From Panorama of 11 January 1987
It will be a Fantastic Sanremo. Word of Pippo Baudo. More beautiful, longer; four evenings, from 4 to 7 February, 15 hours live on Raiuno, three theatres, comedians, international guests and rock groups. And 22 godfathers, of entertainment and sport, for the 22 singers of the Big section: the Serie A of the tricolor song. Was there a festival to be re-founded after the death of patron Gianni Ravera? Here Baudo is ready. As? By creating a Sanremo Festival in his image and likeness: a great variety, rhythm, surprises. And two great, new protagonists: the telephone and the computer. It will be an irrenocable festival: a survey, conducted by telephone, will give live, already in its first evenings, the rankings of a champion of Italy who follows Sanremo on TV: it will identify, for example, the preferences of women, of those who have more forty years old or not yet twenty. A projection of the Italians’ righteousness will emerge, a real vote, even if it will not influence the official ranking of the Totip columns. A further entertainment element that a Telemark computer will transmit on the screens of the Ariston Theater in real time. Second surprise. On the third evening, Pippo Baudo will move to the Casino theater for the talk show with journalists, singers and live calls from the public from home: 50 phone calls to talk and discuss in an unpredictable bullfight. And on Saturday evening all foreigners, young and big – at the Ariston centre, at dinner time. Baudo proclaims I won’t say anything about the songs: he is selecting them Pupi Avanti with the other four members of the jury. But the show must have rhythm and suspense, not last more than three hours. Like Fantastic. Carlo Massarini will present the international guests and Italian rock bands from the Tenda theater, I will probably manage alone. They would all like a beautiful woman by my side but then the problem is always the same: what do we make her do?. There will be two sponsors, Totip for the voting and Pop 84 with a ballet starring Lorella Cuccarini. Three Rai technical teams. To allow Baudo to travel to the Ariston theater and the Casino, Corso Matteotti, the main artery of Sanremo, will probably be closed to traffic. And for Goofy’s incursion into the Tent, a helicopter is already ready and the Cavalcate delle Walkirie is playing in the background. It’s the first year after Ravera and we all agreed on Baudo’s project, explains Mario Maffucci, manager of Raiuno. It also seemed to us that the talk show formula incorporated all the elements of spectacularity, interest and discussion of a festival that we want to give to the viewer cooked and eaten. Faced with the great Baudian event, it is difficult to get excited about the returns of Al Bano and Romina, Patty Pravo, Frate Cionfoli and Fausto Leali. Or for the group of diehard regulars: Chistian, Ricchi e Poveri, Marcella, Peppino di Capri, Toto Cotugno, Pupo. Even among young men and young ladies, moreover, there are plenty of veterans: Mango, Fiorella Mannoia, Andrea Minghi, Sergio Caputo, Grazia di Michele, Andrea Mingardi, Flavia Fortunato, Rossana Casale, Marco Armani. The only highlights: the Morandi-Ruggeri-Tozzi trio, the strange couples Gepi-Ramona dell’Abate, Bobby Solo-Rosanna Fratello, Toni Cicco-Banda Berté. Only two surprise absences: Anna Oxa, only announced, and Renato Zero, excluded from the industry’s games. The organization will submit an initial shortlist of 40 names to the judging commission. A second screening will select the twenty-two big names admitted to the festival in the next few days. The choice of the 16 young people competing will instead be made during a live audition, from 8th to 10th January, at the Ariston theater in Sanremo. Can sensational last-minute exclusions be foreseen? Don’t worry: everything here is strictly parceled out. Each record company that sits on the board of directors of AFI (the sector’s Confindustria) has the right to two places among the big names. And at least one young man. But will Sanremo, a triumph in ratings and TV, be a good deal for the record industry too? Hardly. Participation in the Festival costs, between production and promotion, a few tens of millions. D45 rpm, however, are seen very few: everyone prefers the compilations with all the songs from the festival. Singing in Sanremo therefore becomes an investment in the image for the artist, the guarantee of a package of television broadcasts on Raiuno. And the certainty, for those who work in the Centre-South, of 60-80 evenings a year. The festival single-handedly keeps the small and medium-sized concert industry afloat. All this because more than half of Italian TV users watch Guaran TV every year and every evening. I saw one of the Sanremo evenings on television. I was at a friend’s house and I was able to escape, Ennio Flaiano, king of the lightning aphorism and the fragment, noted in his diary in 1968. And he implacably concluded: These friends intended to see the program for study reasons, being psychologists and interested in culture mass. In the end I realized that they liked that thing.