Francesco Guccini - Portrait of a Storyteller

It's no easy task to describe, reconstruct and recount in brief the poetry, words and music of Francesco Guccini. It's no easy task because doing so means grappling with nearly forty years of our history. It's no easy task because, faced with figures so influential, it's hard to exclude, cut or omit episodes, encounters, events. It's no easy task because Guccini is a true cantautore, and like all true cantautori, he has had – and still has – a great deal to say. Perhaps, then, the best way to tell Guccini's story is through his own words, following the invisible thread of his narrative through the small stories that make up his albums, embracing his soul as a modern-day storyteller, a refined crafter of verse, a political songwriter

Let's start from Italy, which in the second half of the Fifties was not America. It was Italy, precisely. It was the early days of television, it was the flower festival, it was Nilla Pizzi. But maybe it was also the Italy of someone with an ear cocked towards distant lands, towards other stories, towards other music. Someone who decided to play, perhaps the guitar, perhaps the harmonica. Someone who found someone else to share their passions with, giving rise to musical experiences, maybe in parish halls, in dance clubs, under names in perfect Anglo-Saxon style like Hurricanes or Snakers.

In 1962 Guccini left for military service, spending entire days up in the Apennine mountains, playing in a band called I Gatti (who would soon become Equipe 84). He was already writing songs, all the while still listening to old and new stories, old and new music. The echoes of folk and anarchist songs, but also the protest songs coming from across the ocean, sung by a kid from Minnesota with a crooked, unmistakable voice. A certain Bob Dylan.

These are the years of "Auschwitz" and the memory of the extermination camps, of "Noi non ci saremo", of "Dio è morto" (censored by RAI at the time but broadcast by Radio Vaticana), and of uncertainties and hopes about the future. Songs written for others (Equipe 84, Nomadi), yet representing the first testimonies of Guccini's art, poetry and sensibility.

"Risorgerà il mondo nuovo"

Social and political engagement, along with deep reflections on the meaning of life, characterize Guccini's output as a whole, but they emerge with particular force and youthful fervour in his earliest albums. In 1967 his debut LP, Folk Beat n.1, was released and sold very little. The album presents an artist still in search of full artistic and expressive maturity, yet it contains some of the best and most famous songs he ever wrote, as well as being indicative of his way of composing through evocative metaphors and textual analogies that move over a bare, simple musical terrain, relegated to a mere accompanying role ("I'm convinced that with songs you can't really make music, and you can't really make poetry either," the author himself has said). Here we find the songs "lent" to Equipe 84 and Nomadi, as well as "In Morte di S.F.", better known as "Canzone per un'amica", written, precisely, for a dear friend who died in a car accident, right up to what is considered his very first song, "Il sociale e l'antisociale", a heartfelt manifesto of his hatred for "modern life made of scandals and promissory notes, noise, intellectual office workers". The result is a passionate collection of ballads and stories that highlights his strong personality and his heartfelt quest for social justice.

A couple of years after his first LP, in November 1969 Guccini recorded his second: Due anni dopo. He picks up where he left off, but compared to the previous record we find a more pronounced intimate and existential streak, expressed through lyrics with a markedly poetic and narrative bent. An intimate, dreamlike universe made up of encounters ("Lui e lei"), slices of everyday life ("Giorno d'estate") and romantic vicissitudes ("Vedi cara, certe crisi son soltanto segno di qualcosa dentro che sta urlando per uscire. You see, dear, some days are a year, some sentences are nothing that's no longer worth hearing").

A few months after recording the LP, America came crashing into Guccini's life, or perhaps Guccini came crashing into America's life. In 1970, in fact, he left for the United States, drawn by romantic matters (he was involved with a certain Eloise), but also by that star-spangled myth read about in books, dreamed of at the cinema and now finally within reach.
The greatest expectations, however, often lead to the bitterest disappointments, and sometimes a dream is best left as just that. So the American experience petered out amid cultural and romantic misunderstandings, to the point that Guccini himself would declare that "America was better imagined than seen". At the same time, though, this existential jolt gave him the chance to express himself, and in 1970 he also published his third effort, L'isola non trovata, an album illuminated by numerous literary references and particularly important within Guccini's body of work, since it marks the beginning of his collaboration with some of the musicians who would accompany him throughout much of his career (Vince Tempera, Ares Tavolazzi and Ellade Bandini). Guccini's guitar, his accent and his rolled "r" accompany, with the usual intimacy, the musical episodes of this record where, as mentioned, the music is often not just music and the word is sound. It's an album with elaborate arrangements and evocative atmospheres ("Asia", "L'isola non trovata"), rhythmic passages ("Il frate", "Un altro giorno è andato"), and nostalgic moments ("Il tema", "L'uomo"). Among the tracks, nostalgia, memory and reflection stand out in "Un altro giorno è andato": "And another day has gone, its music has ended, how much time has passed by now and will pass! The orchestras of engines accompany its sighs, today, where yesterday went, will go too".

