Lucio Dalla - Between Via Emilia and the Moon

Lucio Dalla, the man born on March 4, 1943, was one of the most innovative and versatile singer-songwriters in Italian music. This was thanks to an unbroken run of albums that, especially straddling the '70s and '80s, built a lyrical and musical universe of incomparable magic. His death from a heart attack in Montreux (Switzerland), on March 1, 2012, just days before his 69th birthday, plunged at least three generations of Italians into grief - generations who had grown up with his songs, always dazed and ironic yet at the same time charged with deep poetry and humanity. And while the final stretch of his career was not without its missteps, the artist's brilliance kept flashing, now and then, with some residual glimmer of an unmatched talent.

This monograph has a twofold aim: to separate the wheat from the chaff in his vast body of work, and to persuade a few superficial detractors to give him a more attentive re-listen.

From the Flippers to Gesù Bambino

The story can only begin on March 4, 1943. Besides marking the birth of Lucio Dalla, that date would also become the title of one of his great classics, better known as "Gesù Bambino". No ports or sailors feature here, though, but rather postwar Bologna, poised to drive Italy into the years of the economic boom. Lucio is an awkward, restless kid with a passion for music. He plays clarinet, moving between the popular repertoire of Emilia and New Orleans jazz. He starts performing in public from a very young age: countless dance halls, then traditional jazz in Rome. First a brief stint with the Reno Jazz Gang, then a spell with the Second Roman New Orleans Jazz Band, and finally the Flippers, an ensemble formed under the wing of maestro Carlo Loffredo with, among others, Fabrizio Zampa, Massimo Catalano and Franco Bracardi.

Dalla is an excellent clarinettist and a comically distinctive singer, experimenting with techniques unknown to the Italian scene of the time: off-the-cuff "scat" vocalizing (later clumsily imitated by Celentano), jarring vocal leaps bordering on the off-key, a "black" style that draws more on the proto-funk roughness of James Brown than on the smooth soul "bel canto" of Marvin Gaye. It's Gino Paoli who discovers him and sets him on a solo career, seeing in him Italy's first soul singer. But for Dalla, soul, jazz and song are merely ingredients for odd musical divertissements, written almost as a game. In fact, many of them are never even committed to vinyl. Live, moreover, the results are disastrous. At the 1965 Cantagiro, there are more tomatoes thrown at the stage than rounds of applause. Once, he recalls in a wonderful interview with Giancarlo Dotto, someone hit him square in the chest with an apple. It hurt like hell, and he pretended to keep singing while a backing vocalist covered for him…

But Dalla is a free, provocative spirit: he couldn't care less about labels, he dresses badly, he sings badly (by the standards of the time), he comes across badly. He's also rather unattractive, with a bristly, surly kind of ugliness that doesn't inspire the warmth or tenderness that Celentano's "molleggiato" persona does. To the Italietta singing along to "Non ho l'età" while leaving Luigi Tenco adrift, someone like him could hardly be appealing.

Stubbornly, though, Dalla carries on. From 1965 to 1970 he continues down his eccentric path, often brushing up against the beat movement.

In 1966 he steps into the arena of the Sanremo Festival with "Paff… bum", flanked by none other than the Yardbirds, the legendary band that cradled British blues rock. The song, written by Reverberi and Bardotti, is quirky and mocking (the title is meant to mimic a heartbeat when meeting a girl!), yet in step with the sounds of the time. It will pass almost entirely unnoticed.

That same year Dalla releases his debut album, 1999. A jazz-pop hodgepodge that alternates brilliant tracks, such as the title track and the refined "Tutto il male del mondo" (revived more than thirty years later under the new title "Amici"), with overly ambitious experiments ("Lsd", "Quando ero soldato").

The album is a flop, and over the following four years Dalla seems adrift, torn between continuing his work of debunking pop-song conventions and giving in to the lure of the record industry.

In 1967 he again takes part in the Sanremo Festival, alongside the Rokes with "Bisogna saper perdere", and even opens for Jimi Hendrix at the Piper club in Milan. Moving tracks like "Lucio dove vai" (a kind of ironic self-confession) and "Il cielo" show that his talent hasn't deserted him. And his persistence is rewarded in 1970 with his first success as a songwriter: Gianni Morandi records his "Occhi di ragazza" and takes it to the top of the charts.

At the start of the new decade, Dalla immediately makes his mark. The album Terra di Gaibola (1970) indeed showcases some of his sharpest songs of the period – from "Il fiume e la città" to "Non sono matto (o la capra Elisabetta)", the first lyric ever written by his own hand, set to music by Gino Paoli – plus an effective reinterpretation of "Occhi di ragazza" and a couple of evocative ballads like "Sylvie" and "Dolce Susanna", the latter written for a very young Ron.

