... It has all the credentials for
being an artist is of a melancholy
drink like an Irishman
if it meets a desperate
not asked for an explanation
divides his dinner with painters
blind, deaf musicians,
unlucky players, writers vain ...
I could not fail to mention a great artist as misunderstood as just as brilliant as my fellow countryman Piero Ciampi.
The first real Italian singer-songwriter, genius little understood but very original poet of our reality, a man with a restless temperament.
Piero Ciampi was born September 28, 1934 at 12 via Pontino Pelletier in the district of Livorno. A popular district inhabited by traders and small port always. E merchant (of skin) was also the father of Peter, who was born by his second marriage. During the war, as a result of fierce bombardments that made thousands of victims among the inhabitants of Livorno, the Ciampi family displaced in campaigns to return to Pisa Livorno until several years after the end of the war when the area was finally drained.
finished high school he joined the faculty of engineering at the University of Pisa, but the left after passing about half of the examinations. He returned to Livorno put up with his brothers Roberto and Paolo, a trio in which he was the singer. To live, however, worked in a company of lubricating oil to the port until he left the military.
The period of the CAR was held in Pesaro, where he spent his evenings off duty, playing in local clubs along with three fellow soldiers including Gianfranco Reverberi. Even during this period remember his great drinking, his character that led him to seek a fight. But it was also a fascinating man and a poet who could only provoke extreme feelings: love or hate.
And he falls in love with the daughter of the commander that Ciampi wrote letters every day: according to Gianfranco Reverberi "Cyrano de Bergerac would have even been able to do better ". He returned to Livorno
plays the bass (instrument learned to play by self-taught) in small complessini the area. But the restlessness and dissatisfaction grew, and so in 1957 without a penny in his pocket, went to Genoa, where he met Reverberi, then go to Paris. Here they arrange singing for a few pounds from his poems, perhaps written just hours before in a pub. Often did not even have money to eat but he became known in some circles in Paris where he was called "Italian" here he met Louis-Ferdinand Celine and became an admirer of Georges Brassens. If
professional life proves difficult, is not unlike the personal and emotional. All of the sixties were years of wandering: Sweden, Spain, England, Ireland, perhaps even Japan. Run away without saying anything to anyone. So how to escape his women: Moira, Ireland, and after less than a year of marriage goes away with Stephen, their son born in 1963, which gives him a daughter, Gabriella. Years later, in the song "It has all the necessary requirements," Ciampi will sing: "He so loved two women were beautiful, blond, tall, slender. But he has no". The only constant companion and is increasingly inseparable from the bottle.
to appreciate and recognize the greatness of the author and performer are just a few friends of early years in Milan, including Gino Paoli who has long played his songs and he could get him a contract with RCA and a significant advance in money Livorno without affecting the singer squandered one piece. His haughty selfishness is due to his being an artist, poet, and concerts that organized, participated by drunk, often insulting the audience. The kicker Ezio Vendrame Friuli, his close friend in those years, during a meeting at the stadium with Appiah's shirt stopped the game to greet Padova publicly Piero, after recognizing him on the sidelines for the event.
continued to record with the usual failure feedback while some arrived as an author: in 1973, "My Child" (written by Ciampi with Pino Pavone, a singer known by the Calabrian Ciampi in 1960) was sung by Carmen Villani to Canzonissima (the Villani was also designed to record a whole album with songs by Ciampi, but RCA did not approve the project). The same year
Nicola Di Bari refused "You and I, Maria," which still recorded a year later. And it is precisely in 1974 that Ciampi's career may have yet another turning point: Ornella Vanoni Gianni Marchetti contacted because he wanted to record an entire album with the songs of Ciampi, but he was unavailable and now reappeared when the project was designed by Nada , Ciampi's fellow villager, with the beautiful album I discovered that there too. Meanwhile
dragged from one club to another, often without concluding concert and arguing with the organizers, bartenders and listeners. In recent years he returned frequently to Livorno.
the 1976 is its historic appearance at the Club Tenco: the evening is recorded and released years later on CD.
In late 1976 and early 1977 Ciampi test to perform in concert with some friends met at the RCA are Elvis, Nada and Renzo Zenobi, but evenings are not widely, is also recorded a program, but Rai does not relay ever. It should be singing in lounges so-called "elite" to take me the money, trouble with the bartender regularly attacking and insulting the audience of wealthy bourgeois heavily (often by planting all in the lurch, in Florence in 1975, he went away without finishing the then the first piece to be saying the singer more pay for Italy, three hundred thousand pounds for half a song "). The episodes of this period are numerous, in Rome, while attending a performance of Silvan, sends him publicly in the ass (exact words) because his sleight of hand they seem trivial and another night is leading a fight with Franco Califano, who invited him in his night without offering a drink.'s colleagues are strictly away, and he returns gladly distrust. He has a quiet and high esteem by Fabrizio de André (but not Frank Sinatra), called the premium Tenco, position the speakers as "pieces of shit".
died in Rome on January 19, 1980 for throat cancer, attended by His doctor, who was also singer-songwriter: Experience Tnt (who engraved to commemorate his friend, years later, one of the most beautiful songs of Ciampi: "Not you"). He wrote in his poem of 1975:
Many do not know that a famous refrain of one of the most popular songs of that script which I never suffered, such Zucchero Fornaciari (as narrated by him during a lengthy interview, but recognized only after a cause intentatagli by relatives of the late singer-songwriter) is a quotation from the great inspiration of Piero Ciampi: "The stormy sea at sunset, the moon and went behind a curtain of stars if the ... fuck.
(thanks to Wikipedia and the Brigade Lolli for help)