"The house is like a point of memory"

It's 1972 when Radici is released. An album that is timely, timeless, universal in its content. A well-played album, with a sizeable cast of musicians (Vince Tempera, Ares Tavolazzi, Debbie Kooperman, Ellade Bandini, Antonio Marangolo) and musically inspired, with its folk shadings, its keyboard flourishes and the overall good quality and structure of its arrangements. An album of confirmation. Confirmation of Guccini as a great cantautore. Confirmation of his ability to capture reality as it is. Confirmation of his skill at pinpointing the needs of a restless generation. Confirmation of his remarkable expressive powers, of his knack for painting emotions in bold colours.
Radici is an album in which the key elements are a profound sense of identity, individual and collective memory, the legacy of our national culture, as well as a greater sonic and compositional refinement (the arrangements are by Pier Farri), appreciable at least in intent.
It's hard, if not impossible, to talk about this LP without mentioning "La locomotiva". A song that, even today, is perhaps the most beloved in his entire output, the most requested, the one that's never missing from his concerts, a veritable generational anthem of protest. And to think it was written in half an hour, that it's musically bare-bones, that it doesn't speak of the present, doesn't incite the crowd, doesn't talk about revolutions or popular uprisings, but instead tells, with tremendous evocative power, the story of a 19th-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!").

But Radici isn't just that. It also contains some of Guccini's most inspired creations, songs that tell of memory and childhood, like "Piccola Città", a melancholy ballad that transports us into a postwar Emilia made of mist, smoke, crumbling houses and old courtyards. There's the family portrait, and the tender everyday life and melodic delicacy of "Incontro", where Guccini's lyricism strikes right at the heart ("Restano i sogni senza tempo, le impressioni di un momento, le luci nel buio, di case intraviste da un treno. We're something that doesn't last, empty phrases in the head, and a heart full of symbols"). A lyricism that can occasionally disorient, though, as with "Canzone dei dodici mesi". A stylistic exercise criticized for being overly mannered, paying its dues (perhaps inevitably) to the times, with its lofty overabundance of tributes and literary references (from Cecco Angiolieri to T.S. Eliot to Chaucer), and which musically reveals the author's desire to break away from established sonic templates, venturing into jazz and classical territory through the use of specific instruments that give each of the twelve months its own distinct arrangement.
The album closes with the generational confrontation (a recurring theme in Guccini's lyrics) of "Il Vecchio e il bambino", in which the author once again and quite decisively expresses his bond with his roots, with the past, and his gradual detachment from a modernity he struggles - and will keep struggling - to accept even in later chapters of his output ("I due camminavano, il giorno cadeva, il vecchio parlava e piano piangeva. With an absent soul, with wet eyes, he followed the memory of past myths").

In 1973, tavern jokes, jester-like musical interludes and comic sketches make up the album Opera Buffa, recorded between the Folk Studio in Rome and the Osteria della Dame in Bologna. A record that, with its conversations with God, maternal odes, musings on sex and a few glasses of wine, seems conjured up from thin air. Little loved and little appreciated, including and especially by its own author, it at least has the merit of revealing Guccini's playful streak, already well known to regulars at his concerts, as well as his free and easygoing image. A lighthearted work, yet one that can't quite hide how remarkably topical and persuasive it already was at the time, winning over young people caught between the search for values, a deep sense of unease, and oppressive political and social constraints. Nor does it abandon his politically engaged, "left-wing" image, a product not only of his political and social commitment but also of his ability to break established rules and rituals, getting physically and humanly close to his listeners and often, for instance, offering himself up to perform in makeshift settings and at "political" (i.e. affordable) prices.

