Francesco Guccini

Francesco Guccini has passed away at the age of 86, in his beloved Pavana. One of the most irreverent, poetic and innovative singer-songwriters on the Italian scene, he had started out writing songs for other artists (above all the many versions made famous by Nomadi), before overcoming his shyness and beginning to record for himself and take the stage: a brilliant testament to Guccini in concert is the 1984 box set "Fra la Via Emilia e il West".
A bard of old-fashioned taverns and everyday heroes from another era, far removed from today's, and of that Bologna where it was customary to stay out late between a song and a glass of wine - a drink he became something of a symbol for, to the point of naming one of his hit albums after his home address ("Via Paolo Fabbri, 43") - Guccini had later chosen to return to live in the Apennines where he was born, in the small town of Pavana, which preserved within its houses the atmosphere and flavour of a bygone way of life, humble in its origins - though never in spirit - like the heroes he sang about in his songs (the famous "La locomotiva"). It was there that he also set a series of detective novels co-written with Loriano Macchiavelli.
As he sang in “Farewell”, Guccini has “taken away with him a little bit of summer”, but his memory and his songs will never die. We remember him through 15 of his most memorable.

La canzone del bambino nel vento (Auschwitz)

This is one of the defining songs of Francesco Guccini's civic commitment and one of the most important pages in Italian singer-songwriter history. Written in 1964 and included on his debut album, "Folk Beat n. 1", "Auschwitz" gives voice to a child who died in the Nazi extermination camp, turning the tragedy of the Holocaust into a universal reflection against war, hatred and every form of violence. For years, however, the song was credited to Equipe 84, who held the rights, since Guccini was not yet registered with the Italian copyright agency SIAE. Guccini wrote the song on a wave of enthusiasm after listening to "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan", the LP that contained "Blowin' In The Wind" (to which "Auschwitz" owes something, if only for the image of the wind) and which launched the legend of the new minstrel of the pacifist revolution: "Ad Auschwitz c'era la neve, il fumo saliva lento/ nel freddo giorno d'inverno e adesso sono nel vento, adesso sono nel vento". But at the time, tackling such a dramatic subject in a song was an unprecedented choice, and criticism was not lacking. In a 2024 interview, Guccini recalled an episode from the recording of his first LP: "There were these sound engineers in white coats... One of them, after listening to it, told me: 'Did you write this? Look, I don't know if you want to make a career of this, but you'd better change genre, otherwise you won't get anywhere'". At the time, Guccini explained, many people couldn't accept a song talking about a concentration camp: "Songs were seen as a form of entertainment and amusement. For the first time, one was tackling subjects of a certain kind - it was a sort of revolution".

Dio è morto

Written in 1965, "Dio è morto" is one of Guccini's most emblematic songs and one of the manifestos of Italian protest music. Inspired lyrically by Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" and – in its title – by Friedrich Nietzsche's myth of the Death of God, the song captures the profound cultural and social change of those years, giving voice to the disillusionment of a generation watching traditional values collapse and questioning institutions, consumerism and social conventions (“Ai bordi delle strade, dio è morto/ Nelle auto prese a rate, dio è morto/ Nei miti dell’estate, dio è morto”). Guccini also references the horrors of the "extermination camps" and the "myths of race," a subject he would return to two years later in the poignant "Auschwitz." Behind its stern tone, however, the song is not nihilistic: the ending in fact opens onto the possibility of rebirth, entrusting young people with the hope of building a different future. It was precisely the provocative title that sparked a huge controversy. Despite containing no attack on religion, "Dio è morto" was censored by Rai, which deemed it blasphemous and banned it from broadcast. Pope Paul VI's judgment, however, went the opposite way: he grasped the message of hope contained in the final lines: "in ciò che noi crediamo Dio è risorto, in ciò che noi vogliamo Dio è risorto, in ciò che noi faremo Dio è risorto…". As a result, the song found airtime on Radio Vaticana's frequencies. In 1967 two recordings of it were released: one by the Nomadi, destined to become a huge hit, and one by Caterina Caselli, which contained some variations in the lyrics.

