Francesco De Gregori - Walking on broken glass

Although he himself has repeatedly said he dislikes the label, to this day Francesco De Gregori embodies the authentic spirit of the Italian “singer-songwriter”, thanks to his way of writing and performing songs: lyrics rich in metaphor and unusual logical-syntactic constructions, set to music that stays in the background yet is original and complex, almost always relying on traditional instruments. Just as distinctive is his way of delivering a song, with that nasal voice and broad use of vowels: the “De Gregori style”, which whole generations of imitators would go on to mimic.

An intellectual with a passion for popular music, he has always built his songs with the finest European poetic production of the twentieth century as his structural and stylistic reference point, drawing on that cultural grounding and on his natural gift for poetry (some of which has even appeared in school textbooks) to clothe his songs in verses of overwhelming evocative power. Verses that could almost do without the music, because, strangely enough, they sing on their own.

His reticence, his lack of interest in the public image filtered through the media, and the somewhat aristocratic, elitist character of his music and (above all) his lyrics earned him the famous nickname “Prince” of Italian song.

Born in Rome on April 4, 1951, he spent his adolescence in Pescara and returned to the capital with his family at the end of the Sixties. He attended the “Virgilio” classical lyceum, where he witnessed firsthand the political events of the 1968 student movement. During those same years he also helped his father, a director of the Vatican libraries, rescue books from the Florence flood. Meanwhile, he learned to play guitar by strumming his grandfather's instrument in his room (the talent clearly ran in the family), and began putting to work the gift that would come from his youthful reading (Steinbeck, Cronin, Pavese, Marcuse, Pasolini) and his musical loves (Simon & Garfunkel, De André, Tenco, Woody Guthrie, Cohen and Dylan chief among them).

Fascinated and inspired by the bard of Duluth, and encouraged by his brother Luigi (known as Luigi Grechi), himself a librarian but also one of Italy's most admired country singers, at eighteen he began performing some translated versions of Dylan songs at Giancarlo Cesaroni's Folkstudio - Cesaroni being a chemist bitten by the good-music bug - playing and singing on the famous red chair (none too comfortable given his height) of the well-known basement venue on Via Garibaldi.

The Trastevere club was the “temple” of other young singer-songwriters (Antonello Venditti, Ernesto Bassignano, Mario Schiano, Giovanna Marini, Mimmo Locasciulli, Edoardo De Angelis, Archie Sawage, Stefano Rosso, Riccardo Cocciante, Paolo Pietrangeli, Giorgio Lo Cascio - collectively “I giovani del folk”) who, under Cesaroni's protective wing, would unwittingly help create the “Roman School” of Italian singer-songwriting.

During that period, still only twenty, De Gregori travelled around Italy accompanying on guitar the folksinger Caterina Bueno from Florence, author of the song “Cinquecento catenelle” (to whom De Gregori would later dedicate the track “Caterina” on Titanic).

Some time later, he joined the roster of Vincenzo Micocci's It label (the same Micocci whom Fortis would have liked to kill in “Milano e Vincenzo”) and, at just 21, released his first album, Theorius Campus, split down the middle with Antonello Venditti (for financial reasons).

It's still a remarkably immature record, with Venditti as its main figure, while De Gregori is still a very young songwriter who didn't fully convince the label, with half his colleague's vocal power and no track with the same impact as Venditti's already-established “Roma Capoccia”.

Worth remembering, though, are “La signora aquilone”, an ethereal folk fable, “La casa del pazzo”, an evocative text set over an obscure Moog composition by Giorgio Lo Cascio, and “Vocazione 1 e ½”, the only track co-written by both songwriters, carried along by heavenly choruses.

In 1973 De Gregori moved to Rca and didn't fail his first real long-player test with Alice non lo sa. Commercial success still didn't arrive this time either, but his name began to circulate among the more discerning young audience, and there was a standout track: the title song “Alice”, built on guitar and the finest, thinnest violins, which tells of the sweet passivity of childhood and adolescence through a lyric made up of images that seem almost unrelated to one another: the bridegroom who at the moment of the wedding shouts “Non ci sto”, Cesare (Pavese, ed.) “lost in the rain”, waiting “...da sei ore il suo amore ballerina”, or again Lilì Marlène who “...sorride e non dice la sua età”, and, last but not least, the protagonist Alice herself, who “non lo sa” - doesn't know any of this.

On one hand, De Gregori's passion for history emerges (the enchanted “1940” and “Saigon”, a fine folk-blues enriched by Roberto Ciotti's guitar); on the other, his more complex and enigmatic songs begin to take shape (it's after this record that De Gregori starts being described as hermetic, an adjective that has always irritated him greatly): “Buonanotte fratello”, rhythmic and Dylanesque, dedicated to his friend Lo Cascio and built from evocative images; “La casa di Hilde”, a guitar ballad telling a coming-of-age story laced with “contrabbando”, co-written with Edoardo De Angelis; and above all “Marianna al bivio” - perhaps his most genuinely hermetic song - which unspools obscure metaphors over a line of bass and percussion (“e Marianna camminava/ con il sole nei capelli/ aggrappata a un paradiso di stagnola/ Ogni uomo che passava/ ne toccava la sorgente/ ma lasciava la sua anima da sola/ e la strada divideva/ due esistenze parallele/ l’orizzonte ne copriva la realtà/ e Marianna non sapeva/ cosa fosse veramente/ quel diamante che stringeva nella mano/ mentre il sole la seguiva da lontano”).

The single “Alice” would incredibly finish last at “Un disco per l'estate” (De Gregori, long-haired at the time, took part in the event alongside the Vianella, also on the It label), but the album still achieved a fair amount of success, confirming the Little Prince as one of the emerging artists most loved by the avant-garde youth audience.

In 1974 came Francesco De Gregori, branded on the cover with the famous sheep painted by Gordon Fagetter. It's the underground album of the Roman singer-songwriter's discography: idolized by his most devoted fans and almost disowned by De Gregori himself (years later he would call it his worst work). The tracks, all guitar/voice arrangements enriched by hints of piano and a few other instruments (drums are entirely absent), are denser and more personal than his previous records, almost like thoughts jotted down on a pillow. "Nothing to Understand", the opener and the album's most famous song, is a response to the labels of hermeticism pinned on De Gregori the year before, built with a kind of De Gregori-style cut-up, with lines like “però se un giorno/ tornerai da queste parti/ riportami i miei occhi/ e il tuo fucile/ e non c’è niente da capire”.

The inspiration is palpable in every track and reaches its highest peaks in "Giorno di pioggia" (guitar and bass almost muted, and two repeated piano notes), which boasts a stunning lyric, and "Bene", the album's masterpiece, an intimate song with layered meanings (a love that has ended, existence itself, the aching end of adolescence), so private that rumor has it De Gregori only ever performed it once outside of the studio recording.

It's striking how, using such spartan instrumentation - and being, at the time, a genuinely rudimentary guitarist himself - De Gregori managed to craft songs that are as cohesive as they are independent and brilliant in their own right.

