“With Renato Bozzetto we shared everything, we even swapped girls.”

Cochi is in Lecco to visit a contemporary art exhibition. He looks at the works of those artists he knew well in the distant years, Piero Manzoni, Lucio Fontana… Then he will go to meet the public to present the show – at the Cult of Zelbio, an event in the province of Como, after Martina Franca, where he will receive the award, and therefore also in September in Rome – “Kochi version“the book in which he has just told his personal and professional story. Aurelio Ponzoni has always been known as Cucci, the other half of Renato (Buzzetto). He has lived 83 summers, and as he walks through the exhibition, he remembers the most important one. The moment that changed his life. Because there were many summers, first in Emilia Romagna, then with the family in Viareggio, and then traveling or at Lake Maggiore where he grew up and where he always returns.

But what is your July and August?

“The year is 1964, my first professional summer, exactly sixty years ago.”

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Why do you remember it?

“It was my first time in Cesenatico with Renato, Tenin, Felia Mantegazza, Lino Toffolo, Felice Andreasi and Bruno Lauzzi. It was our first appearance in the cabaret and the realization that I had already started doing this job there.”

Weren’t you convinced before?

“That year, in winter, we founded our cooperative in Cab 64, a bar in the province of Milan. We performed under the stairs on a platform we had made, while the neighboring Filia (Filia and Tennin Mantegazza who worked in RAI and created the famous Dodò di pezza dell’Albero azzurro, ed.) made puppets for it. We made our first professional appearance. It went well, but we never tested ourselves outside of Milan.”

What were you doing in Cesenatico?

«There was a big dance hall, La nuit, and after the stars of the moment, singers like Gianni Morandi or the primitive Mal, had performed, we did a cabaret, in a more protected area of ​​the disco. Meanwhile, Tenin and Velea were cooking something for us and for those who came to listen to us.»

You started with Milan songs and graphics: what do the Romanian audience think of this?

“There was a mix of spectators, with many foreign tourists, Germans and Italians, who listened but didn’t understand anything, but they were happy, they were there, they drank. Then the singers who had performed before joined us: Edoardo Vianello was always there. But also Fausto Lelli, whom we knew because he was one of the first to sing Beatles songs in Milan and we were already familiar with that world.”

However, these were not the times of “chicken is not a smart animal” or “and life, life”: what did you have in your repertoire?

“Also the chaotic folk songs and the non-Italian pieces. We said goodbye to Jamaica Belafonte, the bossa nova. I had a great love for João Gilberto and I sang Desafinado. But the real mark was the one left by our songs that later became famous. And then we had Lauzi, who did Ritornerai and was already known.”

Why did you choose Cesenatico to be your “foreign” debut?

“It was a point of reference because there was Dario Fo who spent every summer there writing his comedies. We went to visit him and in the evening he came to see us. Dario supported us immediately, since we met him at the Osteria dell’Oca d’Oro, where Renato and I went to sing as students and who – in addition to him – frequented names like Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Dino Buzzati, Umberto Precedente meaning environment. They were the first to see us, and at that time we did not realize the value of these people.”

Back to that summer..

“We went into it without much expectation, but at the end of the evening we always had a little money together. That’s how we paid for our holiday. We slept in a partner hotel, which put us all together in the attic. Later, when we came back, it was probably in 1968, we were all hosted by Giorgio Ghezzi, who was Inter’s goalkeeper and had a hotel. He was never accused and he set up a cabaret, the Beccato Vignale, which Renato and I opened.”

Renato Bozzetto remembers his wife Brunella Gubler: “I could have given her more, I always think of her”

Did you fight with Renato?

“Never, while we laughed a lot. Renato was always my companion in games, in life, in everything. We divided everything that happened to us, always in half.”

Girls too?

“That was the order of the day, without prejudice to nationality: whoever arrived we took. So, yes, Renato and I could have exchanged some of them. We were very young.”

Did your older colleagues give you any advice?

“They looked at us with great favour, even those who were more famous at the time, like Walter Chiari. In Cesenatico many came to visit Fo and then to see our show. But above all, it was the painters who encouraged us in those times. Bruno Munari was one of our supporters. Fontana asked us to be brave and to do what we loved, and not to be afraid to take risks.”

Did he also encourage her by giving her one of his works, by any means?

“Let’s hope! Fontana came to see us regularly, and since he didn’t drive, I always dropped him off at home after the club at two in the morning. One evening he said to me, ‘Come on, I’ll give you a notebook.’ But I didn’t go because I felt I was taking advantage of an old man, a man of sixty.”

Then, when the summer was over: What happened in September 1964?

“We passed the test of an audience unaccustomed to this kind of expression, to the unusual sense of humour of vaudeville and vaudeville. People listened to us, they even paid. So, when we returned to Milan, we all went to Derby with Enzo Ganacci, and there we began our journey that took us to television and everything else.”