La locomotiva

Perhaps the most beloved song in his catalogue, the most requested, the one that could never be left out of a concert. And to think that, according to his own account, it was written in just 20 minutes, despite its length (over 8 minutes) and a structure built on no fewer than thirteen verses. The immortal ballad included on "Radici" (1972) became an anthem of generational protest, even though it doesn't tell of collective revolutions but rather the story of a nineteenth-century train driver, his locomotive, and his fight against the bosses ("…e che ci giunga un giorno ancora la notizia di una locomotiva come una cosa viva, lanciata a bomba contro l'ingiustizia!"). With his typically evocative style, Guccini narrates the true story of the anarchist train driver Pietro Rigosi, who on 20 July 1893 seized a locomotive uncoupled from a freight train near Poggio Renatico station and drove it at 50 km/h towards Bologna station, where it crashed into some parked carriages. The man was thrown clear; he lost a leg and was left with a disfigured face, but survived the impact. A classic for all seasons.

Il vecchio e il bambino

Featured on the 1972 album "Radici," "Il vecchio e il bambino" is one of Guccini's most celebrated and significant songs. Through simple yet poetic language, the songwriter builds a parable on the relationship between memory and the future, imagining a dialogue between an old man and a child in a world devastated by nuclear war. The setting is bleak: a plain covered in red dust, towers of smoke and a sun with an "unreal light," symbols of a civilization annihilated by its own madness. The old man tries to pass on to the child the memory of a world that no longer exists, inviting him to imagine fields of wheat, trees, flowers, colours and voices: a lush nature the child has never known. But it is precisely here that the song's most heartbreaking moment unfolds. Unable to tell the story apart from a fairy tale, the child listens with a sad look and concludes: "Mi piaccion le fiabe, raccontane altre!". In that line Guccini captures the entire distance between two generations: one that holds onto the memory of what once was, the other, born after the catastrophe, unable even to conceive of a different world. Besides being a powerful reflection on the risks of nuclear war and environmental destruction – themes Guccini had already tackled in "Noi non ci saremo" and "L'atomica cinese" – "Il vecchio e il bambino" is a universal meditation on memory, on human responsibility and on the value of passing down the past to new generations. One of his most moving and prophetic songs.

Canzone della bambina portoghese

From 1972's "Radici," an unusual Guccini, far more philosophical and, in some ways, more psychedelic than usual. The metaphor of a little girl who falls asleep in the sun on a beach and begins to dream is the pretext for a meditation on the meaning of life, on being minuscule in the face of the immensity of time and space (“Sentì che era un punto al limite di un continente/ Sentì che era un niente, l’Atlantico immenso di fronte/ E in questo sentiva qualcosa di grande/ Che non riusciva a capire, che non poteva intuire”), an existentialism sketched with extraordinary power (“capirai che una sera o una stagione/ Son come lampi, luci accese e dopo spente/ E capirai che la vera ambiguità/ È la vita che viviamo, il qualcosa che chiamiamo esser uomini”), singer-songwriter craft itself blending with psychedelic rock. Powerful, unique, wonderful.

Canzone delle osterie di fuori porta

Celebration, decadence, the melancholy that the relentless passing of time brings with it. Here (the album is 1974's "Stanze di vita quotidiana") Guccini tells of another Bologna, his own, as if in a collective, popular autobiography: a world – that of the osterie di fuori porta that once populated the Emilian capital – of which he proudly feels a part, but which has now irrevocably vanished. A world populated by creatures of the night, unrepentant party animals, professional drunks. "Non ho utopie da realizzare/ Stare a letto il giorno dopo è forse l'unica mia meta" is the line that celebrates this epicurean anti-heroism, born and dying within the space of a few hours, only to repeat itself every day ("Ho dalla gloria quel che posso, cioè qualcosa che andrà presto, quasi come i soldi in tasca"). The guitar tiptoes along the trajectory of this world falling apart and dying before the eyes of a Guccini who has never sounded so melancholy and sorrowful: "Qualcuno è andato per formarsi, chi per seguire la ragione/ Chi perché stanco di giocare, bere il vino, sputtanarsi ed è una morte un po' peggiore".

