In the late seventies, when I first began to follow soccer as a genuine fan, S.S. Lazio was unfortunately a team in serious trouble. In the years that followed, disasters of every kind were visited on poor Lazio. What’s true in love is also true in soccer: the more you love, the worse it hurts. There was one bad year after another, culminating in the official downgrading of S.S. Lazio to Serie B as a punishment for an illegal betting ring linked to the club. It certainly wasn’t the fans’ fault, but the dishonor besmirched us as well as our team. I continued to show up for soccer at the parish field in my white and sky blue jersey, but clusters of kids wearing yellow and red jerseys seemed to grow constantly, and it was all too easy for them to ridicule a fan of S.S. Lazio, now struggling along in Serie B. Add to the mix the name Spaghetti . . .
It was hard to withstand the constant ribbing. And every time we tried to organize a mini crosstown derby among us kids, it was always three or four outnumbered Lazio fans playing against a far more numerous and enthusiastic group of eleven romanisti. Maybe that was why we laziali just kept getting better and better. It was the misfortunes of our miserable S.S. Lazio that taught us young fans how to lose, while our little yellow-and-red-jerseyed cousins hadn’t yet really learned how to win.
It wasn’t until the 1982–1983 championship season that S.S. Lazio climbed back up into Serie A; unfortunately, that was the same championship season in which A.S. Roma took the scudetto, which spoiled my first taste of joy as a Lazio fan.
In those years, from when I was nine till I turned thirteen, it was always my dream to go see a soccer match at the stadium. To turn that dream into reality on anything like a regular basis demanded suitable preparation. First of all, if I wanted even the slimmest likelihood of success, I’d have to start hammering at my father several weeks before the match in question. Once I had begged and pleaded him into compliance, the breathless countdown to Sunday began. We’d take a bus to Rome’s Stadio Olimpico, to avoid problems with finding a parking place—even back then, a parking place was the holy grail in Rome. Since there was no numbered seating, we’d have a midmorning departure from our house, to ensure we’d have plenty of time to get to the stadium, buy our tickets at the box office, and select a good location on the curve behind the goal along with the rest of the fervent home-team supporters, usually standing up. And then . . . we waited, since the soccer match never began before two thirty p.m. The privileged ticket-holders for the bleachers, where seating was numbered, could afford to show up minutes before the first whistle marked the beginning of play. I didn’t mind waiting in the crowded benches: I liked watching the excited, colorful crowds that surrounded me as I anticipated the magic of the match. Even though my father was a rabid fan, taking me to the stadium on a Sunday was probably more torture than pleasure for him. For one thing, it meant he had to give up Sunday lunch, a fundamental ritual for any self-respecting Italian family—and my family was certainly no exception. In fact, Sundays were when my mother and my grandmother together put on a display of dizzying culinary ability, and we spent hours lingering at the table, eating, talking, and drinking wine, enjoying the leisure time that is always in short supply during the week. Still, even if it meant skipping the Sunday banquet, it was always a special occasion when we went to the stadium, and having a panino for lunch was no big sacrifice. In fact, I can still remember clearly the flavor of the panini al prosciutto that we’d pack with us from home. The memory of that flavor is etched into my mind, and I’ll always associate it with the intense excitement of those moments of pure fandom. I remember the first time I walked into the Stadio Olimpico. It was a sunny afternoon, and the sunshine made the grass seem even greener. Then I waited with bated breath for the teams to run out onto the field. Finally the match began. It was the first time I’d ever seen a game from the unaccustomed angle of the curve. Imagine my shock—silly, I know, but for me it was a surprise to discover it—that there was no play-by-play announcer, like on TV! Luckily, from years of watching Sunday evening sports roundups that showed all the goals of the day’s matches, and thanks to my relentless study of the soccer player cards made by Panini, I had no particular difficulty identifying my favorite champions, even without the staticky voice of the announcer shouting their names every time one of them gained control of the ball.
In the eighties, I started going to see soccer games at the stadium with my friends, and often without my father. This was a hard time in Italy, and the Stadio Olimpico wasn’t necessarily the safest of places. Italy’s “years of lead,” a period marked by terrorist attacks, civil unrest, and a fair amount of fighting in the streets, had only just come to an end, and grown-ups were cautious about letting kids wander the city unsupervised. Especially when there was a “derby” in the offing—what we called a crosstown game between S.S. Lazio and A.S. Roma.
In Rome, the derby and—much more important—the run-up to the derby passeth all human understanding: every fan, whether rooting for Lazio or Roma, has his own way of experiencing and awaiting the derby, his own superstitions and propitiatory rites. There are those who prepare for the derby dressed in the same clothes, year in year out, for decades. There are those who vanish for a week prior to the derby on a meditation retreat. There are those who whip themselves up into a furious frenzy, so that by the day before the game their eyes are bloodshot with snorting hatred for the other team and all its fans. And there are those who simply have nervous breakdowns.