The second half of the record - centered on the splendid sentimental ballad "Bene" - features even more complex lyrics (“in fondo alla pianura/ una linea più buia/ l’esercito degli uomini diversi/ con gli occhi e la bocca pieni di sonno/ aspettava in una buca di due metri/ e noi/ dall’altra parte del concetto/ con l’anima in fondo alle gavette/ cacciavamo i pensieri come mosche mortali/ e il nostro cervello era bianco/ l’attacco era fissato per le sette”, from "Finestre di dolore"), and overall keeps intact the excellent songwriting level of the first half, which closes with a line that's hardly innocuous: "Ero così distratto, amore mio, quando ti ho morso il cuore".

These are years of political struggle and censorship. Rai openly opposes De Gregori, due to his lyrics and his political leanings (close to the Communist Party): he responds with a scathing track like "Informazioni di Vincent" (“Ieri alla televisione mi hanno detto di stare tranquillo/ Non c’è nessuna ragione di avere paura/ Non c’è proprio niente che non va”). But tracks like "Cercando un altro Egitto" and "A Lupo" also stand out. In the latter (everyone wonders why it's not titled "Al lupo"), alongside episodes from his private life and the legendary Renault 4 in which De Gregori used to drive around with his travel companion Lo Cascio, the song tells of an impresario nicknamed "Lupo", who always swore on his daughter's life. One day Salvatore Quasimodo gave him a book of his with the dedication "To Lupo, pure soul, so that he may no longer swear on his little girl".

It's yet another pretext for the specialized press, which stirs up fierce cultural controversy over his extremely free use of words. For the first time in the Italian music scene, the so-called "canzonetta" - a pop song form so attentive to lyrics - seemed to no longer be telling any story at all.

De Gregori's songs, however, are only an apparent mystery. They are stories suspended between reality and dream, between the universal and the everyday. Often, simply knowing a few of the real-life situations behind the lyrics is enough to grasp their key. They plant clues, then wander off, leaving it to the listener's sensibility to piece together the rest, carried along by suggestions tightly bound to the music. It almost seems like he enjoys writing the stories of men (himself included) using metaphors like a stimulating mathematical equation, with words resembling perfect numbers, set together with the notes into the melodic blueprint of the song about to be born. Also distinctive in his songbook is his use of synaesthesia, the construction that joins two terms belonging to different sensory spheres ("sorriso ladro", "notte crucca e assassina", "barattolo di birra disperato", etc.).

In 1974 Fabrizio De André went to the Folkstudio and asked Luigi Grechi to let him hear his brother's songs. This is how his friendship with the Genoese singer-songwriter began, leading to the album "Volume ottavo", released under De André's name but featuring De Gregori's songwriting credits on tracks like "La cattiva strada", "Dolce luna", "Le storie di ieri", "Oceano" and "Canzone per l'estate".

A year later De Gregori released Rimmel, still his most celebrated album and a milestone of Italian song. Bittersweet lyrics, underscoring a constant emotional ambivalence, richer and more polished arrangements this time, and an overflowing melodic gift combine to produce an extraordinarily consistent and fluid album, whereas his previous ones had always shown a more intermittent talent.

The title track hits on an irresistible piano melody, setting stories of lived love within an American-folk frame, balancing lyricism and sarcasm (“Ora le tue labbra puoi spedirle a un indirizzo nuovo/ e la mia faccia sovrapporla/ a quella di chissà chi altro/ I tuoi quattro assi, bada bene, di un colore solo/ li puoi nascondere o giocare come vuoi/ o farli rimanere buoni amici come noi”). Then there's the immensely popular, tender ballad "Buonanotte Fiorellino", inspired by Dylan's "Winterlude", which earns forgiveness for a touch too much lexical preciousness ("fiorellino", "uccellini", "monetina") thanks to disarming rhymes ("Ora un raggio di sole si è fermato/ proprio sopra il mio biglietto scaduto") and an overall ironic, disenchanted tone. The other hit, "Piano Bar" - a vivid portrait of a "man of little melancholy" who "doesn't know how to cry" - takes the shape of an enveloping ballad in the style of Elton John ("Daniel"?), built around the timbre of keyboards and acoustic guitar.

Other gems include "Pablo" - which simply tells the story of a Spanish emigrant but has instead been attributed to numerous political exiles and even to Neruda - with its eccentric arrangement by Lucio Dalla; the enchanting arpeggiated ballad "Pezzi di vetro"; and the surreal "Quattro cani" (aka Francesco De Gregori, Antonello Venditti, Lilli Greco and Patty Pravo), a farcical allegory driven by striking fingerpicking. The dedication on "Il signor Hood" remains a mystery, though: "to M. with autonomy" (perhaps a reference to Mimmo Locasciulli, from Pescara? Or to Marco Pannella, who also hailed from that Abruzzo city?). But the album's greatness also shines through in its "minor" tracks, as shown by the sweet "Piccola mela", a tender pop melody delivered in a hushed voice, and the most political song of the bunch, "Storie di ieri", which tackles the theme of anti-fascism with his usual lyrical sharpness ("La mascella al cortile parlava/ Troppi morti lo hanno smentito").

The time was ripe, and De Gregori rented an old three-room apartment on Via del Mattonato in Trastevere (across from the Folkstudio), leaving behind for good his parents' home - his parents, worried, anxiously thought of their second son facing the world alone, standing at the dangerous crossroads of the winds, armed only with an Eko guitar instead of the protective shield of a degree in Literature, as they would have preferred ("Mio padre è un ragazzo tranquillo... è convinto di avere delle idee/ E suo figlio è una nave pirata", is the seal on the generational conflict in "Storie di ieri").

One has to go back to 1975 to understand how difficult it was for the Roman singer-songwriter to compose the follow-up to Rimmel without upending his art or falling into repetition. He himself would later confess about Bufalo Bill (1976): "It's my cross to bear and my delight: look, if I could, I'd probably redo it, taking more care over the sounds and arrangements. I made it that way, bare and essential, to punish myself for having made Rimmel, which had sold too much... it was crazy!". And yet De Gregori himself would call it "my most accomplished record", the one from the most serene and happiest period of his life.

Through the description of Buffalo Bill's final, pitiful show, the old American world stages its own de profundis, making way for the myth of the Frontier, for motorization (the mechanic nicknamed "rubber ass"), for the conquest of the West, for the rise of hypocritical American culture - that of boy scouts, pin-up girls, the American dream, the thirty-two-tooth smile, and the false optimism from across the ocean.

The record tackles its subjects elliptically, using evocative metaphors, and is cleaner in its sound. The voice, too, is perfectly pitched, slightly nasal and at times almost unrecognizable compared to his previous records. The use of piano is further refined in coordination and harmony.

The splendid title track is a melancholy metaphor for the opening of America's horizons toward the far West, in which even a real man like Buffalo ends up becoming a circus act. Musically, it plays on the chasing interplay of a celestial piano and a country guitar (and on constantly hinting at a chorus that never actually arrives), closing with a gorgeous piano solo.