L'avvelenata

"Via Paolo Fabbri 43" (1976) stands as one of the high points of Francesco Guccini's output and, for many, the album that best embodies his artistic vision. It's also one of his most famous and recognisable records, helped by an unusual title that would go on to become a trademark of sorts. On it, Guccini emerges at the height of his artistic maturity: sharp, inspired and deeply committed. Perhaps everything has already been said about "L'avvelenata": about the grievances of an artist eager to assert his own creative freedom and a lifestyle very different from the one society had, in some sense, imposed on him ("mi piace far canzoni e bere vino, mi piace far casino, e poi sono nato fesso"). The story dates back to 1975, when Riccardo Bertoncelli, then a young critic for the monthly Gong, panned Guccini's "Stanze di vita quotidiana," judging it too withdrawn into a personal dimension at a time that demanded explicit political engagement from singer-songwriters. Guccini hit back without mincing words in a line that has since become famous: “Tanto ci sarà sempre, lo sapete/ Un musico fallito, un pio, un teorete/ Un Bertoncelli, un prete a sparare cazzate”. But "L'avvelenata" is also a bridge to his critique of "fellow singer-songwriters," another recurring theme on the album.

Canzone di notte n.2

Another elegy of the nocturnal world, this time from "Via Paolo Fabbri 43." The osterie, the companions in mischief, the wine: Guccini's universe returns, as he proudly declaims late into the night: “Ma i moralisti han chiuso i bar/ e le morali han chiuso i vostri cuori/ e spento i vostri ardori: è bello ritornar “normalità”/ è facile tornare con le tante stanche pecore bianche!/ Scusate, non mi lego a questa schiera: morrò pecora nera!". The night is a physical space, a safe harbour, a way of life, just another way of surviving and warding off fears: “E un’ altra volta è notte e suono/ non so nemmeno io per che motivo, forse perché son vivo/ o forse per sentirmi meno solo/ o forse perché a notte vivon strani fantasmi e sogni vani/ che danno quell’ipocondria ben nota,
poi… la bottiglia è vuota”.

Eskimo

Featured on "Amerigo" (1978). One of Guccini's most generationally resonant songs, perhaps precisely thanks to that iconic title. Backed by guitar chords and steeped in a lyricism rarely so heartfelt, the songwriter blends a narrative that shifts between first person singular and plural, private life and the snapshot of an era. Like slides in a projector, on a bored September Sunday there pass by Christmases at Santa Lucia, the uprisings of '68, dreams of becoming Bob Dylan, the discovery of synthetic drugs arriving from London, a longing in one's twenties that turns into the biography of both the individual and an entire generation: “Diciamolo per dire, ma davvero si ride per non piangere perché/ se penso a quella che eri, a quel che ero, che compassione che ho per me e per te/ Eppure a volte non mi spiacerebbe essere quelli di quei tempi là, sarà per aver quindici anni in meno o avere tutto per possibilità…”.

Bologna

Guccini's 1980s open with a new album, "Metropolis" (1981). An LP in which, against the backdrop of metropolitan realities (Byzantium, Venice, Bologna, Milan), stories of life move and intertwine, where a nostalgic gaze toward the past crosses paths with one turned toward an uncertain future, toward a changing world. Particularly meaningful are the words the author devotes to "his" Bologna, the city of his home on Via Paolo Fabbri 43, of the Osteria delle Dame, of encounters and brotherly friendships, but also of the contradictions typical of urban life: "Bologna" — according to Guccini — "is an old lady with slightly soft hips, her breasts resting on the Po plain and her backside on the hills," but she is also "arrogant and papal, Bologna the red and the foetal, Bologna the fat and the human, already a little Romagna and smelling of Tuscany." Bittersweet and lucidly ironic, it's one of the most memorable portraits ever given to an Italian city, comparable in some ways to Lucio Dalla's "Milano".

Piccola città

From the album "Radici", released in 1972, a song of love/hate for the "damn place" where Guccini grew up — Modena, specifically, but it could be any other town in Italy's boundless provinces, that magical, in some ways even mystical place that for Guccini stretched from the Via Emilia ("the outermost edge of the city") all the way to the West. A boundless space, especially within the wanderings of memory, stretching from childhood games with other kids in the postwar years to first romantic adventures. And so it's a place from which one must, necessarily, flee ("if I think back to a day, a moment, I find only melancholy / it's all one dark nightmare, a period of darkness thrown away"), only to return, at least in imagination, through music and gratitude ("old courtyards, dreams and springtime things, first youthful vows"). Because you need a hometown, but also a small town to set off from into the adventure of life, and to return to and see yourself reflected in: “Piango e non rimpiango, la tua polvere, il tuo fango, le tue vite/ Le tue pietre, l’oro e il marmo, le catapecchie/ Così diversa sei adesso, io son sempre lo stesso, sempre diverso/ Cerco le notti ed il fiasco, se muoio rinasco, finché non finirà”.

