L’immenso

(Amedeo Minghi) – Amedeo Minghi, 1976

L’immenso really stems from the need to affirm my inner conviction that songs must belong to those who sing it. I had written songs for others for years, I had also written songs for myself but always with much input by other musicians, like Aldo Pizzolo or Renato Serio, who had arranged the strings on my first album. It just poured out of me, music and lyrics, all at once: I remember that I was in the bedroom – my wife and I lived in a small two-room apartment – and she was out shopping. While I was lying on the bed with the guitar in my hands, L’immenso came out with two chords, C and F,  in a quarter of an hour: I felt the need to write something completely mine which represented me, and I finally talked about myself, my true self. From that moment onwards all the songs that I write would be inspired by my wife, then as now.

When she came back from shopping I told her I had written a new song, she liked it very much. We pitched it to Cenacolo on a Teac 4-track, Melis heard it and decided to record it. But he was not wholly convinced, to the point that before publishing it he inserted it as the only slow song in a promotional 33rpm record full of dance tunes and intended only for discos, with the result that there was only one slow track that was going around at that time in clubs, the only one that could make kids hug, and it was mine, it was L’immenso. Melis had a brilliant idea, it was a real test, and when feedback came from the clubs it turned out that L’immenso was the most played track by dee-jays throughout Italy.

Finally Melis was convinced and published it as a single, which is also rightly credited to  Pandemonium, because they had played it in the recording studio and I was part of the band at that time. We recorded it in Studio C at RCA, all in a circle, with Piero Pintucci in the centre, and all live. In fact my acoustic guitar feedback can be heard in my voice track. The strings we borrowed from a session that Pintucci was doing with Renato Zero, because Piero also worked with Renato, and for one session the string section, instead of playing with Renato, came to us to record their part on L’immenso. We made a video clip for the song (and I was one of the first to do so) that also featured my three year-old daughter Annesa. It was directed by Pino Leoni, who later became a rather famous television director and worked a lot with music. I don’t think many people had already made a music video by 1976.

Quoted from: Ceri, Luciano, M’illumino d’immenso. Intervista ad Amedeo Minghi, in «Vinile», n. 5, December 2016, p. 96