Lucio Dalla

“Lucio, where are you going? Even you don't know why anymore, but you sing, you keep singing…”. Those funny, self-pitying lines written in 1971 with Sergio Bardotti (“Lucio dove vai”) were still echoing in Dalla's mind after the artistic split with Roberto Roversi. A sense of inadequacy was paralyzing him. But then he found his courage. And with “How Deep Is the Sea” he found the most surprising and reassuring of answers. It was an album on which the little man from Bologna, writing all his own lyrics alone for the first time, revealed himself as a sensitive and imaginative author, blending political idealism with raw feeling, eccentricity with humour. Even without the contribution of the poet-friend with whom he'd forged the magical automobile trilogy, Dalla had managed to produce astonishing lyrics, plumbing the depths of emotion, dreaming up curious philosophical musings, turning small everyday stories into universal frescoes. The little hairy clown, misunderstood and mocked in the Sixties, was ready to take his final leap. Like in the fairy tale of the toad who turns into a prince.

Name, surname and band

The album of his definitive consecration doesn't even need a title. Name and surname are enough: “Lucio Dalla”. Because what matters is the content: nine tracks that would go down in the history of Italian song. Without so much as a pause or a filler track to catch its breath.

Recorded at the Castello di Carimate (near Como) and more carefully produced than its predecessor – with the trusted duo of Alessandro Colombini and Renzo Cremonini at the helm – the album settles into a brand-new pop-ballad style, without shying away from sudden shifts in rhythm or forays into blues-rock territory. It's the peak of what the press of the time promptly dubbed the “Dalla sound”: a rocky, dense, instantly recognizable sound. A blend of Mediterranean roots, soul visceralness and Anglo-Saxon soft rock, to which – beyond the usual contribution of Ron – the musicians of his band, the future Stadio, contributed crucially: Giovanni Pezzoli on drums, Marco Nanni on bass (the man who had already made “How Deep Is the Sea” great), Fabio Liberatori on keyboards, plus an explosive new entry: guitarist Ricky Portera, whose solos brand the album's rockiest moments with fire. It's precisely the guitar, albeit in a more electric than acoustic guise, that bursts forcefully into Dalla's sound, a man who until then had preferred to tread other paths, almost as if to underline his jazz background compared to his more folk-oriented colleagues (De Gregori, Guccini, Venditti, Vecchioni, De André). Also perfectly suited to the project are the horn parts – a longstanding passion of the former Rheno Dixieland Band jazzman – and Giampiero Reverberi's string arrangements, which add an extra touch of epic sweep and romanticism.

The icing on the cake is Lucio's own performances, the Italian soulman whom Gino Paoli had discovered in the jazz clubs of the Sixties. Performances that are always vibrant and passionate, never content to merely recite the score but twisting it through the full physical, bodily, gestural dimension that the man from Bologna possesses, combined with that streak of corrosive irony that has been the house trademark ever since “Pafff… bum” and “Interview con l'Avvocato”.

Unlike other singer-songwriter productions of the period, then, on “Lucio Dalla” the musical side proves just as decisive as the lyrics. But there's no glossing over the fact that the lyrics are a world unto themselves: prodigies of aching poetic intensity, so incredibly fluid that they seem to have been written in a single sitting overnight, all built on assonance in a blend of cultured language, spoken syntax and dialect. Unlike many of his peers, Dalla is never mannered, polished or literary. His lyricism is pure street poetry, as visceral and direct as it is disorienting and visionary. It's an operation of simplification of the singer-songwriter's vocabulary, if you like, but one lit up by the unpredictability of genius, so that every line comes across as perfectly comprehensible and yet never banal. “What my songs say, my aunt could say too,” he always insisted. True enough, but the point is how it's said. And the Dalla of this period has a unique way of saying it. A “fairy-tale realism” steeped in melancholy, a blend of tenderness and alienation in which the plot twist or the caustic quip often arrives to defuse the drama, through that “technique of distraction” also dear to Chekhov. “L'ultima luna” is emblematic, with its dystopian narrative constantly shifting between tragedy and farce: “La sesta luna/ Era il cuore di un disgraziato/ Che, maledetto il giorno che era nato/ Ma rideva sempre/ Da anni non vedeva le lenzuola/ Con le mani sporche di carbone/ Toccava il culo a una signora/ E rideva e toccava/ Sembrava lui il padrone”. Or again: “La quinta luna/ Fece paura a tutti/ Era la testa di un signore/ Che con la morte vicino giocava a biliardino”. Not to mention the great ape who “si aggirava tra la giostra e il bar” and the angel of God who “bestemmiava, facendo sforzi di petto”!

