Cyndi Lauper, lazy socialism, psoriasis and me

In this extract from his book ‘Skin’, Sergio del Molino explains to his son why Cyndi Lauper and her story meant so much to him and how big pharma saved her from psoriasis

Lauper has lived a hard life (Getty Images for NARAS)

There was once, son, a female singer with a shrill voice that made her sound like a ghost child. She composed songs like she couldn’t read or write and danced like she had epilepsy. And yet, she composed, sang and danced in one of the most important songs in the world. Your father, of course, didn’t appreciate the importance of said song until he was very old, as old as you find him now, almost ready for the scrapyard, the age when the things we say might as well not have been said at all, because nobody listens to them.

One has to be very deaf and very confused not to feel the pull of the lyrics of that song, not to dash on to the dancefloor when the melody comes in but, while the world danced and sang along, I sat grumbling at the back of the bar, taking cover behind my 100 per cent cotton t-shirt burka with heavy metal bands on the chest, missing out not only on my own adolescence and ruining the Renaissance of the skin, but showing contempt for a sublime work of art that spoke more directly about my life than all the other songs I’ve ever heard.

At the time – the mid 1990s – the song was already old, though it had never gone out of fashion, given that it had become an instant classic the moment it was released. It was a song for every occasion, just as it is now. It can pop up in the middle of a film, and it’s unusual for it not to get rolled out at any good party. There are more than 20 famous versions of it, and it’s been re-written in every style: ennobled by violins, by melodic singers, set to a jazz tempo, played on acoustic guitars and amid the din of heavy metal, with orchestral touches and even to the accompaniment of church choirs. I like a lot of them, but the original is still the best: ramshackle and rustic, like something played by an organ-grinder.