Although I later fell in love with France, and now consider it my second home, the first country to win my young heart and seduce me with its language and beauty and fashion and flowers and intellect and men was Italy. Entering Italy for the very first time in May of 1967 was like entering a Fellini film as one of the stars. My reality, by any normal standards, was a fantasy: I was sought after by intellectuals, wined and dined by writers and filmmakers and politicos, pampered as the darling of the leftist intellectual circles in Rome and Milan. I met Furio Colombo, whom I called Marco, and who may be the smartest human being I’ve ever known. A journalist for La Stampa, one of Italy’s two largest newspapers, author of a book about Kennedy’s America and one on the American theater, he was then also working for Italian television. He took me to tiny restaurants where everyone knew him, and everyone knew me, and he talked about politics, philosophy, art, and religion, while I sat starry-eyed and in awe of his stupendous mind. I was taken to the most prestigious shops and given outrageous discounts on the latest fashions. I was given beautiful suites overlooking parks and gardens, and actors, writers, poets, songwriters, painters, senators, and professors sent me bouquets of roses.
I sat up in bed in my magnificent suite in the Excelsior Hotel, in an ocean of white linen sheets and a mountain of pillows and quilts, and ordered croissants and jam and caffè con latté for breakfast. I’d practice Italian songs on the guitar until it was time to order a big bowl of spaghetti al dente for lunch. Basking in the attention, confused at first, I soon became spoiled and addicted to the splendiferous scene.
The concerts were not so much concerts as they were spectacles, gala events, political forums. I sang in the Teatro Lirico, a beautiful opera house in Milan. It was filled to capacity, standing room only, with a crowd that could be described as exuberant. In the middle of the first half there was a great commotion in the balcony but I just continued singing, hoping the noise would subside. A political group had unfurled a Viet Cong flag in the top row of the balcony, and when I hadn’t responded to it, had become angry. They began noisily demanding recognition, part of the audience supporting them, others just as noisily telling them to shut up, and still others expressing their impatience and disgust at the whole scene. Eventually, the commotion turned into a near riot, and I took an early intermission.
I hadn’t seen the flag, of course, as I looked into a spotlight, but the flag-wavers were now demanding a statement from me on 1) why I had ignored their statement, and, 2) my position on the war in Vietnam. When I went back out I gave a short speech related to the American invasion of Vietnam, which Marco translated. Unfortunately, in an attempt to spare me the reaction of the conservatives in the crowd, Marco interpreted “American invasion” as “American involvement,” and a second shouting match ensued, with people standing up on their seats and hurling wadded up programs at each other, shaking their fists, and, I gather, cursing each other’s family lineage, putting a heavy emphasis on the maternal side. Finally I asked Marco to leave, then stretched out my arms imploringly and sang “Pilgrim of Sorrow”—a heartrending spiritual I’d sung to King in Grenada—which, if done in the right key, allows me just enough sustained high F’s to win over the most difficult of crowds. The Milanese forfeited their deep love of confrontation for their equally deep love of the human voice, and, perhaps remembering that theirs was the birthplace of Puccini and Verdi, succumbed to my untrained but impressive vocal gymnastics, decided to sit down, and listened to the rest of the concert.
I finished up with four encores, left the stage carrying armfuls of bouquets, and fell exhausted onto a tiny velvet couch in a dressing room already so overflowing with flowers that the new ones had to be put into the sink and toilet bowl. Everyone left the room in a hush, and I fell asleep; ten minutes later they came back, polite but animated: the public was still on its feet cheering, demanding another encore. I went onto the stage barefoot and sang a capella and my love affair with the Italians was sealed by my unabashed acceptance of their wild flattery.
In 1970 I sang in L’Arena, a soccer stadium in Milan. I had been on television and spoken in Italian about Martin Luther King, about the war in Vietnam, about demonstrations, about nonviolence, and had sung a song in Italian called “Cera un Ragazzo,” about two youths—one Italian and one American—who both play guitar and listen to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. One day the American gets a letter from his government and goes off to Vietnam, and now the guitar is forgotten and instead he plays a new instrument, which has only one note. It goes Ta ta rrra ta ta, ta ta rrra ta ta. It was a current hit sung by Gianni Morandi, a teenage idol who had one of those scratchy, sexy voices which sells millions of records. My singing “C’era un Ragazzo” on TV, a suggestion of Marco’s, was a coup. The first night, sixteen thousand people came to the stadium to hear the outspoken, radical, anti-Vietnam War, pacifist American singer. I read introductions in Italian off little pages scribbled with phonetics, and sang a one-and-a-half-hour show, including “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” “The Ghetto,” “Swing Low,” “Sweet Sir Galahad,” “C’era un Ragazzo,” and other popular Italian songs. The crowd was excited but well behaved, and the evening was a success.
The next night, the audience had doubled in size. Kids jumped the fence to get in free, the police were everywhere, and I was determined to maintain control over thirty thousand mad Italians. Marco had a microphone offstage for when I needed help, because the politicos had also turned out en masse. The Maoists, Stalinists, Trotskyites, and anarchists were the most vocal, and regularly interrupted the concert by shouting or chanting anti-American, anti-Nixon slogans. While the students and the more manipulative politicos jammed the lawn the entire 360 degrees around the raised platform where I stood, the conservatives, local politicians, mayors, stars, and normal people sat in the bleachers quite a distance away. Right-wing fanatics sat in small groups and occasionally countered the Maoists, etc., with brave shouts of “Viva II Duce” (Long live Mussolini). Up close, red flags dotted the crowd, and between songs I humored, cajoled, and tried every trick I knew to keep the evening calm.