Stars in the pinball machine

An enemy of frills and artifice, he goes straight to the listener's heart. He pushes them to dream, to look at the stars and chase the moon, while always keeping them rooted to the earth – "E la luna è una palla ed il cielo è un biliardo/ Quante stelle nei flipper sono più di un miliardo" – ("Anna e Marco") – and to the simplicity and earthiness of everyday life, like that of the rural dance halls in "Tango": “Tutte le stelle del mondo/ Per un pezzo di pane/ Per la tua donna/ Da portare in campagna a ballare/ Per un treno con tanta gente/ Che parte davvero/ Per un tango da ballare tutti insieme/ Ad occhi aperti senza mistero”.

They almost seem like secular prayers, in the name of the only religion Dalla ever truly professed: a universal humanism, which would be sublimated a year later in a line from "Balla balla ballerino": "Ecco il mistero/ Sotto un cielo di ferro e di gesso, l'uomo riesce ad amare lo stesso/ Ama davvero, senza nessuna certezza/ Che commozione che tenerezza". Even in the most grotesque or dramatic episodes, the singer-songwriter behind "Piazza Grande" always retains a compassionate view of human nature, a hidden hope in bonds of affection as the only escape from the tyranny of "Madonna Disperazione".

It feels almost embarrassing to have to discuss songs so deeply embedded under the skin of everyone's feelings and emotions that they have by now become part of the national imagination. Let's try starting with the lesser-known ones (very few, really), pieces just as essential to a mosaic in which every tile is exactly where it should be. Take, for example, the most cryptic track of the batch, "La signora", a musically understated but lyrically biting portrait of power and its incarnations ("La Signora è una fila di macchine da qui fino al mare/ la Signora ci stampa il giornale e ce lo fa comperare/ La Signora ha tanti nomi, tanti nomi/ così da nascondersi e non farsi trovare/ ma a volte si veste di luci e bandiere per farsi notare"), but also an ambiguous fable of bourgeois frustrations ("La Signora è in lacrime, e si ferma ad ascoltare/ attraversa e si blocca a metà della strada/ un colpo di vento la fa continuare"). With Nanni's relentless bass underpinning Dalla's vocals, which spill over into his classic soul-style vocalizations.

Or take "Notte", which flows like a dense dark rain of subtle thoughts, in a succession of breathtaking lines: “Notte bianca come il vestito di una sposa/ in leggera discesa così che il corridore stanco si riposa/ dura da masticare, a pezzi tra i denti, notte da sputare/ così noiosa che si addormenta sul divano e mi viene addosso”. After all, nocturnal fascination, often surreal if not metaphysical, would always remain one of the recurring themes in Dalla's songbook.

Closing this ideal triptych of only seemingly minor episodes is the poignant "Tango", opened by the strings arranged by Reverberi and Gianni Ziglioli's accordion, and closed by a killer quatrain: “Morena è lontana e aspetta/ suona il suo violino ed è felice/ nel sole è ancora più bella e non ha fretta/ e sabato è domani”. An abyss of radiant melancholy.

It's precisely in these more intimate, secluded episodes that Dalla reveals that fluidity of writing, that ability to capture the definitive image in a handful of lines, which would remain – at least until the start of the following decade – his greatest weapon.

Sandbags at the window

Then, of course, there are the evergreens. Like the aforementioned “L’ultima luna”, a chronicle of an ordinary apocalypse, with giant apes roaming the streets, elegant gentlemen with bloodied ears, and lines of shackled prisoners. A narrative that builds in crescendo until “sospesero i giochi e si spensero le luci, cominciò l’inferno, la gente corse a casa perché per quella notte ritornò l’inverno”. This is where Portera comes in with a memorable solo that preludes the final panel, perhaps the only one to grant a glimmer of hope: “L’ultima luna la vide solo un bimbo appena nato/ aveva occhi tondi e neri e fondi e non piangeva/ con grandi ali prese la luna tra le mani, tra le mani/ e volò via e volò via: era l’uomo di domani”.

