Paolo Conte

(1982, from “Appunti di Viaggio”, RCA)

Some songs capture an era; others tell of a place and crystallize it outside of time, handing it over to legend. “Diavolo Rosso”, a song written by Paolo Conte and released on the album “Appunti di Viaggio” (1982), actually celebrates two legends at once, each one feeding into the other, intertwined in the threads of a story made of strong men and arcane landscapes, of invisible everyday life and epics distant in memory.

Paolo Conte's songbook, as we know, is like an inexhaustible globe: the more you spin it, the more faces, stories, sounds, real and imagined places, and destinies you find, coming and going through the sliding doors of life. And quite often, in his eternal wandering between colour-tinted memories and reveries d'antan, the lawyer from Asti comes back home.

Popular legend has it that Giovanni Gerbi was given the nickname Diavolo Rosso by none other than a parish priest: the cyclist sped right through the middle of a religious procession, and the priest, thoroughly annoyed, hurled the worst insult he could think of at him. As for the colour, that was added on by the bystanders: he was wearing red, and red it would remain forever.

The image of the sporting hero suddenly bursting in on the slow rhythms and archaic legacy of provincial monotony is the very foundation the song rests on. The idea of speed cutting the land in two and giving it new perspectives is the emblematic metaphor for a world about to shift gears. The theme returns in the thrill of the Topolino Amaranto, whose roar breaks the stillness of “a landscape going nowhere”, scarred by war, and echoes the other great hero on a bicycle saddle, Bartali, whose arrival kicks up a cloud of dust and fluttering newspapers, leaving behind a faint bucolic melancholy: “There's a bit of wind, the countryside is barking, there's a moon at the bottom of the blue.”

From the very start, then, the figure of Giovanni Gerbi, Diavolo Rosso, is wrapped in the myth of an unbeatable, unconventional hero: popular rumour, once again, tells of other feats. It's said that during races he would build up such a lead that he could afford to stop for a drink at a bar before getting back on his bike. Some claimed he didn't hesitate to hop on a train to arrive first at the finish line. What is certain is that, not being a skilled sprinter, his tactic was to break away solo, in an attempt — almost always successful — to stay out in front alone until the finish, sometimes with such incredible margins that they seemed downright suspicious. French riders even went so far as to boycott races in protest against the alleged tricks pulled by Diavolo Rosso: the affair made the papers, with a long string of controversies, accusations and defences to follow. In 1904 he was disqualified from the Tour de France. Setbacks and rumours aside, Gerbi started bringing home trophies at the age of fifteen, in 1900, and only stopped in 1941, at 56. In between, a string of records set on the road and a third place at the Giro d'Italy in 1911.

In “Diavolo Rosso” the hero is there but unseen, because it is he himself who drives the whole song forward, dragging guitar, piano and snare drum into the frantic, epic motion of existence. It's as if we were in the saddle of his bike, tearing through the horizon as “time slips away against the light the whole while”: life pedals faster than any champion, flowing invisibly through one's fingers, and only when it stops — called out loud by fellow villagers inviting him to “have an orangeade” at the bar — do we discover just how long the breakaway actually lasted.

The chorus frames what is probably the most powerful and visionary lyric the lawyer ever wrote: the narrative unfolds in a sequence of images that flow one after another like slides, or like paintings in the boldest of colours. From the handlebars of one legend unspools another: that of the North-West, of the landscapes of Monferrato and the Langhe, of his native places. The land is a living, arcane, magnetic entity: it is from the land that, as if by perpetual magic, there spring forth “those blonde little girls with those small earrings, all of them brides who will give birth to men as big as trees, who, when you try to convince them of something, you'll see are truly made of wood.” Diavolo Rosso too is a man as big as a tree, but he is granted an entirely new possibility: that of watching the perpetuation of generations and seasons from another vantage point, of stepping outside his native landscapes to see the world, and of returning to his origins strengthened by other experiences: “look at the tallest nights of this North-West decked out in stars, and the cart tracks frozen like the stares of the French” in a “waltz of wind and straw.”

The journey is not only physical but also, and above all, transcendental: the contrast between the apparent stillness of the countryside — locked in the unchanging cycle of seasons and years — and the swift motion of the cyclist allows entry into a new dimension, one in which even the imperceptible is, if not tangible, at least visible to the eye: peasant death creeps in and disguises itself, “climbing back up the rice fields, croaking like the frogs, and arriving punctually on threshing floors as white as piecework reaping machines.” Against the methodical order of the inevitable, the following verse sets the chaotic labyrinth of life: memories surface like “voices from the sun and other voices, from this countryside other abysses of light, and of earth and of soul nothing”, in a blinding vision where horse and quinine overlap, hotel voices and whispers, lowland lovers, coach queens and milestones bearing as dowry “their ancient discretion” that “is water and honey.” Land and men thus seem to blend inseparably into the epic of a world now erased by the arrival of a modernity never named but always looming: a world marked out by seasons and rituals lost in the mists of time.

The image of fireflies circling “in the circles of the night” and of a darkness that “smells of hay and of faraway things” carries an almost Leopardian power, while “the song perhaps tastes of ratafià” breaks the spell, placing the song in a precise location (Piedmont, the region where this particular liqueur is produced) and in a more convivial, human atmosphere: a necessary return to earthly conditions.

In its original version, the one included on “Appunti di Viaggio”, “Diavolo Rosso” is a brisk foxtrot driven by upright bass and bass drum: so its musical dress, too, carries a folk breath. The song keeps the same structure but gains further depth and epic feeling in its live versions, which immediately became one of the focal, most intense moments of Paolo Conte's concerts, as well as one of the most eagerly awaited by audiences. These performances, embellished by horns, sometimes stretch past the ten-minute mark and possess the innate gift of never sounding the same twice: there's always an instrument, a riff, a touch of piano, a solo that lends a unique flavor to each rendition, perpetuating an epic tale as dazzling as a flash of lightning while, backlit, time just slips away.

Quelle bambine bionde

con quegli anellini alle orecchie

tutte spose che partoriranno

uomini grossi come alberi

che quando cercherai di convincerli

so you see, I really am made of wood

Diavolo Rosso dimentica la strada

vieni qui con noi a berti un'aranciata

controluce tutto il tempo se ne va

Guarda le notti più alte

of this North-West decked out in stars

e le piste dei carri gelate

come gli sguardi dei francesi

un valzer di vento e di paglia

peasant death

that climbs back up the rice paddies

and mimics the croaking of frogs

and punctual

arrives on the white threshing floors

like the piece-rate reapers

Voices from the sun and other voices

from this countryside other abysses of light

and of earth and of soul nothing

more than the horse and the quinine

and voices and whispers of the hotel

lovers of the plain

queens of buses and milestones

their, their ancient discretion

is water and honey

Diavolo Rosso dimentica la strada

vieni qui con noi a berti un'aranciata

controluce tutto il tempo se ne va

Girano le lucciole

nei cerchi della notte

questo buio sa di fieno e di lontano

e la canzone forse sa di Ratafià