“L’uccisione di Babbo Natale” is — as De Gregori himself has revealed — his only “amoral” song; it tells of the end of childhood and the (dis)illusions tied to it. “Disastro aereo sul canale di Sicilia” boasts a far-sighted lyric (“Risulta peraltro evidente/ anche nel clima della distensione/ che un eventuale attacco ai paesi arabi/ vede l’Italy in prima posizione) e la consueta bravura nell’imbastire le melodie, in un continuo crescendo emotivo. Nell’onirica “Ninetto e la colonia” the sound grows more rhythmic, while the lyrics probably allude to the American agribusiness multinationals that have monopolized plantations in South America.

But it's with “Atlantide” that the album reaches its climax. A liquid ballad, built on an airy melody and on intense, staggered images of love and dreams (“così pensava l’uomo di passaggio/ mentre volava/ alto/ nel cielo di Napoli/ rubatele pure i soldi/ rubatele anche i ricordi/ ma lasciatele per sempre/ la sua dolce curiosità/ ditele che l’ho perduta quando l’ho capita/ ditele che la perdono/ per averla tradita”). Melancholy words, but sweetly detached, with piano and guitar laying down a soft sonic carpet.

The quality remains extremely high with the following “Ipercarmela”, “Ultimo discorso registrato” and “Festival” (dedicated to the death of Luigi Tenco), while “Santa Lucia”, the album's closing track, is a splendid secular prayer for piano and voice, enriched in the finale by a bluesy electric guitar coda over an organ base. The only misstep on the album, ultimately, is the oddball “Giovane esploratore Tobia”, written in collaboration with Lucio Dalla.

At this point De Gregori has cleared the first hurdle, the backlash from Rimmel that could have destroyed him; his songs have evolved, the use of piano alongside acoustic guitar has markedly improved in coordination and harmony, and above all, every track is steeped in the same urgent inspiration that marked his previous records.

1977 is De Gregori's dark year: during a concert at Milan's Palalido, he's subjected to a political trial staged by a squad of audience members belonging to an extra-parliamentary left-wing group linked to Autonomia Operaia, the so-called “autoriduttori”. Some time later, commenting on the episode, the Roman singer-songwriter would say: “Given how things had gotten, they could easily have shot me: it was a small moment within the strategy of tension”. Accusing singer-songwriters of getting rich under the pretext of political messaging was a rather common trend in those years. The judge of that farcical trial, Gianni Muciacia, formerly of Jo Squillo, still states today that the trial against De Gregori was simply part of the climate of those years. “It was a matter of fashion, not of genuine conviction,” Guccini would reportedly say.

De Gregori, however, is the one who pays the price: wounded in his sensibility, he suspends the tour and withdraws from the scene for a long period, during which he even decides to change profession, working for a time in a Roman bookshop. He later marries a former high-school classmate, Alessandra Gobbi, with whom he'll have two sons, Marco and Federico (to whom the lyrics of “Raggio di sole” would later be dedicated).

But it's only a parenthesis. In 1978, De Gregori comes out, the third chapter of the magical trilogy begun with Rimmel and Bufalo Bill. A record that sounds like the end of a personal nightmare. Liberating from the very start, beginning with the lovely aerial cover shot, where De Gregori finally shows himself, on a green lawn, running after a ball.

The backlash he suffered hasn't dulled his political edge, which here reaches peaks of fierce denunciation (“Generale”, “L’impiccato”, “La campana”). Yet the unmatched tenderness of his songbook also remains intact, sublimated in the luminous ballad “Raggio di sole”, the ideal song to dedicate to a new life just beginning.

A born storyteller, De Gregori manages to turn even the harshest anti-militarist invective into a fable: “Generale” immortalizes, in an iconic melody, the sense of defeat of a veteran dreaming of coming home (“Fra due minuti è quasi giorno, è quasi casa, è quasi amore”). The cadences are once again those of the ballad, driven by piano and guitar, but with drums that gradually gain weight, almost as if depicting the drumbeat of war. Along the same lines, the other single, “Natale”, tints the memory of a distant love with a kind of “cheerful sadness”. That same memory returns in “Renoir”, a track split into two different arrangements, the first more festive (with De Gregori's own backing vocals in counterpoint), the second more reflective, closing with bitter self-pity: “Ora i tempi si sa che cambiano/ passano e tornano tristezza e amore/ da qualche parte c’è una stanza più calda/ sicuramente esiste un uomo migliore/ io nel frattempo ho scritto altre canzoni, di lei parlano raramente/ ma non è vero che io l’abbia perduta, dimenticata come dice la gente”). Nostalgia and tenderness also blend into childhood memories, as in “Il '56”, when pictures of tanks were pasted onto pieces of cardboard (it's the year of the Soviet invasion of Hungary), and yet “tutto sembrava andasse bene”.

But the record is shadowed by the heavy cloak of the “years of lead” and a political conflict that had by then reached its peak. Hence “La campana”, which tolls like a funeral bell, underscoring the marginalization of the defeated: it's almost the requiem of an entire generation (“Con un fascio di giornali in mano pensavo: si può anche morire di dolore/ E sotto questo grande cielo azzurro/ finalmente, mi sentivo un uomo solo/ I miei amici lo sai, sono tutti in galera/ sono tutti fregati”). And yet there's still the strength to spit out one's rage against the violence of the system, symbolized by repression and summary executions, as in “L’impiccato”, another bare piano-and-voice ballad built around a relentless sequence of events narrated in a direct, reportage-like style: “Il quinto venne assunto in galera per un indizio da poco/ e fu crocefisso col ferro e col fuoco/ Forse per un errore o forse perché era stato scoperto/ forse per un’implicita confessione/ oppure soltanto lo sconforto/ e tutti si domandarono di che segno era il morto”. A denunciation that also turns intimate, painted with a brushstroke of piano, when it touches on the painful wound of domestic violence (“Babbo in prigione”).

It sounds, then, almost like an escape from so much oppression: the closing “urban dream” of “Due zingari”, a wonderful anti-racist ode, but also a hymn to freedom (“ho sempre corso libero, felice come un cane”), to traditions now vanished (“i miei… avevano occhi veloci come il vento, leggevano la musica nel firmamento”), and to the desire to live against the rules of the pack (“se potessi ti sposerei per avere figli con le scarpe rotte, girerebbero questa e altre città, a costruire giostre e a vagabondare”). A delicate tracery of piano and a poignant sax solo in the finale seal one of the most intensely evocative tracks in De Gregori's entire body of work.

The album is a solid success and relaunches De Gregori after the Palalido ordeal. But it's in 1979 that, thanks to a massive comeback campaign by Rca and to Lucio Dalla, he returns to his beloved stage, taking part in what would become one of the greatest events in Italian pop music: Banana Republic, a summer packed with stadium concerts across Italy and a success of enormous scale, from which a live double album and a film would be drawn.