Equally subdued is the following LP, Stanze di vita quotidiana. An album of "simple songs", in which his scant attention to musical variation is, if anything, pushed to extremes amid Guccini's torrent of words. It's a record poorly received by critics (the invective penned by critic Riccardo Bertoncelli in the magazine "Gong" is by now infamous), in which Guccini looks within and behind himself with a nostalgic, at times detached air. A Guccini who narrates himself, his world and times gone by, achieving his fullest expression on the opening track, “Canzone delle osterie di fuori porta”. The song, and the album, open like this: "The osterie di fuori porta are still open just like back then, but the people who used to go drink there, inside or out, are all dead. Some left because of age, some because, already a graduate, they chase after maturity: they got married, built a career, and that's a death that's a bit worse". There are juicy anecdotes too, for this album, about the artistic partnership with producer Pier Farri (Guccini recalls: “At the time, Pier was obsessed with exoticism, with marimbas. Ares Tavolazzi, the bassist, walked out when Pier asked him to play 'a yellow sound'… what the hell was that supposed to mean?”).

We're in a historical and musical period in which the singer-songwriter reigns supreme in the tastes of both audiences and critics. A period in which record labels, through their artists' civic and political commitment, sought to meet the needs of a generation in ferment, deeply sensitized to politics by the upheavals of the late Sixties and early Seventies, by student protests, by workers' struggles. It's hardly surprising, then, that there was such interest in Francesco Guccini's words and in his "political" commitment to recounting life and everyday experience.

Fertile ground, then, for an artist whose following, whose reach, and whose evocative power in concert and on record kept growing exponentially. On Via Paolo Fabbri 43, from 1976 (the title comes from "our man's" home address at the time), he rediscovers the grit (or even the anger) of a few years earlier, the urge to describe and tell the nuances of life, and he does so through a vividly varied palette, more in terms of the themes tackled than the musical choices. Bold, vivid colors mark tracks like "L'avvelenata", with its outbursts ("Se son d'umore nero allora scrivo frugando dentro alle nostre miserie; di solito ho da far cose più serie: costruir su macerie o mantenermi vivo") and its blunt personal confessions ("Io tutti, io niente, io stronzo, io ubriacone, io poeta, io buffone, io anarchico, io fascista, io ricco, io senza soldi, io radicale, io diverso e io uguale, negro, ebreo, comunista! I'm a faggot, I'm someone who, by singing, knows how to get by, I'm fake, I'm real, I'm a genius, I'm an idiot, I'm here alone at four in the morning, the anguish and a bit of wine, the urge to curse").
Today we can consider it (alongside "La Locomotiva") Guccini's most famous song. Both for its enduring hold on audiences, and for the legends and stories that inevitably spring from such a torrent of unfiltered confession. One episode above all deserves mention, the one involving Riccardo Bertoncelli. The critic, offended at being mentioned in less than "respectful" terms ("un Bertoncelli o un prete a sparare cazzate"), met with the singer-songwriter (different times indeed!) to hash things out. The story (as told by both men involved) has it that the whole affair ended with two glasses of wine, a guitar, the decision to leave the song's lyrics exactly as they were, and above all the start of a friendship that has now lasted thirty years.
Guccini also takes a few small, ironic jabs (in the title track) at three female characters created by fellow songwriters De Gregori, Venditti and De André: "The unhappy little girl (Lilly) met Alice at a summit for folk singing. Marinella non c'era, fa la vita in balera, e ha altro per la testa a cui pensare").
But the house at Via Paolo Fabbri also makes room for the sad, delicate notes of "Piccola storia ignobile", which tries to tell of the experience of abortion and the pressures of public opinion ("Ma che piccola storia ignobile mi tocca raccontare, così solita e banale come tante, che non merita nemmeno due colonne su un giornale, o una musica, o parole un po' rimate, che non merita nemmeno l'attenzione della gente: quante cose più importanti hanno da fare"), or for the moving, unsentimental everyday life of "Il pensionato" ("Lo sento da oltre il muro che ogni suono fa passare, l'odore quasi povero di roba da mangiare. I see it in the light that I too remember well, of the dim lightbulb, the thirty-candle one, among furniture that never saw any other splendor, old newspapers and corners of dust and smells, among the worn and strange sounds of its daily rituals: eating, clearing up, then washing dishes and hands").

Guccini encounters America once more in 1978. Not in person, but through an album (Amerigo) in which he comes to terms with his dreams and his past. The LP, and its opening track ("Amerigo"), are dedicated to Enrico Guccini, an emigrant uncle. The song is a splendid portrait of the imagined new world, seen both through the innocent, dreaming eyes of a child ("L'America era Atlantide, l'America era il cuore, era il destino; l'America era Life, sorrisi e denti bianchi su patinata; l'America era il mondo sognante e misterioso di Paperino; l'America era allora per me provincia dolce, mondo di pace") and through the weary, worn-out eyes of the migrant ("fu lavoro e sangue, e fu fatica uguale mattino e sera, per anni da prigione, di birra e di puttane, di giorni duri, di negri e irlandesi, polacchi e italiani, nella miniera sudore d'antracite, in Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Tex, Missouri").
Memories of his American period return in the nostalgic and ironic "Eskimo" (for younger readers, the parka that was the signature garment of left-wing youth in the Seventies), in which the reckoning with time is both melancholy and ruthless ("Bisogna saper scegliere in tempo, non arrivarci per contrarietà: tu giri adesso con le tette al vento, io ci giravo già vent'anni fa"). Both the impact of the other tracks ("Le cinque Anatre") and the musical inspiration and emotional intensity of the closing "Il Mondo Nuovo" are more modest.

