Her voice was like the romantic algorithm of the Sixties, the prehistory of Tinder that united in a distinguished match souls that otherwise would not have merged. The “Gardener of Love” sang and Cupid’s arrow walked among hippies, elephant foot fashion and the dimly lit nightclubs it sounded in. My hands on your waist.
At 77, the Sicilian who lives in Brussels and has been appointed Commander of the Arts and Letters of France, continues to sing even in Japanese. He continues to adapt compositions to Turkish, Korean and German, and already has a program of shows in Quebec in 2022. His reign survives longer than in domestic coffers, between 33, 45 and 78 rpm records. . On Spotify, it is possible to rediscover his multilingual and inexhaustible work.
He has the impression that a blink of an eye has passed since this childhood move that tore him from the sunny fields of Sicily to the cloudy towns of Ghlin – first – then Jemappes.. All the memory seems locked in a guitar that he keeps and whose strings he has decided not to replace so as not to alter the illusion of time: as a child, he sang while tapping a broom in front of the mirror. His mother discovered it and wrote to the Sicilian grandfather. This is how he arrived in Belgium the determining instrument of its destiny.
Salvatore Adamo as a young man, when he was a star and a cover in the world
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Its history is crossed by several “no”. Eliminated from a Radio Luxembourg musical competition in 1960, he was about to return home sheepishly, when a member of the jury reconsidered his positions and convinced the others: “This 16-year-old has something. -the. Adamo – who was secretly from his father – came back and won. “I still remember the tears of my father, who was against my career, when the days of the competition the radio played my song. With this competition that I won, I was able to record my first album. The first three failed. I’ve had”.
Take the Buenos Aires call with the surgical souvenir portion. His last stay was in March 2012. This time he sang at the Gran Rex A lock of your hair and with its overwhelming rearview mirror, it made even sound engineers cry. His music was part of Leonardo Favio’s film Perón, symphony of a feeling. Today he makes fun of those who rediscover him in the voice of Raphael or discover him in the songs of Bart Simpson: he is the composer of My big night (Hold on in its original version), the hit that -adapt- popularized El Niño de Linares.
“This return was special, because I had the happiness of the reunion after decades, but the sadness of the news of the death of Lucio Dalla. I remember crying inside I sang Caruso as a tribute, “he said adorably harshly.” There was a time when I was friends with Jairo. We played football in France. In New York I once met Favio and there was a lot of sympathy. I could have been Argentinian ”.
-How is it?
-In 1947, my parents had to choose between Belgium and Argentina. My mother’s brother and sister chose Argentina. But my father, who knows why, chose Belgium. I sometimes think about what I would be today if I had chosen Argentina.
Salvatore Adamo today, at 77
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-The tango occupied a privileged place in the first years of his life. How did this link come about?
-It was very important. My father listened to a lot of tangos. La cumparsita, CaminitoThese are wonderful melodies that I keep in mind. I myself did some tangos in my repertoire, like a parody which had a great success in France (You allow, sir), which tells about the Sunday celebrations when we lived in a working-class town. One carried the accordion, the other the guitar, and they sang and danced. Tango is music that touches me a lot, it comes from the soul.
Remotely, what happens to you when you remember data like the one you once escorted The Beatles into sales?
-I was second in sales behind the Beatles in 1966. An incredible thing. I say to myself was this reality or did I dream it? I have not sold records in Anglo-Saxon countries. But it sold all over Europe and South America. Quite a performance that made me proud. I have met the Beatles two or three times. Once I recorded the song at Abbey Road Studios Poor verlaine. I was in studio B and they worked at A. We greeted each other, they played La Marseillaise and I thought it was in my honor, because they thought I was French. (Series). Until he comes out All you need is love and I understood that La Marseillaise was the introduction. What innocence of mine.
Salvatore Adamo and his inseparable guitar
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-How is your voice today, how do you perceive it?
-I lost some treble. I like it better. Before I had a complex with my voice. In my class, I didn’t want to speak because I had a strange and androgynous voice. And during the first albums many said: “I thought it was a woman who sang”.
-He had a healthy relationship with the celebrity at peak times. How did you deal with this?
-I was lucky to have my dad by my side when my dream started. If I wanted to do something presumptuous, he would put his hand on my back and I would return to Earth. I lived in a city of workers where solidarity was natural.
In its peak decade, the sixties. A 1968 photo.
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-How is your life as a writer?
-I wrote a novel (The memory of happiness remains happiness, The memory of happiness is also happiness) to thank the people I loved. It would be difficult to speak to them in a four minute song. I told the story of my family, of all the men who worked in a mine 1,000 meters deep. Imagine that it gives me chicken skin. I wrote this drama with irony. I now hope to finish the second novel. Humor is very important. It is the elegance of the desperate. My father did everything to prevent me from working in this mine. I was once asked to take promotional photos in a mine and I never agreed. I had too much respect, I don’t wish her or my worst enemy.
-His life has been crossed by immigration. Today, he shifts the theme of xenophobia in his work.
-Two years ago I wrote a song called Migrants, in which I tell the drama of these people who die in the middle of the Mediterranean. I tell the audience before singing it that migrating is never a pleasure, it’s a drama. My parents had misery on them, these people who migrate have death behind them, the least we can give them is a little humanity. Now, when I compose, I am dependent on the present tense. If something happens that shocks me, I write a song. The public knows that I don’t live in the clouds.
The eternal quarantine reminds him of the old confinement that marked his childhood. Meningitis and mastoiditis kept him hospitalized for almost a year. She was a nun who taught him to read and write prostrate, made him the best student in her school and made him understand that “pain is a path to art”. Salvatore does not know what happened to the life of the priest who refused him participation in the choir with the explanation that his voice sounded “cracked”. Sweet revenge flies over the charts of old record companies: more than 100 million records sold.
Writer, Salvatore Adamo was encouraged to write a novel in French.
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UNICEF Ambassador, father of three, the man who starred in the French film The Arnauds So what in 2004 he made a forced and prolonged silence because of a heart problem, he tends to wake up early in the morning. He spends hours navigating waters that did not exist during his first 40 years of profession: the Internet. So he discovers “today’s wonders like Ed Sheeran”, but never lowers “the bar”: “I bet on sincere music. When I find out that a song is a thing, I leave.
The Adamo company – which even includes a perfume in its last name – has no plans to lower the blinds or be tracked down by the virus. He is always called for presentations at incredible points. “They ask me for concerts in churches, they put on a stage at the same altitude as the sanctuary and that makes me more complex,” he laughs. He also sings in prisons. “In Mons, where the poet Verlaine lived and studied, the attention of the prisoners turned my heart. Everything was like poetry in my life. I dreamed of being a Germanic language teacher and music took me to another dimension. I admit that now I’m more afraid of singing in front of the public than at 20, because I haven’t won anything in advance ”.
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