"My dark eyes and I have grown up together with a soul eager to ask for a place that doesn't exist": in the first verse of one of his famous songs, Strada Facendo, there is all the desire of Claudio Baglioni not to stop on the surface but to go further. He has 70 years of life behind him, on May 16, over 50 years of music and 60 million copies sold all over the world: the little Claudio Enrico Paolo, 'Cucaio', born in '51 in Rome Montesacro, has come a long way. . The first radio, a song contest in Centocelle, for everyone was 'Agonia', the first contract with RCA in 1969, he became 'the' singer-songwriter of sentiments, one of the kings of Rome, one of the last stars, elegant and charismatic , in a world of self-styled VIPs.
A pioneer, he revolutionized the concept of live performance by singing on trucks, on the street, on balconies, in hangars ... He inaugurated large stadium rallies and was the first, in 1996, to 'make the stage disappear' by bringing the scene in the center of the arenas. On 2 June the next challenge: the opera - total concert 'In this story that is mine' in streaming on the ITsART platform from the Teatro Olimpico in Rome. An only child, Claudio is in turn the father of an only child, Giovanni, a virtuoso of the guitar, to whom he dedicated 'Avrai' and 'Grand'uomo'. He has always shared his home with dogs, an imagined complicity like that with "a brother who is told about". Meticulous composer and inspired author, Baglioni is a pop icon but he has also navigated through world music,rock and jazz, with partnerships like the one with his friend Danilo Rea. If the recorded duets are traceable, from 'Stelle di stelle' with Mia Martini and 'Io dal mare' with Pino Daniele to those of QPGA (40 years later) and the collaborations, from Stefano Di Battista to Tony Levin, from Astor Piazzolla to Youssou N'Dour, on the other hand, there are countless live duets on tour ('Capitani coraggiosi' with Gianni Morandi) but above all on the island of his heart, Lampedusa, to which he gave 10 editions of O'Scià (the last in 2012), bringing over 300 artists to the Guitgia beach, without sponsors and cameras. It was the island of the Pelagie, together with the experiences on TV with Fabio Fazio at 'Anima mia' and 'The last waltz',the Baglioni gym, host and showman seen at the head of the Sanremo Festival in 2018 and 2019.
Snubbed by the "committed" artists and challenged in 1988 in Turin on the Amnesty stage, Baglioni actually touched on universal themes and social unease in some songs such as the old men, the lost men and Noi no. Critics appreciate the author's gifts, the unique timbre and the vocal range (illuminating 'A thousand days of me and you'), while the public touches on idolatry. His fanclub, CLAB, has amassed tens of thousands of members. He met the popes, from Wojtyla to Francis. He gave the latter the O'Scià hat in Lampedusa before celebrating his 80th anniversary in 2016 with a charity concert in the Paul VI hall. Faith is a constant, the cherished desire to become a friar, the love for Umbria, land of saints, the first "famous" concertprecisely in Norcia, in 1972, 'Fratello Sole, sister of Luna' for Franco Zeffirelli with the continuous search for that "hook in the middle of the sky".
The success was pressing and overwhelming with the albums of the 70s: This little big love, Gira Che Ti Rigira Amore Bello, And you, Saturday Afternoon, Alone, And how are you. In the 80s a new start with Strada fare (and the liveliness of pieces like Via e Notti), the double live Alé-oo, La vita è ora which remains in the charts for 18 months, with over 1.5 million copies sold , a record, up to the double album of the Oltre consecration. Sometimes Baglioni felt the need to retire. "Where have I been in all these years I had gone to wash my clothes from the deceptions of success", he sings in the 'cinematic' album 'Io sono qui' in '95, after 5 years of silence. He always came back with the desire, almost an obsession, to leave a mark. In the years '90 in the futuristic public version 'Traveler on the queue of time'. There are live projects, cover albums and tributes like 'Our concert' by Umberto Bindi. It is from 2013 'Con Voi', an album pitted on the web a single at a time. The latest of unpublished 'In this story, which is mine', comes out seven years later. It exudes freshness in the lyrics and a sense of freedom, it is "the peace of consensus". "A strange thing is happening to me: it seems to me the eve of my first album. As if time had not run its course or had turned back - he confessed - to find that day".album pitted on the web one single at a time. The latest of unpublished 'In this story, which is mine', comes out seven years later. It exudes freshness in the lyrics and a sense of freedom, it is "the peace of consensus". "A strange thing is happening to me: it seems to me the eve of my first album. As if time had not run its course or had turned back - he confessed - to find that day".album pitted on the web one single at a time. The latest of unpublished 'In this story, which is mine', comes out seven years later. It exudes freshness in the lyrics and a sense of freedom, it is "the peace of consensus". "A strange thing is happening to me: it seems to me the eve of my first album. As if time had not run its course or had turned back - he confessed - to find that day".
