There is a line by Vasco Rossi that stayed with me over the years: “In your artistic works you must say things you would never say to your best friend.” It became the quiet foundation behind many of the personal stories I share here – a kind of permission slip, or maybe an invitation to be a little less defended.
I mentioned this line yesterday to a GC who is obsessed with him. “You quoted Vasco, and that’s enough,” she said. Fair point. I’ve seen every tour from 1999 to 2022, even though I would never call myself a hardcore fan. For a few years I even worked for the law firm that represents him. They say you should never meet your heroes. In my case, it went reasonably well.
Still, the bond comes from something much simpler: my first concert – out of more than a thousand since then – was his.
Bologna, 1999, Stadio Dall’Ara. No smartphones. No cameras. No Instagram. No distractions. Just the crowd and the lighters, little trembling flames doing their best against the dark. I had bought the ticket months earlier and counted the days. At home, I kept listening to the Rewind live album on my Sony PlayStation. Boomer alert: yes, I listened to CDs, and yes, I played them (also) on the PlayStation One.
There is a funny story from that day. I was supposed to go with my father, but he suddenly felt unwell and went home. I entered the stadium anyway. Reckless attitude alert, but also classic teenage logic: if you have a ticket for a concert, nothing will stop you.
A few hours later, a voice echoed through the loudspeakers: “Marco Imperiale, please come to exit number six.” I ignored it. Second call. I ignored it again, assuming it was for someone else. The third time, I finally stood up, climbed the stairs and found my mother waiting for me at the entrance with a worried face. I thought something terrible had happened at home. Instead, she simply wanted to check if I was alive.
“Don’t worry, mom, I’m staying here. I’m safe.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“How will you come home?”
“Walking or by bus.”
By the time I went back in, my carefully selected spot in the curve was gone. I had been there since two in the afternoon – the kind of strategic planning only a teenager who knows he won’t see anything from that part of the stadium can have. But you always take care of your mother first. Seats can be found. Mothers cannot.
There is also a sad thread running through that night. It was the first concert after the death of Massimo Riva, Vasco’s longtime friend and guitarist. The concert was on June 30, just a couple of weeks after his unexpected passing. I never saw “Massimino” live, yet I always felt a strange connection to him — something in the hyperactivity on stage, the sense of play, the lightheartedness, and those eyes that seemed to carry an entire world inside them.
The band was incredible. Jonathan Moffett on drums. Burns and Solieri on guitars. Gallo on bass. The opening with Lo Show (I had to wait until Rome 2016 to see it again…). The usual closing with Albachiara. And before the encores, Gli Angeli, a song that carved a small space inside me and never really left.
But the band and the songs were just part of a larger-than-life experience. So big that, even after more than twenty-five years, the memories remain vivid. I remember the packet of paprika chips that passed for dinner. I remember the clothes worn by the people around me, and the look of a mature woman dancing during Bollicine. More than anything, I remember something Gurio (real name: Emiliano) told me days later when I shared the story with him. He worked at Ricordi, one of those big music stores where every Italian teenager used to spend more time than money.
“I’ve seen Vasco five times,” he said. “I stopped when I realised people don’t go to a Vasco concert to hear the songs. They go to sing their songs.”
He meant it critically, almost dismissively. But for me, that sentence opened a door: the idea of a forty-thousand-person karaoke, a collective voice echoing the same words night after night. I have always loved crowds and emotions. The bigger the wave, the better.
Many concerts followed that one. Even more Vasco’s concerts. Each with its own memories – shows with girlfriends, with friends, and of course Modena Park, La notte dei Sogni, which still sits comfortably in my personal top three.
But the first one is, and will always be, something different.
I kept all my concert tickets over the years. I still cannot find that one. Maybe destiny is waiting a little longer before showing me where it is.
P.S. I wish I had photos from that concert. Truth is, it took me fifteen years or more to start taking pictures, which still feels a bit surreal. So I grabbed a screenshot of the setlist from setlist.fm. Not to prove anything, just to keep my memory company.
