steven brown
brown plays tenco



LUIGI TENCO

The popular Italian singer, songwriter and actor Luigi Tenco was born in March 1938 in Cassine. After playing in high school jazz bands, he made his professional music debut with the band I cavaieri (The Knights), and during this period employed the pseudonym Gigi Mai. His first single under his real name, entitled Quando, was released in 1961.

The following year Tenco began a brief dalliance with cinema, appearing in Luciano Salce's movie La cuccagna, as well as contributing to the soundtrack. The singer also struck up a firm friendship with the Genoese anarchist poet Riccardo Mannerini. Tenco's first album, Ballata e canzoni, appeared in 1962. One of the songs, Cara maestro (Dear Teacher) was censored by the authorities, who would also later ban other Tenco compositions, including Io so (I Do) and Una brava ragazza (A Good Girl).

After a period of military service, Tenco signed with RCA and in 1966 released one of his finest songs, Un giorno dopo l'altro (One Day After Another). That same year he met the Italo-French singer Dalida, with whom he began a love affair. In January 1967 the pair took part in the Italian Song Festival at San Remo, performing Ciao amore, ciao (Hello Love, Hello), although it is said that Tenco participated against his will. Whatever the truth, the song did not reach the final.

On 27 January Luigi Tenco was found dead in his hotel room at San Remo, with a bullet wound in his left temple. A note explained that his suicide was a gesture of protest against the jury's taste in music. His body was discovered by Dalida, to whom he had become engaged only days earlier.

In 1974 the Tenco Award was instituted, also in San Remo, to promote quality songs over the bland fare heard in the official festival. Many leading Italian songwriters have cited the influence of Tenco on their own work, and the song Festival by Franceso de Gregori attacks the hypocrisy with which the Italian music establishment sought to downplay his dramatic death, in order that the show might go on.


STEVEN BROWN ON LUIGI TENCO

The memory remains, somewhere in there, lodged amongst one of the many hazy, Italian summers past. Somewhere south-east, on the Adriatic side. Pesaro? Senigallia? I remember asking V. to give me some names of Italian pop singers from the 60s… good ones, I said. I trusted her judgment.

Evening promenade - the center is jammed with folk out for their evening stretch and/or whatever else happens in this curious Mediterranean ritual. I find the town's record store, go inside and score cassettes of two of the singers that had been recommended. Luigi Tenco was one of these two. I remember being told that he had intelligent lyrics, that he put more heart and soul into his work than was often the case in pop music in the 60s, or anytime.

Of course, these things I like to hear. Also I tend to seek some sort of affinity with the being behind the ad campaign or cover photo.

So when I learn that someone writes good songs and has a brain as well, I get more interested partly because this is such a unique combination, and also because there is a chance that the artist as a poet might have something to say besides "baby oh baby…" When I heard of the way Luigi Tenco died I decided that, yes, there was a good chance he would have something to say to me.

Ciao Amore was I think the first piece that made an impression. A strange melancholia wedded to a glossy Phil Spector 60s style production - "Lonely streets white as sale… my life is a prison of glass… 1000 streets grey as smoke, in a world of light I hear no-one…" - backed by a fat bass and tambourine/snare slow rock beat, then breaking into a huge almost upbeat choral refrain. A hit-maudit.

On one level it sounds like a classic rock ballad, but when you listen to the lyrics (and the delivery of those lyrics) this song pulls itself into another realm altogether; behind the veneer behind the gloss into yourself. The song is totally accessible, direct in its musical form, seemingly complying with all the rules of radio play, and yet it is a haunted desperate shriek of despair.

If that had been the only Tenco song I ever heard, it would have been enough. But I have heard more since then, as many as I could find. Some time ago I got the idea of trying to record some of these songs of Tenco. I'm happy to say that, with a lot of help from some friends, this idea has manifested itself with this record.


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