Farewell

Another story, this time tender and melancholy, of an old love long since ended, drawing inspiration from the novels of Ernest Hemingway (from "Quello che non...", 1990). The rising arc of how the relationship was born and developed amid mutual fears of losing each other, moments of care and everyday life lived side by side, and then the first problems that arise and become clear ("And truly we are no longer those heroes ready to face every challenge together / we're like two leaves clinging to a branch, waiting"), up to the inevitable break and the sorrow that follows ("maybe once it could have moved you, but now it's useless, I think, because / every time you cry or laugh, you don't cry or laugh with me"). Among Guccini's vast body of work, one of the most heartrending songs, and one of the most beloved by fans — sincere and universal.

Quattro stracci

From "D'amore di morte e di altre sciocchezze" (1996), a memorable, deeply personal invective that becomes universal — the end of a relationship set to music, with the trailing wreckage of those "few rags" that Francesco Guccini turns into anger and scorn. The lyrics are a goldmine of aphorisms later borrowed by generations of fans (and disappointed lovers). From "Cigarette or pen in my right hand / frivolous symbols you never loved," the triumph of intellectual work over manual labor at “Io, se Dio vuole, non son tuo padre/ Non ho nemmeno le palle quadre/ Tu hai la fantasia delle idee contorte/ Vai con la mente e le gambe corte”, but above all that line that fits like a glove: “Ma io sono fiero del mio sognare/ Di questo eterno mio incespicare/ E rido in faccia a quello che cerchi e che mai avrai”.

Cirano

Released in 1996 on Francesco Guccini's seventeenth album, "D'amore, di morte e di altre sciocchezze", "Cirano" is one of the most incisive compositions of the later phase of his career. Inspired by the famous character created by Edmond Rostand, the song turns Cyrano de Bergerac into an alter ego of the singer-songwriter, who through his voice launches a fierce invective against politics, conformism, power, hypocrisy and the contradictions of contemporary society: “Venite pure avanti, voi con il naso corto/ Signori imbellettati, io più non vi sopporto/ Infilerò la penna ben dentro al vostro orgoglio/ Perché con questa spada vi uccido quando voglio”. The lyrics, written by Guccini with the collaboration of Beppe Dati and set to an arrangement by Giancarlo Bigazzi, alternate passages of extraordinary harshness with an ending of great emotional intensity. Having poured out all his indignation at the world around him, the protagonist abandons his polemical tone to address Rossana, a symbol of love, purity and hope: "Io sono solo un'ombra e tu, Rossana, il sole; ma tu, lo so, non ridi, dolcissima signora... Se mi ami come sono, per sempre tuo Cirano". Edmond Rostand's hero turned into a contemporary avenger. One of the most brilliant songs of "late" Guccini, still as combative and impassioned as ever.

Odysseus

Another hero, another monologue delivered in the first person. This time, however, there's no transposition into a contemporary setting: Guccini's Ulysses (from the 2004 album "Ritratti") is a product of Greek myth, of classical studies, of a passion for literature that never faded. The narrative is driven by epic itself, which catapults the listener straight into the story: “E ad ogni viaggio reinventarsi un mito/ A ogni incontro ridisegnare il mondo/ E perdersi nel gusto del proibito/ Sempre più in fondo”. The theme of the journey, or rather of the need to discover, of never being sated with knowledge, thus becomes the final thought of Odysseus-Guccini: “La vita del mare segna false rotte/ Ingannevole in mare ogni tracciato/ Solo leggende perse nella notte/ Perenne di chi un giorno mi ha cantato/ Donandomi però un’eterna vita/ Racchiusa in versi, in ritmi, in una rima/ Dandomi ancora la gioia infinita/ Di entrare in porti sconosciuti prima”.

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