The Prince on trial

In the most ideologically charged decade of all, singer-songwriters weren't just expected to write great songs. The toxic rhetoric of the 1970s decreed that every single behaviour had to be "faithful to the line," as Giovanni Lindo Ferretti of CCCP would ironically theorize a few years later. The singer-songwriter was supposed to be the bearer of a message, an unimpeachable messiah allowed no weaknesses or missteps, not even in private life. Edoardo Bennato would go on to build one of his most memorable send-ups around exactly this idea ("Cantautore," 1976).

Francesco De Gregori, despite being "always and forever on the same side," to quote one of his future classics, immediately raised the suspicions of the left's hardliners. "I was always being outflanked from the left," he would recall. "It was a time when people would say: we need to get the worker comrades and the university students to the assembly too. And I'd say: fine. Then someone else would say: we need the farmhands from Maccarese too. And I'd say: what's that got to do with anything? And that's how I already started being seen as 'lukewarm.'" Besides, his haughty, aristocratic reserve was already a sign of heterodoxy. On top of that he was bourgeois, girls liked him, and — even more unforgivable — he was starting to sell a lot of records. He was even diluting the hard shell of militant ideology with sentimental verses. "De Gregori makes my skin crawl," Lidia Ravera, author of "Porci con le ali," would blurt out, summing up the shared feeling of a certain snobbish radical left toward the Folkstudio's golden boy.

Dangerous liaisons

The first to put him in the dock, however, would be a music critic, Giaime Pintor, in a 1975 article for Linus that sounds like an indictment from its very title: "De Gregori isn't Nobel, he's mascara" ("De Gregori non è nobel, è rimmel"). Declaring himself a sworn enemy of "little pop songs," Pintor mounts a brutal j'accuse, opening with an apology for the hasty comparison he himself had sketched in another article between De Gregori's verses and Montale's. He then goes on to tear apart the whole of "Rimmel": "An album that strikes me as the manifesto of a 1960s poetic sensibility dressed up with some baroque and quasi-baroque arrangements, one eye on the soft rock of the fourth English generation (Elton John and brethren) and something else besides (banana-on-the-head folklorism, a myopic, almost blind glance at Dylan and Cohen, an incoherent De André, Gian Pieretti, Gianni Meccia and even Nico Fidenco...), and onto this threadbare fabric he heavily lays lyrics in which hermetic metaphor triumphs in its kitschiest garb." And while acknowledging that De Gregori makes "an attempt to introduce political concepts, or at least slices of life not confined to weary love stories," Pintor condemns "a hermetic poetics, one of lyrical intuition" as "essentially idealist, therefore right-wing, incapable of reflecting real tensions or of carrying positive, revolutionary values." In short, one of those cases where, to borrow from Ruggeri, "you take me literally and get the wrong answer." With reasoning that seems to come straight from another geological era.

Worse still, though, is the conclusion of Pintor's article, only seemingly tongue-in-cheek: "Francesco De Gregori, now they're going to throw tomatoes at you." And indeed, some would take up the invitation. Going much, much further than that.

Pintor's takedown is an unexpected slap in the face, the first time one of the left's musical darlings is truly put up against the wall. But he's not alone: from Lotta Continua to Ciao 2001, the detractors are sharpening their sabres. Partly because De Gregori, besides writing sappy musette waltzes, has other terrible habits. Like hanging around the upper echelons of the charts. Or wanting to be paid for his concerts. It happens too at the Circolo Ottobre in Magliana, Rome, where he had already played for free once before. For the "encore," though, he asks for a fee of 400,000 lire. He's turned down flat, and refuses to sing. All hell breaks loose. Lotta Continua's newspaper runs a front-page piece titled "A Lovely Party": "You should know that Lucio Dalla (an inexcusable no-show), Cochi e Renato (arguably excusable) and Jannacci (because he was ill) were all supposed to come to the Magliana party, and didn't. Instead, braving the perilous journey from central Rome to the outskirts, along came a certain De Gregori, apparently famous, who asked for 400,000 lire to perform, and got 400,000 raspberries instead." Negotiations followed, along with a "make-up" tour to fund the Circoli Ottobre.

De Gregori, in short, tries to coexist with the harshness of a movement growing ever more rigid and uncompromising. But he's always regarded with suspicion. As if he were an intruder. A year later, a young Luigi Manconi, already a Lotta Continua militant writing under the pseudonym Simone Dessì, comes to his defence with a half-joking piece — "Variations (Full-Throated) on the De Gregorian Chant" — aimed precisely at dismantling Pintor's arguments.

But in the meantime, Pintor's words have left their mark. De Gregori's own entourage senses dark omens for the future in that tirade. Of course, it remains legitimate music criticism, and no one is entitled to read an incitement to the events of April 2, 1976 into those words. But the Linus editor's diatribe perfectly captures the leaden atmosphere of those years, when the feverish appeal to ideology conditioned every kind of interpretation, warping even the horizons of a single line or song. "There was a moment in my life when I felt like a 'kantautore,' with a k," De Gregori himself would admit a few years later. Under this oppressive blanket of dogma, prejudice and slogans, the most painful event of his career takes place. A dramatic evening that would leave a lasting scar on the very history of Italian music.

