Jeff talks about loss and new music with Gino Vannelli

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I' Jeff Stevens. It's my eighties show podcast. Gino Vanelli
has a new studio album called The Life I Got
to My Most Beloved. It is out February seventh, and
you can also go to genov dot com and all
major digital platforms. There's a new single called Nowhere to
Go But Up. So very thrilled to talk to Geno Vanelli. Hello, Jeff,

(00:20):
Hello there, Gino, Nice to talk to you. How you doing, man,
I'm doing fine, well, I'm doing very well. Thank you
been a fan for a long long time. And first
of all, let me just start by saying my condolences
to your wife, Patricia battling cancer. I know that that's
what's been a big inspiration for your new album. But Gina,
we're just just really really sorry to hear that.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Well, I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Jeff. Tell me about Patricia.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, Patricia exceptional person. I met her when she was
nineteen years old and we were together almost this years.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
I never did anything important, even unimportant, without consulting. There.
We were together on everything, and our topics would range
from the silliest to the to the most serious and
gravest matters. And I wanted the album to be you know,
a really honest and apple pos reflection and tribute, you know,

(01:17):
to Patricia, Yeah, because I honored her so much.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Well, you definitely sound like soulmates. Man, and this is
obviously your twenty third album. What a way to pay
tribute to her with the life I got to my
most beloved and man, what a what a cool way
to again to pay tribute to her. Your voice sounds
amazing on nowhere to go but up my goodness, I mean,
you have to be so proud of this.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, I do. I do like the record a lot.
I mean I just got sent the video a couple
of days ago. We recorded to shop the video in Belgrade, Serbia.
Wo went back and I hadn't heard this song in
a while, and so I just I just saw the
video yesterday and I'm quite pleased with it. It brings

(02:06):
back a lot of good memories of being there. We
were treated so well. Yeah and yeah, I mean people
won't know, but that was the fourth version of that song.
I really Some songs on the album came pretty quickly,
you know, I knew exactly and the production followed through
very very very very smoothly. But that one went through
many many reincarnations before I ended up, you know, with

(02:29):
that version of it. And when I finally hit that
version of it, I knew I hit right, including the
harmonica solo, which is really interesting sound.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah, it's just such a smooth song. And your voice
is just you know, it's always been amazing, but my goodness,
a fifty year career, your voice just sounds fantastic. And
it's a very heartfelt song too, it is, you.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Know, and it combines you know, some really kind of
funky rhythm stuff and you know, stuff I pulled from
the early mid seventies, you know, CV wonder stuff, you
know a little bit the syncopation and the keyboards and
all that stuff that I grew up with that I liked,
and with with the new twist, new theme lyrics to
it enough. Of course, lyrics are very reflective of what

(03:19):
I needed to be to my wife in our last
in our last moments, and that was to be I
know it sounds cliche, but a positive force and quit
whining and quit pitching and quit complaining, and you know
about this about that and artists, you know, really poets, artists, writers,
So much of what we do is secretively kind of

(03:42):
sugarcoating are whining and complaint. If you read all of
the Lake poets, you know, coming out of the early
eighteenth century and all that they're all complaining about, you know,
the industrial Revolution, and then you can you listen to
all the beat poets in the sixties. They're all complaining
about government, about this, about that at the heart of it.
So much of art is complaining. But then you listen

(04:06):
or you read through what Witmen, or you read through
Ennison and some other people, and you see, well, there
are some people that chose to write to lift our spirits,
and those are the hardest kind of songs to write.
And so this is what I was determined to do
on this record, is to write lyrics that were that
recognized the darkness, yet that would lift myself and people

(04:28):
around me out of the darkness. And that was the
most it's kind of hard to write that.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Oh, it's got to be the hardest type of type
of a song to write, right, I mean the hardest
it is.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Because it's really easy to depict what's wrong, you know,
with life or this person or that person, or the circumstance.
Everybody could sit down and criticize whatever you know, for instance,
during COVID, right, we're all criticizing all that they didn't
do this right, they didn't do that right right, But
what is the right thing to do? That's the hardest
thing to yes and to know those same thing. You know,