I can’t think of many other cities on earth where a sports event has so much importance to urban life. Every day in the pre-derby period, people in Rome wake up, wash their faces, make sure that there is only good news from their team’s training camp, and then—only then—do they go to work. I’ve come to the conclusion that the true sports fan in Italy’s capital does not so much love his team as he hates and wishes only the worst on the team from the other side of the Tiber.
And so, paradoxically, what I consider to have been my greatest triumph as a Lazio fan was the defeat of Roma by Liverpool in the finals of the Champions Cup on a penalty kick back in 1984. It was my revenge. Years before, Roma had ridiculed Lazio for their demotion to Serie B—for something that didn’t even happen on the field. And now, thanks to that loss on a penalty kick, I fooled myself into thinking they would finally learn how to lose.
6
Music
What rescued me from obsessing over the many obstacles of the Spaghetti name was, first and foremost, music.
The first song I ever sang was “Mamunia,” by Paul McCartney & Wings, a beautiful acoustic track from their wonderful album Band on the Run. It was 1973; I was three years old and I still pronounced my own name “Cuca Petti.” I was the first and only grandchild in my small family, and therefore the unrivaled sovereign of my parents’ and grandparents’ affections. Every time my grandparents saw me, it was a celebration.
My grandmother Liliana was born in Sardinia. She was very short. She was more or less the same height as E.T., and she had the same heart-melting gaze. As for my grandfather, he was my ticket to get a taste of the forbidden fruit of the vine. It was only on Sundays, when we had lunch at my grandparents’ house, that I was allowed to have a taste of wine, nectar of the gods, which was rationed out sparingly, a few drops at a time, into my glass, while the adults watched attentively.
My two youngest uncles, Giorgio and Fabrizio, lived at home with my grandparents, their parents. They were the first to introduce me to their love of music. Since they were both in their early twenties in the mid-seventies, they listened to music all the time. I was born and raised in a family where there was always plenty of music; my father loved jazz, which played as background music in every room of the house every day. To be honest, though, however much I might have liked his jazz, I was much more excited by the music my uncles were listening to. I was absolutely fascinated by the long, orderly rows of LPs that filled their shelves: hundreds of album covers with thousands of colors, beautiful photographs, and words that were generally incomprehen
sible to me. One of the few words I thought I could understand—because I believed it was Italian, though I wasn’t quite sure what it meant—was “Mamunia.” I had claimed “Mamunia” as my own, and I sang it to the delight of my entire family, repeating this strange word endlessly, until the occasional friendly kick in the pants informed me it might be a good time to turn off the small—and possibly annoying—jukebox. But my uncles always loved my vocal stylings, so every chance they got they would put “Mamunia” back on the record player. When I heard the strains of my favorite song, whatever I might be doing, I broke off my game and came running to the stereo to resume my show as Luca, the Singing Midget. Then, one fine day, my uncles asked me, “Luca, do you feel like singing something a little more challenging? It’s a song made up of just two words. It’s called ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’!”
And the infectiously cheerful notes of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” issued from the two mysterious cubes that my uncles called “speakers,” along with the beloved voice of my friend Paul McCartney. They had persuaded me that he was my “Uncle Paul,” just an uncle a couple of times removed.
My uncles Giorgio and Fabrizio continually handled those records that I saw as magical objects. They placed them on the turntable with incredible delicacy, taking care not to leave fingerprints or scratches on the surface. Of course, I was forbidden so much as to touch that long row of gems, and since I was a good little boy, I never disobeyed. If for no other reason than the fact that I had my own musical toy: an orange mangiadischi—literally, a “record eater.” Anyone who grew up in Italy in the fabled 1970s remembers these little record players, into which we’d slip 45s of sing-along fairy tales. It was a must-have for all kids of that era. I knew all the songs by heart, but even then, I have to admit, “Mamunia” and “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” meant a lot more to me. So imagine my ecstasy when, a few years later, I started singing—with no understanding of the English lyrics—“Yellow Submarine,” or as we pronounced it, “Iello Sammarin,” accompanied by my two uncles on their acoustic guitars.
I was about eight when I received a gift that changed my musical destiny once and for all: my first real album—in fact, my first real double album. A record with a red cover, with the faces of four smiling young men looking down from a balcony. For the very first time, with the help of grown-ups who guided me in the pronunciation of the words in English, I read the name of the group: The Beatles. My uncles immediately demanded that I learn not only this eminently musical word, but also the names of each of the young men looking down from the balcony. After a full day of torture and rehearsal, I succeeded: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. And when they told me that Paul McCartney was the same friendly uncle who sang “Mamunia” and “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” I asked somewhat sheepishly if I could consider the other three old uncles as well. I was told I could, and from that day forward, to me those young men were just John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
My hands were too small to hold the record without touching the grooves, the way a grown-up could, so they taught me to hold the disk with two hands, fingers outstretched and the edge of the vinyl record braced against the flat of my palm.
