Francesco De Gregori

Francesco De Gregori – "Atlantide"

(from the LP "Bufalo Bill", 1976)

On the roadside, contemplating America

"If I could have chosen between life and death, I would have chosen America." That's how aFrancesco De Gregori, at the height of his powers in 1976, opened his American travel diary with "Bufalo Bill". An immersion into a land of frontiers and (dis)illusions, an eldorado for the dispossessed and a refuge for sinners, an Eden of freedom and a black hole for every degeneration of consumer society. On the roadside, contemplating America, to quote him again, De Gregori sits with a gaze both dreamy and disenchanted. He steers well clear of the clichés of anti-Americanism, yet never lets himself be seduced by the myth either. It's a chiaroscuro America, multifaceted, the Prince's America — not so far, in the end, from the one portrayed in Guccini's songs, but even more dreamlike, restless, elusive. Crowded with bit-part characters who rise to become unlikely protagonists. Unwitting heroes who overturn every hierarchy. From Buffalo Bill to dim-witted Ninetto, from boy scout Tobia to the nameless cowboys drifting through the canyons of life. But deep down it's the same America of Dylan, of Hemingway, of Kerouac, of Steinbeck — authors devoured by De Gregori, confirming a bond with the culture of the New World that has never been broken.

But "Bufalo Bill" is not a concept album or a rock opera, territories the Roman singer-songwriter has practically never ventured into, preferring instead to reserve eccentric moments and clear digressions from the central leitmotif in each of his works. Rather, it's a collection of notes, a broad notebook where, alongside the great American commentary, other ideas found their way in too. All of them transformed into wonderful song-poetry.

The curious story of its gestation is well known, at least to fans: the entire album was recorded in just over a week, with a very "live" sound, almost as if captured in one take. As if to preemptively distance himself from accusations of excessive polish, which De Gregori had faced after the extraordinary commercial success of "Rimmel". "'Bufalo Bill' is my cross to bear and my delight," he would later say. "If I could, I'd probably redo it, taking more care with the sounds and arrangements. I made it that way, bare and essential, to punish myself for having made 'Rimmel', which had sold too much... it was crazy! I was in crisis, so I decided to make an album in a week."

Chronicle of an escape

It's also in this week that the mysterious, fascinating world of “Atlantide” takes shape — the album's most precious gem, one that remained inexplicably submerged for a long time, much like the mythical continent itself. Perhaps because of its bitter, cryptic lyrics, hard to decipher. Like a skilled conjurer of words, De Gregori deftly plays with language, resorting to one of his typical in medias res openings that hurl the listener straight into the middle of the story (“Lui adesso vive ad Atlantide con un cappello pieno di ricordi”), taking for granted that the beginning is already known, and gradually handing over the keys to piece the puzzle back together. It's the admission of a defeat, of an (ir)responsibility, sublimated in the surreal role-reversal of the unfaithful protagonist, who sends word that it is he who forgives his beloved “for having betrayed her.”

Io la conobbi un giorno ed imparai il suo nome

ma mi portò lontano il vizio dell’amore […]

 

Ditele che l’ho perduta quando l’ho capita

ditele che la perdono per averla tradita

But whereas in other autobiographical episodes by the Roman singer-songwriter, like “Rimmel” and “Bene”, the confession unfolded in the first person, here De Gregori distances himself, steps out of the scene and slips behind the camera. He falls back on a classic device of literary song-writing: sending a message to the beloved woman through an intermediary. Except that everything here is bitterly mocking, contradictory: the temporal displacement makes the belated realization of one's own mistakes look like a kind of “forgiveness.” In the rest of the song, however, the story is instead carried by a narrating voice, in the third person (“Ha la faccia di uno che ha capito e anche un principio di tristezza in fondo all’anima”). “He” has sought refuge in the submerged world, another place of the soul. One that either never existed, or is still entirely to be discovered. He fled to California (the first of the many escapes narrated throughout De Gregori's songbook), tried to build himself a new life, but remained chained to a memory that keeps hurting. So now he lives “in the third ray” and has learned his lesson:

Lui adesso vive in California

da sette anni sotto una veranda ad aspettare le nuvole

è diventato un grosso suonatore di chitarre

e stravede per una donna chiamata Lisa

quando le dice: “Tu sei quella con cui vivere”

gli si forma una ruga sulla guancia sinistra

Lui adesso vive nel terzo raggio

where he learned to stop asking questions like:

“Do you happen to know a girl from Rome

whose face recalls the collapse of a dam?"

Io la conobbi un giorno ed imparai il suo nome

but the vice of love carried me far away

Grotesque yet lucid, precise word associations, evoking even in physical terms the marks of pain, of a searing experience (the "wrinkle on the left cheek," the face that recalls "the collapse of a dam"). And within this dreamlike sequence of images, one stands out unforgettably: the "can of desperate beer" hidden under the bed, the brilliant personification that, in the most absurd of emotional transferences, manages to explain everything.

The originality of the lyrics is matched by one of the most beautiful and intricate pieces of music ever composed by Francesco De Gregori: a slow, dreamlike sonic flow, brimming with intense oceanic and oneiric atmosphere, between the celestial chimes of the piano, the dark cloak of the Eminent organ, subtle guitar arpeggios and an enveloping, deeply sorrowful melody, the kind that melts the heart. While there's an undeniable debt to "Three Angels" by his guiding light Bob Dylan (from "New Morning", 1970), "Atlantide" must still be credited with a uniquely evocative power. And one can sense the freshness of writing done "in one go," the fruit of a state of compositional grace.

The song, in fact, was born during a sleepless night at the piano, after an Rca party and before a departure for Catania. "I remember a fairly large room with two windows, and pressed against the wall between those two windows, the upright piano," De Gregori would later reveal. "I sat down there to play and write this song, jotting down the words on a sheet of paper, and meanwhile day was slowly breaking, and the light was coming in from those two windows to the right and left of the piano, and I thought that was the best stereophonic day I had ever seen. Partly because it really felt like being underwater, partly because that was a rare, precious moment of solitude, it occurred to me to call this song 'Atlantide'."

In memory of Andrea Purgatori

Performed live many times and brought back to the public's attention in recent years, "Atlantide" also became the theme tune of the (wonderful) show of the same name hosted by the late Andrea Purgatori on La7. The Prince's liquid, dreamlike notes accompanied his exploits, astride his motorbike, notebook in pocket to gather notes for new investigations, through a nighttime Rome full of mysteries to unravel. And it is to the great departed journalist that we wish to dedicate it, imagining him now too within the enigmatic "third ray," asking awkward, intelligent questions, as always.

Lui adesso vive

ad Atlantide

con un cappello pieno di ricordi

ha la faccia di uno che ha capito

e anche un principio di tristezza in fondo all'anima

nasconde sotto il letto barattoli di birra disperata

e a volte ritiene di essere un eroe

Lui adesso vive in California

da 7 anni sotto una veranda ad aspettare le nuvole

è diventato un grosso suonatore di chitarre

e stravede per una donna chiamata Lisa

quando le dice tu sei quella con cui vivere

gli si forma una ruga sulla guancia sinistra

Lui adesso vive nel terzo raggio

dove ha imparato a non fare più domande del tipo

conoscete per caso una ragazza di Roma

la cui faccia ricorda il crollo di una diga?

io la incontrai un giorno ed imparai il suo nome

ma mi portò lontano il vizio dell’amore

E così pensava l’uomo di passaggio

mentre volava alto sul cielo di Napoli

rubatele pure i soldi rubatele anche i ricordi

ma lasciatele sempre la sua dolce curiosità

tell her I lost her when I understood her

tell her I forgive her for betraying her.

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27/04/2026