Because “A mano a mano” is (also) Rino Gaetano’s song

It’s March of 1981. RCA organized a collective tour of three very different artists, Rino Gaetano, Riccardo Cocciante and the New Perigee. During a tour date, Gaetano and Cocciante decide to exchange a song. The first “lends” his “Aida” to the second. Cocciante, vice versa, makes Gaetano sing “Hand by handCocciante cannot imagine it: Rino Gaetano’s extraordinary performance of “A mano a mano”, which the singer-songwriter of “Margherita” had composed together with Marco Luberti and published three years earlier, will forever link Gaetano’s name to that of the songso much so that many years later, many continue to believe that it was written by him, ignoring Cocciante’s version. Suffice it to say that on Spotify the studio and live versions of “A mano a mano” by Rino Gaetano count together for over 100 million streamsmaking the song the most popular song by the singer-songwriter of Calabrian origins on the platform, even more than his classics such as “Ma il cielo è semper blu”, “Gianna” and “Aida”. An only apparent paradox, which tells a lot about the way in which collective memory and popular songs work. Gaetano’s version in fact arrived at a decisive moment in his career and his life, a few months before his deathof that cursed June 2, 1981. That recording, so fragile and withheld, was progressively reread in the light of his passing, almost taking on the value of an involuntary farewell. And it is precisely with “A mano a mano” that Sony Music, forty-five years after his death, celebrates Rino Gaetano. He does it with a special vinyl, an exclusive 45 rpmentitled “A mano a mano”, available exclusively on the Sony Music Italia store from midnight tomorrow, 2 June: it will only be available for purchase for three days, until 11.59pm on 4 June.

Read the Rockol special on Rino Gaetano here

The special edition comes out concurrently with the usual one Rino Gaetano Daythe annual event dedicated to the memory of the famous singer-songwriter, organized by Anna and Alessandro Gaetano – the singer-songwriter’s sister and nephew respectively. The Rino Gaetano Day 2026 will be held tomorrow in Rome at the Parco Arena Rino Gaetano: «The strength of “A mano a mano” lies in the fact that it arises from the meeting of two enormous worlds: the intense writing of Luberti and Cocciante and the free, visceral and almost theatrical interpretation of my uncle. During that tour they exchanged songs, Cocciante sang “Aida” and Rino reinterpreted “A mano a mano”. And something rare happened: a collaboration that became the history of Italian music. When two true artists meet there are no boundaries of belonging. Cocciante wrote a masterpiece, Rino gave it another life. “A mano a mano” is a song that talks about the fear of getting lost and the desire for rebirth. A powerful artistic encounter”, explains Alessandro Gaetano, who has kept his uncle’s artistic legacy alive for years.

On the side A there will be some vinyl Rino Gaetano’s versionoriginally published in 1981 on the live Q disc “Q Concert” and over the years it has become one of the symbolic songs of his repertoire, almost an emotional will that arrived shortly before his death. On the side Binstead, it will find space the live version by Riccardo Cocciante taken from “Istantanea Live” from 1998, to remember how much this song actually belongs to both artists. In Cocciante’s version, who included the song in the 1978 album “…E io canto”, “A mano a mano” is an intense and theatrical ballad, built on a continuous emotional progression, almost a sentimental confession that grows until the final explosion. It is a song about love as mutual transformation, about letting yourself be changed by the other “little by little”, slowly, inevitably. Unlike its author’s interpretation, Rino Gaetano instead sings “A mano a mano” as a subdued confession. His cracked voice, the almost hesitant way with which he enters the words, have ended up making the song perfectly compatible with the imagination that has been built around his figure over the years: that of the melancholic, ironic and profoundly human artist. Thus, generation after generation, many began to automatically associate the song with him.

It is a phenomenon that rarely happens in Italian music (perhaps a similar case concerns “Sally” by Vasco, of which Fiorella Mannoia’s version is famous), but when it happens it leaves its mark: the interpreter manages to overwrite the origin of the song, transforming it into something new. In the case of “A mano a mano”, the strength of Gaetano’s reinterpretation was also amplified by the continuous television and radio circulation of his version (a version sung by Rino Gaetano is part of the soundtrack of the film “Fasten your seatbelts” by Ferzan Özpetek and of the film “Christmas without Santa” directed by Stefano Cipani), which over time has become the most used in tributes, documentaries and celebrations dedicated to the Calabrian singer-songwriter. Cocciante over the years has always spoken of the song as a deeply personal piece, born with Marco Luberti within that creative period which had also produced “Margherita” and “Bella senz’anima”, but he was also the first to recognize the strength of Gaetano’s interpretation: «Rino managed to make this song his own, to give it a new dimension and make it his symbol. A song must not only belong to the performer or the author, it must travel through the lives of those who sing it to become something else. Many don’t know that this is one of my songs and for me it is an immense pleasure that it has become, thanks to Rino, another song and another proposal of such great success», Cocciante reiterates today.

Sony Music vinyl was created precisely to celebrate this double identity. Not only a tribute to Rino Gaetano on the forty-fifth anniversary of his death but also the recognition of a song that has had two parallel lives: the original one, signed by Cocciante and Luberti, and the subsequent one, emotionally very powerful, built by Gaetano’s interpretation. The graphic development of the project – above the cover – was entrusted to the guys at Hello, Italian Discoa reality that in recent years has often worked on recovering the aesthetics and imagery of Italian discography of the past. A detail that confirms the almost artisanal nature of this release: a record designed not only to listen to, but also to keep.