The arrangements by the De Angelis brothers (later better known as Oliver Onions) are finely judged. And the lyrics by writers such as Sergio Bardotti, Gianfranco Baldazzi and Paola Pallottino wrap the record in a dreamlike lyricism, in which the Bolognese suburb of Gaibola is elevated into a legendary, fairy-tale setting.

The following album, Storie di casa mia (1971), confirms his on-and-off inspiration, moving between small gems of aching melodic pop ("La casa in riva al mare", "Per due innamorati" and "Il gigante e la bambina", destined to become one of his friend Ron's biggest hits), muddled naïve sketches ("Un uomo come me", "Il bambino di fumo") and a few lapses in taste (the rather garish chorus of "Itaca").

But what carries the album is the aforementioned single "4 marzo 1943", blessed among the flowers of Sanremo and also released in Brazil (in a version by Chico Buarque De Hollanda), in France (courtesy of Dalida) and in Japan. It's a bittersweet fable, written by Paola Pallottino and accompanied only by Renzo Fontanella's slightly tipsy-sounding violin: Dalla performs it with the swagger of a street storyteller, bringing out its irreverent (the song would be increasingly censored) and bohemian spirit. That Baby Jesus among thieves and prostitutes closely resembles the one in the Gospel, but it certainly proved hard to swallow for the bigoted Italy of the time. Dalla's is a street-level, proletarian poetry that would find an even more complete expression a year later in the heartrending "Piazza Grande" and its tramp protagonist, a song that brought a tear even to the eye of the staid Teatro Ariston audience: co-written with Ron and the duo Gianfranco Baldazzi-Sergio Bardotti, it's another touching song about marginality and solitude, initially set in a country vein but reworked in later versions with acoustic guitar arpeggios and plucked instruments not far removed from fado territory. And – as Dalla himself explained – the song is about a vagabond, and the Piazza Grande it refers to is Piazza Cavour, not Piazza Maggiore as many believe.

The Engine of the Year 2000

Dalla is ready for the big leap forward. Yet he has no intention of riding the comfortable wake of Sanremo, and instead embarks on a high-risk gamble: a trilogy made in collaboration with the Bolognese poet Roberto Roversi, a Marxist intellectual and, together with Pasolini and Fortini, founder of the literary journal "Officina". Rather than ride the wave of popular song, as many of his colleagues were successfully doing at the time (from Lucio Battisti downward), Dalla takes it head-on and smashes it to pieces: alienating arrangements, eccentric melodic lines, "concrete" sounds and noises, disorienting stories and jazz-inflected vocal performances built on improvisation and shifting registers all come together to form a musical universe light years ahead of the Italian scene of the time (and of much of what was still to come). The "political song" of Dalla and Roversi gives voice to the anxieties of an Italy that refuses to bow to "official truths", that wants to break through the rubber wall of power and conformism, and that demands a profound change in society.

The duo's debut, Il giorno aveva cinque teste (1973), is a multifaceted, hermetic, uneven album, but one lit up by flashes of genius. Roversi's lyricism brings to the surface a bitter vein of social protest that had, until then, remained largely submerged in Dalla's songbook. “Questo luogo del cielo è chiamato Torino/ lunghi e grandi viali/ splendidi monti di neve/ illuminate tutte le sponde del Po/ mattoni su mattoni/ sono condannati i terroni/ a costruire per gli altri/ appartamenti da 50 milioni”, is the closing line of "L'auto targata TO", a sour slice of immigration (and property speculation) set in the false eldorado of the North.

Dalla doesn't simply set Roversi's (gorgeous) poems to music, he brings a great deal of himself to the project. In the singing, above all, which is not merely a vehicle for communication but an autonomous creative substance in its own right. At times music isn't even needed, the voice alone is enough to express the idea of a song ("E' lì"); at other times, when it's the music alone that carries the message, as in "Pezzo Zero", the vocal line can be reduced to a jumble of phonemes. Broken down this way, the words lose all meaning under traditional linguistic codes, yet gain an instinctive musicality, almost as if to symbolize a return to a primitivism that frees humanity from convention. A humanity more alienated than ever, whether caught in the automated mechanisms of industry ("L'operaio Gerolamo") or in the repetitive rituals of everyday life ("Alla fermata del tram").

The triumph over reason in "Il coyote", the mechanical breakdown of "Il grippaggio" and the return to an innocent spirit in "La Bambina" are further proof of this "naturalist" yearning that pervades the record.