De Gregori had already run into some unpleasant episodes. At the Festival of Young Proletarians on the beach at Licola, near Naples, he'd fled just in time, moments before a hail of objects and sand-filled shoes rained down on, among others, the unfortunate Alan Sorrenti. In Milan, during a concert for A-Rivista anarchica alongside folk singer Paola Nicolazzi, he'd been saved by Giorgio Gaber's "peacemaking" intervention. In Pescara, when he struck up "Niente da capire," with Giovanna playing her "maddening little games," he was attacked by the very same girls on security duty — all furious Lotta Continua feminists. In Bari, he'd effectively had to play twice in the same evening because of a ticket price deemed too steep. So many small omens of a great tension building.

But the huge success of "Rimmel" had spurred him to set off on a long tour. At his side was an old friend, Renzo Zenobi, who had just released an album for RCA. But already at the first stop, in Pavia, clashes break out between the crowd and the police, someone flees with a bloodied face, and Zenobi says that as far as he's concerned the tour could end right there. Perhaps he had already sensed what was about to happen.

The singer-songwriter on trial

On April 2, 1976, Milan's Palalido is sold out: at 9pm the organizers decide to let in about a thousand kids who were on the verge of breaking down the gates. A group of roughly a hundred troublemakers gathers behind the stage and starts hurling insults at De Gregori. They accuse him of exploiting his songs to get rich, even of staying in overly luxurious hotels while on tour. Some of them manage to break through the security cordon and storm the stage. Chaos erupts. The account of that evening is preserved in a famous article by Mario Luzzatto Fegiz for Corriere della Sera:

Using the same method that had disrupted the concert of decadent rock star Lou Reed about two years earlier, a group of young people took up position behind the stage, showering De Gregori with insults and accusing him of profiting from political songs. A little later, some members who had broken away from the main group took possession of the stage and, seizing the microphone, read out, amid general confusion, a statement protesting the arrest, in Padua, of a far-left militant. The concert resumed in an atmosphere of tension, while among the audience some agitators, shouting that 'there are more fascists than comrades in here,' set off a fascist-hunt that fortunately ended with nothing worse than a few scuffles. Twenty minutes of interruption, and the show went on. Around 10:30pm, Francesco De Gregori managed to bring the concert to a close and retreated backstage. At this point a group of troublemakers laid siege to his dressing room, shouting: 'Come out — come back on stage and talk to us, or we'll wreck everything.' The ushers and security staff try to hold back the assault, but in vain. After a few minutes De Gregori comes out. Faces straight out of a Lombroso mugshot and youths who seem gripped by hysteria take turns at the microphone. "Play for the workers, don't pocket the money." "How much did you make tonight?" one young man shouts. "I think a million two..." De Gregori whispers, barely audible, "but then there's the copyright agency..." "If you're really a comrade, not just in words but in deeds, leave the takings here," they retort. A white-bearded man of indeterminate age takes the floor: "You don't make revolution with music. First you make the revolution, then you can think about art or music. Mayakovsky said the same, and he was a true revolutionary, and he killed himself. You should kill yourself too!"

De Gregori listens, pale and silent. With little conviction he murmurs into the microphone: "Maybe I'm a victim of the industry too..." The deranged farce of the 'trial' goes on: "Go get a real job and play at home in the evenings." Some girls cry, other speakers carry on in the same vein, accusing everyone present who paid for a ticket of being "a bunch of a**holes." De Gregori manages to reach his dressing room. He looks devastated and concludes: "I will never sing in public again. Tonight all that was missing was the castor oil, and the scene would have been complete."

The tour is suspended, and De Gregori's very career is put at risk. He withdraws from performing for a long period, during which he works in a friend's bookshop in Santa Maria in Trastevere and even considers changing profession altogether. He finds peace in his private life: he marries a former high-school classmate, Francesca Gobbi, and they have two children together, the twins Marco and Federico.

But the Palalido incident is a shock to the whole of Italian music. No more concerts, empty stadiums, and a widespread sense of dismay. A year later, Roberto Vecchioni would revisit those nights of madness in a track from "Samarcanda", "Vaudeville (Ultimo Mondo Cannibale)":

E spararono al cantautore

in una notte di gioventù

gli spararono per amore

per non farlo cantare più

gli spararono perché era bello

ricordarselo com'era prima

alternativo, autoridotto

fuori dall'ottica del sistema [...]