At the end of the tour, also in 1979, Viva l’Italy is released. Despite its falsely nationalist title, it's actually De Gregori's most “American” record, as shown by the presence of a handful of skilled overseas musicians and the choice to hand production duties to an international guru like Andrew Loog Oldham, previously at the side of the Rolling Stones.

The Latin American touches (“Eugenio”, “Buenos Aires”) and the travel concept linking the eight tracks nonetheless conceal a clear-eyed examination of Italian reality, torn apart by unpunished massacres (“…del 12 dicembre”), by discrimination between north and south (“Nata nell’Africa d’Italy”) and by marginalization (“Terra acqua/ acqua e terra/ ecco quello che ho visto io”). There's also the usual bittersweet nursery rhyme (“Stella stellina”, rocked along on languid South American rhythms) and the anti-militarist invocation (“Gesù bambino”), wrapped in soft folk textures, while “Terra e acqua” is a chant-like litany sung with an angry edge over a bare, spectral arrangement.

But the album's masterpiece is obviously the title track, a grieving chiaroscuro ballad about the history of contemporary Italy, carried along by a solemn pace, with an orchestral intro preceding De Gregori's measured delivery, backed by bass, guitar and drums. It's a portrait of the Italy "of waltzes and coffee", of Italy "naked as ever", but also of the Italy "that resists", in a sort of relentless battle against itself and its original sins. The song would become the subject of repeated political misreadings, which the Roman singer-songwriter fought firmly against (for instance, forbidding its propagandistic use by the post-fascist Movimento Sociale).

Despite the everlasting success of the title track, Viva l'Italy still turns out to be a transitional album, caught between De Gregori's golden era and what was to come: a period that would see his gift for musical composition gradually fade, while his gift as a poet would hold up more effectively right up to the present day.

The '80s open with an album inspired by the tragedy of the famous Star Line transatlantic liner that, on April 15, 1912, struck an iceberg and sank into the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. But Titanic isn't exactly a concept album (only three songs are tied to the story: the title track, "I muscoli del capitano" and "L'abbigliamento di un fuochista"), and it also becomes an opportunity for De Gregori to update his political songwriting, stripping away the residue of '68 and '77 and bringing it back to a dimension of pure social commentary.

The Italian context had deeply changed: the dark season of the Years of Lead was by then giving way to the illusory boom of the '80s, to Milano da bere and to a short-lived prosperity. De Gregori, then, uses the metaphor of the seemingly unsinkable ocean liner to expose the contradictions of this fake progress, which sails blindly toward collapse (“E il Capitano dice al mozzo di bordo: “Signor mozzo, io non vedo niente/ c’è solo un po’ di nebbia che annuncia il sole/ andiamo avanti tranquillamente”) and which punishes the weakest layers of the population (“La prima classe costa mille lire/ la seconda cento/ la terza dolore e spavento/ e puzza di sudore dal boccaporto/ e odore di mare morto”).

But there are still echoes of that '68 "too brief to forget" in the track that would become the album's evergreen, "La leva calcistica della classe '68", a sporting metaphor for a generation that moved from revolution to bourgeois integration within the span of a decade. A fine piano ballad, with a poignant instrumental coda. It would be overused in every kind of sports broadcast aired by every kind of TV channel.

Another classic is the title track, a choral fresco of the assorted humanity aboard the ship, wrapped in a melody that itself seems to float on the waves. Even better is "L'abbigliamento di un fuochista", built on a driving folk-song pace (Giovanna Marini provides back vocals), with a few pointed chords and lyrics denouncing exploitation and immigration, seen through the dialogue between a mother and her son about to depart (“Figlio con quali occhi… ti devo vedere/ Coi pantaloni consumati al sedere/ …Figlio senza domani/ con questo sguardo di animale in fuga/ e queste lacrime sul bagnasciuga…/…Ma mamma a me mi rubano la vita/ quando mi mettono a faticare/ per pochi dollari nelle caldaie / sotto al livello del mare/ In questa nera nera nave che mi dicono che non può affondare”). The Titanic triptych closes with the more subdued "I muscoli del capitano", which marks out, through piano interludes, the epitaph of a modernist drive now doomed to end.

At least two other tracks deserve a mention: the opening "Belli capelli" (a bit hammy, but ultimately successful) and the almost country-style ballad "Caterina", dedicated to Caterina Bueno, the folksinger who had taken him on tour when he was barely twenty, in 1971: an almost moved tribute, built on flashbacks: “Poi arrivò il mattino e col mattino un angelo/ e quell’angelo eri tu/ …E la chitarra veramente/ la suonavi molto male/ però quando cantavi/ sembrava Carnevale”.

Titanic is a huge success and gets De Gregori airtime even on the Rai newscasts that had always boycotted him. It will, however, also be the Roman singer-songwriter's last great peak. The years to come would in fact mark a progressive decline on record, though offset by live performances that remained consistently powerful and engaging.

In 1983, De Gregori wrote the soundtrack for the film "Flirt", released on a Q-disc, which contains "La donna cannone", a piano ballad full of class and craft that would turn out to be one of his most successful hits.

But the arc is already on the way down. Scacchi e Tarocchi (1985), produced by Ivano Fossati, is De Gregori's first misstep. There's no shortage of beautiful songs, but they're few: "La storia", a piano-and-voice demo recorded in a quarter of an hour, is a minimal ballad built on just a few chords, a masterpiece of incisiveness and of an emotional yet crystal-clear view of the concept of history and our belonging to it; "A Pà", dedicated to Pasolini, starts off subdued with a duet of piano and electric guitar before closing with a splendid musical turn, onto which De Gregori grafts a quotation from the poet (“e voglio vivere come i gigli nei campi/ e come gli uccelli nel cielo campare/ e voglio vivere come i gigli nei campi/ e sopra i gigli e nei campi volare”). The other significant song on the album is "Miracolo a Venezia", one of the many underrated, exquisite gems that De Gregori's catalogue has to offer: described by the author as "a pure vision, not even a song about Venice [...], it's a drawing by Buzzati, it's an old photograph, it's a symbol of discontent, of something dying", it rests on a dark bed of synths and builds in a crescendo (vocal too) that never actually explodes, leaving a pleasant sense of the unfinished. The rest of the album alternates between pleasant but only half-successful songs — "Poeti per l'estate", "Ciao ciao", "Tutti salvi" — and genuine little indulgences, of no particular importance.

The following Terra di nessuno (1987) is perhaps De Gregori's darkest and most painful album; somewhat overlooked, it contains a couple of remarkable piano songs ("Pane e castagne" and "Mimi sarà") and more rhythmic tracks ("Il canto delle sirene", with its sublime lyrics, and "Nero"), but also a few weaker moments ("Spalle larghe" and "Vecchia valigia"). The Prince's compositions have truly changed since his debut, as has his way of singing. No more love and shards of autobiography, but a dry, clear-eyed look at reality and at the changes it brings to our souls. Even the angelic voice of his early records is gone, except in a few instances (the already mentioned "Pane e castagne" and "Mimi sarà").

