Queer Places:
Cimitero di Bogliasco
Bogliasco, Città Metropolitana di Genova, Liguria, Italy
Umberto Emilio Bindi ( Bogliasco , May 12, 1932 - Rome , May 23, 2002 ) was an Italian singer-songwriter , composer and pianist .
He was one of the greatest composers of his generation and one of the leading exponents of the renowned Genoese school .
He was born in Bogliasco , in what was then the province of Genoa , on 12 May 1932. Together with Bruno Lauzi , Gino Paoli , Fabrizio De André and Luigi Tenco he is one of the major exponents of the so-called Genoese school , a core of artists who profoundly renewed music light Italian. Bindi in particular is the best musically prepared, and his penchant for an elegant melody and sumptuous arrangements bring him closer to classical singers.
His best compositions have the texts of a fellow citizen, the lyricist Giorgio Calabrese : with him he wrote Arrivederci (placed second overall in Canzonissima 1959 ), Il nostro concerto (1960), in which he puts his studies to good use in a long instrumental introduction more than 70 seconds (instrumented by maestro Enzo Ceragioli ) and reaching the first position in the charts for 10 weeks, Vento di mare , and Non mi dire chi sei (which participated in the 1961 Sanremo Festival ). With Gino Paoli he writes My world , A memory of love and Love is like a child . With Franco Califano and Nisa he wrote La musica è finita (1967) for Ornella Vanoni and Per vivere (1968) for Iva Zanicchi . My World , translated into English by Carl Sigman under the title You're my world and sung by such performers as Cilla Black , Dionne Warwick , Tom Jones , [2] Daryl Braithwaite, Guys'n'Doll and Helen Reddy , reaches the first place in the singles charts in Australia (twice), Belgium, Mexico, Holland, South Africa and the United Kingdom. In the French and Spanish versions, both sung by Richard Anthony , it also reached number one in France and Spain. But despite the international acclaim, as time went on, Bindi encountered more and more difficulties in the musical environment, partly due to the low demand for composers equipped with his refined touch, but mainly due to the discrimination due to his homosexuality against him . As he himself told at the 1996 Sanremo Festival, his problems began on that same stage, in 1961, when the newspapers spoke not of the melody he had written but of the ring he wore on his finger. He activates the collaboration with the lyricist Alberto Testa , between the songs composed together with Basta una volta and Riviera (1961). In 1972 he released the album Con il passa del tempo for West Record , with arrangements by Bill Conti . The first song of the album, Io e la musica , with lyrics by Bruno Lauzi, is an autobiographical song, in which he talks about the music that eased his pains. In it, the musical theme from Our Concert returns . In 1973 his friend and lyricist Giorgio Calabrese wrote for him a program broadcast on the second channel of Rai, titled like the last LP he is going to present, Con il passa del tempo. In this program, lasting 38 minutes, Bindi converses with Calabrese himself speaking of his "not really popular" character, saying that not even the night club is congenial to him; he talks about how he has dealt with the passage of time, and says that his discourse in music is not finished, and he wants them to let him speak and above all that there is someone willing to listen. The conversation is a pretext for performing some of the songs on the disc.
In 1975 his life was turned upside down by the tragic and controversial death of his mother, killed by a shotgun accidentally fired by an acquaintance, while Bindi was away on business, in the villa rented six months earlier in Rocca di Papa (Rome ) . In 1976 he took part in the Rai program Subito musica to present his new LP Io e il mare , which contains four instrumental pieces. The arrangements, refined and full of original ideas, are by the guitarist Bruno Battisti D'Amario . There he reaffirms that he is not a singer , but a composer who writes songs, and claims that the album's instrumentals are perhaps more important than the songs; he plays a part of the instrumental piece L'alba on the piano overlapping the piece on the record. Then he performs Io e il mare (text by Bruno Lauzi) on the piano, on a musical basis. In 1982 the album D'ora in poi was released : the poet Sergio Bardotti wrote the lyrics for the album, created it and produced it. In 1985 Alfredo Rossi , who hadn't trusted him in the sixties, made one of the first recording tributes dedicated to a still living artist: thus the album Bindi was born , in which Bindi sings together with Loredana Bertè , Antonella Ruggiero of Matia Bazar , Anna Identici , Fiorella Mannoia , Ornella Vanoni, Celeste, Sônia Braga and the Kappy Y Nerey Vocal Group. The participation, together with Gino Paoli, in the Rai program is noteworthy Songwriters and… conducted by Bruno Lauzi in 1986: the theme of the episode, in which Bindi performs Riviera and Io e il mare , is precisely the sea. In 1988 he revealed his homosexuality on the Maurizio Costanzo Show with emotion, which was decisive for his marginalization of him in the sixties. In 1989 he participated in the television program Una Rotonda sul Mare conducted by Red Ronnie , in which he won the duel against the challenger Gian Pieretti playing on the piano, with a refined and new arrangement, Arrivederci. In the same year he reveals that he had been rejected by Sanremo, whose selections he had presented with one of his most poignant songs: "It took time (to learn to live alone)".
In 1990 at the Recanati festival he met the singer-songwriter Ernesto Bassignano , with whom he wrote new songs. In November 1993 with his friend Bruno Martino , author with him in the sixties of the song Storia al mare , at the Flaiano theater in Rome he held twenty evenings of a show called Two lives and a piano , directed by Walter Manfrè . A CD with the significant title of 'Our' Concert is released , containing the 1985 album versions of his songs. In 1995 he met Renato Zero who listened to the numerous songs that Bindi had in his drawer and he decided to produce a record by him. Bindi thus participates in the Sanremo Festival 1996 , with the song Letti con i New Trolls , publishing the CD Di coraggio non si muore and the album contains It's all here , sung by Renato Zero and L'approdo , with spoken introduction always by Zero. Also in that year the anthology Il mio mondo was released , always and only focused on songs from the sixties.
In 2000 BMG Ricordi and Ricordi published Umberto Bindi , a double CD of the series "Flashback: The original great successes". The album, initially sold only in mail order catalogs, after the musician's death also appears in music stores. This CD also contains only the composer's first production.
Due to long-standing problems with the taxman, he lived the last two years of his life in poverty; the situation is aggravated by health problems: «For two years I have had a kidney out of order, four by-passes , an angioplasty , a malfunctioning liver, with the beginning of cirrhosis . But the real trouble is a terrible weakness and that water that forms everywhere and that I have to remove with a syringe », he confessed to Corriere della Sera . [3] Gino Paoli in April 2002 launches an appeal in Il Messaggero for Bindi to be granted the benefits of the Bacchelli law in support of artists. The appeal is welcomed by many. [4] The annuity will in fact be promptly granted, [5] He died in Rome on 23 May 2002 at the Spallanzani Hospital , at the age of 70 where he had been hospitalized for four days due to worsening heart conditions; his funeral was celebrated on 27 May in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Montesanto , known as the Church of the Artists in Piazza del Popolo ; after the funeral ceremony, the Municipality of Rome ordered the temporary burial in the Monumental Cemetery of Verano and after four months he was buried next to his mother in the municipal Cemetery of Bogliasco .
My published books:
