The odd couple

Often labelled a political songwriter, Francesco De Gregori is instead, above all, the artist who, more than any other in the Italian music scene, has managed to weave a close and constant relationship with the pages of our history. And it's often precisely by looking to the past that he has let his views on contemporary politics filter through. Almost always, however, without pointing the finger. Not out of caution, but because — as he has repeated many times — that simply isn't his style. De Gregori immerses himself in the folds of events like a curious traveller, capturing faces, details, nuances. And he pours them into his songs, sketching out, even with just a couple of words, the definitive snapshot of an event or an era. Perhaps because "history has no hiding places," as he would write in his most famous tribute to a passion cultivated since boyhood. But even when he turns his gaze to collective destiny, De Gregori never abandons the individual angle, those cinematic subjective shots typical of his narrative style. The existential dimension of the person is the lens through which the view widens onto history, because — as always in his work — it is the ordinary that becomes extraordinary. This will happen too in his most controversial song, in which he touches on one of the rawest nerves of Italian history: the Republic of Salò, where "on the wrong side, you die."

De Gregori had already taken aim at the fascisms of yesterday — but above all those of today — several years earlier, in a bitter fragment of "Rimmel" titled "Le storie di ieri." Originally intended for the "Pecora" album, the song was blocked by RCA and only released a year later, when evidently — as the Principe would later remark with irony — "anti-fascism had become more acceptable even to the mass media." That same year it would also appear on "Volume VIII" by Fabrizio De André, the album born precisely from the collaboration between the two songwriters. With bitter, rather pointed lines such as "La mascella al cortile parlava/ troppi morti lo hanno smentito," "E i cavalli a Salò sono morti di noia/ a giocare col nero perdi sempre," and further on: “Mussolini ha scritto anche poesie/ i poeti che brutte creature/ ogni volta che parlano è una truffa”. Plus a closing line — "I nuovi capi hanno facce serene e cravatte intonate alla camicia" — with a clear target: Giorgio Almirante, secretary of the Movimento Sociale, named in the original version of the song and replaced with "Il gran capo" in De André's version. Controversy, unsurprisingly, would follow…

Misuse, scientific misreadings, fodder for the national political circus. De Gregori has endured plenty of this, but never so much as in 2001, when the lead single from the album "Amore nel pomeriggio" turned his attention to "Il cuoco di Salò." Even before its official release, the song was labelled "revisionist." De Gregori's stated admiration for De Felice's historical approach, combined with the word "Salò," forms a definitive equation that triggers fierce attacks from the left and slippery flattery from the right — as if the horses dying of boredom at Salò in "Le storie di ieri" hadn't already been an exhaustive and unambiguous allegory. After all, De Gregori's lyrical, minimalist approach demands a level of analysis that has nothing to do with political current affairs. Yet even a cursory glance at the lyrics would be enough to understand that they contain no judgment, but simply recount a fragment of history through yet another individual angle.

Musically, however, the song finds fresh ground thanks to an unexpected and in some ways thrilling collaboration: alongside the Roman singer-songwriter is none other than Franco Battiato, brought in to work on the arrangement. Not such an odd choice, after all: the Sicilian artist had already crafted arrangements capable of blending subtle irony with dramatic tension in historically and politically charged pieces for Giuni Russo and Milva, such as "Lettera al governatore della Libia" and "Poggibonsi." For "Il cuoco di Salò" the choice falls on an arrangement weaving together piano and strings, echoing the era of "Povera patria," over which a distant trumpet enters with a deliberately grotesque, almost martial tone. The result is a measured balance between formal elegance and a sense of decay, well suited to conveying the absurdity of an affair marked from its very origins and carried forward under the tattered banner of an idea of nation. A classically styled lied, recorded with the Orchestra Sinfonica Giuseppe Verdi di Milano, which brings out Battiato's most "symphonic" side.

The two would never again cross paths musically. But De Gregori would have the chance to return the favour two years later in another surprising collaboration, this time on set, appearing in Battiato's film "Perduto amor," his debut as a feature film director: a delightful cameo, a very brief scene in which he plays the music critic "Francesco D."

As for the supposed "political" nature of "Il cuoco di Salò," not even the interpretations of esteemed colleagues like professor Roberto Vecchioni have been enough to put the controversy to rest. In his series of university lectures on Italian songwriters, Vecchioni explains: "The device of the external narrating voice allows De Gregori to call a truce and feel a human, universal pity for all enemies, rivals included. What would have been harder for him to do in the first person (see 'Le storie di ieri') becomes, within this thematic framework, simple, non-contradictory and above all consistent. It isn't the De Gregori of Bella ciao, the boy who looks at the wall and looks at his hands, telling the story here. It isn't the passionate, communist De Gregori, the populist standing against every form of power: starting from himself and his own experience, he could never have written a song like this. And so we get the cook of Salò, a creature caught in a storm far bigger than himself, one he barely senses and cannot fully grasp in all its nuances — except for the one nuance he can read clearly: death, collapse, the end."

The protagonist, in short, is not a fighter for Salò, but merely an unwitting witness to those events, a minor character whose observations are jarring footnotes to the central drama, because “even a cook can be useful in a storm, even amid a shipwreck one still has to eat.” History unfolds behind his back, appearing, in his eyes, almost irrelevant. And so a sequence of reassuring images passes by: “beautiful women” and “without shame,” actresses fled from Rome or singers not yet famous who rustle by “like bunches of roses,” leaving behind an intoxicating scent, the still waters of the lake, the glorious sunny day, the Americans looking for “something for dinner.” But then the distant gunfire conjures the horizon: the battlefield where “Italy is made and men die, on the wrong side.” They are the “fifteen-year-olds torn apart by spring, worn-out shoes and still they have to go,” the Republican fascists, already condemned by history and aware of their fate as losers. And yet the quotation is disorienting: the cook-narrator, in fact, uses for them the words of the Communist partisans, from their anthem “Fischia il vento” (“Fischia il vento, infuria la bufera, scarpe rotte e pur bisogna andar, a conquistare la rossa primavera, dove sorge il sol dell’avvenir”). The crossed web of opposing historical references – Salò and the Resistance, the Risorgimento and fascism – is no accident, because De Gregori still seems to be suggesting a humane, universal outlook, in which pity in the face of death does not stop before one's enemies. But there is no alibi for those who chose “the wrong side”; if anything, there is a further condemnation of the senselessness of that historical moment, of a fratricidal war fought on the backs of the youngest, called upon to pay a higher price than their “bad teachers.”

Ultimately, “Il cuoco di Salò” is nothing more than a song against all wars, including contemporary ones. Having remained silent for a long time in the face of the growing controversy, it would be the songwriter himself who finally clarified things at length, speaking at a conference in Arezzo (“Comunicare la storia,” 22-23 February 2001), from which we report a significant passage.

The song, if you analyze the lyrics, recounts things that objectively happened; it doesn't take one side or the other. It doesn't side with the left or with the Republic of Salò. It was not my intention, through this song, to restate – if there were any need to – that I am a man of the left and that I therefore have, let's say, a clear idea of the historical, political and moral judgment on fascism and the Republic of Salò. That's not the intention, because it isn't a political song. Pointing out that those who joined Salò died on the wrong side comes naturally on its own. Among other things, the line 'dalla parte sbagliata si muore' wasn't meant as a judgment handed down from above by me, the songwriter pointing a finger and saying: watch out, listeners, these were on the wrong side! It's they themselves who, in this song, say they are on the wrong side.

I believe this was a fairly widespread feeling, perhaps to a greater or lesser degree of awareness, among those who had chosen to serve in the Italian Social Republic. They certainly knew they were heading toward a historical defeat, not just a military one. The only point in the song that, as I wrote it, could be seen as revisionist – though it would come far too late compared to the historiographical analysis of the period – but one we can discuss, is the line “qui si fa l'Italy e si muore,” a quotation, precisely, from Garibaldi: and, so to speak, were these people making Italy? Now, the discourse on civil war versus war of liberation has always been viewed unfavorably by the left, up until about a decade ago. Then there was that very important book, which surely some of you will have read, by Claudio Pavone, which states once and for all – and I believe no one today can dispute this – that even those who fought on the fascist side, even the Republican fascists, even those allied with the Germans, were nonetheless Italians. So they probably had strong, patriotic motivations for making that choice. This clearly does not mean justifying them. A song is not the place to justify anything. I mean, if I write a song about Joan of Arc, I don't have to talk about the Hundred Years' War; if Manzoni writes I Promessi Sposi, he doesn't need to spend more than a few lines – among the most tedious ones, at that – describing the war of succession over the Duchy of Mantua and Spanish rule. No, a song lives on other things, after all.

As for revisionism, then, I'm not really sure what it means... If revisionism means downplaying the responsibilities of what fascism and Nazism were, then for heaven's sake, I am anti-revisionist.

If I were a historian, though, I would set myself the task of continually revising history. We can't imagine that in the year 2000 one could write a history of the French Revolution the way it would have been written in 1950. History is a work in progress; there are no truths that can be taken as settled once and for all. It's clear that postwar historiography was heavily influenced by the historiography that came before it, which suggested or imposed a certain way of writing about that period. Today we can look at things with more detachment, and therefore also come to understand the strong, sometimes honest – individually honest – motivations of many who were at Salò.

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20/04/2026