The first track was “Love Me Do,” followed by “Please, Please Me” and “From Me to You.” I listened to those three songs over and over again, without stopping. Every time the needle reached the end of “From Me to You,” with my steady little forefinger I carefully lifted the tonearm and put the needle back at the beginning of “Love Me Do.” And so on, ad infinitum. I don’t think I even heard the fourth track on the album until a month or so later. “From Me to You” was my first true musical shock: I could distinctly hear two voices singing the same words with two different melodies, one made up of high notes, the other of low notes. While the lower voice seemed normal enough to me, the higher one sounded a little loose, but still exceptionally beautiful. Listening to the other songs there were always these two merry voices—one high and sweet, one low and a little sharper—that would come together to make one dreamy sound. I didn’t know what they were saying, but I was hypnotized. Marked for life.
A few years later, I invested all my savings in the first record I bought with my own money: Double Fantasy by John Lennon. Tragically, just a few weeks after the record came out, John was shot and killed outside his home in New York. I couldn’t stop asking myself why anyone would have wanted to kill him, since he was only a singer who had written beautiful songs. Everyone around me was far too grief-stricken to give me an answer.
The record was incredible (aside from a few songs sung by a woman with a voice I had never heard before, at least not on my double album with the red cover). Even if the only tracks had been “Woman,” “Starting Over,” and “Watching the Wheels,” I could have listened to it for hours.
“Woman” was at the top of the Italian hit parade; every Friday and Saturday around noon, the radio broadcast the top ten songs and the so-called dischi caldi—“hot records,” or the songs that were in eleventh to twentieth place. To keep from missing the weekly hit parade live, I took a small transistor radio to school with me. I listened to it pressed up against my ear, turned down low, as I sat in the last row of desks to keep the teacher from hearing. Of course, in order to hear “Woman,” which was hovering around first place, I had to put up with all the songs from twentieth place to second or third place, but it was worth it.
I was captivated by music, by that music, most of it American, and I wanted more. Every morning I walked out into the Roman sunshine with a few coins in my pocket that my parents had given me to buy a snack at school with. Often I decided to squirrel them away, without telling them. I finally skipped enough snacks to make my monthly musical purchase. There was a little record store directly across from my house, and I was the shop’s youngest regular customer; the owner had gotten used to the curious, enthusiastic boy who walked into his record store as if it were wonderland, and I guess he must have liked me. Still, he was astonished every time I left the place with Paul McCartney’s Tug of War, America’s Alibi, or the Alan Parsons Project’s Eye in the Sky under my arm. I would spend entire afternoons listening to music in that shop, and I did my best to follow the lyrics printed on the inside record sleeve.
The great turning point came when my uncles gave me free access to their enormous library of LPs, which by now was even bigger than before. I was now allowed to listen to their records even when they weren’t there. It was the point of no return. It was the mid-eighties, and I suddenly had access to hundreds of records in their updated musical library. The challenge was now to catch up on no fewer than fifteen years of musical history that I had missed. I discovered Jackson Browne, the Eagles, and even more from my four British uncles. Studying and listening, I learned marvelous things. (For example, the song that I used to know and sing as “Lady B” was actually called “Let It Be.”) I decided to proceed in an orderly manner: I would buy a copy of every one of those records for myself, artist by artist. I decided to start with the Eagles. Every Saturday evening, while most of my classmates were heading for the discotheque, I hopped on my moped and scoured the record shops of Rome, returning home with at least one trophy, though often used or with a torn-up album cover. Many stores would sell used records by unknown bands for mere pocket change. If they were American, I bought them. What were a few lire when my musical awakening was at stake? I was sucked into a maelstrom of desperation as I became seized with another sick obsession: the yearning to play the guitar. There were just too many six-string stimuli vibrating in my brain. I was fascinated by the sight of fingers moving delicately across the various parts of that musical instrument, creating chords and harmonies, often by a bonfire on a warm night. I had to learn to play the guitar.
And there was one more thing, not of secondary interest: I had noticed that guys who knew how to play the guitar attracted special interest among the girls. Maybe if I got to be a really good guitar player, my last name would be overlooked.
So I asked my uncles t
o lend me their Eko, a beat-up old Italian-made guitar that wasn’t worth much, but was perfect for a beginner. With a manual of chords and a pile of Xeroxed sheet music and chord charts, and, more important, by listening to music nonstop, I started to teach myself how to play the guitar. I can still remember the immense joy I felt when I achieved my first bar chord—I played that C major over and over again, all day long. I’m pretty sure that during the period my parents must have at least thought about doing away with me. They’d always encouraged me and my brother in all our artistic pursuits, but still, I have to imagine that an incessant, unending strumming would have sorely tested anyone’s patience.
But I was slowly improving. By now, I even had a few songs in my repertory: a few of the easier Eagles songs, for instance, were the first ones I’d mastered. But it was when I moved on to the records of another American singer-songwriter that my musical life changed once and for all: James Taylor. It came as a surprise to me. I knew only two James Taylor songs, “Hard Times” and “Her Town Too,” which I had included to fill up some extra room on a mix tape. It was the mid-1980s, and a new album was about to come out. More important, in September 1985 James was coming to Rome for a concert, his first ever in Italy, and my uncles were going to take me. I didn’t have much time; it was already July. The simplest thing would be to tape his Greatest Hits, a 1976 white album that I had found at my uncles’ house.
Un Amico Italiano Page 5