Rino Gaetano

Salvatore Antonio "Rino" Gaetano (29 October 1950 – 2 June 1981) was an Italian musician and singer-songwriter. He is famous for his satirical songs and oblique yet incisive political commentary. He is remembered for his raspy voice, for the heavily ironic lyrics of his songs and his social protests. He died in a car accident at age 30. He was a popular and influential figure, widely re-evaluated by the following teen generations.

Biography

Salvatore Antonio Gaetano was born in Crotone, Calabria. At the time of his birth, his family had just returned to Calabria after spending a period of displacement—common to many of their fellow citizens—in Dolo due to the ravages of World War II, where his older sister Anna was born. In the family, he was often called “Salvatorino,” but Anna preferred to call him by an even shorter nickname, “Rino,” which over time became the only name she used for him in everyday life.

In March 1960, at the age of ten, his family moved to Rome, where he would spend the rest of his life. In 1961, he was sent to study at the seminary Piccola Opera del Sacro Cuore of Narni, in the province of Terni, where, under the guidance of his teacher Renato Simeoni, he began to show his flair for writing poetry. Far from his family, Rino composed the short poem E l'uomo volò ("The Man Flew"). His teacher remembers him thus:

[Gaetano] understood the importance of studying, but he also had moments of great absence, which was not emptiness. It was very difficult to find Rino in situations of “emptiness”; he was always mentally occupied. There were tastes, this is how I always saw him, tastes within this person, his personal pursuits that kept him busy. He was quite a dreamy lad, very dreamy.

By 1967, he had finished school and returned to Rome, settling in the quarter of Monte Sacro, where he would live until his death, first in Via Cimone and then, from 1970, in Via Nomentana Nuova 53, where a plaque was placed in 2011 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of his death.

In 1968, Gaetano created a quartet with a group of friends called Krounks. The group mainly played cover songs and Rino played bass and enjoyed writing songs in his spare time. They were inspired by Italian artists such as Enzo Jannacci, Fabrizio De André, Adriano Celentano, I Gufi, Gian Pieretti and Ricky Gianco as well as international musicians such as Bob Dylan and The Beatles, as can be read on the title page of a notebook containing chords and songs Rino wrote during this period.

In 1969, Gaetano approached Folkstudio, a well-known club in Rome for promoting young artists. Here he met Antonello Venditti, Ernesto Bassignano and Francesco De Gregori. As he recounted, His style proved very different from that of the other musicians, and his strong use of irony caused concerns for the club managers:

"When I sang at Folkstudio, I was already the center of discussion... in fact they did not want me to do many of my pieces because, as they said, it seemed like I just wanted to make fun of everyone."

Bassignano also recalls:

He adopted an atypical, clownish style, but he did not perform cabaret. He continually desecrated pop music and, for all these reasons, he was unthinkable for the Folkstudio audience.

During that same period, Gaetano often performed alongside Venditti in cabaret shows organised by Marcello Casco.

Gaetano was a multi-talented performer and, during the early 1970s, he performed in cabarets and took part in several plays in addition to gigging. He played the role of Estragon in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, the Fox in a production of Pinocchio by Italian director Carmelo Bene, and recited poetry by Majakovsky.

Gaetano was an accomplished actor, developing much of his subsequent stage style and writing technique through his theatre experience. He was inspired by German kabarett, a form of theatre excelling in political satire. Wikipedia describes this as "unlike comedians who make fun of all kind of things, Kabarett artists (German: Kabarettisten) pride themselves as dedicated almost completely to political and social topics of more serious nature which they criticize using techniques like cynicism, sarcasm and irony." They were able to deal with social themes and political developments through their acts, something that inspired Gaetano and can be seen in many of his concepts and staging, for example, in his song Aida/Spendi spandi effendi regarding the oil crisis of the 1970s. It enabled him to make political observations while avoiding censorship. Gaetano cited Ionesco as his favourite playwright, one of the foremost writers of Theatre of the Absurd, saying that he explored the usual problem of the inability to truly communicate, isolation and exclusion. He developed a comedy act with his friend Bruno Francelleschi, 'Ad esempio a me piace...' (For Example, I Like...), as a mixture of theatre and music.

In addition to his performing, Gaetano studied accountancy, encouraged by his father to pursue a secure career in banking. Gaetano asked for one more year to break into music and in 1972, he registered with the SIAE and met Vincenzo Micocci, owner of the record label It. In the same year, Gaetano recorded his first 45 rpm record with the Milan-based Produttori Associati containing the songs "Jacqueline" and "La ballata di Renzo", a song which features lyrics that echo details of his own death. The disc was not printed and Gaetano signed with Vincenzo Micocci, releasing his first single in 1973, I Love You Maryanna/Jaqueline (with "Jaqueline" on the B-side) produced by RosVeMon, the surnames of Aurelio Rossitto, Antonello Venditti and Piero Montanari. In this song, Gaetano exhibits his multicultural education, singing in four languages – English, Italian, German and French. Rino decided to release the single under the pseudonym of Kammamuri's as tribute to a character in Pirates of Malaysia by Emilio Salgari. According to Micocci the choice of using a pseudonym was a sign of shyness and insecurity of Gaetano. The singer-songwriter seemed to be rather doubtful, especially about his singing abilities and therefore about the possibility of singing his own songs. Gaetano was not particularly in tune; suffice it to say that in middle school in Narni, he was excluded from the seminary choir. However, according to many experts in the field, it was precisely his natural and “rough” singing style that gave his songs such intensity.

Micocci said:

"He considered himself a writer, not a singer. He believed he didn't have a good voice, so that after the release of I Love You Marianna, when the time came to record his first album, he came and told me that it would be better to get someone else to sing the songs. I, of course, I laughed and sent him in the studio."

In 1974 Rino met Bruno Franceschelli, with whom he developed a close friendship. Bruno recalls their first meeting as follows:

It was the early 1970s when Rino and I met for the first time in a bar in Montesacro, our neighbourhood. In that bar, I was “playing draughts” while Rino was “drinking lager from a can”. The bar was called Il Barone. I could describe that meeting as two people who had been searching for each other for a long time finally finding each other.

Gaetano described the atmosphere of the bar mentioned by Franceschelli in the song Tu, forse non essenzialmente tu (You, perhaps not essentially you). The album cover shows the singer, in a deliberately blurred image, walking in front of a brick wall of his first home in Rome, with a sign hanging on a door that reads “Ingresso libero” (Free entry). The title alludes to Gaetano's entry into the world of music.

The album was not particularly successful, while the single taken from the album, Tu, forse non essenzialmente tu/I tuoi occhi sono pieni di sale (You, perhaps not essentially you/Your eyes are full of salt), was more successful, capturing the attention of Renzo Arbore and Gianni Boncompagni, who played the two tracks several times on their radio programme Alto gradimento. Compared to the first single, the songs on this new album showed greater social commitment and embraced themes such as marginalisation and industrial alienation.

In 1974, Gaetano published his first album, Ingresso libero. The LP featured many of the themes that would characterise his work, such as issues of isolation, marginalisation and exclusion, as well as his lively style and intelligent, witty lyrics. His songs began to be played on radio stations and in the same year, through record company RCA, Gaetano wrote three songs for Nicola Di Bari "Prova a chiamarmi amore", "Questo amore così grande" and "Ad esempio a me piace... il Sud", included in the album Ti fa bella l'amore. None of the three achieved great success in Italy, The song Ad esempio a me piace... il Sud took part in Canzonissima but was eliminated in the early stages, while the Spanish version, "Por ejemplo", achieved success in Latin America.