On the second installment, Anidride solforosa (1975), the pair are even more in sync: Roversi's writing settles more comfortably into song form, and Dalla sings with overflowing verve, even going so far as to impersonate a noblewoman from Emilia in the splendid title track, immersed in an ocean of proto-computers. A toxic surrogate for breathable air, sulphur dioxide symbolizes the individual's fogged-up mind, the toxic cloud that makes the cities "barely visible", in an increasingly robotized world where "we'll know how many times to make love and how many times the rivers in Italy will overflow".

The nightmare of industrialized society is once again the leitmotif of multifaceted tracks, in which the musical side grows more substantial, amid alienating choruses, strangled vocalizations, frenzied strings, sudden rhythm changes and quasi-jazz orchestrations. Childhood memories, political denunciations and portraits of eccentrics and outcasts pile up on top of one another: from the little gypsy girl abandoned among the rubbish ("Carmen Colon") to the young offender branded a "Mela da scarto", from friends who have become unrecognizable ("Non era più lui") to the reworking of warrior myths (the splendid "Ulisse coperto di sale"), from unresolved nostalgia ("Tu parlavi una lingua meravigliosa", "Un mazzo di fiori") to anti-capitalist invective disguised as nonsense (the rambling stock-market listings of "La borsa valori").

It closes with the puzzle of "Le parole incrociate", where the crossword game turns into a gallop backwards through history.

The final chapter of the trilogy, the concept album Automobiles, was the most troubled: it ran into censorship from RCA, which demanded the removal of five tracks deemed too politicized. Dalla, reluctantly, agreed; Roversi withdrew his name in protest, hiding behind the pseudonym "Norisso". The result, however, is once again exhilarating.

The common thread remains the relationship between man and technological progress, embodied specifically by the culture of the automobile. The car, first and foremost, as the nerve center of industrial power, already unsettled by the first symptoms of crisis ("a wooden stick on the wave"): hence the brilliant "Interview con l'Avvocato", in which Gianni Agnelli explains the future of the car industry to a reporter from the Manchester Guardian; Dalla delivers it in his own inimitable way, having the head of Fiat recite a comic pseudo-English grammelot, singing in scat, and unleashing a wild vocal "solo".

But the car is also a synonym for myth: the myth of progress, of speed, of triumph. And the parable of Nuvolari is its perfect embodiment. Introduced by the "tarantella" percussion of Tony Esposito, the suite "Mille miglia" ventures into the ruins of rural Italy devastated by the Great War, a country that lives, "heart devoured", through the exploits of racing's great champions. In an epic of "splashes of oil and spurts of earth", the "flying man from Mantua" tames his car: "Nuvola, Nuvolari, sei una nuvola nera!" goes the refrain, lit up by a Bixio-style charleston. But in Nuvolari (and we've now reached the title track), Dalla also sees a projection of his own physical limitations: he is "short in stature", "below average", "fifty kilos of bone". Limits overcome, however, by a supernatural strength, because "there's always one number more in destiny when Nuvolari races", and so even when his single-seater skids off the road, in a hell of "water, hail and wind", he “rinasce come rinasce il ramarro/ batte Varzi, Campari/ Borzacchini e Fagioli/ Brilli-Peri e Ascari…”. A legendary track, driven by a wild riff and deliciously retro female backing vocals: only Paolo Conte, with his "Bartali", would manage to paint the deeds of a champion with equal poetry.

In the second half, the album grows darker. The motorway nightmare of "L'ingorgo" starts slowly, with the voice distorted by echo and the solemn chords of the organ, then picks up speed to the puffing rhythm of the synths. Then comes the ode to the "Motore del Duemila", which will be “bello e lucente…/ Avrà lo scarico calibrato e un odore che non inquina/ Lo potrà respirare un bambino o una bambina”. An optimistic prophecy (think of today's eco-friendly devices), which instead chills the blood, aided by the ghostly synth breaks and the final dilemma: we know everything about the engine, but how will the heart of the boy of the year 2000 work?

Amid so much murk, the ending opens up a ray of light: the story, underscored by the chords of an Eminent organ, of "Due ragazzi", who choose a scrapped car as the setting for their romantic encounters. Having rediscovered their own intimacy, the individual has finally reclaimed themselves.

Despite being musically challenging, the album goes down well with audiences, supported by quirky live shows close in spirit to the theatre of Dario Fo and Giorgio Gaber. But the censorship affair has by now opened a rift within the Bolognese duo. Roversi returns to his work as a poet, while Dalla decides to take the big step: from now on, he will write his own song lyrics himself.