It's worth mentioning the splendid Francesco Guccini & i Nomadi - Album Concerto, released in 1979. A live album recorded at the Kiwi in Modena and the Club 77 in Pavana, very intense and full of memories, in which Guccini, i Nomadi and the audience look back and retrace the road traveled together through a number of particularly significant songs: from "Canzone per un'amica" to "Noi non ci saremo", all the way to "Dio è morto". Also worth noting is the style of Guccini's performances, flask of wine on stage, charming and entertaining the crowd with the flair of a seasoned showman. In these years, while still firmly anchored to the "folk ballad" format, Guccini doesn't shy away from excursions into other musical territory, from jazz to tango.

"Il silenzio era scalfito solo dalle mie chimere"

Guccini's Eighties open with a new album, three years after the previous one, and not a particularly brilliant one: Metropolis (1981). An LP in which, against the backdrop of urban realities (Byzantium, Venice, Bologna, Milan), stories of life unfold and intertwine, where a nostalgic gaze toward the past crosses paths with one looking toward an uncertain future, toward a changing world ("vedo in me e nei segni che qualcosa sta cambiando, ma è un debole presagio che non dice come e quando"). Particularly noteworthy are the words the author devotes to "his" Bologna: "Bologna is an old lady with somewhat sagging hips, her breast on the Po plain and her backside on the hills. Arrogant and papal Bologna, red and fetal Bologna, fat and human Bologna, already a bit Romagna and smelling of Tuscany".

The next album (Guccini, from 1983) presents us with six songs "on the move". It's an account of journeys and invented stories, in which the settings serve as backdrops the author uses for everyday gestures and emotions, through a feat of imagination that leads us by the hand across the bridge separating reality and fiction. The encounter in "Autogrill", between a motorist and a girl, is likewise invented. A few minutes of emotion, hope, affection, metaphor, sudden revelation, love ("Bella, d'una sua bellezza acerba, bionda senza averne l'aria quasi triste, come i fiori o l'erba di scarpata ferroviaria; il silenzio era scalfito solo dalle mie chimere che tracciavo con un dito dentro ai cerchi del bicchiere"), in which, in the end, so many questions still go unanswered.

About a year after the self-titled album, 1984 saw the release of Fra la via Emilia e il West (a line taken from "Piccola Città"), which gathers across two LPs a series of live performances in Milan, Modena, Turin and, above all, Bologna, on the occasion of the great concert in Piazza Maggiore, in which, alongside Guccini, other major names took part, including Nomadi, Giorgio Gaber, and Paolo Conte. The setlist reads like a "greatest hits": "Canzone per un'amica", "Autogrill", "Canzone delle osterie di fuori porta", "Piccola città", "Eskimo", "Incontro", "Vedi Cara", "La locomotiva" are just a few of them.

Signora Bovary is the 1987 record. A contradictory album, one that fans would praise and dismiss with equal intensity. What's certain is the solid musical architecture of its tracks, as well as the presence of some songs with genuinely refined compositional choices. Particularly significant, given their ties to the author's family experiences, are songs like "Van Loon", dedicated to his father ("Quanti anni, giorno per giorno, dobbiamo vivere con uno per capire cosa gli nasca in testa o cosa voglia o chi è, turisti del vuoto, esploratori di nessuno che non sia io o me"), or "Culodritto", dedicated to his daughter Teresa ("vola, vola tu, dove io vorrei volare, verso un mondo dove è ancora tutto da fare e dove è ancora tutto, o quasi tutto, da sbagliare"). Also notable for its poetic intensity is the Piazzolla-style tango "Scirocco": "Soffiasse davvero quel vento di scirocco e arrivasse ogni giorno per spingerci a guardare, dietro la faccia abusata delle cose, nei labirinti oscuri delle case, dietro lo specchio segreto di ogni viso, dentro di noi…".

