Mala tempora currunt, the Latins said two thousand years ago. Looking around, the situation doesn't seem that different. "We live in dark times, in fact it's really the middle of the night", agrees Zucchero, who however seems to have found his solution. "In these moments here, I tend to be as sunny as possible, to find as much light as possible." Darkness and light, concreteness and lightness, joy and pain are the key points on which his new world tour is based, the Overdose D'Amore World Wild Tour, which started on Saturday 30 March with three dates at the Royal Albert Hall and which will also hit Italy between the end of June and the beginning of July with five stadium dates (Udine, Bologna, Messina, Pescara, Milan).
"Every now and then we need fun", Sugar says in English during the live performance in the Victorian temple of British music, packed with Italians and others. "We need lightness", he repeats once he gets off the stage. "We must never take ourselves too seriously, we must have fun." He, he plays the part with a show that seems to be the perfect show. The sum of his forty-plus years of music in over two and a half hours. A definitive Zuccherology, someone dares to define it, developed over years of live performances and many kilometres, including songs taken from his extensive repertoire ("I can choose from at least 250 songs and change the set list every night") which have become classics, top-class musicians from all over the world who warm up the audience by playing the old fashioned way, without relying too much on computers and technology. "It's my way of seeing and experiencing live music: if there's no music played, the colors and dynamics are missing and everything would be very flat. I wouldn't have fun. Is the concert working? So why change it?".
Zucchero live at the Royal Albert Hall in London
But there is another factor that should not be underestimated in the success of the show: Zucchero's never-ending desire to be among his audience. "Vasco says he wants to die on stage? Well, I've been saying it long before him and I even came very close once in Zurich", he replies, and he seems to really mean it, indicating his primary commitment to live activity the future. "Given my age, I prefer to kill my time with concerts: you see people, you travel the world, you're alive, you feel alive. I like records and I'm working on something, but I'm aiming for tours, at least for as long as I can." And he doesn't think about quitting as other colleagues have announced.
He also says enough about duets: "I was among the first to do them, now I leave them to others. Also because many artists I would have liked to work with are no longer there. One above all Amy Winehouse". The only duet he allows himself during the London show - apart from the presence of the backing vocalist Oma Jali with a powerful and emotional voice - is with the Italian-British Jack Savoretti on the notes of Senza una donna. "He loves the song and asked me if we could do it together and be a guest at the Royal Albert Hall and I gladly accepted. After all, it was here that I performed for the first time in 1990, thanks to Eric Clapton who called me to open his concerts. He gave me a great chance: from there my career outside Italy started. I don't know if there will be other guests during the tour, but if I had the choice I would like to have Mark Knopfler and Cat Stevens."
And what do you think of young artists? "It seems to me that today everything is a bit watered down, even rock. Everyone is too attentive to political correctness and no one takes it too seriously. Social battles in songs? It seems more like a dartboard to me. Even if there is someone who writes well : I like Salmo, Marracash, Blanco". Among the youngest, especially in the rap and trap scene, there are violent and sexist lyrics that politics, according to the undersecretary of Culture Gianmarco Mazzi, would like to combat with a memorandum of understanding: "I don't think that people like Francesco Guccini, Fabrizio De André or Francesco De Gregori would sign up for something like that. I wouldn't sign up for it either", says Zucchero decisively.
Zucchero live at the Royal Albert Hall in London
In almost 35 years, he has returned to the London stage many times (he holds the record for non-operatic Italian artist to have performed there the most times). "Since then it has always been the same hotel and same room, with one difference: then I was in a bad situation and in front of a window I thought about suicide, but today I can easily keep the windows open", he jokes with a melancholy note in his voice. Compared to the past, something else has also changed: "Before, I willingly went to Russia. I started going there in '90 with a historic concert in the Kremlin. Now, even if I were invited, I wouldn't go. But not even to Netanyahu or Trump." He remains away, for different reasons, even from the Sanremo stage. "It's not that I don't want the festival and that I don't know if I would go. It's a bit worn out - says Zucchero, indulging in the Emilian dialect -. And then I go to the competition to do what?". After all, he cares little about prizes and recognitions: "Oro, Incenso e Birra is the second best-selling album in history in Italy, probably the first because some reprints were not counted, but I don't give a damn, the prizes what counts counts: they are like caciotte".
Video Zucchero: 'It will be a wild tour, a train that doesn't know when it will arrive'
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