All Quotes

"He adopted an atypical, clownish style, but he didn't do cabaret. He constantly desecrated pop music and, for all these reasons, he was unthinkable for the Folkstudio audience."

"On the one hand, there were Baglioni and Cocciante, who were bland; there was Battisti, whom none of us thought much of; there were those like me who drew inspiration from France and Tenco, others who looked to Dylan, and others like Antonello who looked to Elton John and English music. Rino was truly the most Italian because he didn't look to anything or anyone else."

"And among these guys we managed on Sunday afternoons, there was this skinny guy, with a few broken teeth, looking like a real badass with his little guitar. [...] He knew how to win my heart right away, so much so that Cesaroni, who had heard him play and “strum” the guitar, as he said, was not in favor of letting him sing even on Sunday afternoons. I, on the other hand, having found some very nice, very naive, very true things in him, waited for the moment when Giancarlo, the so-called “boss,” Cesaroni went around Trastevere drinking whiskey with De Gregori, and I would throw him on stage. And I remember well these two songs he did for a few Sundays in a row, one dedicated to a friend, who, as fate would have it, I believe had been in a car accident and died, and the other dedicated to a railway worker, Agapito Malteni, and it's a song that has stayed with me; I still hum it sometimes. There was this beautiful image of a train running along the Tavoliere. That's how I got to know him."

"It was like this: you sing, sing... say, say... talk... and I'll take you all for..."

"With his guitar, he began to play [Imitating the rhythm of ‘'Ma il cielo è sempre più’'] and began to sing “il cielo è sempre più blu” (the sky is bluer and bluer) and we all went enthusiastically to Vincenzo Micocci: “Vince', look, this guy has written a little piece that could really work,” we told him. Micocci wasn't so convinced."

"I remember once talking about it with Paolo Conte and we were very impressed by his song called ‘'E cantava le canzoni’' (And he sang songs), it was a folk song [...] and it's about transhumance, a road full of cows with bells, the whistles of shepherds. [...] There, really, in a song like that, I recognize his great musical talent."

"I think that in the category of, let's say, “songwriters,” he was the most unusual one."

"He was hitchhiking with his guitar slung over his shoulder, and I gave him a ride to Rome, where he was going to look for a contract. He played me a preview of his songs, and I took him to Vincenzo Micocci, who then launched him."

"If you listen to the songs broadcast by the top five or six networks today, they are always the same songs that are circulating... The curious thing is that even today, you often hear Gaetano's songs."

"Il tempo è giustiziere Rino | ora i tuoi dischi suonano come se fossero appena usciti. | Rino, hai vinto tu."

"Mi serve sentirti Rino | presto al mattino | per non sentirmi solo e per sentire un po' di orgoglio per il posto dove sono nato, vivo e scrivo."

"Rino mi dà tuttora energia e rabbia. Aveva attitudine rock e voce roca, era un outsider anche a livello compositivo."

"Rino mi piaci un casino | tanto quanto mi piacevi da bambino, | mamma dice che eri quello che preferivo | perché eri il solo colorato in un cantautorato grigio."

"I believe that young people today continue to love him or, in some cases, to rediscover him, because of his great simplicity. So generations are clearly renewing themselves through his repertoire."

"He wanted to sing in English because he wanted to disguise himself in some way, so much so that this characteristic accompanied him even later, when he made his official debut, he was always dressed in a curious way."

"I met Rino Gaetano through De Gregori and Venditti, but he started going to the studio without me mentioning him because, how can I put it, he was somewhat protected by the two people I was working with a lot at the time."

"If some of his songs are still alive, that's the litmus test. I mean, they're songs that are suitable for any time, any era, any season."

"There is the song Nuntereggae più, which is also a very entertaining song, but he had the courage of his convictions and never backed down: he named names, at a time when naming names was very difficult."

"He was an anarchic spirit, someone who wrote whatever came into his head without responding to specific social or political codes."

"But he had a great strength, which was irony, and irony was not always understood in those years, when everyone was very sectarian. [...] He focused on writing his songs, and his songs had to faithfully reflect his thoughts but also his eccentricity, that positive eccentricity that accompanied his thoughts, his ability to distort reality in order to describe it better, using the weapon of paradox. [...] He was the most paradoxical singer-songwriter, and it was by constructing the most incredible paradoxes that he was able to describe his times, his life, and his loves with perfect realism."

"These are songs that, if you listen to them again today, all have their own reason, their own truth, and their own relevance. He was a true scourge, someone who put his finger on the wound and even added a little salt if it was needed to widen that ugly wound."

"He was definitely a nonconformist. That's what I admire about him, that's why young people still love him and why his songs still make sense and are fun to sing along to, among other things. Not all songs are meant to be sung along to in bars, taverns, restaurants, picnics, trips, buses... Gaetano's are."

"His unique interpretation of nursery rhymes in pop, reggae, whatever you want... is exclusively his, by right."

"He deserves a place in the pantheon of Italian popular music from the 1960s onwards."

"[In 2007] He is among us in some way and therefore he is in compilations, he is in fiction, he is in television commercials, he is everywhere."

"I wouldn't categorize him because the thing he hated most was being categorized. In my opinion, he is a free talent, a free personality, not inclined to compromise.7"

"Rino Gaetano was not looked upon favorably because he was disengaged, and that was not a time when disengaged people were viewed very well."

