Vanity Fair Interview: Italian Pop Singer Tiziano Ferro Declares He Is Gay & Wants A Relationship.

VANITY FAIR – Tiziano Ferro “I want to fall in love with a man”

TEN YEARS AND NEVER A LOVE

Interview by Enrica Brocardo. Photography by Julian Broad. Edited by Barbara Bartolini.

While the world adored TIZIANO FERRO, he was hitting rock bottom: “I couldn’t go on any longer denying the truth to myself”. The next step was to go into therapy, to get a hold back on his life, “starting from my HOMOSEXUALITY”. The first result: this interview, in which for the first time he explains why he no longer intends to give up “living that part of me” which for so long he considered “a monster”. Second result: a diary-book which may “help someone not waste all the years I did”. Third result: “I hope I’ll be able to tell you very soon”.

“What’s going to happen after this?” Tiziano Ferro asks me. Then he answers himself: “Nothing will ever be the same as before”.

It is not often that an artist’s expectations from an interview are higher than the journalist’s. All the more so if the musician answering the questions is Tiziano Ferro, who has spent a large part of the past ten years topping the album sales charts half way around the world. An artist that since 2001, when Xdono was released, hasn’t flunked a single song, selling million of discs and garnering more awards than will fit into a computer screen readout. And who now, ahead of a new album release next year, is publishing an autobiographical book: a collection of his diary entries between 1995 and 2010, under the title Trent’anni e una chiacchierata con papa (Thirty Years and a Chat with Dad), which starts with a revelation. Or rather, with a gift Ferro has decided to make himself and all those who love him: to live happily and contentedly.

The story starts where all stories with a happy ending should: from its conclusion, from a promise of love. And that’s also the starting point he chooses to answer my question on why he wrote the book.

“A couple of years ago”, he says, “I started a psychotherapy process based on counselling and medication. I hadn’t felt well, both mentally and physically, for some time, and I knew I had to get a grip on a few things, starting with my relationship with homosexuality. So at the end of last year I reached a conclusion: I wanted to live that part of me, stop considering it as a monster, something  bad to the point of being crippling. But was I also certain that to manage this, I had to give up my work. I was convinced the two things were incompatible. I talked to my father about it. I hoped I had found someone I could just bear my heart to, but he told me off: ‘It’s your right to be yourself, and if someone doesn’t like it, tell them to fuck themselves. But if this means quitting music, you’re making an even bigger mistake than you have so far by hiding your homosexual side’. But I thought: ‘Dad loves me so much, what else could he say?’ So I went to talk with my manager (Editor’s note: Fabrizio Giannini, Ferro’s manager since his debut). I said to myself: ‘He’ll be more rational about it, because he has a more neutral point of view’. Instead, Fabrizio caught me even more by surprise: ‘You deserve to have the life you wish for, because you’re not happy as you are. You’ve been living abroad for eight years (Editor’s note: first in Mexico, now in London), far from the people who love you, and that’s not right. I am totally with you, but if you’re thinking of calling it a day with music, you’re wrong again’. My father and my manager had taken my side with a force I hadn’t expected, and both had said the same thing: you’re more important than anything else, you were wrong in not realising that, and now you’re making another mistake. Two years of therapy had made me aware of a lot of things, but I didn’t know how to tackle them. Now it all seems absurd to me as well, but at the time I was truly convinced that in order to live my life, I was going to have to give up my job. Luckily, they did more than make it clear to me that I was wrong: their reaction was so strong that I felt ‘forced’ to come out. I did so through my diaries: I felt it was the only way I could explain things my way. So, to answer your question, the real reason for wanting to write this book is, well, obviously I’m looking for love, the part of life I have missed out on so far”.

Or, to be exact, the part you denied yourself. But why?

“I don’t know. It might be that when you’re not well, you see reality in a distorted way. Nobody ever put me in the condition to believe it was a problem, it was all my doing. The debate is always about the social impact of homosexuality, but there is never any talk about its impact on the individual, on a person’s problems and fragility. Sometimes we just inflict punishment on ourselves”.

So insecurities are the problem. What were yours?

“I think it all started with my inability to accept my body, with my being an overweight adolescent (Editor’s note: as a boy he weighed 111 kilos, hence the title of his album 111, released in 2003). It’s hard to have a relationship with another person if you don’t like yourself and don’t love yourself. On top of that, I had trouble dealing with success. I’m a workaholic. The truth is that for ten years I simply neglected everything that had nothing to do with music”.

First you couldn’t be happy because were overweight, then because you worked too much. Is that it?

“For a long time I did all I could to postpone the option of living happily. This might be because I grew up believing that there is more dignity in suffering, that being happy means being less of a good person. In a family, the person that suffers most, that makes the most sacrifices, is the one who deserves most respect”.

Is that how things were at home for you?

“I think it’s quite a widespread belief: if you’re happy, you’re superficial. Obviously a delusion, but hard to uproot. For a long time I felt it was my duty to nurture my angst rather than overcome it. Then one day I said to myself: ‘I have a job I love, I am financially independent, surrounded by people who love me, and I’m healthy. Why can’t I just enjoy life?’”

Indeed, why not?

