Italy’s most successful rock star Vasco Rossi has announced that he will be retiring from the rock scene after his current tour. Rossi, who will be 60 next February, stated in a shock interview on RAI TV that he can no longer keep up the pace of the ‘on the road’ rock star lifestyle and will give up touring, although he will not completely disappear from the business.
The singer and songwriter from Modena started his career in the late seventies although failed to obtain large scale success until his fourth album Siamo solo noi in 1981. A controversial performance at the Sanremo Song Festival in 1982 with the song Vado al massimo became a further stepping stone to success and admiration among Italian fans looking for a home-grown star among the usual Anglo-American stars of the time. His song Vita spericolata the following year, also premiered at Sanremo, became the anthem of a whole generation and continues to be a crowd favourite and a ‘classic’ of Italian popular music. A drug raid in his home near Bologna in the spring of 1984, where he was found in possession of cocaine, only helped him along the way to ‘cult’ status among fans, and his success rocketed throughout the 80s and 90s with a string of successful albums and his famous ‘stadium’ concerts drawing huge crowds nationwide. An audience of 130,000 at the Heineken Jamming Festival in Imola in 1998 remains a record for crowd attendance at an Italian rock concert.
Although fairly well known in continental Europe, Vasco Rossi remains a peculiarly Italian
rock phenomenon. In 2010 he blamed his lack of success outside Italy on American and British governments who, he claimed, banned foreign artists from becoming successful in their countries.
Rossi has three children, one of which was only officially ‘recognised’ 17 years after his birth following a DNA test.
Biography by ondarock (in Italian)
Italy for beginners 
Listening to Vasco right now
– American citizen
Vasco is mythical
Vasco the best italian rockstar
American and British gov’s “banning” foreign artists ? What a load of bollocks ! The majority of consumers in those countries simply does not understand italian. Thats the reason why they dont buy italo-pop.
Well, why people around the world who also do not understand English buy British and American pop-rock?
Understanding a language is not the point of the matter because many many people from every country in the world dont understand english lyrics songs too when they listen to them. Music is just a huge and commercial business and that is the reason why they banned Vasco Rossi to be in british or american music markets as Vasco is too talented rosck star and he would have have been a huge massive success there.
Vasco Rossi you are a great rock star
BLASCOOOOOOO!!
John–your comment does not make sense, because when an act/singer is a huge success, everyone benefits (government, businesses, fans, artists). Where is the evidence for anyone banning non-American/Non-British acts from succeeding? Ever heard of ABBA (Swede), the Scorpions (German), Roxette (Swede), U2 (Irish), plus about a dozen Canadian acts? People generally listen to music in languages they understand much more than those they do not. Rossi is good, and I also listen to Zucchero, but I don’t listen to Italian songs more than English, even though I understand Italian well enough. Americans and Brits listen more to what they are more comfortable/able to understand, that’s all. You can see this is true based on the number of foreign acts which made it commercially in the US and Britain only when they produced English-language hits.
Thanks for your comment and for taking your time to read the article. The view that foreign artists are “banned” was expressed by Rossi himself. You may be interested to learn that the artist has recently isued a ‘comeback’ album.