Rita Pavone Fan Club history

RITA PAVONE FAN CLUBS

I’d think a page about the inner workings of a teen-age fan club dedicated to a female teen-idol would be an interesting subject to pursue.

I have been a member of at least three different fan clubs dedicated to Italian teen-sensation Rita Pavone who burst into Brazilians' consciousness on a Thursday night, 25th June 1964, when a video-tape of her recital at Teatro Record recorded two days earlier was broadcast by Channel 7, TV Record. Her vivacious charisma was instantly taken on by a whole nation. Her boisterous rendition of Italian-style rock’n’roll was wildly applauded. Her bold routine of stepping down from the stage to mingle in the midst of  the audience, sitting on grandpas' knees or making grandmas sing along a few bars of ‘Datemi un martello’ had never been seen before. It was a sensation in itself. Rita could do no wrong. She enthralled São Paulo and Rio plus the whole of Brazil in one single night.

Her album ‘Meus 18 anos’ (Non è facile avere 18 anni) shot straight up to Number One. Her two EPs - ‘Quando sogno’ and ‘Come te non c’è nessuno'- were Number One and Two at the charts. ‘Datemi un martello’ had been at the top for 8 straight weeks when the follow-up ‘Scrivi’, went to number 2 and ‘Sul cucuzzolo’ to number 3. Rita Pavone was the greatest foreign sensation of 1964. While the US was into Beatlemania, Brazil and Argentina were into Pavonemania.

It took some time for Fan Clubs dedicated to her to start popping up but when they finally did - as of mid-1965 - there was a plethora of them spread all over the country. Prospective fan-club-presidents would advertise for members in teen-age oriented magazines like Jeanette Adib’s ‘Revista do Rock’ (edited and printed in Rio), TV Guide ‘Intervalo’, old timer weekly ‘Revista do Radio’ or even on an illustrated magazine like ‘Fatos & Fotos’ which started catering for the teen market.

Fan-club organizers wrote to the letters-section of these mags inviting fans to join in. They had their addresses or PO Boxes numbers printed and were soon flooded with mountains of letters from avid fans asking for photos, lyrics, friendship, records that didn't reach their out-of-the-way towns etc. Sometimes a less-informed fan thought they were writing to Rita herself instead of to a fan-club. Some invarialbly asked for money which was a joke for most of FCs were managed by teen-agers who had meager incomes.

1966-1967 the golden years

By mid-1966, I had met a few fans who really mattered. It all started when I decided to visit the address of Fã Clube Rita Pavone started by Antonio Carlos Faria aka Totó, a lad of 15 who enjoyed show business, lived with his mother and a younger brother at a house in Bosque da Saúde-Vila Mariana. There was a variation on FCs’ names: ‘RP Fan Club’ or ‘Fan Club RP’. Some would spell the word ‘fan’ as ‘fan’ and others as ‘fã’ which is also possible in the Portuguese language. Toto’s was ‘Fã Clube Rita Pavone’. 

Even though Totó wasn't home when I knocked on his door on a late afternoon, his mother, dona Tina, who was very friendly, told me he was out working as an office-boy at a bookshop on Rua Afonso Celso at that moment. She showed me a stack of letters he’d received only that week and said I could amuse myself reading some of the fan mail. They were dozens of letter of teenagers responding to the ad published at Revista do Rock inviting Pavone fans to join his F.C. 

Through these letters I ended up meeting other fans... and the most ardent of all was a girl called Silvia Paula Jentsch, who lived not far from there, at Vila Clementino. Silvia had a few imported vinyls like ‘Volvió la Pecosita’, a 1965 Argentine album which had a few tracks never released in Brazil. That was the ultimate Graal chalice of a Pavone fan. He/she who had the supreme happiness of being the owner of an ‘imported record’ was king/queen among their peers. Besides being a fortunate fan Silvia was a skillful drawing artist and painted on china; ran a family business straight from home and was independent economically.

After visiting Silvia one Saturday afternoon I learned she was also a member of other Fan Clubs. One in São Carlos-SP which I also belonged to and one in Sorocaba-SP which was led by Leda Gonçalves whose parents owned a rolling skate rink in town. Silvia, her brother Roberto and her mother Paula had visited Sorocaba and she became fast friends with Leda and other girls there. 

At the same time I had written Toto I also wrote to a ‘Rita Pavone Fan Club’ located in São Carlos – a mid-sized town some 250 km from São Paulo. That was a much more organized FC with a president in the person of Luís Fabio Miranda and Sonia Oliveira as a secretary, both in their late teens.

Silvia’s house eventually became the ‘de-facto’ Fan Club post where we went to on Saturday afternoons to listen to the latest Pavone releases from here or imported from far-away places like Germany, Italy or the USA.

