Edited by Enrico de Angelis and Enrico Deregibus, published by il Saggiatore, a volume that collects in 440 pages the words written and spoken by Luigi Tenco throughout his existence.
A collection of largely unpublished materials – from elementary school essays to letters, from diaries to drafts of stories and screenplays, from interviews to his final statements during the 1967 Sanremo Festival – that gives shape to an impossible autobiography: the story of his life, his thoughts, his emotions and his encounters through his own voice.
There is a boy at the beginning of this book called Luigi. We watch him grow up, learn to play the sax, guitar and piano, form a jazz band with his friends, leave for military service, be homesick and miss his mother. We watch him start composing songs and then try to sing them, with the shyness and trepidation of a twenty-year-old; succeed in the feat of recording a record and hearing it played on the radio. Finally we see him torn between the pursuit of success and intransigence, going on television, giving interview after interview, trying his hand at acting; falling in love and falling back in love, each time madly.
Luigi Tenco left us a trace, a text, a statement of almost every phase of his short life, allowing us to look beyond the appearance of rebelliousness and melancholy with which he has long been identified. This work allows us to get to know up close and in his evolution a creative figure full of desires, nonconformist and ahead of his time, humble and at the same time aware of the power of words and songs. The portrait of one of the greatest singer-songwriters in the history of Italy, in his most sincere essence.
Enrico de Angelis (Bolzano, 1948) is a journalist, song historian, and cultural activist. He has been active in the Sanremo Tenco Club since its founding in 1972, and served as its artistic director for twenty years. He has also curated numerous other festivals, events, lectures, recordings, and radio programs, especially on "canzone d'autore," a term he coined in 1969. He has authored or edited countless publications, including an anthology of his journalistic writings collected in the volume "Musica sulla carta."
Enrico Deregibus (Balzola, 1967) is a journalist and artistic director or consultant for various musical and cultural events. He is considered the biographer of Francesco De Gregori, about whom he has published several books. In addition to these, he has authored Dizionario completo della canzone italiana (2006), Il mio posto nel mondo. Luigi Tenco, cantautore (2007) with Enrico de Angelis and Sergio Secondiano Sacchi, and Chi se ne frega della musica? (2013). In 2017, he organized a tribute to Luigi Tenco with simultaneous events in over 30 locations.
