FITNESS FOREVER (Feat. PEPPINO DI CAPRI) "Ischia" Single Digital

A few days ago, we let you know about the arrival of FITNESS FOREVER’s new album with the first advance single, “A Vele Spiegate”, but there is something very important that you need to know. It all starts in Rome, in 2005. A fascinating and experienced TV presenter takes a walk down the Villa Borghese. A young woman accompanies him, hypnotized by his distracted way of walking, by the nervous gesticulations of his hands. In the next scene, they are sitting together romantically on a bench, and kiss passionately as if it were a seal of their cosmic love that transcends logic, time and space. In this sensual and secret Rome, a city open to all ideas and possibilities, we find the first portrait of chansonnier, a figure that will show up again and again in different ways and shapes over the course of “Amore e Salute”.

On this album, we will find the stories of some of those chansonnier. Beyond the original meaning of someone who sings his or her own songs, we understand this figure here to be a certain type of man, of a certain age, who is full of class, charm and elegance, intelligent and vocally persuasive, with a magnetic look, a mysterious and melancholic interior life, and that touch of a sense of humor that makes him absolutely irresistible to women of all ages and social classes. The kind of man that was common in the last century and is basically extinct now, like, Daniele Pace, Filipponio, Julio Iglesias, Franco Califano, Serge Gainsbourg, Renato Nicolini, Luciano De Crescenzo, Renzo Arbore, Luciano Angeleri and Fred Bongusto, to name a few.

Specifically, this advance single that we’re bringing you today, “Ischia”, tells the story of the latter, but to tell the story of Bongusto, we need to start with the incredible and exceptional collaborator that Carlos Valderrama and company worked with: Peppino Di Capri. There is no one in Italy who doesn’t know Peppino Di Capri, an authentic living legend with seven decades of music under his belt, reinventing himself constantly and always staying alive in everyone’s hearts, injecting his pop and Neopolitan vision into any language he comes across.

Starting in the 60s, he was the first person to bring the Beat, Twist and Ye-ye sounds to Italy (and made it so popular that he was called to open the only three concerts the BEATLES ever played in Italy!). After that, in the 70s, he opened up to the jazz-funk sounds (we could never forget masterpieces like “Mò” and “Nun Può Dicere”) and then submerged himself in electronic music in the early 80s with hits like 'E Mò E Mò'. It’s said that he was one of the first people in Italy to order an expensive Fairlight synthesizer, made famous by Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones.

We haven’t even mentioned his immortal hits like 'Champagne', 'Roberta', 'Nessuno Al Mondo' and 'Il Sognatore', which made him very famous even on the other side of the Atlantic; he continues touring regularly in the US, Canada and South America, especially in Brazil, where he is worshiped like a divinity.

The thing is, not everyone knows that Peppino Di Capri was a great friend of one of the greatest Italian chansonniers, Fred Bongusto, who, starting in the 70s, regularly recorded his albums in the Splash! Studios in Naples. This is where, by the way, this very "Amore e Salute" was recorded, and with the same sound engineer, Massimo Aluzzi, who recorded and mixed the majority of the albums from that period. 

The relationship of professional respect and appreciation between Di Capri and Bongusto quickly turned into a sincere and sparkling friendship, thanks to their shared passion for tennis, and a healthy competition between the two about who was a better musician, which culminated in a joint tour in 1996 called "Due Ragazzi Così" (two guys like that), where they frequently sang each other’s songs.

Bongusto lived for a long time on Ischia, in Sant’Angelo, one of the island’s most magical, beautiful towns with a most idyllic location. The lounge spirit and disco elegance of the song evoke those glamorous, summery locations for us. But when Bongusto died at the end of 2019, and when the first wave of Covid-19 passed and we could leave our homes again, the first thing Carlos Valderrama did was get on a boat and go to Ischia to visit the places Fred had lived, see his house (a beautiful villa with a fantastic view of the sea) and talk to the people who had known him.

He found out that Fred had left the island to return to Rome a few years beforehand, had sold his beloved villa, and yet everyone still remembered him, everyone had their own story to tell, and in the small town of Sant'Angelo everyone still knew who he was. After such an intense, emotional experience, this song materialized almost immediately in the head of our beloved songwriter - lyrics and music at the same time, as if it had just written itself.

From that first moment, he knew who should sing it: Peppino Di Capri. He was the one who needed to close the magic circle that this chain of events had opened.

It was easier said than done, of course. Asking a star like Peppino to sing for an underground group like FITNESS FOREVER was a little like asking Lionel Messi to come play football with your work buddies. But determination and insistence ultimately won out and the collaboration happened.

That’s why “Ischia” isn’t just a song; it’s so much more. If you’ve read these words, you can understand why.

We will be back soon with more singles, more chansonniers and more stories. Because this transcends music in every way.