Pino Daniele at the Apollo in Harlem, and other stories. Photogallery

From the book “Pino Daniele, the story never told”, by Joe Lodato and Franco Schipani, published in the Tritono series by Tempesta Editore directed by Renato Marengo, we reproduce, courtesy of the publisher, an excerpt of Franco Schipani’s preface.

With Pino we called each other by surname, like at school. Him Schipà and me Daniè. Daniè and I have Joe Lodato in common, who changed our lives. Forever.
Early 70s.

After finishing high school I attended the faculty of literature at university, more for family duties than for vocation, and I started writing about music on “Sound Flash”, out of passion. This magazine would later become “Super Sound” and “Nuovo Sound”, with Elisabetta Ponti: a very cool rock editor who was a bit Patty Pravo and a bit Catherine Spaak, with whom all of us young editors were secretly in love. .
In the editorial office I meet Alan Sorrenti, a Neapolitan with a Welsh mother. We become friends and he suggests I follow his summer tour. I was driving a Ford Transit full of instruments, with Tony Esposito and the rest of the band in the back seat, resting between concerts. Those were the years of outdoor rock festivals.
In my free moments I wrote articles with my inseparable Olivetti. Traveling I became familiar with great musicians who, a few years later, would climb the charts: Battiato, Bennato, De Gregori, Venditti, Renato Zero, the Balletto di Bronzo, Osanna and many others.
It was this knowledge “on the road” that gave me the opportunity to interview them and write about them in advance. My “career” and reputation as a “scoopist” benefited from it.
I then began to collaborate with Rai’s music radio programs, and in the same period the IT label entrusted me with a young artist in his first recording experience. It was Lino Rufo, with the album “Notte chiara”.
With the record producer Gianfranco Baldazzi, Giorgio Verdelli and the legendary photographer Toni Occhiello we booked the Studio Splash in Naples, which Peppino Di Capri had just inaugurated without sparing any expense. Our reference in Naples was Verdelli, a boy already of great talent.
Thanks to our knowledge of the area, the best of Napule’s Power arrived in the studio: James Senese, Enzo Avitabile, Tony Esposito, Jenny Sorrenti, Ernesto Vitolo and Osanna in full force. Other more or less famous musicians came just for the pleasure of being there. The first because many of their friends were in the studio with us, the “Romans who came to Naples”, the others because they hoped to get noticed.
Among the latter was Pino Daniele, who one day gave me an audio cassette recorded in his house, together with some friends, and asked me to play it to the record companies “in the north”.
The new pieces were revolutionary.
Pino had already published “Terra mia” for EMI, three thousand copies sold in a few weeks. But the record company hadn’t reissued it and couldn’t decide to send it back to the studio for the second LP. He called and called, but for a long time now
piece they were denied.
I played the new songs to those at IT, in Rome and then at Ariston in Milan, where a manager after listening to them for a couple of minutes blurted out.
“But, Schipani, cool!”, (read in Milanese) “Look, we are a multinational. We don’t sell records on the stalls in Forcella!”.
About a year later he called me back. “Hey, Schipani”, (always read in Milanese), “aren’t we still in contact with Daniele? Hearing him better, well, the Neapolitan isn’t bad!”
I told him that the oxen had already left the stable.

Naples and the Neapolitans have always brought me luck. It is thanks to Osanna that I met Joe Lodato: the soul of a musician, the sensitivity of a poet and the guts of a Personal Manager.
I made Joe listen to Pino Daniele, but it’s a story that he himself will tell you later in the book. And in March 1979, thanks to his presence in New York, after the events of “Stereoplay” and “Rolling Stone” Italian edition, I still leave it to him the pleasure of telling you about them, I felt encouraged to leave Italy.
(…)
I started working at Rai and it went very well for me.

I wrote successful documentaries, I worked alongside Isabella Rossellini in Renzo Arbore’s Altra Domenica and I made friends with the sacred monsters of “Rolling Stone Magazine”. .
Then I decided to produce and present “Hit Parade”: an Italian musical current affairs program broadcast on cable TV in North and South America. And Pino was often a guest on my charts.
I saw him again a few years later at the Catanzaro stadium: I was on holiday in those parts and I decided to give him an impromptu.
It was a touching moment.
Pino wanted to know everything immediately about Joe, who he still heard on the phone. But he wanted first-hand information. He recommended that I tell him that I had seen him live in a packed stadium. Which I did as soon as I returned to New York after the summer.
Joe was obviously happy with his buddy’s success.

Another summer, another meeting.

We were on the beach in Sabaudia, near Rome. Pino had serious eye problems and his heart continued to act up. Many people greeted him, but he did not respond. It wasn’t rudeness: it was the sight that didn’t help him, he didn’t recognize them.
Then it was Pino who gave me an improvisation in New York.
He had started collaborating with big international artists.

One day he stopped in New York and showed up unexpectedly at my office. We immediately called Joe, but unfortunately he was on the other side of the United States on business, to everyone’s disappointment. .
On September 29, 2005, Pino, his second wife Fabiola and I left Rome for New York City: he was to perform at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, the temple of black music.
The manager who had organized the concert did not understand that Pino was an international artist, and therefore transformed the theater into a square crowded with Italian Americans.
What a pity.
I remember an African-American gentleman in his eighties who had been cleaning at the Apollo since the 1950s and had seen thousands of live performances. When Pino began his set he froze and shortly after wiped away a tear. He told me “It’s blues, my friend. It’s great blues…”
Joe did everything he could to be there, but he was on the other side of the States and couldn’t get there in time.
The day after the concert Pino kidnapped me.
We rented a taxi and just the two of us went around the little shops in the Village to buy used military items: camouflage suits, telescopes and amphibians. Pino was a serial collector.
In the evening he wanted pizza. I took him with the group from Kestè to Bleecker Street where Pino declared that they didn’t make pizza like this anymore even in Naples.

The owners of the place, thinking to please him, put on one of his CDs, but Pino kindly asked him to change the soundtrack and let him listen to something by Gigi D’Alessio.
It was like that.

There are times in life when you remember exactly where you were when something important happened.
I remember the moon landing, the Twin Towers and when I learned that Pino was no longer with us.
I was on Bleecker Street, in front of that pizzeria, with an American coffee in my hand and a newspaper under my arm.
And the bells of Our Lady of Pompeii rang out loudly.