Stomp and go

Dalla the lyricist could not have made a more auspicious debut. How Deep Is the Sea (1977), in fact, opens with a dazzling broadside: "We are many, we hide at night for fear of motorists, of linotype operators. Siamo i gatti neri, siamo pessimisti, siamo i cattivi pensieri, e non abbiamo da mangiare…". Finally confident in his own expressive means (he would later reveal that he learned everything from Roversi), Dalla proves himself a sensitive and imaginative author, blending political idealism and sentiment, eccentricity and humour.

How Deep Is the Sea is an album of everyday, autobiographically tinged stories, of hunted stray dogs and lost souls. A narrative marked by a variety of rhythms and styles: blues, rock, soul, stomp, the melodic ballad. It's a more accessible record, yet still dense with allegorical references. The sea of the title track, for instance, represents thought, which "is a nuisance, even though whoever thinks is as mute as a fish", but "you can't block it, you can't fence it in". And so the powerful turn on the sea with a vengeance: they want to burn it, kill it, humiliate it. A slow, achingly sweet refrain, set to the liquid bassline of Paolo Donnarumma, worms its way, inexorably, into your ears and your heart. And it convinces you that perhaps we really are all descended from fish…

But that's only the beginning. Because there's the tenderness of "Cucciolo Alfredo" to dive into, wandering lost through the downtown streets among people who "con gli occhi per terra prepara la guerra", dreaming of escaping on the notes of a love song. A melody that opens the heart, paired with an inspired lyric full of scorching irony ("la musica andina, che noia mortale!/ sono più di tre anni che si ripete sempre uguale…"; "uno scudo crociato e una stella cometa fanno pubblicità da un muro a una dieta"). The city shows its fierce face again in the whirlwind of "Corso Buenos Aires", where a southerner, a dog and a child steal some tuna, a salami and a banana, unleashing the "sacred fury" of the forces of law and order. An urban hallucination set to a blues-rock beat.

The fairy-tale elegy of side one gives way to the foul-mouthed sensuality of "Disperato erotico stomp", which swaggers along on a repetitive, mocking rhythm, spelling out the story of an ordinary depression suffered by a man abandoned by his woman, his encounters in a grotesque Bologna (the "optimistic, left-wing" prostitute, the Berliner who's lost his way downtown…), and his consoling self-gratification, the only possible ending. Vulgar, yes, but sharp and biting: entire generations of Italian pop songwriters, with varying degrees of wit, would try to emulate it. Before the closing track, entrusted to the new dream of "Barcarola", there's still time to get drunk on melancholy: what "Quale allegria" can there ever be when you're "a letto insieme senza pace/ senza più niente da inventare" and all that's left is to "farsi anche del male per potersi con dolcezza perdonare, e continuare"? A simple pop ballad. Lump-in-the-throat stuff.

The sound also grows sturdier, thanks to a group of Bologna-based musicians who would later partly go on to form Stadio (from keyboardist Fabio Liberatori to guitarist Ricky Portera). This is how the typical "Dalla sound" of the period is born, blending Mediterranean tones with soft-rock cadences. Red or blue beret on his head, canvas trousers and a tank top, Lucio Dalla takes an electrifying show around Italy, revealing a stage presence unknown among our singer-songwriters, and riding the success of How Deep Is the Sea.

The small, hairy clown, misunderstood and mocked in the Sixties, becomes a star. Like in the fairy tale of the toad who turns into a prince. An incredible vindication for Dalla, who, while always keeping both feet firmly planted in the singer-songwriter tradition, had never hidden his ambition to reach a wide audience. The love affair, however, happens with a new generation — one that has set aside "the fabulous Sixties", the Watussi dance and Bandiera Gialla, and is living through all the uncertainties of a decade of contradictions, born from the ashes of '68 and destined to fade out in the Years of Lead. Dalla is a communist, eccentric, awkward, but his lyrics, always deeply humane, and his great melodic gift make him acceptable even to the "silent majority" ("what my songs say, even my aunt could say," he always liked to point out). What also brings him close to people is his deep humanity, his humility as a street artist who always pokes fun at himself: "I was eleven," he would recount again in the Dotto interview, "when my mother, an odd woman, a dressmaker who couldn't even sew on a button, took me to a psychotechnical institute in Bologna for an aptitude test. It turned out I was half an idiot…"

When Lucio Dalla (1979) comes out, the boom is in full swing. More polished, if less experimental than its predecessor, the album relies essentially on melodic ballads, without disdaining sudden bursts of rhythm and forays into blues-rock territory. Compared to the past, what stands out above all is that guitar from which Dalla had always kept his distance, as if to mark the difference from his folk-leaning colleagues (De Gregori, Guccini, Venditti, Vecchioni, De André). The guitar, though, is mostly Ricky Portera's electric one, whose solos underline the more rock-leaning episodes. The horn inserts, always dear to Dalla, and Giampiero Reverberi's string arrangements, which add an extra touch of epic grandeur, also fit the project perfectly. Lyrics of incredible poetic intensity, built on assonance in a blend of learned language, spoken syntax and dialect, and impassioned performances full of twists, complete an almost perfect picture.