What comes out of it is an album that could be described as a concept album about "difficulty", understood as pain, doubt, the difficulty of immigration and of planning a future. All of it perfectly focused and cohesive, even though it isn't sustained by that constant surge of inspiration, by now lost along with youth.

Two years later came Miramare 19.4.89, which, though more varied than its predecessor, could be seen as its natural continuation. In some respects it's more direct and focused than Terra di nessuno, in others more visionary (and at times unfocused). After the shift marked by Scacchi e tarocchi, an album achieved through spare, minimalist production, this record features arrangements that are too restrained and smoothed-over, although there's really only one song that would have clearly benefited from sharper rhythms and fewer sonic frills: "Bambini venite parvulos", which opens the album with lyrics of unprecedented harshness ("No calculation makes any sense inside this paralysis"... "legalizing the mafia will be the rule of the year two thousand, it'll be Mastro Lindo's charisma organizing the line"), a song "about the steadily dropping age of both killers and victims in today's world, and about the fact that both often wear the same brand of shoes".

Further on come bearers of light and gold prospectors, in a "Miramare" that opens delicately with guitar and harmonica, but never quite takes flight, settling instead for reeling off lyrics that are nonetheless evocative. The rock numbers are less convincing ("Dr. Dobermann" and "Pentathlon", one of the ugliest songs in De Gregori's entire catalogue), while there's room for a couple of little gems: "Cose", an enigmatic nocturnal scene, and the closing "Lettera da un cosmodromo messicano", a short but evocative keyboard piece with a fine conclusion entrusted to the strings.

As mentioned, there was his relentless live activity: in 1990, De Gregori decided to immortalize it across three albums: Nothing to Understand, Easy Listening Music and Catcher In The Sky. Thirty-four songs in all, as a summation of a career already spanning almost twenty years.

The return to a studio album with Canzoni d’amore ideally continues the reflection on the world begun in his previous work. The title is obviously misleading, aside from the sweet “Bellamore,” another whispered sentimental ballad, sung together with Patrizia Giordano. The involvement of the band that played on his tour gives the record an almost live energy, tangible on more “muscular” tracks like “Sangue su sangue,” “Adelante! Adelante!” and “Viaggi & miraggi.” De Gregori often plays at being a rocker, posing uncomfortable dilemmas (“Stai dalla parte di chi ruba nei supermercati/ o di chi li ha costruiti…rubando?,” from “Chi ruba nei supermercati”) but also getting tangled up in short-winded political polemics (“E’ solo il capobanda, ma sembra un faraone…/ Si atteggia a Mitterrand, ma è peggio di Nerone,” an invective whose all-too-obvious target is Bettino Craxi). But Mani Pulite hadn't happened yet…

Small, minimal poems also light up the record, like the heartrending dialogue with his father in “Tutto più chiaro che qui,” the country-folk of “Stella della strada” and the aching theme of “Povero me” (written together with his friend Mimmo Locasciulli). But the peak is the closing “Rumore di niente,” an evocation of new Nazi-racist ghosts, backed by a splendid instrumental coda.

Canzoni d’amore is a compact, vibrant record: De Gregori opens the new decade with the assurance of a true-blooded storyteller.

After the two live albums The Bandit and the Champion and Bootleg, four long years of silence follow, during which De Gregori tries his hand as a journalist for l'Unità, edited by his friend Walter Veltroni.

His return to the market comes in 1996, when on the album Take and Leave, produced by guitarist Corrado Rustici, De Gregori's audience discovers new sonorities and more modern arrangements, at times far removed from the acoustic approach the Roman artist had used at the start of his career.

As usual, the results are debatable, because De Gregori's music is perhaps doomed never to be able to change, just as he himself has never changed, stubborn and tenacious in his convictions, in his poetics, in his elitist isolation. And so no amount of rock guitar or more technological sound can restore the shine to a songwriting now in the grip of a deep creative crisis. Thus in “Compagni di viaggio,” more than the “fuller” sound, what comes through is a Dylanesque spirit hovering between the verses and images. In “L'Agnello di Dio,” the near-rap intro and the tribal groove are worth no more than his usual brand of urban protest poetry. “Un guanto,” inspired by the lithographs of Max Klinger, unwinds between country arpeggios and vaguely jazzy arrangements, but without ever drawing blood.

De Gregori is still at his sharpest when he digs into the roots of folk song (the bare “Stelutis Alpinis,” the hallucinated fable of “Fine di un killer,” with Ambrogio Sparagna's accordion) or into the sentimental ballad, as in “Baci da Pompei,” a snapshot of two lovers caught by the volcano's eruption, with an evocative guitar riff underscoring the lovers' dialogue. “Prendi questa mano zingara,” on the other hand, would earn him an embarrassing (for the promoters) plagiarism suit from the authors of the song “Zingara” (presented at Sanremo by Iva Zanicchi in 1969).

From the tour that immediately followed came a double CD enriched by the previously unreleased “The Actor's Suitcase,” written for Alessandro Haber, by “Dammi da mangiare,” already recorded by Angela Baraldi, and by “Non dirle che non è così,” a poignant Italian version of Bob Dylan's “If You See Her, Say Hello,” which he had included on his “Blood On The Tracks” in 1975.

The origins and Curves in Memory are two good anthologies released in 1996-98, useful above all for rediscovering his golden years.

The present, meanwhile, offers yet another studio album, Afternoon Love (2001), produced by the faithful Guido Guglielminetti. Dark tones and gloomy moods mark this new songbook of everyday life, to which important names such as Franco Battiato and Nicola Piovani also lend their collaboration.

The Dylanesque imprint remains strong, noticeable from the opening “L'aggettivo Mitico,” an insistent urban ballad built on the trio of bass, guitar and drums, with a scathing lyric (“Oggi si versa il vino, si spezza il pane duemila volte che canta il gallo… Socrates shouts questions in the street and Fra Angelico paints walls in the outskirts of town… the men with machetes on their off-road trucks, the barefoot men along the road”). Also driven by tight rhythms is “Spad VII S2489,” another parable about war, seen through the eyes of a fighter pilot.

The dreamy country sound of “Condannato a morte” frames another raw j'accuse, this time against religious intolerance, riding the wave of the Salman Rushdie affair (“Religione può essere un sentimento/ religione può essere una fuga d’amore/ Religione può essere intrattenimento/ religione può essere terrore”). “Canzone per l'estate” revisits, in an even bleaker key, the song written and performed in 1974 with Fabrizio De André. But the album's high point and its “case” is “Il Cuoco di Salò”: a heart-wrenching piano and a fine backdrop of strings and fanfares (arranged by Battiato) accompany the lament of a loser, a cook, who finds himself serving fleeing fascist officials (“qui si fa l'Italy e si muore… dalla parte sbagliata si muore”). Some permanently on-duty idiot will read revisionism into it and stir up petty controversy in the press.