Closing out the Eighties, 1989 saw the release of another live album, …Quasi come Dumas…, which revisits, in rearranged form, some of his classic songs as well as tracks from Signora Bovary (it also features a previously unreleased track, "Ti ricordi quei giorni", dating back to 1964). That same year Guccini also published his first literary effort with Feltrinelli, "Cròniche epafàniche".

"Custodire i ricordi, carezzare le età"

The Nineties open for Guccini under the sign of memory, nostalgia and remembrance, with the negations and uncertainties of Quello che non, in which he gives voice to a sense of unease over both personal and collective disappointments and misunderstandings, sentimental and political alike ("Lo senti il perché di cortili bagnati, di auto a morire nei prati, la pallida linea di vecchie ferite, di lettere ormai non spedite? Can you see the noise of extinguished fables? Do you know that we're nothing anymore? Non siamo un aereo né un piano stonato, stagione, cortile o un prato"). But this is also a musically significant album - perhaps more so than any other in his catalog - with strong jazz influences, featuring a collaboration with Lucio Dalla, who wrote the music for the track "AEmilia".
Guccini also won the Club Tenco's "song of the year" award for "Canzone delle domande consuete" ("E siamo qui, spogli, in questa stagione che unisce tutto ciò che sta fermo, tutto ciò che si muove; non so dire se nasce un periodo o finisce, se dal cielo ora piove o non piove, pronto a dire 'buongiorno', a rispondere 'bene' a sorridere a 'salve', dire anch'io 'come va?' Non c'è vento stasera. Siamo o non siamo assieme?").

In 1993 an Italian entomologist discovered a new butterfly and, out of gratitude, decided to name it after Guccini: "Parnassius Mnemosyne Guccinii" – from there it was a short step to the title of his new album (Parnassius Guccini).
The author dedicates a song to Silvia Baraldini ("Canzone per Silvia"), convicted and imprisoned for political offences in the United States, through whom he revisits some of the themes that have characterised his output, such as the fight against injustice, obtuseness and ignorance ("L'America è una statua che ti accoglie e simboleggia, bianca e pura, la libertà, e dall'alto fiera abbraccia tutta quanta la Nazione, per Silvia questa statua simboleggia solamente la prigione perché di questa piccola italiana ora l'America ha paura. Paura del diverso e del contrario, di chi lotta per cambiare, paura delle idee di gente libera, che soffre, sbaglia e spera").
In "Samantha", another story that is purely invented yet terribly real, a teenage love affair whose future is already written, set in a bitter, melancholy Milanese suburb. This is an inspired, evocative Guccini, who coins for himself the title of "puppeteer of words" ("E io, burattinaio di parole, perché mi perdo dietro a un primo sole, perché mi prende questa assurda nostalgia?").
"Farewell", undoubtedly to be counted among his very best songs, is the melancholy, honest and sincere recollection of a love story steeped in simplicity and everyday life ("Giorni lunghi tra ieri e domani, giorni strani, giorni a chiedersi tutto cos'era, vedersi ogni sera; ogni sera passare su a prenderti con quel mio buffo montone orientale, ogni sera là, a passo di danza, salire le scale e sentire i tuoi passi che arrivano, il ticchettare del tuo buonumore, quando aprivi la porta il sorriso ogni volta mi entrava nel cuore.").

Still in 1993 came “Vacca d’un cane”, his second novel, again published by Feltrinelli (a third would follow in 1997 for Mondadori, “Macaronì”, a crime novel co-written with Loriano Macchiavelli), and in 1996 Guccini released D’amore di morte e di altre sciocchezze. The record confirms our man's passion for South American sounds and rhythms, such as the “Cueca” (Chile's national dance) featured in “Canzone delle colombe e del fiore”, as well as for folk and rural music — no coincidence, then, the collaboration with the Coro Stelutis (“Il Caduto”). He also delivers classic Guccini-style ballads such as “Lettera”, dedicated to two childhood friends who had passed away, Bonvi and Victor Sogliani, along with a couple of much-loved pieces like “Cyrano” and “Quattro Stracci”. The former (perhaps the album's finest moment) is musically inspired (Bigazzi?!) and emotionally intense (“io sono solo un’ombra e tu, Rossana, il sole; ma tu, lo so, non ridi, dolcissima signora e io non mi nascondo sotto la tua dimora, perché ormai lo sento, non ho sofferto invano, se mi ami come sono, per sempre tuo Cirano”); the latter, in perfect folk-rock style, is a splendid autobiographical excursion back to his Sixties style (“nata di marzo, nata balzana, casta che sogna d’esser puttana, quando sei dentro vuoi esser fuori cercando sempre i passati amori e hai annullato tutti fuori che te, ma io qui ti inchiodo a quei tuoi pensieri, quei quattro stracci in cui hai buttato l’ieri, persa a cercar per sempre quello che non c’è”). The album closes with “other bits of nonsense”, like the breezy “Il matto” and the hilarious “I Fichi”, lightening the heavy mood and recalling the atmosphere and hilarity typical of his live performances.

