Rome and The Dolce Vita

It was ‘sixties Rome, the Rome of the Dolce Vita, with its artistic and cultural ferment. For a young Florentine full of determination and passion like Giancarlo, who also had charm, Tuscan-ness,  great expectations and creativity, this was truly fertile ground. Pretending to work at the bank, Giancarlo made his acquaintance with the world around him: the film and theatre worlds, where he made friends with future great directors like Visconti, Scola and actors like Manfredi, Monicelli and many others….He also had a brief affair with Catherine Deneuve.
He got in with the RCA crowd, the top ‘sixties record scene; also with the crowd from the Piper, the famous Roman club where many musical talents started out. These were fun, constructive years, which made Giancarlo realise his future was not the bank but the entertainment world. So he began to strum the guitar and above all to whistle new tunes.
And so, whistling, he arrived at the CGD in Milan, today’s Sugar Music, where the great publisher Ettore Carrera listened to the tunes he whistled and plonked out on the piano. Carrera offered him an exclusive contract as an author at a sum which Giancarlo certainly could not refuse. It was thus that at 27 Giancarlo left his work in the bank, left Rome and his group of friends, and began his new real life of music, songs and endless successes in Milan ……