"Run boy over there, fly between flashes of blue, run to the aid of all the people of humanity".
Anyone who was a child in the eighties has already recognized the incipit of the acronym of one of the most famous Japanese cartoons broadcast on Italian TV: "Jeeg steel robot", an anime masterpiece created by the genius of Go Nagai.
An acronym that contributed to the success of the adventures of Hiroshi Shiba, the young protagonist of the series called to pilot a super-robot created to defend the earth from the menacing Haniwa warriors, the bad guys of the moment.
According to an urban legend widespread until recently, it was none other than Piero Pelù, former frontman of Litfiba, who sang it.
In reality, the voice was that of a Sardinian musician: Roberto Fogu, aka Fogus.
Born in 1936, family originally from Sassari, but residing in Rome, Fogu, who died in 1995, was a talented pianist, who performed in clubs in the capital, including the White Elephant. At the same time, he collaborated with Rai for soundtracks and acronyms and in the seventies he also edited the music for the film "Prostituzione" by Rino Silvestro.
In addition to "Jeeg robot of steel" he also interpreted the theme song of another cult cartoon of the seventies and eighties, "Ryu - The boy from the caves" .
But how did the urban legend of the acronym sung by Piero Pelù come about? Simple: the singer of the band Oedipus and his complex , founded in Prato at the end of the eighties, interpreted it in the album "Pura lana" (1990) imitating the unmistakable style of the Florentine singer. And so the belief spread that behind the song - almost incognito - there was the leader of Litfiba.
Instead, the original version (although a second version was later recorded by the Superobots group) was precisely by Fogus, of which Pelù himself, who had to deny several times that he was the "father" of the acronym, had to say: «I want to shoot a film about him, with his damn soul tone and a life to tell...".
Curiosity within curiosity: in homage to the legend, in 2008 Piero Pelù really wanted to perform his own version of "Jeeg robot d'acciaio", contained in the solo album "Fenomeni".
(Unioneonline/lf)