Starting in March, after three years away from the stage, De Gregori, under the artistic direction of Guido Guglielminetti, embarks on a new tour, backed by Paolo Giovenchi on guitars, Greg Cohen, formerly with Tom Waits, on bass and acoustic double bass, Alessandro Svampa on drums, Alessandro Arianti on piano and keyboards, Marco Rosini on mandolin and acoustic guitar, and, 25 years after his last appearance, Toto Torquati on Hammond organ and keyboards. The tour successfully plays Italy's major theatres and, after a short break, continues through September, giving rise to the live album Fuoco amico, released in 2002.

That same year, the Roman singer-songwriter embarks on a long tour together with Fiorella Mannoia, Ron and Pino Daniele. The experience of this unlikely quartet would be captured on the live album In Tour.

More in keeping with the Roman singer-songwriter's background is his other collaboration, with Giovanna Marini, a historic voice of Italian folk music: fourteen tracks under the title Il fischio del vapore, drawn from the singer-songwriter's personal archive as well as from the historical memory of folk music. There's the political song “L'attentato a Togliatti,” which recalls the attempted assassination of the Communist leader in 1948, already included on the earlier live album Fuoco amico. There's an intense re-recording of “L'abbigliamento del fuochista.” But what gives the record its most authentically folk flavour are a few traditional songs of the rice-weeders (“Saluteremo il padrone” and “Bella ciao”) and an emigration song in the style of the cantastorie of the Po Valley (“Il tragico naufragio della nave Sirio”). Echoing this last one is the track “Sacco e Vanzetti,” which tells of the execution of the two anarchists, wrongly accused of murder in the United States, in 1927. There are also numerous tracks drawn from the repertoire of Giovanna Daffini, rice-weeder and cantastorie, who died in 1967 (“Donna lombarda di Gualtieri,” “Sento il fischio del vapore,” “O Venezia che sei la più bella”). A risky and courageous undertaking, Il fischio del vapore leaves many fans puzzled, but in fact crowns a path of recovery and philological study of Italian folk music that the Roman singer-songwriter has tenaciously pursued throughout his career.

As a testament to a (partially) rediscovered creativity, 2005 saw the release of Pezzi, quite possibly De Gregori's best album since Titanic. Ten tracks scattering a narrative that needs piecing back together, like the puzzle on the cover. Nothing new or earth-shattering, mind you, but at least that mature-Dylan blues-rock ballad format, long showcased in his live shows, finds substance here in a richer, more engaging array of melodies and sounds. Starting with the aching "La testa nel secchio", steeped in desert-rock suggestions worthy of Calexico, with its swaying gait and its western guitar work, all the way to the other rock flare-up of "Il panorama di Betlemme", with its fine guitar work, its piano progression and its harrowing portrait of death (“Signore ti prego/ Lasciami respirare/ Lasciami un po’ riposare/ Prima che devo morire”). Tracks like "Parole a memoria" also hold up to a decent standard, this time looking straight toward Duluth (read: "Knockin' On Heaven's Door"), with lyrics as disjointed as in the old days (“Era solo per chiacchierare/ versare il vino spezzare il pane/ Pagare pegno, ricominciare/ parlare al cane”), as does the tender "Gambadilegno a Parigi", yet another portrait of defeat, or the touching lullaby "Le lacrime di Nemo", softened by Marco Rosini's mandolin.

Elsewhere, De Gregori's classic-rock, always far removed from indie distortion and noise, comes across as stale and monotonous, as in the lumbering opening of "Numeri da scaricare", the pointless riff of "Tempo reale", or the cloying single "Vai in Africa, Celestino", a collage of disparate fragments of our everyday life.

Current affairs are reviewed with unflinching bluntness, between chronicles of horror ("Il vestito del violinista", in which the ghosts of the children of Beslan appear) and national outrage (the invective of "Tempo reale", with lines like "se dovessi rinascere, preferirei non rinascere qua" ["if I had to be born again, I'd rather not be born here"], which strip even the happy ending from Gaber's "Io non mi sento italiano").

Pezzi is a bitter, disenchanted look at the world, from someone who no longer has any ambition to change it. In an interview with "Corriere della Sera", De Gregori would state: "Even the left doesn't excite me anymore. I sing fragments of life, pain and confusion". And referring to his sound, he would once and for all celebrate its Dylan-esque lineage: "Springsteen has a much more polished sound, he's a nice guy. Musically, I'm dirtier. Springsteen is a rock sly fox, you can tell he works in a studio. Dylan, on the other hand, is a crooked, dissonant, innovative musician. Springsteen has good will, he's studied, but that's as far as it goes".

The "nine new songs" on Calypsos (2006) offer nothing astonishing: just ensemble variations on the evergreen formula, ranging from blunt titles about life's milestones to street-ballad vocals more nasal than ever. The album flows lightly, between piano ballads in the vein of "La canzone dell'amore perduto" ("Cardiologia") and not-too-daring power-pop tracks ("Mayday"), while attempting the usual snapshot of a city on the atmospheric "Per le strade di Roma", where "fireflies on the Salaria and streetwalkers on Via Frattina" appear, not forgetting the "kids leaving school dreaming of becoming a politician or an actor...". Interesting is the metaphorical use of "La casa", conceived as an imaginative place and a shell for thorny, broken feelings, albeit tentatively hopeful ones ("costruisco questa casa... E ci pianto quattro vigne per il vino di settembre, e ci metto la scommessa che ti voglio amare sempre..." ["I'm building this house... And I'm planting four vines for September's wine, and I'm staking the bet that I'll love you forever..."]).

The overall musical sense is rather minimal, except for the call-and-response choruses of "La linea della vita", which play the role of the sweet and wicked soul being discussed. Only here, more or less, does he venture a vaguely ecclesiastical tone, not exactly memorable. Elsewhere, the arrangements are practically negligible, as if it were a sermon set to background music. And there you have the reason behind the persistent melodic fatigue (this time, truly so) of his recent albums: it also lies in his preaching anxieties, now even greater, though also more sophisticated, than in the past.

In 2008 came the nine songs of For Short, Called Artist (a title drawn from a legal note in his first record contract).

The title track opens the album with an aching dive into the past: acoustic caresses and string drapes framing a (possibly) autobiographical ballad, dense with memories and dreamlike suggestions, playing on the theme of the double and of opposites. The other standout is "Volavola", a soft piano-and-voice lullaby in the Italian folk tradition, which would not have been out of place on the songbook recorded in 2002 with Giovanna Marini.

The rest of the album, however, gets lost in that flaccid, formulaic songwriting in which De Gregori now seems to have taken refuge. Hence the usual bloated blues-rock, with vaguely prophetic tones ("Finestre rotte"), the predictable Dylan-esque gaits ("Celebrazione", a distancing from the years "of terrorism and photography" when "the left was paralyzed, the right was working"), the country ballad with the obligatory harmonica ("Ogni giorno di pioggia che Dio manda in terra"), the usual linguistic divertissement, this time played out with verbs in the imperfect tense ("L'imperfetto"), the inevitable "mala tempora currunt" mantra, this time in the form of a grotesque stomp ("Carne umana per colazione"), topped off with deeply kitsch female backing choruses.