 

mentre cadeva, buono tra i buoni

e si annebbiava vieppiù la vista

dashed off two or three songs on the spot

a sign that he was a great artist

Curiously, in an unreleased track from two years earlier (De Gregori era morto), the same Roman singer-songwriter had almost “prophesied” the event:

De Gregori era morto

killed by his bourgeois upbringing and a terrible headache […]

De Gregori era morto

ucciso dal suo ultimo Lp e dai suoi profeti

Only indirectly, however, would the bitterness and despair of the two years that followed — spent away from the scene — surface amid the funereal tolling of “La campana” (on “Francesco De Gregori”, 1978), one of the most painfully autobiographical songs in his catalogue:

Io ho pianto lacrime fino all’ossolacrime e tosse sul selciato

incollato sull’asfalto della strada

mai stato così lontano

dalla dolcezza cui tutti hanno diritto

io con un fascio di giornali in manoe con un fascio di giornali in mano

I thought: you really can die of grief […]

E sotto questo grande cielo azzurro

finalmente mi sentivo un uomo solo

The defense speaks

The Prince adored by the masses, for whom an "intrusive future" had been predicted, would have to serve a solitary self-exile to find his catharsis. "It's the only written document from those two years in which I was doing fairly well, but with occasional pangs of bitterness, of loneliness," he would recall. "I wrote it thinking back on all the time spent wandering around city squares, alone. I'd read the papers because I didn't feel like doing anything, and I'd pretend to be interested in what was written there. And actually, you regain your peace of mind when you realize you're alone, autonomous, self-sufficient."

So, wounded in his pride, he picked up pen and paper and wrote Muzak a meticulous letter, in which he clarified the spirit of a comment of his that had been reported by the press after the attack: "Given how things had turned out, they might as well have shot me: it was a small moment within the strategy of tension." A long "confession" meant to send back to sender one of the many attempts to exploit him for other ends.

Regarding what happened at the Palalido in Milan, the press comments and certain statements reported inaccurately, I wish to make a few observations. When I said that the protest against me fell within the strategy of tension, I did not mean to say that it had been carried out by far-right groups or by others in some way directed by or connected to the far right. Nor did I ever use the expression "red fascists." I do believe, however, that the group of comrades who so harshly attacked my work and my person made a very serious political mistake, one that does nothing to clarify matters but instead prevents a correct analysis of youth culture, of current musical output, and also, if you will, of the errors and inevitable contradictions of those artists who, like me, try from within the music industry to promote a different, alternative discourse on the level of musical and lyrical content and concert management.

From this point of view, the gravely reckless initiative carried out by these comrades can only reinforce the usual musical establishment, push back to the right artists and bands potentially open to left-wing initiatives, and encourage three-thousand-lira concerts, police deployments and private security services hired by big promoters.

From this point of view, then, these episodes objectively play into the hands of the culture of power and of reassuring, tranquilizing music, and moreover lend themselves to being seized upon and exploited in a terrorist, reactionary, scandal-mongering key by a certain kind of "independent" press. As for my earnings, I believe that rather than a personal donation of mine (to which in any case I would avoid giving any publicity), it is more appropriate for me to put my music and my words at the disposal of a movement which, although I am not a revolutionary militant, I feel I belong to ideologically, sharing almost entirely its cultural choices, engaging with it, and accepting its support, its criticism and its proposals.

Lotta Continua, the Circoli Ottobre, Re Nudo, the Anarchists all know well that I made myself available for free on countless political and musical occasions. I say this not to claim any medals for good behavior, but to make clear what path I have followed so far and what choices I have made.

As for my songs, their content and my language, I write songs the way I know how to write them. I simply express things the way I manage to express them, and I think it would be demagogic of me to change my own style and write songs, for instance, like Ivan Della Mea or Paolo Pietrangeli, artists whom I esteem and respect, by the way. Still, I believe that alongside their work, more directly tied to the political chronicle of our times, there can be room for mine, which starts from different premises but nonetheless aims, even if perhaps by other roads, at raising the musical standard of the masses. The more politicized young audience, or at least part of it, shows that it appreciates what I write and sing, perhaps because I try to talk about private matters and political matters in a different way from the traditional one. That's all. I would not want what I've said to be mistaken for an attack, or worse, a self-defense. I only hope I have helped clarify some fundamental points in a debate that certainly needed to be addressed, regardless of what happened at the Palalido in Milan.

Years later, De Gregori would even arrive at a kind of virtual reconciliation with his accusers: "I have the feeling that those kids who protested against me in Milan actually loved me, just as I loved them, because they were the ship's stokers, they were the ones who, according to the regime, weren't supposed to have a voice, they were the dispossessed. And I was, and still am, on their side." Yet the bitterness and the sense of misunderstanding would linger for a long time. "I'd rather not talk about it anymore, because that episode gave me, and still gives me, well, I won't say pain, but a certain discomfort, yes, and because it was a painful historical moment for everyone," he would explain, before making an announcement from the stage of the Auditorium in Rome: "I wish those kids would show up! They've surely become respectable gentlemen by now, some of them probably even important, but I don't think any of them ever became a revolutionary. And then, I'd ask them the question from that wonderful film by my friend Nanni Moretti: 'You used to say hit one to teach a hundred.' Where are the hundred you taught?"

And so Francesco De Gregori would have to "walk through the night on foot to cheat melancholy," together with his friend Lucio Dalla, who knew a thing or two about it himself, having been hit by a Molotov cocktail during a concert at Milan's Castello Sforzesco. When the "night of the Republic" had already left its trail of terror and Italy was searching for a way out of the Years of Lead, all that remained was to chase illusory tropical Edens like Banana Republic. A sensational tour that would reopen Italian stadiums to music and reconcile the Prince with the stage.

Ride the wave of great music

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25/03/2026