What strikes you is the infinite tenderness of tracks like "Stella di mare", a soft-rock number that soars into a lovely closing guitar solo, and "Anna e Marco", a lyrical suburban vignette in which the moon becomes a ball and the sky a billiard table, and pinball stars make you dream of another life, even if America is far away. But behind the melodic charm also lurk less reassuring stories: from the electro-rock apocalypse of "L'ultima luna" (crowded with monsters and dark omens, where "lo scimmione si aggirava tra la giostra e il bar" and even "l'angelo di Dio bestemmiava, facendo sforzi di petto"), to the unsettling "Notte" (one of the crucial themes of his songbook is precisely this nocturnal fascination, almost metaphysical and surreal), from the grotesque portrait of Power embodied by "La signora" to the bittersweet ode to "Milano", suspended between modernity and nostalgia: “Milano vicino all’Europa/ Milano che banche che cambi/… Milano che quando piange/ piange davvero/… poi Milan e Benfica/ Milano che fatica/… Milano sguardo maligno di Dio/ zucchero e catrame”. Perhaps the most beautiful song ever written about Milan, written, what's more, by someone who isn't from Milan.

And while "Cosa sarà", the first fruit of his partnership with De Gregori, hides its melancholy beneath a cheerful rhythm, "L'anno che verrà" portrays a listless era ("Caro amico ti scrivo, così mi distraggo un po'…"), in which the sunset of utopias risks sliding into disillusionment. An age when people go out little in the evening, perhaps out of fear of the Years of Lead poisoning Italy. The closing line — "Io mi sto preparando, è questa la novità" — can thus be read either as a last burst of optimism or as the final capitulation to the realignment of the looming Eighties. An almost perfect ballad, it would remain his definitive manifesto.

At the peak of his popularity, Dalla sets off together with Francesco De Gregori for the event-tour of Banana Republic (1979), from which the eponymous double live album and a film would be drawn. New, previously unreleased songs also emerge from it, some a bit crowd-pleasing ("Come fanno i marinai"), others decidedly striking (the poignant title track, De Gregori's reworking of an American song). Between "the plebeian street showman" (Dalla) and "the melancholy, charming prince" (De Gregori) — as the gushing press of the time described them — the collaboration always lives on a knife's edge of tension. The usual Ron plays a decisive mediating role, also joining the two of them on stage.

In a sort of epic Italian road movie, some of the most significant songs from their respective catalogues go by, from "Piazza Grande" and "4/3/1943" (Dalla) to "Bufalo Bill" and "Santa Lucia" (De Gregori), and there's even room for a strange cover of Paolo Conte's "Gelato al limon".

Banana Republic celebrates an Italy looking for a way out of the Years of Lead by chasing tropical atolls or Cuban-Caribbean political hideaways. It will be a huge success, with sold-out stadiums and 500,000 copies sold.

The partnership between the two, however, will come to an end with no foreseeable follow-up.

Futura e altre storie

Dalla (1980) consolidates the formula, while adding a handful of new, formidable ballads. "Futura" is one of his greatest melodic masterpieces: the musings of two lovers on the doubts and fears of the future (“Chissà chissà domani/ su che cosa metteremo le mani/ se si potrà contare ancora le onde del mare/ e alzare la testa”) melt into a crescendo that coincides with orgasm. Dalla dreams of a better tomorrow for Futura, but also for all of us, still making our hearts bleed. The other nighttime serenade, "Cara", renews the miracle, with lyrics of overflowing melancholy and an enveloping melody, cradled by the piano. The driving "Balla balla ballerino" also plays the card of a sudden burst of tempo, pushing on Portera's brazen electric guitar, and sublimates twenty years of pacifism into a dancer's moves (“Balla anche per tutti i violenti…/ Se capissero vedendoti ballare/ di essere morti da sempre/ anche se possono respirare”).

