After sixty years, Gino Paoli's masterpiece has its own video.
It was 1963 when a man not yet thirty years old Gino Paoli he sang a song that would launch him into the firmament of the greatest Italian songwriters. Sapore di sale is the most beautiful and iconic song of the summer, the one in which the mind is completely invaded by the blue of the sky, by the sound of the waves and ... by love. That summer marked the life of the Friulian singer-songwriter, more exactly of Monfalcone, where the 23 September of the 1934. Friulano, because that was his native land, even if most think he is Genoese.
Genoa is the city that welcomed him and his family shortly after his birth. Pegli became his neighborhood and Genoa later became his city. Of that city and of the musical movement that has distinguished it, the so-called Genoese school, he has become a symbol of it together with Fabrizio De André, Umberto Bindi, Ivano Fossati, But also to Paolo Conte e Luigi Tenco, both born in Piedmont, the first in Asti, the second in Cassine, in the province of Alessandria, but Genoese by adoption.
Gino Paoli. An incomprehensible summer
We defined the summer of 1963 as a period that marked the life of Gino Paoli. The success of Sapore di sale it is extraordinary, but despite this the singer-songwriter arrives to make the extreme gesture. On 11 July 1963 he attempts suicide by shooting himself in the heart. About the episode a few years later he will say that: "Each suicide is different, and private. It is the only way to choose: because the crucial things in life, love and death, are not chosen; you do not choose to be born, or to love, or to die. Suicide is the only arrogant way given to man to decide for himself. But I am the proof that not even in this way can you really decide. The bullet pierced the heart and lodged in the pericardium, where it is still encapsulated. I was home alone. Anna, then my wife, had left; but he had left the keys to a friend, who shortly afterwards came in to see how I was ”.
The video clip… sixty years later
Fortunately, life went on, for him and for us who enjoyed his art. Many new hits, an extraordinary musical career that has given other immortal masterpieces: The Cat, The sky in a room, What is there, Without end, A long love story, Sassi, Four friends. Now one of his masterpieces has its own video clip, a tribute to the song Sapore di sale it is a tribute to an artist who has been celebrating his family for a few weeks 87 years and that he accompanied, with his songs, entire generations.
The video was shot last summer, along the Romagna Riviera, exactly in Bellaria. Director Stefano Salvati has recreated the magical atmosphere of the sixties, in an almost Fellini-like atmosphere reminiscent a little 8 and ½ and a little there Sweet life, complete with a band, bullocks and prima donna, dispenser of kisses and smiles. The uniqueness of the video concerns its protagonists who are all children. Like the one who impersonates the Gino Paoli of the 60s, complete with iconic glasses. And speaking of the glasses at the end of the video, the Friulian-Genoese singer-songwriter reveals a little secret about the place where he bought them.
The song in the video is played by Gino Paoli himself with the marching band of Funk Off. It is exciting to see and hear. To think that that song that accompanies us every summer under the umbrellas of our beaches and that is sung, whistled or simply listened to by many is almost sixty years old, has something incredible and magical. The magic of a poem by an apparently gruff man, who with age has acquired a sailor's face, with a large white mustache and the furrows of time on his face.
The inspiration
Overlooking the splendid sea of Sicily, that of Capo d'Orlando, while he was in a deserted house in front of a deserted beach, he composed his greatest success. A day at the sea, where the sun lazily accompanied the passage of time, while his woman bathed and then lay down next to him. As the same author has recalled several times, the song was not written for Stefania Sandrelli, then a very young actress and companion of the singer-songwriter.
Gino Paoli has never been an artist to be caged within a definition, of course he has always been one who, as his Genoese colleague and friend Fabrizio De André would have said, traveled in an obstinate and opposite direction. His artistic career as well as his sentimental one, have always placed before us a man who has never accepted the normality of life, who has always wanted something more, to discover all the different aspects and, above all, who was never imposed on him anything. , from no one. He also wanted to put his personal seal on death, he tried to decide, by himself, when to greet this world. Fortunately that bullet followed one, too obstinate and contrary direction. Now she is close to his heart to remind him that life always offers a new opportunity. To him as to all of us.
Article by Stefano Vori
