The former Timoria singer recounts his band’s masterpiece in a book
“On New Year’s I saw for the ninth time Pulp Fiction, but I would have preferred to do something else »: how hard is the life of the rocker in a pandemic, if there is one category with which the virus has raged more than others, this is that of musicians. Like Omar Pedrini: he had two concerts in Sardinia, swept away by Omicron: «We live in the evenings – says the former Timoria leader – the economic damage was great. With all the love I have for Pope Francis, I don’t understand why the 20,000 outdoors for the Christmas mass (or the crowded ski resorts) yes and the concerts in the square no: if the emergency is great, as it seems, maybe it would be it was better to close everything. And instead we always and only pay us artists ».
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If the present therefore speaks badly to Omar, the near and distant past, on the other hand, is very good for this 54-year-old multifaceted artist with a crazy heart. Who with Timoria, in fact, wrote a glorious page of Italian rock in the 90s, symbolized by their masterpiece album,
Windless journey, 1993: the singer celebrated it first with a tour («they had to be 8 dates, they became 49») and now with a book. Written with Federico Scarioni, accompanied by beautiful photos and illustrations, “Inside a windless journey” tells the concerts first and then that x-ray disk. Evidently passed from generation to generation “since I saw a lot of twenties at the live shows”. Because? «It is the story of a young man in crisis, between amorous disappointments and toxic addictions, but who does not surrender to defeat. It was valid in 1993, it is valid today ».
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Joe was called that boy, sort of renovated Tommy of the Who, a concept album (ancient word …) where Joe obviously was Omar. Who narrowly escaped: “My son Pablo was born, I understood that I would have to settle down with hard drugs and I left for India in an ashram.” A crackdown that would have served him later when a congenital disease would have shattered his heart, starting in 2002, with several relapses, the last one last summer: “Yes, if I hadn’t stopped in time I would have died”.
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And to the microphone of this adventure he would have turned Francesco Renga who left the Timoria family to pursue more national-popular shores in 1998: «He had to go to Sanremo and he said no. He had already done eight though, maybe he could give up one. We are like the Beatles, the only Italian rock band not to have had a reunion … »Omar jokes a little bitterly. Sanremo already, Timoria were among the first to sing to us in 1991, among young people, when among the rock bands they did not use and was actually seen as a sacrilege: “Yes, we have opened a path”. A highway given the victory of the Måneskin. Pedrini likes them: «They are not part of a scene, as in our times, but they have the moral responsibility to become its leaders. And if in the meantime under the tree the kids have asked for an electric guitar instead of a mobile phone, it is certainly thanks to them “.
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January 3, 2022 (change January 3, 2022 | 07:49)
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