But there's also the surreal irony that lights up the tragicomic end of a love affair in "Mambo" (“she stormed off slamming the door, with my hand still caught in it”), or memorable characters like “Meri Luis”, the sad girl who, in the end, “blessed the sky like it was her brother, for her beautiful tits and for the friend who wants to touch them”.

The whole album is a journey back through a troubled romantic path, a journey made of melancholy and loneliness. "Halfway between Ferrara and the moon", Dalla returns to the fairground rides of childhood ("Il parco della luna"), stops to "tear a song to pieces" in the back alleys of Rome, dreaming of a "Sera dei miracoli" (and coming up with yet another one of his breathtaking melodies), and even questions obtuse deities about the meaning of life ("Siamo dei").

These songs don't need any special effects. "What emotion, what tenderness," Dalla announces right from the start. That's the secret.

After conquering even the No. 1 spot on the charts without ever selling his soul to the devil, Dalla's career now begins its downward arc. First, though, there's still room for an interesting work, Q-Disc (1981), where a jazzy cover of Carole King's "You've Got A Friend" sits alongside a lovely melancholy blues ("Madonna disperazione"), another bona fide melodic ballad ("Telefonami tra vent'anni", a sort of even more resigned update of "L'anno che verrà") and an irreverent, somewhat heavy-handed pop-rock number ("Ciao a te"), which takes aim at father figures and bad role models, but also at homophobia of every era.

The seal on Lucio Dalla's golden era is a trio of concerts at Castel Sant'Angelo (Rome) in front of a hundred thousand people. The tour will also mark the official debut of Stadio, destined for an important career of their own as well.

Dalla's next solo album, the hugely anticipated 1983, disappoints many fans, presenting itself as a far less immediate and engaging work than its predecessor. The songs seem less inspired, the writing less fluid and brilliant, the harmonic choices more forced. And yet the Bolognese artist's talent still burns beneath the ashes, as shown for instance by the long title suite, a kind of survey of forty years of Italian history, or the more conventional "Noi come voi", which blends a driving rhythm with ever-biting lyrics. The giddy, nonsensical dance number "Stronzo" (sung in "scat") is pleasant but harmless. If anything, Dalla still manages to draw blood when he digs into the melancholy of "L'altra parte del mondo", to which the use of electronics lends a sense of depth.

Lucio, where are you going?

Realizing that something has gone wrong, Dalla tries to change tack with Viaggi organizzati (1984). The shift from the sound of Stadio to that of Mauro Malavasi scales back the rock accents in favor of electronics bordering on dance music, which should reinvigorate the songs but instead often sinks them for good. The one clear exception is the brilliant "Washington", which wraps the tragicomic misadventure of two air force bombers in synthetic pulses ("qui c'è solo un sasso… non si vede un casso!").

The "new" Dalla has lost a bit of his passion: he's colder, more cerebral, more calculated. He still wants to be provocative, but he no longer has the right tools to pull it off.

Two years later, Bugie does a full about-face, returning to the ballad format, but pays the price of déjà vu. The single "Se io fossi un angelo" dusts off his usual irony, though with a few lapses into rhetoric. Things fare better on the side of the more sentimental songs, among which the poignant "Chissà se lo sai" stands out (one of his boundless depths of tenderness) and, in a more subdued register, the delicate "Scusami tanto se ho solo te".

Dalla still tries to renew his interpretive flair (the syncopated, nervy vocal delivery of "Luk", the more frantic one of "Navigando"), proving he can still pull it off, perhaps more through craft than creativity.

Fittingly, DallAmeriCaruso (1986) tries to shift attention back to his (still excellent) live shows, documenting a concert at New York's Village Gate. But the ace up his sleeve is the brand-new "Caruso", written during the summer at the hotel in Sorrento where tenor Enrico Caruso spent his final days. A heart-wrenching reworking of Donizetti's "Te voglio bene assaie" theme in a Neapolitan-melodic key, it would become one of Dalla's biggest hits, selling nine million copies worldwide across dozens of versions (one of them, inevitably, by Pavarotti).

When, however, Dalla decides to embark on a tour with his old friend Gianni Morandi, a historic champion of Italian easy-listening pop (Dalla/Morandi, 1988), it becomes clear that his past is now well and truly buried. By now more showman than singer-songwriter, the storyteller of the Seventies risks quickly turning into a parody of himself. Which is exactly what happens a few months later, when he stages the pantomime of "Attenti al lupo". It's the single that drives the success of Cambio (a million and a half copies sold), overshadowing two interesting tracks like "Le rondini" (co-written with Malavasi) and "Comunista", a reworking of lyrics written by Roversi fifteen years earlier that now sounds like a painful trip down memory lane.

