Lucio Dalla

The Seventies were years of violence and of political and social tension. Turbulence that inevitably spilled over into music too. In the summer of 1978, Lucio Dalla too suddenly found himself at the centre of that oppressive political climate that had for years been gripping Italian music, a climate that had already led, for instance, to the sensational "Palalido trial" endured by his colleague and friend Francesco De Gregori. Up to that point, the protests that had targeted many singer-songwriters had only marginally touched the Bolognese artist. But on the evening of 24 July, during a concert at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, the situation escalated dramatically.
Lucio Dalla was on tour for "How Deep Is the Sea", the album that had marked a decisive turning point in his career: for the first time he had written all the lyrics himself, leaving behind the long partnership with Roberto Roversi. On stage, in front of around ten thousand spectators, the Bolognese singer-songwriter was in the middle of one of his most free-flowing and unpredictable shows, mixing songs, improvisations, vocal riffs and jokes. Then, suddenly, a flash of flame.
A young man threw a firebomb that grazed the singer without hitting him. The Molotov cocktail exploded just a few steps away from him, while the crowd looked on in disbelief. The culprit, only fifteen years old, tried to flee but was immediately caught. According to what later emerged, he claimed he didn't even know why he had done it, and said the bottle had been handed to him by other young men. Dalla emerged unharmed from the attack, while the boy ended up in jail.

The episode deeply affected the Emilian singer-songwriter, who in the following days shared with the weekly magazine Panorama a bitter reflection on the meaning of that violence. "That boy ruined his life over one act. And the blame lies with whoever put it into his head that singers are like Che Guevara, that you can make revolutions with songs. The blame lies with whoever bombarded him, and so many other young people, for too long, with slogans, with falsely revolutionary phrases, with images of machine guns." Dalla identified the excessive politicisation of the singer-songwriter figure as one of the roots of the problem. In the Seventies many artists had been turned, often against their will, into ideological and symbolic points of reference for entire generations. An overlap that the Bolognese musician considered dangerous. "So why be surprised now, why be horrified, if many young people have absorbed what is certainly the most effective message, but also the least serious, the least useful for society?"
In the same interview, Dalla also reaffirmed his independence from traditional political affiliations. While admitting he had voted for the Italian Communist Party for years, he claimed the right to shake off any label: "In recent years I've always voted for the PCI. But today I claim the privilege of not holding any party card, the privilege of being able to be critical, without constraints, even towards the party I feel closest to. It's the privilege, all things considered, of no longer voting for it, while still feeling like a communist all the same. I'm tired of labels. I've thrown politics as a slogan out of my life and out of my songs."

The Molotov cocktail thrown onto Dalla's stage came during a season marked by frequent protests at concerts. Among the most active groups were the Autoriduttori, an expression of the extra-parliamentary radical left, who targeted artists deemed too detached from political activism or accused of having turned into mere stars. Their protests ended up involving not only Italian singer-songwriters but also international artists such as Led Zeppelin, Lou Reed and Santana.
Two years earlier, in April 1976, a similar episode had struck Francesco De Gregori at the Palalido in Milan. During the concert, some protesters climbed onto the stage, interrupting the show and subjecting the Roman singer-songwriter to a genuine public interrogation. They accused him of having grown rich by exploiting themes close to the left, and of leading a lifestyle at odds with the image his songs conveyed. That night went down in history as the Palalido "trial". In the immediate aftermath, De Gregori remarked: "All that was missing was the castor oil, and the scene would have been complete."

Lucio Dalla himself played an important role in his Roman friend's subsequent return to the scene. The two had known each other since the early Seventies and had occasionally worked together, for instance in 1975 on the arrangement of "Pablo" (one of the classics from "Rimmel") and the following year on the lyrics of "Giovane esploratore Tobia" (from "Bufalo Bill", another De Gregori album). But it was precisely after those events that their relationship became firmly cemented. In 1978 they recorded the single "Ma come fanno i marinai" together, and the following year they decided to share the stage on a tour that would go down in the history of Italian music. Thus was born "Banana Republic", the summer 1979 tour that turned two artists so different in character and style into one of the most celebrated duos in Italian song.
Just a few years after the protests, the impromptu trials and even the Molotov cocktails thrown at concerts, Dalla and De Gregori found themselves side by side filling stadiums, ushering in a new era for live music in Italy.

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02/06/2026