"I, Francesco Guccini, eternal student"

We now reach recent history: the Guccini who once picked up his guitar with a flask of wine by his side keeps strumming his six strings and drinking good red wine, but does so with a greater awareness of himself, his music and his lyrics. A Guccini increasingly devoted to literature, yet never losing sight of his own historical memory.

Between 1998 and 1999 came another double live album, a celebratory release. "Acknowledged" but not loved by its author: Guccini, live collection. Then came a series of literary ventures: "Un disco dei Platters" (again in collaboration with Lorenzo Macchiavelli), the Dictionary of the Pàvana dialect, a biography by Massimo Cotto titled "Un altro giorno è andato", as well as a friendly cameo as a bartender in the first film by Luciano Ligabue, "Radiofreccia".

Described by Umberto Eco as "the most cultured of Italian singer-songwriters" and honoured with several literary prizes, including the Montale Prize "Versi per la musica", Guccini crosses into the new millennium with a new album, Stagioni. There's the poetic emphasis that has characterised all his previous work (the metre of "Autunno" is particularly telling in this respect: "Un'oca che guazza nel fango, un cane che abbaia a comando, la pioggia che cade e non cade le nebbie striscianti che svelano e velano strade… Profilo degli alberi secchi, spezzarsi scrosciante di stecchi, sul monte, ogni tanto, gli spari e cadono urlando di morte gli animali ignari…"), although as the album plays on, the impression grows of a greater care for the formal aspects of the writing, of more deliberation, and in practice of less creative spontaneity.
Stagioni is an ongoing existential reckoning that musically revisits classically gucciniano structures and themes, also tied to the strand of political and social opposition ("Don Chisciotte" above all), as well as small experiments born of collaborations with other musicians (the atypical "Ho ancora la forza", with music by Ligabue, is the clearest example), in which Guccini once again focuses his attention on "saying" rather than "playing".

Another literary effort followed in 2003, "Cittanòva blues" (an account of Bologna across the Fifties to the Seventies), along with two more anthologies, Music in pack and Canzoni 64/84, bringing us to his most recent studio album (2004), Ritratti.
An album that isn't particularly notable on the musical front, but is decidedly convincing on the narrative one (the best of his most recent output). Guccini converses with historical figures (Ulysses, Che Guevara, Christopher Columbus), tackles current affairs with both gravity and lightness ("Piazza Alimonda", recounting the Genoa G8 and the killing of Carlo Giuliani, "bitter and indelible, the open trace of a wound", which seems to echo the evocative guitars of "La locomotiva") and indulges in personal reflection ("Una canzone" is a declaration of love for music and poetry: "La canzone è una vaga farfalla che vola via nell'aria leggera, una macchia azzurra, una rosa gialla, un respiro di vento la sera, una lucciola accesa in un prato"). Guccini also offers, finally, a 1971 outtake titled "La tua libertà".

And then, in 2012, the word "end". At the venerable age of seventy-two, having spent almost fifty of those years singing on stages across Italy, Guccini recorded what – he assures us – would be his final album: L'ultima Thule. The album will in all likelihood not displease the die-hard gucciniani, but it's dominated by songs that are either unremarkable or merely transitional, with two notable exceptions: "Su in collina" and "L'ultima Thule". The first, a transposition of a dialect tale of partisan resistance, blends the cold of winter and the desolation of the Emilian hills with a wartime death that chills the heart. Without any irritating heroic posturing, in a restrained tone, Guccini brings back into focus the tragedy of a period too often stripped of its human dimension.
The second, somewhat "Bisanzio" and somewhat "L'isola non trovata", returns instead to the quintessentially Guccini-esque archetype of the legendary, unreachable land, with the whole caravan of symbols the songwriter has attached to it over his many years of engagement with the theme. The product of a gestation almost as long as his entire career – Guccini had been thinking of "L'ultima Thule" as the title for his closing album ever since the days of "Radici" – the song draws on the medieval myth of the island of ice and fire lost at the far north of the seas, weaving together, for one last time, old age, dream and memory until they can no longer be told apart. Certainly the most striking track on the record, it's also one of the most musically thrilling episodes in Guccini's entire songbook: a prog-folk ride in which keyboards, horns, percussion and hurdy-gurdy chase one another, providing counterpoint to the voice with energetic Celtic motifs.