Overall, though, the album is a weary rehash of styles, sounds and even words (stars, moons, eyes, sea, hands, telephones…). A long tour will follow, documented on the live album Amen.

With Henna (1994), at the very least, Dalla shows flashes of rediscovering the sardonic vitality of his golden years (the hilarious gag of "Merdman", which once again tells a story of marginalization through the tale of an alien who ends up on a talk-show) and the urge to experiment a bit more on the sound front too (the mystically tinged title track, the modern reworking of Modugno's "Vecchio Frack" in "Latin Lover"). A small breath of fresh air, in short.

Two years later, however, Songs resumes the downward slide. "Ayrton" (that is, Senna, the Brazilian F1 legend) tries in vain to recapture the epic enchantment of "Nuvolari", the single "Canzone" relies on the pen of Samuele Bersani but fails to leave a mark; the only surprise, then, is the jarring ghost-track: a reprise of "Disperato erotico stomp" followed by a religious hymn sung by a monk with only organ accompaniment. As if to say: the profane and the sacred…

Also honored with an honoris causa degree from Bologna's Dams in "Arts, Music and Performance Disciplines", in 1999 Dalla released Ciao, which was meant to bid farewell to the century amid the mournful climate of the Balkans in flames, but turns out to be another flop (the title track, its vocals filtered beyond recognition, would even be used as the hold music for Telecom's toll-free customer service line!).

Luna Matàna (2001) is another misfire, weighed down by oversized strings, ill-advised vocoder flourishes and some rather too blatant commercial winks (the tired football ode "Baggio Baggio", the gypsy-flavoured, Gipsy Kings-style knock-off "Zingaro"); the damage is only partly limited by "Kamikaze", a bleak prophecy of our times, and the more straightforward "Siciliano", barely "disturbed" by a fleeting appearance from Carmen Consoli.

In 2001 Einaudi dedicated "Parole e canzoni" (2001) to him, a box set containing all his lyrics plus a video; that same year Dalla published his first book of short stories, "Bella Lavita", through Rizzoli.

In the throes of full artistic delirium, Dalla even embraced opera, with the syrupy mishmash of Tosca. Amore disperato (2003), inspired by Puccini's work.

But his self-deprecating streak was certainly undimmed: having abandoned his legendary wool skullcap, he covered his bald head with an improbable toupée made for him by Cesare Ragazzi (!). Ever the prankster, Dalla loved to throw everyone off by using the alter ego Domenico Sputo (a name even displayed on the doorbell of his house in Bologna) for various collaborations, and even named his sailboat Catarro (Phlegm, !).

But his musical direction proceeded in a rather muddled way: the new album Lucio threw together a hodgepodge of tracks, including the theme from Ambrogio Lo Giudice's film "Prima dammi un bacio", stretched-thin songs like "Le stelle nel sacco" and "Yesterday o Lady Jane?", two tracks lifted from "Tosca" ("Per Te" and "Amore disperato", sung as a duet with Mina), plus a cover of the Wizard of Oz theme ("Over The Rainbow") that, frankly, nobody was asking for.

For Il contrario di me, the new album from 2007, Dalla opted for a bizarre move: releasing it simultaneously in record shops and at newsstands bundled with the newspaper La Repubblica. Beyond its "revolutionary" veneer, the gesture mainly seemed to betray the Bolognese singer-songwriter's own doubts about his new creation's chances of success. Dalla also took on the roles of arranger and producer (alongside Marco Alemanno), attempting to offer the portrait of an artist both amused and reflective, casting a bittersweet eye on the present through eleven interconnected snapshots.

The single "Due dita sotto il cielo", inspired by his friend Valentino Rossi, glides along on delicately jazzy atmospheres. "Liam" rests entirely on its backing vocals and on lyrics that are, this time, a touch sharper. The reggae of "Malinconia d'ottobre" transports us to Pessoa's Lisbon, while "Rimini" drowns the carousel of the Romagna riviera in Eastern spices. "Spengo il telefono e ti cancello" aims to work as satire on today's communication overload, but it never really bites. And while "Lunedì" leans hard on nostalgia, with old-fashioned sound effects, the more ambitious secular prayer of "I.N.R.I" drowns in flabby reggae arrangements. The record closes on a blues note with "atiV", where the trick of spelling the word backwards is a nod to the old song "Vita", sung with Morandi.

It was a flop, but at least Dalla seemed to put his heart into it, bravely putting himself back on the line.

