Mina, happy birthday (and a personal memory)

Since yesterday, and even more today, the newspapers were and will be full of articles dedicated to the 85 fantastic years of Mina, our lady of the song. Difficult to find something new and original to write to celebrate Mina. And then I resort to my personal memory, which I had entrusted some time ago to the pages of the Mina Fan Club magazine and today – for a kind concession of Loris Biazzetti – I propose here, as if it were a greeting card and thanks to the birthday girl.

I cannot say the precise year, but I assure you that now the fact has fallen into prescription, so I feel authorized to tell you hoping that you will understand that, if I break a discretion pact that I made with myself, it is not for vanagloria – but to make you understand with a single example that people are Mina and Massimiliano Pani.

In short, one day Max calls me – for several years I had already had the honor and the burden of writing the press releases for the new Mina records, without course having ever met her in person – and tells me that I would like it if I went to Lugano to see the new studies of the PDU.

I gladly accepted, and I also took my wife with me – who was not yet my wife yet, but my girlfriend. The idea (my idea) was that an article for Rockol would have originated from that visit; So I went from Varese to take my future wife and together we arrived in Lugano by car. In Nathalie, in reality, to visit a recording studio did not matter much, but the idea of ​​a trip to the lake did not mind, and then she was curious enough to meet this Massimiliano whose good I always said to her.

We were at the first pleasantries, when the matter took a completely different, and surprising fold (for us; not for Massimiliano, who had designed everything). In fact, after a few minutes Max told us, in an absolutely random tone, that he wanted to let us know a person. I thought he intended to introduce me to one of the technicians of the study, and instead he made us enter an office where she was there. Of course, my salivation I will turn instantly, and I only managed to stammer a few words. Mina was kind to me, but he devoted his attention above all to Nathalie, making his debut with a compliment (“You are very beautiful“) And starting amiably to chat with her, while Massimiliano made me visit the study.

Everything will last a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes, but as you can imagine that “random” encounter – a huge gift that Max wanted to make me, and that I have considered to date as an intimate and private episode, of which still from when my wife and I recall the memory – was one of the most rewarding moments of my activity in the world of music. For which I am and I will always be grateful to those beautiful and generous people who are Mina and Massimiliano.