"From the authors he read, Dante, Pavese, Palazzeschi, from the music he listened to, from his appearances on television. I wanted to bring out a side of him that had never been seen before, his most poetic and fragile side."

"The first word that comes to mind when I think of Rino is “poet.”"

"(About Rino's songs) They are still relevant today, just look at the lyrics of ‘'Nuntereggae più’', it seems like it was written yesterday. It is good not to forget an artist who did not want to take sides, and who paid the price for that choice."

"A poet above all else, and a jester, an irreverent figure who knew how to play down things without being superficial. I knew his songs but not his life, I didn't know he had been in boarding school as a child. Singing wasn't a problem for me because I had a band. Then, he sang more with his heart than with technique, his were performances, I saw that once he showed up at a Corrado show wearing a diving suit..."

"Posthumous and uncritical beatification is a very Italian way of legitimizing artists who were underappreciated during their lifetime. This is certainly the case with Gaetano: too ironic and not sufficiently “aligned” in the politicized chaos of the 1970s. His death (in 1981) complicated the artistic analysis of his work. And certain fictional works, which were not very philological, did not help, except in the reverberation of memory. Gaetano was a supernova. He shone for three years, from 1976's ‘Mio fratello è figlio unico’ to 1978's Nuntereggae più. The success of Gianna in Sanremo took him by surprise, and he did not have time to come to terms with it."

"‘'Live & Rarities’', the collection of Rino Gaetano's songs authorized by his family, says two things above all: that Rino was a giant (which we already knew) and that he is more alive in death than many of his colleagues are in life (which we would rather not have known)."

"Listening to them again today, even Gaetano's ‘rejects’ say more about the present than most of his living colleagues. Even in his lesser-known tracks, there is that mix of moodiness and disillusioned irony."

"His talent lies in his extraordinary ability to interpret Italy and Italians through playfulness and intelligent provocation, social criticism and nonsense, overturning conventions, which necessarily means overturning convenient truths, official statements, the powdered politics of the Palace, and the stereotypes of a fattened and moralistic conformism."

"But he is an irreverent knight: when he takes to the stage at the Ariston in Sanremo to sing Gianna, he does so in a tailcoat and red striped shirt, with a top hat and sneakers. In this pastiche of words, colors, sounds, screams, and grimaces, the trait that distinguishes him from everyone else is his irony, lived with his heart, with total passion, never with coldness, never with detachment. Irony is his weapon as a poet and, to quote a philosopher, in Rino “irony is the sure eye that knows how to grasp the crooked, the absurd, the futility of existence.”"

"Though this is the proposition universally associated by tradition with the name of Pythagoras, no really trustworthy evidence exists that it was actually discovered by him."

"Drugs will really destroy the society. That evil is there…we should be vigilant. We should continue to pray."

"Rino Gaetano continues to flourish everywhere, even though he is no longer with us, because his figure and his music are still deeply embedded in the collective imagination and memory of our country. His music still sounds like a manifesto of brilliant protest, because Rino never sets himself up as a censor, judge, or moralizer: he recounts the world through his desires and his irony, his desire for liberation from individual anxieties and social injustices, his dreams, his artistic illusions."

"Rino throws himself onto the stage, onto the audience, onto Italy, onto politics, and he does so without a safety net other than his artistic talent. He attacks, he provokes, yet he is defenseless, an “only child” in a country that struggles to find itself and sees Rino as a jester, a “strange” singer-songwriter who sings enigmatic, incomprehensible, absurd songs."

"Rino and I met in 1970. I don't remember the exact day, but I think he showed up at Folkstudio, where we were already there: me, De Gregori, and Giorgio Lo Cascio. To ‘us’, the famous four guys with guitars, Bassignano joined us, but I think Bassignano arrived in '71. I was a taxi driver, so in the evenings."

"(About the miniseries ‘'Rino Gaetano - Ma il cielo è sempre più blu’') The fiction did not mention cocaine; it was very present in those years and in the circle where Rino ended up in his last years, and it was also responsible for his tragic end. The story ignored Rino's real problem, cocaine."

"Rino was a sprite, a clown who had roots so different from ours that it was almost inexplicable. So when he played his songs for us, for example, for me and De Gregori, Francesco and I would look at each other and try to figure him out..."

"Rino was a kind of ghost who wandered like an elf around all the clubs in Rome looking for friends, looking for people to talk to, to whom he could play his songs."

"Rino had no points of reference, except perhaps one, who had a tragic fate like his own, and that was Fred Buscaglione."

"Silvia D'Ortenzi, Rare tracce: ironie e canzoni di Rino Gaetano, Arcana, Roma, 2007. ISBN 88-7966-444-1"

"Rino Gaetano, Ma il cielo è sempre più blu. Pensieri, racconti e canzoni inedite, a cura di M. Cotto, Mondadori, 2004. ISBN 88-04-52794-3"

"Andrea Scoppetta, Sereno su gran parte del paese: una favola per Rino Gaetano, BeccoGiallo, Padova, 2009. ISBN 88-85832-60-1."

"This present art, in which we use those twice five Indian figures, is called algorismus."

"This boke is called the boke of algorym or Augrym after lewder use. And this boke tretys the Craft of Nombryng, the quych crafte is called also Algorym. Ther was a kyng of Inde the quich heyth Algor, and he made this craft. And aft his name he called hit algory."