“Living your sentimental life openly means allowing people to get to know you at a deeper level. And for a very guarded person like me, that is hard to accept. I always thought that if others knew me well, I’d be weaker, more vulnerable. And probably having to deal with homosexuality made things worse. But again: I can’t blame anyone other than myself. I still can’t explain why I considered homosexuality as a kind of ‘disease’. And the worst thing is, I could have come to terms with it all five years ago. For a small-town kid like me, used to seeing his parents work hard everyday to earn enough to keep the family going, it made sense to make my job the only thing that mattered, in order to make the most of the great opportunity life had given me. But if that may have been the case at the beginning, I have no excuses for how I behaved later on. I don’t have the presumption to save anybody, but if my book helps someone not waste all the years I wasted, that would make me happy”.

When did you first start having have doubts on you sexual preferences?

“There was one thing that, you could say, worked against me: I liked women. Maybe having girlfriends, and experiences with women, didn’t help me become truly aware that my feelings, my heart, was going somewhere else. Like everyone else, I started asking myself questions as a teenager. But I had a girlfriend at the time”.

Sara, the girl you talk about in the book?

“That’s not her real name. I asked all the people I talk about in the book to choose a fictional name. We were together for four years, from when I was 16 until I was 20. She was the first person I shared my doubts with. I told her I thought I was attracted to boys as well”.

And what did she say?

“She laughed at me in a kind way, saying that wasn’t possible. If at that age you’re in a relationship with a boy, you feel good with him and you’re in love, what else can you say to something like that?”

Then what happened?

“After I broke up with Sara, I signed my record deal: two months later I had a number one hit. I didn’t have time to think of anything else. Also, as I had flings with girls every now and then, and I let myself believe that I was making things up. I put my doubts to one side”.

Except for when you met men you liked.

“What fascinates me most is a person’s brain. I don’t care about the outside. I know it sounds trite, but it’s true: what counts is the way a person talks to me, tells me about something I don’t know, the impressive choices this person may have made”.

And what happened when you met that kind of man?

“I got into a state. On the one hand I knew I couldn’t go on pretending, on the other I kept trying to escape from the reality of things. A reality that had become all too obvious”.

Don’t tell me you were chaste for ten years because I won’t believe you.

“Almost. I’ve lived an absurd life. You have no idea how many nights I spent holed up in hotel rooms. Paris, Madrid, all those cities I thought were so beautiful, but in which I felt so out of place. What I remember most about that period was being hungry all the time, because I didn’t feel like going out for dinner with record company executives and I wouldn’t use room service. I didn’t really know how to, on the one hand, and on the other I didn’t want to spend too much of other people’s money. Thinking back to the person I was, I must say I find myself quite endearing”.

All the same, there’s been talk for years of you being gay. They even said it on TV, wrote about it in magazines.

“They said I led a double life and that I was happily together with a man. That made me furious. Not because they were suggesting I was gay, but because I would really have loved to have a boyfriend. But I didn’t have anyone. And I felt even worse because I just couldn’t come to terms with myself”.

Did you ever fear being found out?

“No. And there’s something else I want to say: I never publicly denied I was gay. It would have been easy to deny rumours by going out with a model. But I never lied. I just kept quiet about some things”.

In the book you say that at one point, to put an end to the rumours, someone suggested organising a fake chance encounter with paparazzi.

“That’s true, I’m sad to say. But I couldn’t care less. In fact, I was dropping clues everywhere”.

Such as?

“Apart from the video with Raffaella Carrà?” (Editor’s note: he laughs for half a minute. Reference is to the 2007 song Raffaella è mia, dedicated to the Italian celebrity and gay icon)”.

It was a bit of a giveaway, wasn’t it?

“I would make jokes with friends, for instance. It was as if I wanted to come out, but without committing. At the same time, I was still denying the truth to myself. It had become a challenge: ‘You’ll never find me out’. A useless battle, because I was its only victim. To the point that, despite having an album due out, I would get up in the morning feeling that I had no reason in life to go on”.

The phase of depression you went through, that you tell about in the book.

“I had finished my album (Editor’s note Alla mia età). I thought it was my best yet, and I didn’t want it to bear the consequences of something I could no longer keep control of. That was when I hit the bottom and decided to go into therapy. Two years ago, the idea of being here with you and talking about all this would have been inconceivable”.

However, rather than representing closure, the book seems to be a starting point. What do you expect will happen now?

“Reading my diaries again, I realised how important my friends have always been, and how much they suffered because I was away. From now on, I want to be with them more. I want to move back to Italy. I’m looking for a home in Milan. And in the meantime, I’ve already talked to all of them. I called them one by one. ‘Let’s go out for a coffee’, I said to each of them. I had written out a sort of set list”.

How did they react?

“They were relieved and happy. They could no longer bear to watch and keep quiet while I was crushed by the weight I felt on my shoulders. Of course, they all knew, they aren’t daft, but they would never have been the first to take on the subject, out of respect for me”.

A new home, more time with friends. And what about love?

“I have no one at the moment, but I hope not for long. I am such a strong believer in love it seems absurd I shouldn’t have one of my own. It’s like having a sweet tooth and not even allowing yourself a tiny pastry”.

You see, you’ve owned up: if you don’t have a love life, it’s because you denied yourself one. I’m going to ask you again: why?

“I would have had to live e double life, and I’m not able to do that. I find it irritating when I hear talk of ‘accepting homosexuality’. My dream is to share. Having a family that accepts my choices is not enough, I want them to live these choices with me. And the same goes for my friends”.

How do you imagine true love?

“Being so happy you can overcome any difficulty with a smile. But I hope I’ll be able to expand on that very soon”.

Do you regret having wasted ten years?

“I do, very much. What else can I say? Very, very, very, much.