Peppe Vessicchio

Peppe Vessicchio in 2017

Giuseppe "Peppe" Vessicchio (17 March 1956 – 8 November 2025) was an Italian conductor, composer, arranger, musician and television personality.

Quotes

"Baudo a Sanremo sposta anche le fioriere. Fermai Vanoni e mi lanciò una scarpa"

From an interview by Filippo Maria Battaglia, La Stampa, 1 November 2025

• In Neapolitan tradition, mandolins, guitars and accordions were part of everyday life, just like kitchen utensils.
• (About the song Ti lascio una canzone) Gino wanted to pay tribute to Ornella Vanoni as a seal on their story. I loved the idea: even before it was born, that song already had a life of its own. He wrote the lyrics, I wrote the music. Paoli was like a cat: you never knew whether he was going to scratch you or purr.
• Pippo was powerful, demanding and competent. If he didn't like one of the arrangements, we would go back and write until late at night. [The Sanremo Festival] was his home: just think, one morning I caught him moving a flower box at the theatre entrance.
• (About the Sanremo Festival) It has gone from being a song festival to a product festival. This is a consequence of the rapid obsolescence of lyrics: once upon a time, an artist dreamed of finding a song that would remain in their repertoire forever. Today, what matters is doing something that works immediately.
• What is produced today is mostly modest. Music has become tribal: fewer and fewer elements are used, and songs are monotonous.