Samuele Bersani: “The past does not pay the ticket”

This article is published in issue 6 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until February 9, 2021.

“Your memory finds a hole in the net
He slips into my brain and is the master
Your memory when it arrives is hungry and thirsty
And what little balance I have disintegrates
The past is a drug
Which I no longer intend to take ».

Your memory

A few years ago Samuele Bersani wrote one of his luckiest songs, In and Xanax, a hymn to the love of two people who share panic attacks and the desire to accept and overcome their fears.

Last October, after seven years of silent recording, it was released Cinema Samuele, a new album welcomed by rave reviews from exhausted itpop and trap critics, and a video of a single taken from the album is online a few days ago, Your memory. It is the bitter sequel to In and Xanax, in which he recounts the after-effects of the end of the relationship, when through the memory the past sneaks into the head and starts to make speeches.

Samuele Bersani is disheveled, smiling, sincere. In the background you can see the framed cover of I love you … neither do I by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, outside the frame of the videochat there is the cat Marcello. Why this name? He is asked. “It’s Marcello Mastrogatti!” He bursts out laughing.

Does the album come full circle?
“Yes, I was lucky enough to have an important relationship, which lasted 3-4 years, very intense as was the disappointment. You are never quite ready for disappointments, I had invested a lot in that story, but life goes like this. Then I got lost when I thought it was impossible to find that kind of emotion, and in addition there are the memories that intercom, as I say in the song, slip under the sole of the foot like a piece of glass, and there is the period of obsession . You may meet wonderful people but you don’t even see them because you are afraid of a new disappointment. We are not even ready for surprises ».

Are the memories treacherous?
«I think the most successful image is that of the network: you put it on but then the memories find a hole and they pass anyway. I imagined the past and the present as two animated characters. The present is correct and pays the ticket, the past travels like a latch ».

Does it have a nostalgic streak?
«No, rather I am melancholy. But most of all I think I’m honest. I said on TV that I am depressed and all to tell me: what are you thinking of? Are you crazy? But I say: and you are happy instead? But how can we be happy with the life we ​​are leading, with everything closed and without the possibility of seeing each other? ».

How did the lockdown go?
“Bad. I found myself with a broken knee in a third floor apartment with no elevator. I was one of those who had the presumption of having everything under control, the pandemic took me from behind and knocked me down. The feeling of loneliness has doubled ».

Was there a positive thing?
“When I finished all the series on all Netflix, I began to come to terms with myself. I learned to cook for myself, which I didn’t do before, at that time with crutches I also refused to eat. Then I started to find the pleasure of doing it and I got back in touch with people I hadn’t heard from for many years. I am also my father’s son who pulled out a diary and started phoning people who hadn’t heard from them since ’52: they all still had the same numbers ».

When the past comes back, what helps you to live in the present?
“The curiosity. I am interested in people, I like to observe others, I would never want to become like those elderly people who never leave the house and always tell the same things. Then the fact of not having had children perhaps gave me more freedom and more time to look inside myself ».

“We would have made a child together / But then the ifs won / Fears and selfishness”, he sings in a song from the new album, Dystopians (I’m close to you).
“Sometimes you make the mistake of wasting time and being selfish, in my life it has happened a couple of times. But I can still at least chase the goal by birth “. (ride)

He has just turned 50: how did he take it?
“It coincided with the release of the album, so everyone complimented me on the songs and then maybe they congratulated me, I couldn’t have a party, it’s like it wasn’t a real birthday.”

Has a budget done it?
«No, but I feel that at 30 I was no less adult than today, the difference is that I have had more experiences. Over the years I think more of the other person than of me, if it seems to me to hurt I withdraw, once I was not like that. Then I’m happy but there can never be full satisfaction. I think for example that Your memory needs to become more popular, it’s a song that deserves to be heard. And since I’m not in today’s trend and I don’t have the communicative power of a trapper, I depend on human word of mouth ».

How’s it going with social media?
«All my followers are real and I reply to messages. People find it hard to believe it ».

When she was young at one point she had gone to It is not Rai and also ended up in the posters of That is.
«Yeah, incredible, I had become something else from myself, I don’t even know why. Or maybe because I was young and cute. I remember a scene very well, I on the set of the video of Heartbreaker, they told me: unbutton your shirt! And I didn’t want to, I was also half stunted… Then they invite me to open the dates of the Italian Take That tour. I arrived with my backpack and pulled out two bullshit, they had the mega superstructures … ».

Pacifico, his friend and fellow singer-songwriter, wrote that when he was composing the songs on the record, everyone was wondering if he was crazy, that he wrote words on paper, “crumbs” which later became this album.
«Gino (De Crescenzo, aka Pacifico, ed) came to see me in the worst times, that is, in the creative moment. I’m not very tidy in general, when I write it is even worse, my mother from Cattolica wants to come and clean and I tell her: no, for heaven’s sake! I don’t have a bad copy and a good one, I live it like this, creativity is a fury, which this time is back after years of difficulties with myself ».

He had a creative block.
«A difficulty in getting out the words on which a limestone barrier had settled that I could not break. The song, like everything that doesn’t exist and then exists, is a mystery. And the risk of boredom is very strong. I’ll give you an example: it’s like when you change your girlfriend and you have to start telling the anecdotes of your life again and maybe in the past it has already happened 4 or 5 times, in short, you arrive tired. Instead there are those who believe in it and always tell them. Songs work like this ».

And what then gave you the impetus to write this album?
“Such a lack of self-esteem… sometimes you have to get to the bottom of the pool to get back up and from there I saw the light and took a breath of oxygen. I was in Milan for a year, something absolutely unjustified, I have never even seen the Duomo … ». (ride)

But why?
“I needed to disconnect, to lose habits, like reading Repubblica.it every ten minutes “.

He said he wanted to write this album to Ginostra.
«Yes, it is my place of the heart. Two musicians and I arrived with 13 packages. But hot water in winter is scarce, there is not much to do, to get to the house you needed two donkeys … in short, there was a mutiny immediately, the musicians ran away. In all, the feat lasted two and a half days, my most epic I think ».

Is he a romantic?
“Yes, there must be a reason for beauty: a landscape, a place or a muse. Something you watch to inspire yourself. “

What muses did he have?
“Bologna. And for this album the past and the present. I had to deal with the past and at the same time near me there was a person who endured my twelve hours a day locked in the closet just to be with me for dinner. This has become the present I believe in. “

Photo by Paolo Di Francesco.

Samuele Bersani’s tour will start in April: 18 April in Milan, 27 in Bari, 29 in Catania, 3 May in Bologna, 4 in Rome, 7 in Turin, 10 in Florence.