Silvia as it turned out was a member of three different RP fan-clubs. Toto’s, Fabio’s and Leda   Gonçalves’s 'Fan Clube Rita Pavone Comanda'. Leda lived in Sorocaba a city not far from São Paulo. Silvia actually had already visited Leda whose family owned a roller-skate rink that swarmed with teens who danced and roller-skated to the sounds of “Datemi un martello’, ‘Quando sogno’, ‘Clementine Cherie’ and all the rock’n’roll hits belted out by the Italian Vocano.

Silvia’s family had a WV beetle and that’s how she, her brother Glu and mother Paula would drive from town to town. They had already been to Sorocaba and I went along with them in their next trip that took us to São Carlos where we finally met (in person) Fabio, Sonia, Sandra Regina and other teens we only knew by letter-writing.  We all became fast friends instantly.

There was a hint of competion and jealousy among the various fan-clubs but we who belonged to two, three or more of them did not take part in this internecine activity.

1966 and 1967 were the golden years of the many Rita Pavone Fan Clubs.  In mid-1967 there was a ‘national meeting’ in São Paulo where lots of kids got together at Walter Tsutsui’s house in Vila Madalena, a São Paulo suburb, where we did the usual: listened to Pavone’s records and talked about how much we loved her.

Little by little the kids started talking about other subjects other than Rita Pavone. Subjects as differente as sexuality, religion or sports were developed among the fans in an intellectually charged atmosphere. Some of us tried desperately to learn Italian to get culturally closer to our idol. Most of us bought Italian magazines which we barely understood but we kept on trying to read them with the help of dictionaries. Many lasting friendships were formed in those halcyon days.

1968 – the year all hell broke loose

1968 was a disruptive year to me particularly because I was conscripted into the Brazilian Army. The military dictatorship ran supreme and there was a lot of resentment in the air with students protesting on the streets and the military police killing indiscriminately. I think that atmosphere contribuited to the  demise of Fan Club activities.

Besides there was a big denouement in Pavone’s private life: Rita married Mr. Ferruccio Ricordi, her long-time manager, record-producer and Svengali on 15 March 1968. Mr. Ferruccio Ricordi was known in the show-business as as Teddy Reno and had been a romantic singer in the 40s and 50s.

Many fans, like my dearest friend Silvia Jentsch, felt betrayed by Rita’s decision who up to then had a rebellious attitude and all of a sudden had ‘given in’ and married an ‘old man’ double her age. It was a big let-down to some fans, especially the most influential ones.

Rita’s having left RCA Italiana was also negative. She recorded now for Ricordi [no relation to her manager-huband], that was distributed in Brazil by Chantecler a ‘no-frills’ label.

But worse than that was Brazilian RCA’s total lack of interest in keeping apace with Pavone’s latest recordings like ‘Solo tu’, ‘Stasera con te’, ‘Questo nostro amore’ etc. Ever since Rita’s last personal appearance in 1965, RCA’s RP’s new releases had dried up. Brazilian RCA were caught unawares with the surge of Brazilian native rock’n’roll – Jovem Guarda’s sudden popularity. CBS (Columbia Records) was on top now with Roberto Carlos and RCA that had been the top dog until 1964 was floundering with no clear way out of the dolldrums.

Hard-core fans had to rely on Italian imported magazines such as ‘Giovani’ and ‘Big’ – or ‘Gente’, ‘Oggi’ and ‘L’Europeo’ to read the latest news about Pavone. Those magazines were expensive and arrived in South America two or three months after their publication. It was the only source of information for the avid fans.

I well remember ‘Non dimenticar le mie parole’, Rita’s last recording for RCA Italiana. I thought it was a marvellous achievement! The song itself was an old Italian hit from the 1940s... but Rita made it sound as if it was a soul recording.  It was hip, it was modern and it had soul. Rita’s rendition was a tour-de-force. Would Rita Pavone become the Italian Aretha Franklin? She had what it took! But that was only a flash in the pan! When Rita moved to Ricordi the quality of her records was abysmal. Well, never mind.  I guess it was time to grow up anyway!

Some idols grow up with their fans others don’t. I guess Rita Pavone got lost when she entered a difficult marriage – at least publicly it was the wrong step to take because Mr. Ferruccio was still a married man with a son and a stranged wife. Italy did not recognize divorce and the Italian Press was dead-set against such a union. The marriage also festered a lot of bad blood between her and her father splitting the family in two camps and the Press having a ball out of it.

I guess the dream was over.  The dream had been shattered, crushed to the ground. I went my own way but I kept as my friends a lot of the people I had met during those two or three wonderful years that turned out to be the most beautiful years of my life.

Luiz Amorim, 24 April 2011.