Two years later came the eccentric Angoli nel cielo, which reflects a somewhat confused but, all things considered, enjoyably flamboyant phase for the Bolognese singer-songwriter, who has a blast with his band. He sings of "clouds full of poison" as well as "hamburgers that expired years ago" which only we, the self-styled "kings of civilization", still eat ("La lucciola" and "Broadway"), confesses his bewilderment in the face of the infinite ("I'd like to know who moves the world, and why" from "Vorrei sapere chi è"); while in "Controvento" Dalla takes on the unlikely role of a life coach ("go only where you want to go", no single wind "will ever be your master"). But the real gem of the record is "Fiuto", a sort of tragicomic, contemporary "Attenti al Lupo" about Naples' "garbage business", sung as a duet with an inspired Toni Servillo.

The album once again flew under the radar, but no one could have imagined that this "opera buffa" from the tail end of the 2000s was destined to go down in history as Lucio Dalla's final studio album.

A Blow to the Heart

In 2010 came an event no one expected: Lucio Dalla reunited with his old friend Francesco De Gregori, thirty-one years after "Banana Republic". It was a thrilling concert at the Vox Club in Nonantola (Modena). But no one could have foreseen that this "Work in Progress" would turn into a touring enterprise lasting a whole year. From that 22nd of January 2010 onward, the two tirelessly crisscrossed Italy aboard the train of their songs. And it doesn't end there, since new dates have been announced running through to spring 2011. Nothing on the scale of the legendary 1979 tour, though there were still some grand settings, such as the Verona Arena. They played together in the evening, then each went home on his own, confirming two very different personalities who, precisely for that reason, complement each other. The double CD Work In Progress seals their rediscovered rapport 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, chief among them a poignant "Santa Lucia" (not by chance Dalla's favourite De Gregori song), a rousing "Nuvolari" and an amused "Disperato erotico stomp". Although, it must be said, the roles compared to "Banana Republic" seem to have reversed: today it's De Gregori who is in better form, even as a performer, while Dalla struggles a little to keep pace, making up for it with craft and charisma.

Twenty-nine live tracks and two new songs: the travel 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 the best of both men's catalogues. With entirely new arrangements. So it can happen that you stumble on a sax-and-guitar coda in place of the piano sonata from "La leva calcistica della classe '68", or see a Dylan-esque harmonica replace the immortal bagpipes of "Viva l'Italy", or struggle to recognise "Buonanotte Fiorellino" transformed from a musette waltz into a galloping rock number. Dalla's songs are treated with more respect for the originals, though the modern arrangements do give fresh verve to past masterpieces like "Anna e Marco", "L'anno che verrà" and "Futura", while a heartfelt "Henna" reminds us of what is perhaps his last great recent achievement. Included is the DVD "Back To Back", with roughly 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.

Meanwhile, the Bolognese singer-songwriter pursued a parallel career as a film-score composer, working with Monicelli, Antonioni, Giannarelli, Verdone, Campiotti, Placido and others. His flair for television led him to take part in more or less successful RAI programmes such as "Taxi", "Te voglio bene assaje", "Mezzanotte: angeli in piazza" and the notorious "La Bella e la Besthia", alongside Sabrina Ferilli. He also worked as a gallery owner, an event organiser and a talent scout (his proteges included Samuele Bersani, as well as actor Marco Alemanno).

But of his music, by now, what mostly remains is the memory of the past – the kind documented by the fine double anthology Questo è amore (2011), containing 31 tracks, including three previously unreleased songs and a new version of "Meri Luis", performed as a duet with Marco Mengoni. Lesser-known songs, yet precious for piecing together Dalla's career, from the tribute to Quartetto Cetra in "La leggenda del prode Radamès" to gems drawn from the "motors trilogy", from the age-old "Il coyote" to little treasures like "Mambo", "Pecorella", "Le rondini" and many others.

In 2012 Dalla returns to Sanremo as well, accompanying Pierdavide Carone on the song "Nani", which receives a good critical response.

Then, like a bolt from the blue, the sad epilogue that closes the curtain forever.

Lucio Dalla passed away on March 1, 2012 in his hotel room in Montreux, Switzerland, struck down by a heart attack. He was in the middle of a successful European tour, and nothing hinted at the end. The funeral could only be held on March 4, the day he would have turned 69. His private life always remained shrouded in a veil of discretion, including his friendships and romantic relationships – complete with (pointless) controversy over his supposed moral duty to come out. Through friends, however, he let slip something of the faith he held in his final years, even revealing that he had dreamed of meeting his guardian angel and Saint Francis. The sacred and the profane walking arm in arm right to the end. Just like the thieves, the prostitutes, and the baby Jesus.

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