In 2022, however, came a surprise, playfully titled Songs to Cry Into Your Drink, meaning songs of seduction. Not an album of new Guccini originals, but a covers album. Besieged by requests from record labels, the songwriter decided to accept them on his own terms, recording a collection of songs that had been significant to his own journey as a listener and musician. Joining him in the venture was producer and arranger Fabio Ilacqua, already known for his work with artists from the Sanremo scene. Every omen pointed to the worst, but surprisingly the record works – indeed, it's the most successful of his recent releases.
Perhaps feeling freed from the constraints of chart pop, Ilacqua crafts rich, inventive and often good-humoured acoustic orchestrations, somewhere between Stormy Six and Capossela. For his part, Guccini, who had nursed the desire for a covers collection even before announcing his retirement from recording, makes decidedly personal and representative choices: anarchist and partisan songs, dialect songs, traditional themes, even a ghost track in Ukrainian that underscores the continuing relevance of the struggles evoked across the tracklist. Particularly successful are his reworkings of the Piedmontese traditional "Barun Litrun", with a progressive-folk arrangement that finds new room for the hurdy-gurdy, and of the understated "Sei minuti all'alba", written by Enzo Jannacci and reworked here in a daring habanera key.

If Songs to Cry Into Your Drink was the surprise, Tavern Songs (2023) is the confirmation: Guccini still has something to sing, even if the words aren't his own. Comparisons with the previous release, from 2022, are inevitable – the team is the same, the title differs by only one word, even the two covers could be mistaken for one another. In almost every respect these are twin albums, the fruit of the renewed enthusiasm of a songwriter who left the stage a decade ago now.
The similarities with the first instalment extend to the arrangements (again handled by Fabio Ilacqua) and the choice of songs, spanning multiple registers and traditions. The selection opens and closes with the two most overtly political tracks, "Bella Ciao" – which Guccini dedicates to the women of Iran and sings partly in Farsi – and "21 Aprile", about the 1967 coup by the Greek colonels.
Enclosed between these two are a multitude of languages and styles, all duly rendered in "Guccinese": there are dialect pieces ("Maria la guerza" and "La Maduneina dal Baurgh 'd San Pir", both in Bolognese dialect), songs in English and Hebrew ("The Last Thing On My Mind", "Cotton Fields", "Hava Nagila" – which devotees of Sanremo and Battiato will recognise as the inspiration behind "Oppio", brought to the festival by Sibilla in 1983), a Catalan song by the Barcelona-born author Joan Manuel Serrat, "La Tieta", which Guccini had already recorded in the Modena dialect back in 2004 on "Ritratti". And no fewer than four songs in Spanish: "Jacinto Ciclana", with music by Astor Piazzolla and lyrics by Jorge Luis Borges (no less), "El caballo negro", "La chacarera del 55", "Sur".
Here too, what shines brightest is the richness and warmth of the arrangements, mostly acoustic and remarkably varied: from the Balkan-tinged oompah of "Bella ciao" (impeccable, if a touch worn out by now) to the little waltz of "Maria la guerza", through to the bluegrass of "Cotton Fields", the necessary klezmer stop'n'go of "Hava Nagila", and the playful folk-pop that breathes new life into "Amore dove sei", a 1970 song with which Milanese songwriter Giorgio Laneve found success at "Un disco per l'estate". But what stands out most, perhaps, is the most instrumentally bare-bones track, the Venetian "Il canto dei battipali", sung a cappella with the "Orobica" alpine choir and backed only by Ilacqua's sound design (read: the thud of pile-driving mallets marking the beat).
If the spoken passages find the songwriter's voice a little unsteady, when it comes to singing his pitch is right on the mark. Whether or not there's a touch of autotune helping things along, the result is thoroughly satisfying, and even if perhaps less sparkling than Songs to Cry Into Your Drink, it's certainly worth a listen, both for diehard "gucciniani" and for anyone curious about the breadth and instrumental quality of these reworkings, traditional or otherwise.

There is much more that could be said and told about Francesco Guccini, but for everything left "unsaid" – or rather "unwritten" – we point you instead to his records. In the meantime, let us frame his work and his poetry with the words of Nobel laureate Dario Fo: "Guccini's is the voice of what was once called the 'movement'. Today, simply, a voice of youth. That is, of granite-like consistency with his own language and thought. In his work there is an endless discourse: on irony, on friendship, on solidarity."

