musical reason to love a timeless album even more.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