(05:02):
with writing songs, it's easy to say, you know you
didn't do this right, I left you because of this,
But try to write a song without sounding overly sentimental
and maudlin that says I love you, because wow, that's
the harder song to write.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Well. This new collection of your new songs that you
wrote through the through your wife's battle that sadly passed
last year, your twenty third album, you've been nominated for Grammys.
I was going through I'm so happy that Vinyl has
like resurged, and I was going through my forty five's

(05:37):
last week and I found living inside myself and I
think it was in eighth grade and my mom heard
that song on the radio. Hopefully this will make you smile.
She passed away a few years ago. My mom heard
that song on the radio. She's like, Okay, have you
heard this Geno Vanelli. I'm like, I heard it, Mom,
It's a fantastic song. I'll go out and buy it.
So I went out bought to forty five, and I

(06:00):
know she bought one too, so we so you at
least got two sales from our family. But I know
a lot of other people bought that record too, And
and of course I just want to stop. I mean,
what a great era. And the great thing I love
about the late seventies and early eighties songs that we're
referring to here is I knew back then that there
were so many special songs in there, but now it's

(06:22):
funny that that actually they you know, they have well
yacht rock channels and different stuff like that where some
of those songs land. And I know I've talked to
some of the artists from the late seventies and early
eighties that are like, please don't ever say yacht rock again.
And other artists are like, you know what, people could
call it what they want. It's our music. It's great music,
and I'm good with that. So I don't know if

(06:42):
you have a thought on that, but but just that
period of time, that period of time, the late seventies
and early eighties is so special, and that was your
absolute wheelhouse, you know, that's.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Where people became good songwriters. Yeah, And of course they
took from the forties and these and sixties all the
classic songwriters like the Gershwins and Backgrack and all those people.
But it culminated in the sixties and seventies and partly
the eighties of some of the best songwriter singer songwriters

(07:12):
you know on the planet. The songs today are for
the most part, there's hard some good ones, but there
for the most part are are more like soundbites. Where
in the old days you didn't really have technology to
help you too much. You heard if you heard a
David Gates song or Jim Crochey song or whoever, they
were usually composed very well, with a good theme, good lyric,

(07:36):
good melody, stuff like that, you know. And so I
grew up in that era, and I'm glad I did,
because it's given me a high watermark. Even with all
these years later, fifty years later, I do not consider
a song finished unless I read through the lyric and
I say, oh, this is good, this is it really
moves here and now I get this sensation. And I

(07:59):
mentioned this to someone else before. If your songs, your lyrics,
and your melody, as they come together, you could have
a great lyric and a great melody and something that
does not gel between them, that does not give you
that ping or that ring. But sometimes you have a
lyric and a song and melody and they come together,
and they come together to make that ring. Yeah, and

(08:20):
that you cannot sing one without the other. You cannot
sing the melody without singing the lyricstable lyricers without singing
the melody.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yes, yes, I just right now, I just want to
bust out. I just want to bust out living inside
myself because I just used to listen to it so
many times and it's on my it's still to this
day on my playlist and all that stuff. But that
actually made me go back because I had missed. I
just want to stop. And so then I was like, oh,
he's got other great songs too. And then the very
first radio station I was I ever worked at in

(08:50):
nineteen eighty seven, I get to play wild Horses, So
so that was that was pretty cool. Now And just
to see you, you know, fifty years later, your voice
is still so amazing and you just have this great
catalog of songs that that just so many of us
out here still love today.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Gino I appreciate that. Thank you, Jeff.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
You're welcome, Gino. And before I let you go, I
would be remiss if I didn't mention your amazing hair.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
I mean something about it, right, I mean, you have.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
To and it was it was, it was amazing then.
It obviously still looks very good now. And there are
many people from from you know, that era that that
can't necessarily say that. But but Gino, you got it.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Brother, appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
Jeff, Gino, nice to talk to you, and congrats on
your twenty third album. Thank you so much, all right,
thanks je