Francesco Guccini passed away on 6 August 2026, at the age of 86. He died at home in his beloved Pavana, surrounded by the love of his family. He leaves us an enormous legacy of songs, verses and reflections never to be forgotten.

Contributions by Marco Sgrignoli ("Songs to Cry Into Your Drink", "Tavern Songs")

***

A reflection on the poetics of Francesco Guccini

by Marco Sgrignoli

"No, I don't like Guccini, too politicised". I've heard this line, or some version of it, many times. The man wrote "La locomotiva" and from then on, that's that: he will forever be "the left-wing singer-songwriter". I even worked it out once: his songs that are even remotely "politically outspoken" make up less than a fifth of his output. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, because listening to "Cyrano" it's easy to be enchanted by its utopia, or to cry foul at its excess of rhetoric; in short, the reaction is immediate: beautiful/ugly, love it/can't stand it. And so all the other songs count for little – the less explicit ones, the less moralising, and, truth be told, the less catchy ones too: Guccio is the poet of the parka, of the Prague Spring and of Che Guevara, full stop.

I bet they're wrong. Anyone who doesn't go beyond the "sixty-eight" Guccini except for the occasional striking burst of sentimentality (Canzone per un'amica, Farewell, Incontro) or deluxe bit of tomfoolery (La genesi, I fichi) doesn't know what he's missing. And what he's letting slip right under his nose, because some of these songs hide precisely the "access keys" to what our friend Vecchioni calls Guccini the cantadubbio (the doubt-singer).

"Incontro", for instance: why not start right there. The story is simple, isn't it? After ten years, meeting up with a female friend (an ex?), going to her place for dinner and sketching out a recap, then inevitably ending up talking about the good old days. As in a badly written novel, her husband killed himself at Christmas, but what wraps around the situation isn't sadness: it's rather a sweet nostalgia, disillusionment, a subtle melancholy ("Amerigo").

A feeling that is central to Guccini's poetics and is bound up with two other fundamental themes: the passing of time and Truth.
In "Gulliver", Swift's now-elderly navigator tells his grandchildren about his adventures:

⟦Q1⟧

Gulliver's tales are, for whoever listens, nothing but enchantment, a mirage. Age may bring wisdom with it, but that wisdom cannot be passed on, and to others it's indistinguishable from fantasy.

⟦Q2⟧

Yet the inability to understand falls back on Gulliver himself, who can no longer tell reality from imagination: the story loses its substance, leaving only empty shells of words. Truth, then, is impossible to hold on to, and even more so to put into words, to the point that the accumulated powers of age and experience count for nothing: from time and sea you learn nothing.

Truth instead reveals itself in epiphanies, moments of illumination in which it seems within reach, but which vanish before it can be rationalized. Hence "L'isola non trovata":

⟦Q3⟧

All that remains of these fleeting apparitions is the memory of this foolish intoxication ("L'orizzonte di K.D."), which turns into precisely that subtle melancholy, at once regret for a lost chance and the joy of relieving it, however faded.
Lost chances that translate into an inability to live in the present, forever suspended between nostalgia for the past and a hope (disillusioned from the start) of getting it back in the future: "Autogrill" is a brief flash of insight, the intuition of a possibility for change, immediately discarded, preferring out of laziness regret over remorse; "Lettera" observes that time has no mercy for the endless postponements and hesitations of someone who always waits for winter to long for a new summer:

⟦Q4⟧

Between the lines of that same "Lettera" emerges the myth of Nature and childhood as a state of innocence, a now-irretrievable "Golden Age", which ends up implicitly identifying itself with the timeless ecstasy that is both the cause and the object of that subtle melancholy:

⟦Q5⟧

"La collina" is built entirely around this duality, but the overlap becomes total in "La canzone della bambina portoghese", the summa of Guccini's epiphanism. Against the smugness of adults and their certainties stands the instant of ineffable wonder experienced by a little girl facing the immensity of the Ocean.

⟦Q6⟧

The mirror opposite, at least in the choice of protagonist, is “Bisanzio.” Here the themes already examined take on an epic, tragic, disarming dimension. Filemazio, a scholar of a Constantinople in decline, draws up the desolate balance sheet of his life, spent in the name of a Reason that never taught him how to read the meaning of the World — a meaning perhaps clearer to barbarians who already know the Truth.

⟦Q1⟧

Dear Guccini fans of “Dio è morto” and “Cyrano,” I hope this excursus through some of the “minor” tracks in his catalogue can shed new light on the ending of “your” “Incontro”:

⟦Q2⟧

Ride the wave of great music

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