Italian
Gino Paoli, the “sea” singer-songwriter, passed away last night. Born in Monfalcone, near Trieste, he spent almost his entire long life in Liguria.
Gino Paoli was the son of a naval engineer and a housewife. His parents moved to Liguria early on, but his mother, towards the end of her pregnancy, wanted to give birth in her hometown, Monfalcone, on the Adriatic Sea. He spent the rest of his life overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea.
While attending the Galilei Institute in Genoa, he meets Luigi Tenco, with whom he shares a passion for jazz music and French songs. Having abandoned his studies, as he was not very passionate about them…, he finds a job as an advertising graphic designer (his great passion, after music, was painting).
He starts composing his first songs: The Cat, is from 1960, followed by The Sky in a Room, made famous by Mina. Both pieces appear in his debut album, Gino Paoli (1961), which also includes Stones and Endless, the latter dedicated to his partner Ornella Vanoni.
The meeting with the fifteen-year-old Stefania Sandrelli makes her love life even more tumultuous, while her career is going very well.
The things of love (1962) Il faut savoir by Aznavour and Ne me quitte pas by Brel, the subsequent Just close your eyes (1963) What is there, Live again and Taste of salt, his best-selling 45 RPM of all time.
A failed suicide attempt is a sign of a personal crisis that erupts after the suicide of his friend Tenco in Sanremo in 1967: feeling perhaps out of place in a profoundly changed musical situation, Paoli significantly reduces his activity and sparsely makes appearances.
Following are: The red traffic lights are not God (1974) and He has all the cards in order (1980), the first a tribute to the Catalan Joan Manuel Serrat, the second to the Livornese Piero Ciampi, who has recently passed away.
It makes a grand return in 1984, when A Long Love Story (from the soundtrack of the film A Woman in the Mirror), among his happiest compositions, brings him back to the top of the charts.
The Excesses
The life of Gino Paoli has been marked by many excesses, first among them the abuse of alcohol. In 2017 he had suffered an aneurysm from which he had recovered well, but then Covid had struck him and put his health in danger.
In 2025, at 91 years old, the singer then suffered from acute labyrinthitis. This illness, which affects the inner ear, forced him to cancel several concerts. Many fans were concerned about his condition, a sign of an affection that has not diminished over time.
