“I will show myself.” This is the promise with which Al Bano Carrisi (Puglia, 1943) faces the È la mia vita tour, which will take him to several Spanish cities in March. At the age of 80, he says that the stupidest question that can be asked is if he is thinking about retirement: “Why should I retire? Do you know what it means to sing? Do you know what daily contact with music causes you? Retire, why?”. The Italian does not know a life away from the stage. After a 58-year career, music has always been his most faithful companion: “My blood is liquid, but with notes inside. In both the best moments and the worst moments, the music put me in a kind of trance. It has been my most intense therapy.”
Al Bano has been achieving success for decades, but there is undoubtedly one song that has marked him forever: Felicità. The song, released in 1981, went viral a few months ago thanks to having appeared in the Berlin series, which the singer considers “incredible”. “I call it ‘miracle song’. I don’t know if there is a need for happiness, if it is the music that has something special that captures or if it is simply the triumph of simplicity”, he argues when looking for the reason for this triumph on social networks.
However, the internet is not a world in which the artist feels comfortable: “I’m from the last century, it’s a shame. I’m up to date with everything, but I don’t like it very much.” And the fact is that times have changed since Al Bano started in the industry and what used to make young people fall in love, melodies that spoke of love and romanticism, has been transformed into urban rhythms with bolder lyrics and a clear prominence of the sex “It’s a mirror of the times”, he admits with a smile, and adds that “the best dimension of the human being is when there is sex with love. It has something magical, it goes beyond matter, beyond the body. This is real sex.”
Media exposure is something that Al Bano has always lived with. His marriages, the first with Romina Power in 1970, with whom he had four children, and the second with Loredana Lecciso, with two children in common, were always the subject of talk shows and magazines of the heart. “The important thing is to know how to build a bridge between the artist and the journalist, a communication that is always respectful. Journalists are indispensable”, he says despite the harassment he has suffered at times.
The life of the singer-songwriter, very prolific in the professional field, has been shaken by horrible events that led him to question his own beliefs. “The nineties were a tragedy for me”, he reflects, referring to the mysterious disappearance of his daughter Ylenia, aged just 24, and the subsequent separation from Romina. “I lost my faith, I threw it out of my life because, in my thinking, I didn’t deserve to lose a daughter the way I lost her, nor to lose an intense, fantastic marriage. The tragedy of children who have to grow up either only with their father or only with their mother, because at that time Romina was not there…”, she recalls with the acceptance that has come to her over the years. “My daughters went through very bad times, and not only them, but me too. I lived like a little devil, with rage inside that was destroying my life.” This led him to investigate himself until he found answers: “Like Christ, I too had to rise from this cross that had been placed on me. I looked for the way and when I found the strength of faith again, I was happier because I understood everything better. Anti-Christianity led me to a greater awareness of faith”. When asked if he now lives in peace, Al Bano admits with some melancholy that “more or less”.
One of the essential loves in Al Bano’s life is that of his children, of whom he feels “too proud”. “When they grow up you have to be more than a parent, a psychologist, to anticipate and understand what they choose for life. I know I did a good job. I also know that they have had the negative experience of losing a sister, the end of a great love between their parents… but in life not everything can be as you want, you always have to face something that you don’t expect”, he answers calmly.
All in all, Al Bano faces life and his tour with enthusiasm. “I dream too much. I like that every day something is born inside me. A dream is like a child”, he says with the sparkle in his eyes and the uncontrollable smile of a young man who still has a long way to go.