There are no words to describe the infinite tenderness of "Stella di mare", a sentimental ballad in which the piano climbs along the rhythm set by Nanni's bass and Pezzoli's drums, while Portera's electric guitar clears the way for Lucio's increasingly impassioned vocals. A crescendo structure that would recur in later classics – from "Futura" to "Balla balla ballerino" – but which we also find in the "hit of hits" on this album, "L'anno che verrà". It's yet another visionary glimpse, portraying a lazy, listless era ("Caro amico ti scrivo, così mi distraggo un po'"), in which the twilight of utopias risks slipping into disillusionment and conformity. An era when people go out little in the evening, perhaps out of fear of the "years of lead" poisoning the country. The final line – "Io mi sto preparando, è questa la novità" – can thus be read either as one last flash of optimism or as the definitive surrender to the realignment of the incoming 1980s. Either way, what dominates here, as in the whole record, is a sense of dazed uncertainty about a far from reassuring future. "There's a certain bitterness running through the song," Dalla himself would later say, "because deep down it's about us: sandbags at the window… They're putting them up now: this is a country of burglar alarms. It's a pessimistic statement, in a way; but in the end there's redemption: even if next year is bad, I want to be there. That's the news."

And then there's "Anna e Marco", for this writer perhaps Lucio Dalla's definitive song. A bittersweet teenage fable, tremendously moving. Almost a short film "with the air of an American comedy" given the density of images it manages to evoke. Set in a bleak suburban discotheque ("Anna bello sguardo non perde un ballo, Marco che a ballare sembra un cavallo… in un locale che è uno schifo, poca gente che li guarda, c'è una checca che fa il tifo"), "Anna e Marco" is a parable about the eternal conflict between oppressive routine and impossible dreams, embodied by an America "far away, on the other side of the moon" that "almost frightens you just to look at it". And so the only way out – as often in Dalla's lyrics – is to find within oneself and one's own feelings a reason to live: "Anna avrebbe voluto morire/ Marco voleva andarsene lontano/ Qualcuno li ha visti tornare/ Tenendosi per mano". They will love each other, perhaps forever, with the same liberating awareness with which, a year later, Meri Luis would bless the sky "as if it were a brother, for her lovely breasts and for the friend who wants to touch them" ("Meri Luis", 1980).

Cheating melancholy

Two other crucial episodes complete the picture. First of all, the bitter ode to "Milano", the northern metropolis suspended between modernity and nostalgia, noble traditions – including footballing ones – and dehumanizing progress. Once again, a sequence of extraordinarily sharp images: "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". It vies with "Luci a San Siro" for the title of most beautiful song ever written about Milan (and, in this case, by someone who isn't even a native).

Finally, we get the first taste of the fruitful collaboration with Francesco De Gregori, destined to culminate a few months later in the widely acclaimed "Banana Republic" tour. "Cosa sarà" (co-written with Ron) had already come out – in a different version – as the B-side of the single "Ma come fanno i marinai" in December 1978, and here it regains all its joyous harmony through its pastiche of biting questions ("Cosa sarà che fa morire a vent'anni anche se vivi fino a cento… Cosa sarà che ti spinge ad amare una donna bassina e perduta… Cosa sarà che ti spinge a picchiare il tuo re e che ti porta a cercare il giusto dove giustizia non c'è"). An incomparable duet, in which the two already click perfectly, with Dalla's irresistible closing sax solo seeming to express all the euphoria of this thrilling new partnership.

Red or blue newsboy cap on his head, canvas trousers and a tank top, Dalla would take these songs around Italy, unleashing a stage presence and physicality unknown among our singer-songwriters and forging a lasting bond of affection with the public. But even beyond these nine tracks, there's no escaping this record. "Lucio Dalla" would stay atop the charts for 52 consecutive weeks, selling a total of five hundred thousand copies in a single year. Its songs would enter permanent rotation on every Italian radio station, from then to eternity. It would end up on many lists of the greatest Italian albums of all time (including Rolling Stone's, at no. 40). And it would give the sense of being an unrepeatable one-off, flawless and cared for down to the smallest detail, including the cover, printed in four colors on glossy card, with Dalla's face filling the frame in extreme close-up.

But the Bologna-born singer-songwriter wasn't done yet: at least until Q-Disc in 1981, he kept churning out practically perfect songs in an exhilarating run of hits. Then a slow decline set in, though still punctuated by further flashes of creativity.

“Lucio Dalla” remains, however, the snapshot of a miracle, of a dream perhaps lived all in one night (“Prima che il giorno ti porti via”), of all human anxieties and contradictions, filtered through a pair of little round glasses.

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03/03/2019