Honest songs, but lacking those poetic flashes and melodic surges that once flowed so naturally from the songbook of his golden years. Better, if anything, is the cover of "The Angel Of Lyon" by Americans Tom Russell and Steve Young ("L'angelo di Lyon", with lyrics by Luigi Grechi, Francesco's brother), and the anguished farewell of "L'infinito", dramatically heightened by a string-and-piano arrangement. It's the bitterest epilogue of a "fantasized autobiography", as the singer-songwriter himself described the collection.

Meanwhile, De Gregori continues his tireless touring activity around Italy, and, compared to the past, shows himself much more openly, even on popular television programs like Festivalbar. But perhaps this, too, is a sign of changing times...

In 2010 came an unexpected event: Francesco De Gregori reunites with his old friend Lucio Dalla, thirty-one years after "Banana Republic". It was a thrilling concert at the Vox Club in Nonantola (Modena). The two old friends sizing each other up, finding each other again, having fun on stage between gags and songs. But no one could have predicted that this "Work in Progress" would become a traveling workshop for an entire year. Since that January 22, 2010, the two have tirelessly crossed Italy aboard the train of their songs. And it doesn't end there, since new dates have been announced through spring 2011. Nothing like the gigantism of the historic 1979 tour, although there have been grand settings too, such as the Arena di Verona. Playing together in the evening, then each going their own way, confirming two very different personalities that, precisely because of this, complement each other.

The double CD Work In Progress seals the rediscovered chemistry between the two on stage, where each sings the other's songs, except for "Caruso" and "La donna cannone", too personal to lend themselves to the "swap". Then there are the duets, often the most enjoyable moments, above all a heart-wrenching "Santa Lucia" — not by chance Dalla's favorite De Gregori song — a rousing "Nuvolari" and a playful "Disperato erotico stomp". Although, it must be said, the roles compared to "Banana Republic" seem to have reversed: today it's De Gregori who's in better shape, even as a performer, while Dalla struggles a bit to keep up, making up for it with craft and charisma.

Twenty-nine live tracks and two unreleased ones: the trip invitation of "Gran Turismo" (skippable) and "Non basta saper cantare", a lovely old-style piano ballad, plus the studio version of "Generale" and a cover of "Just A Gigolò" ("Solo un gigolò"). Plenty of classics, drawn from both artists' best repertoire. With entirely new arrangements. So it happens that you might stumble upon a sax-and-guitar coda in place of the piano sonata of "La leva calcistica della classe '68", see a Dylan-esque harmonica replace the immortal bagpipes of "Viva l'Italy", or struggle to recognize "Buonanotte Fiorellino" transformed from a valzer musette into a galloping rock number. For De Gregori, of course, this is nothing new: his songs have always changed shape on stage, following the lesson of Dylan's "Never Ending Tour". What leaves you suspended between embarrassment and emotion is "Rimmel" sung in chorus with the audience: almost a tribute, after years of haughty (and often misunderstood) detachment.

Dalla's songs are treated with more respect for the originals, though the modern arrangements lend fresh verve to past masterpieces like "Anna e Marco", "L'anno che verrà", "Futura", while a heartfelt "Henna" reminds us of what is perhaps his last recent triumph. Included is the DVD "Back To Back", with about an hour of backstage footage and interviews.

Not a nostalgia exercise, nor merely a promotional product, in any case, as shown precisely by the absence of tracks from either artist's more recent albums. Just the sincere, good-humoured testimony of two giants of Italian singer-songwriter music willing to put themselves on the line again after forty years of honourable careers. With all of yesterday's strengths, and a few of today's limitations.

The sudden death of Lucio Dalla (Montreux, March 1, 2012) plunges his friend into despair; faced with the ritual of public tributes, he chooses the silence of solitary grief instead.

Meanwhile, De Gregori continues working on the nine tracks of his new album On the Road, released at the end of the year. If the imagery of Kerouac's book – which he admits to having read only recently – is merely the inspiration for the title, the musical context is even further removed from what one might have expected. The formulaic folk-rock overused in his recent work vanishes with the title track, revealing one of his least Dylan-esque albums ever.

The De Gregori of On the Road benefits from his recent immersion in folk song – first alongside Giovanna Marini, then with Ambrogio Sparagna – as well as from the orchestral touch of Nicola Piovani, who brings his trademark evocative, finely calibrated strings.

The heart of the album, then, lies less in yet another meditation on the journey of "On the Road" than in a serene gaze turned toward an older world, like that of the poet Dino Campana, who flees the military academy his parents had destined him for, wandering in the cold among the brothels (“van le troie illuminando il cammino sgangherato del sergente innamorato, che di notte se ne va”). It's the splendid rebetiko waltz, almost “Cohen-esque”, of “Belle époque”, that provides the flash of brilliance.

It is, as noted, with a more peaceful gaze that De Gregori rewinds the tape of the past century, the Novecento: “Vedo le cose dolcemente passare” he sings in “Showtime” amid radiant melodic openings. Far removed from the frenzy of our times, he confesses to living “Passo d’uomo” (at walking pace), in another elegant ballad echoing the simple imagery he has always cherished (“Sono solo un operaio lungo la massicciata, il mio pane sa di polvere, la mia acqua è salata”). But revisiting the Novecento also means confronting its horrors, like those recounted by the soldiers of “La guerra”, survivors of a brutal battle.

The rhythms sway on Latin cadences, instead, in the two tracks featuring Malika Ayane's voice: “Ragazza del '95”, a portrait of youth and hope wrapped around an accordion, and the mischievous “Omero al Cantagiro”, where, under relentless rain, a latter-day Homer takes the stage to sing of the Trojan War – a none-too-subtle metaphor for the crisis of the music industry.

The autobiographical streak resurfaces amid the poignant strings of “Guarda che non sono io”, where De Gregori almost seems to justify all his “public” reticence, highlighting the contradictions in the relationship between the man and the artist: “Someone sees me and calls me by name, stops and thanks me, wants to know something about an old song, and I tell him I'm sorry, but I don't know what you're talking about, I'm just here with my shopping bags”. A scene one can easily imagine has played out many times. Finally, there's no shortage of the usual reflections on love, which – as often happens in De Gregori's songbook – becomes a magnetic force taking on anthropomorphic guises (“Viaggia contromano, parcheggia sempre dove vuole/ Fa vedere la lingua, parla con la bocca piena/ Si presenta così senza un invito, proprio in mezzo alla cena” – the ballad “Falso movimento”, crowned by a fine closing trumpet solo).

On the Road may throw off a few fans of his more political, Dylan-esque period, but it won't disappoint those who have always seen him, above all, as a polished interpreter of the Italian song tradition, deeply versed in its nuances and history. It's an approach that has reached greater heights elsewhere in his career, but here it still holds up to more than respectable standards for a sixty-one-year-old still going strong.