In a sudden spontaneous and collective move, the young people sitting on the ground rose up in unison and shouted, pointing at something in back of me on the playing field. I turned and saw a young man running full tilt from a carabiniere, who was, I assumed, going to “capture” him for having jumped the fence. “No carabinieril” I shouted into the mike, my voice booming out across the field. “Per piacere, no carabinieri!” The poor policeman walked away in disgust and embarrassment to join his fellow policemen. The crowd gave a victory roar, and the young gate-crasher was hailed and seated in the audience, hugged and kissed, and generally received as a hero.
The elders in the bleachers watched the phenomenon of the political princess and her unruly hordes with amusement, and, I am told, with admiration. Every time I mentioned nonviolence, the antipacifist leftists would shout and scream their own slogans to contradict me, but I was as fearless and tenacious as an old schoolteacher, and, with or without the aid of Marco, would simply lecture them back.
A wind blew up, and I suddenly felt the incredible vulnerability of being alone on the stage. Indeed, the weather was rapidly turning bad. I sang “The Ghetto,” and got to the last verse:
And if there’s such a thing as revolution
And there will be, if we rise to the call,
When we build, we build, we build the new Jerusalem,
There won’t be no more ghetto at all.
At the word “revolution” two things happened. The students went berserk because the word inflamed them, and raindrops began to slap down onto the crowd and the uncovered stage. Thirty thousand heads tilted skyward. The bourgeoisie headed for the bleachers, and the young and the reckless headed for the stage. My platform was about four feet high, and the kids were either moving or being shoved toward the stage in waves, as the sky opened up with lightning, thunder, and a flash flood. My mind raced for a song which everyone could sing, as it might be the only way to calm the mounting hysteria. Rain arrived in sheets, and by the time I started “Kumbaya” the first battalion of kids was crawling up to mount the stage. A great gust of wind blew the stool, notes, and water glass off into the night. My last words over the speakers were: “Manny! Manny! Manny, the stool!”—and the electricity went dead. I knew I was in the hands of God, and of maniacs. The Italians were suddenly upon me. I kept smiling and holding the guitar in the air, thinking it would be safer in the rain above my head than crushed between the chests, arms, and legs below. I saw Marco shoving his way through the soaking, screaming crowd. I saw Gail, who was usually quietly playing with Gabe offstage, elbow her way toward me with the ferocity of a mother cheetah.
A few faces from a student nonviolent group appeared, kids I’d met with earlier during my stay. They calmly tried to link arms, in the hopes of encircling me and getting me off the stage. There was, of course, no backstage, only a soccer field which was rapidly becoming a lake. Someone managed to wrap me up in a large cloth. I looked down and saw that it was an anarchist flag, and shouted “No, grazie, no!” and began trying to disentangle myself while still keeping the guitar in the air. I caught another glimpse of Marco, who was bobbing around like a cork in a bathtub, as were all of us, and he was shouting something to me about the guitar.
Francesco, a great bearded giant of a boy from the nonviolent student group, picked me up in his arms and, bumping people out of the way, hulked down the makeshift stairs. Reaching a surprisingly clear, if soggy, area of grass, he began to run, splashing across the field, past screaming fans, and hurled me into a sound truck. Gail followed just after, shouting, “Lock the doors!” As we did I felt a tiny shock. I tucked my hands under my cold, miniskirted bottom, and sat like a nervous river rat, caught in an unfamiliar bunch of reeds. There was a great pounding on the window. Francesco shouted to open the door, which I did, and he yanked me out, the way a mother yanks her child from a mountain precipice.
“Eelectreecity!” he bellowed, and off he ran with me in his arms again, this time to a waiting car.
Back at the hotel we sat, dripping, on the floor of the lobby: Manny, Marco, Francesco, Gail, and myself. Colleen (my friend from the Carmel days—we last saw her in turquoise silk at the hospital curb looking at her new car . . .) arrived with Gabe sleeping in her arms, her story just as incredible as ours. When the rain started, she had gone into a room off the hallway which ran between the bleachers. There she and a few other women decided to stay dry and away from the crowd. As the storm whipped up, more people left their seats seeking shelter. One of the women with Colleen panicked and shut the door, fearing the crush of the oncoming crowds. When the crowd started banging on the door in a fury, Colleen took it upon herself to open it and invite them in. It was the decent thing to do, and besides, they might have broken in and vented their understandable rage. Ten-month-old Gabe was the hero of the moment, for as furious as the soggy Italians were, characteristically they were just as protective of a baby as they were of their own pride, and Colleen was eventually guided through the crush of bodies and helped to a taxi.
So there we sat on the tile floor, recounting every incident and laughing until we wept.
“You know why we’re still alive?” I ventured.
“Why?” everyone chorused.
“Because I insulted the police and they went on strike! If they’d tried to control the crowd, we’d have been killed!”
I remembered Marco’s glasses crunching noiselessly under a shoe.
“By the way, Marco, what were you shouting at me the whole time?”
“I was saying, ’Don’t hold the guitar een the air!’ ”
“But why, for Christ sake. It was going to get squashed!”
“Yes, I know. But you must understand, that when the Eetalians see something held over their heads, out of reach, een the air, like that, they theenk eet ees sometheeng to capture, like a flag een the meedle of a battle. Every time the geetar went another eench higher, they more and more wanted to have eet, to capture eet, to claim eet. That’s why, Giovanna.”
The next morning at breakfast the headwaiter came over to our table.
“Et, il concerto. Come vai? Successo o fiasco?”
“Fiasco,” I teased.
“Ha!” he retorted, proudly whisking a newspaper out from behind his back. Rave reports of the concert dominated the front page.
“Successo, non fiasco!” he grinned back at me.
“Yes, I know. Un gran successo. It was wonderful,” I said, and kissed his hand.