Sanremo 2025, Righeira and the 40 years of “Summer is ending”

The evening of the covers and the duets of Sanremo 2025 (here the story and the report cards) brought to the stage of the Ariston Johnson Righeira to sing the classic of the Righeira “The summer is ending” with the coma_cose, 40 years after the exit of the song and 39 from the only participation in the Festival with “In love”.
“I am happy with this cover. I hear many points of closeness between the Righeira and the Coma_cose”, says the musician, to the registry Stefano Righi, founder of the Righeira with with Michael Righeira, pseudonym of Stefano Rota. Guest of Rockol Lounge, at the Club Tenco headquarters, adds: “They try to make a modern pop as we have always tried to do us”.

Rockol: How was this return to Sanremo born with these duets with the coma_cose?
Johnson Righeira: I wanted to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the song and the voice came to the coma_cose who suffered, enthusiastically joined, they cultured the idea. I am very happy because I feel many points of closeness with the coma_cose, just conceptually, between the type of music that the Righeira have made and the one they do now, albeit with a due temporal distance. They try to make a modern pop as we have always tried to do.

Rockol: The verse “Sanremo is ending” that you added returns a little the melancholy of the end of this week?
Righeira: That was an idea, I liked it immediately, in fact I said to myself: “Because I didn’t think about it!?”.

Rockol: The arrangement combines the two souls of “Summer is ending”, the melancholy one and the one to dance
Righeira: Yes, they were the two versions on the two sides of the 45 laps.

We had sent the slow version, because it is a little less known than the classic one. Enrico Melozzi has merged the two versions together, just as I normally do live with those two originals. Clearly, he condensed them and this version with the orchestration came out. Among other things, with a change of shades that is not perceived practically, because California is a woman, so to make it better had to make it a tone above. I still do it in original shades, which is quite high, and I still do it easily. But a tone on, I wouldn’t have done it. So she starts with her shade, then there is this orchestral artifice that seems to make her raise, but in reality she lowers a tone.

Rockol: The other beautiful thing was the monochial alone, which you worn. Where did he come from?
Righeira: Comes from some Chinese site!

Rockol: Forty years of “summer is ending”. They are also almost forty years after your participation in Sanremo.
Righeira: Yes, next year there will be forty years. It took us at all costs in Sanremo thanks to the success of “Summer is ending”.

Rockol: What do you remember of your participation in the race in Sanremo?
Righeira: They were other times.

I remember that it was a delirium, that I had the opportunity to touch this opportunity again with the coma_cose, albeit in a reduced version. A beautiful clear memory I have is the end of the festival. There were 18 participants, we arrived fifteenth and Mango arrived fourteenth. In the end we were all on stage and he was next to me. I remember that, since that year was voted with the totip cards, I told him that the detachment between us, between the fourteenth he and the fifteenth, was little, perhaps of about ten votes. So I also told him that, to know, I would buy some cards. And he said, “In fact, I did it!”

Rockol: What was the one for you? What do you remember from that period? In the book “Oh, oh, oh, oh. The Righeira, the Playa and the summer 1983 “by Fabio De Luca your story seems almost a novel.
Righeira: Maybe sooner or later I also make a television series, a fiction. I would be very curious to see who will play my part and I could definitely give him many tips.
Having said that, Sanremo was perhaps the extremization of what we had become.

By now they had stamped us as a hit manufacturers. We couldn’t make a normal record: if it wasn’t a hit, nothing. For Sanremo we came with difficulty to finish the piece, even with external aid, because we were not used to having pressure. We wrote things when they came to us, not on command. And in some ways it was just a bit the moment that marked the end of a certain period. “In love” was still a success, but then afterwards we heard the weight of this responsibility, because it was difficult after being able to do things. In fact, the things later decidedly gradually went well.
However, we lived three truly incredible years. I struggle to have great memories because everything happened in such a sudden and swirling way … there was no time to stop to think and understand what was happening. Then after recording “Vamos in La Playa”, we left for the military – I immediately after and Michael after two or three months. When we finished the military we found a life that had completely changed for us, without gradually perceiving the change that was taking place. So it was certainly a very strange thing.

Rockol: Do you think that the Righeira, who combined pop and melancholy reflections. have they been understood?
Righeira: Certainly the great commercial and popular success at the time made everything else spent. I have always said, perhaps immodestly, but I don’t even think so much, that we were ahead. The fact is that a certain debate on the text of “Vamos a La Playa” began about 30 years later. Not “Vamos a La Playa” wanted to be who knows that. But not even “hearts” of the coma_cosa I think it wants to be who knows that. It is a reflection. “Vamos in La Playa”, unconsciously, unconsciously, was certainly the daughter of the period of nuclear tension worldwide between the United States and the Soviet Union. I don’t remember having been inspired by that, but undoubtedly with hindsight that then influenced me a lot. The idea was however the one that if the bomb will crack, who cares, we will go to the beach the same.

The Rockol video interviews are made at the Tenco club, in collaboration with Evolution and Scf.