After the celebrations for the fortieth anniversary of Rimmel, complete with a grand event-concert at the Arena di Verona, De Gregori finally decides to settle his debt to master Dylan, releasing De Gregori canta Bob Dylan – Amore e furto (a beautiful title: the literal translation of Dylan's 2001 Love And Theft), an album that from the outset proves very hard to pin down, since it inevitably invites judgment on countless levels: the unavoidable comparison with De Gregori's own body of work is compounded by comparison with the original versions of Dylan's songs. Attention, in turn, focuses on two parallel aspects: the translations of the lyrics and the arrangement choices. On this latter point, danger lurks around every corner: it's no easy task to make sonically coherent an album made up of songs spanning five different decades.

Each of these aspects is a potential trap for De Gregori, who from one song to the next might find himself locked in a tug-of-war he can only lose. But the artist, driven by a conviction greater than the risks involved, tackles the mission with determination. First of all, as proudly displayed already in the first single “Un angioletto come te” (“Sweetheart Like You”, 1983), the arrangements are, for the vast majority of the record, rendered almost identically to those of the original albums, without exaggerating the production choices of the era. This approach proves useful in keeping the album cohesive, but at times it undercuts the effectiveness of those arrangements. For instance, the reinterpretations of songs happily “lifted” from the two albums Dylan produced with Daniel Lanois in 1989 and 1997 (no fewer than four songs: “Political World”, “Not Dark Yet”, the unexpected “Series Of Dreams” and “Dignity”) almost entirely lack that sonic visionary quality, made of echo and mystery, which made the originals so special. The guitars of “Servire qualcuno” (“Gotta Serve Somebody”, 1979), for example, originally played by none other than Mark Knopfler, fail to sound as soft and bluesy. And the faithful recreation of “Subterranean Homesick Blues”'s arrangement in “Acido seminterrato” likewise fails to capture the thrilling sixties grit of the original.

In choosing not to distort the songs, the risk of the arrangements coming off as mere revivalism was an unavoidable side effect, and although here and there the project falls into a certain naivety, going through that is essential to grasp the true heart of the work, which obviously lies in the lyrics. De Gregori isn't afraid to put his hands on his guru's work, and he does so by getting them dirty in territory that isn't necessarily his own.

De Gregori proves changeable and nimble, at times giving greater emphasis to tracing the original vocal inflections, at other times to faithfully preserving the rhetorical imagery, and at still other times to crafting new images of his own in order to render the meaning of the original songs as faithfully as possible.

In the most surreal episodes of the tracklist (such as “Acido seminterrato” and “Tweedle Dum & Tweedle Dee”), De Gregori lacks much of that underlying irony Dylan possesses by default, and at times he doesn't come across as entirely convincing in that role. On the other hand, he's spot on in reshaping the most poetic moments (“Non è buio ancora”, “Dignità”, “Come il giorno”), which manage to remain evocative and respectful of the originals.

Ultimately, Amore e furto is an album full of beautiful flaws, one that doesn't aim (and cannot aim) for any kind of perfection, but instead sets out to capture on record something that is, by definition, unfinished: reinterpretation, adaptation, translation. It's not only a declaration of love for Bob Dylan, but also, and perhaps above all, a declaration of love and devotion to words and language, to written and oral tradition, and to the noble craft of the singer-songwriter. Which is a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.

But a Prince can afford anything. Sharing masterpieces and stages across Italy with Antonello Venditti – to the delight of many listeners – and then, right after, pulling off a collaboration you wouldn't expect. That's how, for Pastiche (2024), Francesco De Gregori chooses his partner in crime straight from outside the music world. Enter Checco Zalone, working alongside the Roman musician as his pianist. It isn't the first time De Gregori has reworked his repertoire: just think of “Vivavoce”, a “cover album of myself” (in his own words), released exactly ten years ago. Moreover, in Pastiche – recorded live, with the addition of an orchestra and the singer-songwriter's own band – we find tracks co-written by this unprecedented duo, alongside a series of tributes to the friends and colleagues with whom the author of “Buffalo Bill” has shared the last few decades.

Opening the listen is the unreleased co-written track "Giusto o sbagliato," where it's not the piano but slow, melodic guitar chords that accompany De Gregori (a piano-and-strings-only version closes out the tracklist). Then come the gems from "Rimmel": "Pezzi di vetro" and the title track of the 1975 masterpiece, splendid even in this guise. De Gregori picks passages ranging from "Atlantide" to "Falso movimento," which, carried by the power of the lyrics and the vocal performance, sit comfortably within the intimate support of piano and a jazz mood. Among these are "Pittori della domenica" by Paolo Conte and "Putesse essere allero" by Pino Daniele, admirable for the ambitious attempt to tackle the Neapolitan "language." The game of swaps continues with Venditti, here present with "Le cose della vita," the title track of the album written by his old Folk Studio colleague, accompanied solely by piano. Roman spirit returns with the choice of a passage immortalized by Nino Manfredi ("Storia di Pinocchio"), who in Comencini's famous TV adaptation played the unforgettable Geppetto. And who, as a singer, made songs of Roman tradition eternal. Compositions written by Zalone alone - but sung together with the Roman singer - include the lively "La Prima Repubblica" and "Alejandro." Closing out the listen are "Buonanotte Fiorellino" - in its umpteenth rearrangement - and "Ciao Ciao," from "Scacchi e Tarocchi," written with the passing of Luigi Tenco in mind.

Overall, if the pairing of the two seemed to most like a jarring, almost irreverent choice, the result of Pastiche - no better name could have been found - is reassuring, letting us once again, and with undiminished pleasure, revisit some of the most significant passages in Italian music, interspersed with harmless "intrusions."

There are still those who label him the political troubadour of the left. Certainly, political song has carried significant weight in his repertoire. But many of his songs have been misunderstood: "Nothing to Understand," "Caterina," "Non dirle che non è così," "Raggio di sole," "Due zingari," "The Actor's Suitcase" are not political songs, but simply love songs, in the most universal sense of the word - contemporary fables dedicated to human beings and their stories, seen through the eyes and imagination of this craftsman of the chanson. And besides, why bother trying to figure out who Pablo, Cesare, Irene, Anna, Marianna, Mario, Nino, Ninetto, Caterina, Rollo, Eugenio, Lisa, Mimì, Giovanna, Alice, Hood, Hilde and Susanna really are?

De Gregori, for better or worse, has rightfully entered the history of Italian music, and spanning at least three generations of admirers, he was the architect of the "technical" change in our singer-songwriter tradition, long accustomed to songs that began with "heart" and ended with "love." In conclusion, one could say that De Gregori - turning around what Giaime Pintor once wrote - is not "Rimmel," he is "Nobel." At least within that small but grand poetic universe that is the singer-songwriter tradition.

Contributions by Alessio Belli ("Pastiche"), Angelo Franzese ("Calypsos"), Edoardo Frasso ("De Gregori canta Bob Dylan - Amore e furto")

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