Vasco: the secrets of “Okay, that’s okay”, 40 years later
“Okay, okay like this” is a cult object for Vasco Rossi fans. Originally released on April 3, 1984it was the first live album by the rocker from Zoccarecorded on the occasion of the tour which in fact marked the beginning of that intense relationship with his audience which still today, four decades later, continues to make the Komandante’s concerts true secular masses where the commonality between him who stands above the stage and his tribe becomes total. Recorded during the last three dates of the “Bubbles tour 1983“, between the Teatro Tenda in Bologna (“Finally Bologna”, shouts Vasco at the beginning of the live version of “I want to go to the sea”, among the first examples of Italian reggae: two years earlier Loredana Bertè had become a hit with her “E the moon knocked”), the Cantù Palasport and the Verona 2000 disco,
“Okay, that’s okay” he recorded on tape the sensations and emotions one felt at the rocker’s concertsat the height of success after the consecration achieved a few months earlier at the Sanremo Festival with “Vita spericolata”, the generational manifesto with which he upset the canons of Italian music and quickly became a legend. But what fans have heard to date has, in reality, only been a partial documentation of those incredible weeks.
On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the release of the live album, “Okay, okay like this” returns to stores in the form of an exclusive collector’s box set containing both the remastered versions of the original 1984 album and ten never-before-released tracks. The recordings of “Let’s forget this city”, “Splendid day”, “I like it because”, “Our relationship”, “Asilo Republic”, “A song for you”, “Valium”, “What are you doing”, “I want to go to the sea ” and “Silvia”In fact, they had remained in a locked drawer until today. It was while reflecting on how to celebrate the anniversary that Vasco’s entourage, together with Carosello, the record label that released the 1984 album and which sent this new version to stores, decided to reveal a precious treasure that remained for so long hidden.
It was in unsuspecting times that it was revealed that much more material had been accumulated from the concerts of the 1983 tour than that included in the original version of “Okay, Okay Like This”. Guido Elmihistoric producer and right-hand man of Vasco, who passed away in 2017 a few weeks after the mega rally in Modena Park. “Given the material in our possession, we initially thought of making a double album, but then the idea was abandoned in favor of a more streamlined version.”, he recounted in the liner notes of the 2011 reissue.
In trying to dust off those recordings from the original multitrack tapes, Vasco and Carosello’s entourage decided to entrust their recovery to the same sound engineer who recorded and co-produced the album in 1984. .Maurizio Biancaniwho has been alongside Rossi for some time, says: “I used the 192 khz / 24 bit digital files obtained from the Analog Master which had been recorded with the Manor Mobile Studio and mixed by myself in the Fonoprint Studio in via Coltelli in 1984. But on At the request of Vasco and the Carosello record company I also mixed ten other songs from the same concert, starting from the 24-track analogue tape. We have thus practically completed the complete lineup of the 1983 show”.
Listening to the full album delivers a unique experience with a nostalgic flavour. Vasco was in a state of grace. And so his musicians, Massimo Riva and Maurizio Solieri on guitars, Roberto Casini on drums, Mimmo Camporeale on keyboards and Andrea Righi on bass. The latter in 1984, the year of the release of the live, will give way to Claudio Golinellidestined to be the beating heart of the Zocca rocker’s band for almost forty years.
You can almost see him, Vasco, babbling something about “What do you do”. Just as it seems to see his audience while at the beginning of “Silvia” they sing a chorus – “Aleee-oooo” – which is in all respects a preview of the scenes that would soon characterize the rocker’s great gatherings, starting from that concert at the San Siro stadium in Milan which in 1990 would have represented a watershed in the rock star’s career. Biancani explains: “.From the tracks emerged a dirty, aggressive, almost punk sound at certain moments, revealing a gritty and rocker Vasco more than ever. Some pieces, such as ‘Forget us this city’, which opened the concert, or ‘Asilo Republic’, are literally shouted to the audience and even a sweet song like ‘Silvia’ has an aggressive rock dimension like never before on the stage of those concerts. A Vasco to be rediscovered and which, I am convinced, will amaze many listeners, as happened to me first.” “In those days I went straight and determined on my way and there was nothing and no one that could stop me or prevent me from achieving the goal I had set for myself: becoming number one, the first Italian rock star”, Vasco would recall years later.
