by Aldo Cazzullo
The artist: “De André is the singer-songwriter who is most like me.” Politics: “I don't go to Atreyu, I don't like fascists.” The songs: “The hero of the locomotive didn't die, they want one for him Dedicate space.” The Pope: “I recited to Francis the first verse of Martìn Fierro, the Argentine national poem.”
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
PAVANA (PISTOIA) – The Limentra really makes a continuous and obsessive sound, and Francesco Guccini really lives in the old family house in Pavana, on the Apennines on the border between Tuscany and Emilia. From the family's other home, the mill, great-uncle Enrico – Merigo in the Pavanese dialect, Amerigo, like Vespucci in the memorable song – left to mine coal in America: “And it was work and blood and it was synonymous with tiredness in the morning and.”Evenings/years in prison, of beer and whores, of hard days/of blacks and Irish, Poles and Italians in the anthracite mine/sweat in Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Texas, Missouri…».
Guccini, do you remember your great uncle Enrico?
“Yes. But to me he wasn't a miner; he was a cowboy.
“The hernia belt looked like a gun holster.”
“Enrico was my grandfather Pietro’s brother. They had two sisters, Teresa and Peppa, who died in childbirth; although one journalist wrote that she starved to death. Aunt Peppa had married a socialist carpenter: the fascists burned down his carpentry shop and he went into exile in France, to Antibes, which he called Antibo. Many people from Pavana went to America before the war and returned with little money. Then the Americans came to us.
The Gothic Line ran here.
“A little further north.”
What were the Germans like?
“Very hungry. They asked for omelettes with twenty eggs. We had raised a piglet and hid it in a small house in Pian del Cerro. One day the Nazis knocked on our door. We feared for the little piglet. Instead they looked for the ones who had escaped “Russian prisoners, one of whom the grandfather found wounded in the corn field and brought to safety. The Germans withdrew in the fall of 1944.”
And the Americans?
“I had never seen a black person, I had never chewed gum and of course I had never drunk that dark and delicious liquid they called Coca-Cola. So the Americans came to eat pasta at my grandparents' mill, while I was in their canteen looking for delicacies like canned pineapples and chocolate, which I ate alone in secret on the banks of the Limentra river is actually a torrent. We still have a photo with a dedication – “a esta familia amiga minha dedicação” – from a Brazilian soldier, a mulatto named Octaviano.”
Brazilian?
“The dictator Getulio Vargas had sent the Força Expedicionária Brasileira to Italy, also to get rid of the left-wing idealists who wanted to fight Nazi fascism.” Among them was a department for skiers. And there was a famous musician, whose name I don't remember, who came one evening with his guitar to let us hear his songs; But someone giggled and he walked away very offended.
Didn't she sing?
“I gave my first singing performance for the soldiers of the Fifth Army: Lay that gun down by Bing Crosby, which I pronounced leichepistoldà.” We played bingo with the Americans: “Play bingo!” My mother Ester was convinced that Tombola meant Plebingo in English.
Who won?
“I remember a black man who always lost and ran away crying under the fireplace; until the others moved and gave him the money back.
His father also fought in the war.
“He did two: the one from Africa, then the one from Greece.” He was captured in Corinth and they locked him up in the concentration camp where Giovanni Guareschi was also.
The military internees in Germany: That was also resistance.
“First a postcard arrived at home from a comrade: “Ferruccio Guccini asks me to tell you that he is coming back.” He came back while we were in church. The aunt came running and held the apron in her hands: something important must have happened.
Was that the first time you saw your father?
“Yes. I was five years old. He carried with him a notebook written in very small letters to save paper, and in diluted ink to save ink: it was full of recipes, compiled in the illusion, like that to overcome hunger. His uniform was torn, but he was not thin: freed from the English, he had eaten himself full. First he bathed in the mill shed. I asked him: Dad, can you teach me to swim? He threw me into the water .Sometimes I drown.
Is it true that you are a Pistoiese fan?
“I felt for it. In reality I am a Juventus player. However, I only went to the stadium once, in 1948: Modena-Sampdoria 0-0. A terrible, very boring game.”
Modena: “Small town, bastard place”.
“But it was the city of the first Filarini. I took a girl, or rather a mine, to the cinema – they played an American whore: “Love is a wonderful thing” – and in the dark I dared to ask her: Do you want to be my mine?
And you?
«He replied: I have to think about it. Actually it was a yes. Otherwise he wouldn't come to the cinema.
Musical debut?
“With friends we saw a film in which a band picked up girls and we said: Let's do one too.” We formed several with imaginative names: the Hurricanes, which means hurricanes; the Snakers, which means nothing. And then the Marino's, in honor of the frontman Marino Salardini. First concert in the parish theater: Tutti Frutti, Be-Bop-a-Lula. A girl with the very Modenese name Deanna told me that we had played well and I was very excited. And then The Enchained Sea: While we waited for the mechanical echo, we imitated the cry of the seagulls with painful stomach cramps: “Aaah, aaah!” We played dance music with the Gatti.”
What did you play?
«Peppino di Capri was a big fan. We also performed in Switzerland, in Zofingen near Basel: I had never been so far away in my life, when I came back I told my parents that the mailboxes were yellow instead of red.
In 1964 he wrote Auschwitz.
“We knew what had happened in the death camps, but we didn't talk about it. In 1961 the question was raised again in the Eichmann trial. I read “Thou Shalt Go Through the Chimney,” “The Swastika Plague.” We were moving towards 1968.
Caterina Caselli and Giorgio Gaber invited her on television, where she met Battiato.
“His name was still Francesco and he was a great joker.” Like me. But his jokes were inferior to mine, which are real masterpieces” (Guccini smiles).
Do you have friends among your colleagues?
“Roberto Vecchioni. On Lucio Dalla's boat in Capri I met Zucchero: with him and with Ligabue we speak dialect, even if they come from Reggio Emilia, edgy … “
Is it true that, as a journalist for the Gazzetta di Modena, he interviewed Domenico Modugno?
«Yes, and I'm still ashamed of it. I was unnecessarily aggressive. A guitar banger, as Carducci defined his hymn to Satan.
Did Modugno cope well?
“Very bad. He called the principal to complain.
His characters are often lonely heroes facing a noble defeat: Don Quixote, Cyrano, Che Guevara…
“It has to be a generational thing. This also applies to De André, who sings about the defeated and women with bad reputations. He listened to Brassens, I listened to Dylan; but I admired François Villon, the cursed poet of the fifteenth century, pardoned by the king, whose fate is unknown.”
Is De André the singer-songwriter who is most like you?
“Perhaps yes, for the late romanticism that fascinated us both.” Although he came from an important family in Genoa. I am from Pavana.
De André was terribly afraid of publicity; She has given hundreds of concerts.
“But I was scared out of my mind every time. I went on stage with the same horror with which I experienced the exams at university.
Who else do you admire?
“Gino Paoli. The author's song begins with Il cielo in una stanza. A turning point: without rhyme, without chorus. I also admired Sergio Endrigo, who, however, had broken his eardrum during a dive and was no longer able to keep the tone. I remember a concert where he was in a lot of pain.
In her songs she often sings about the end of love. Others, like the wonderful “Scirocco”, or his. Which woman is hidden behind Eskimo?
“Roberta, my first wife”.
And behind Farewell? “Every time you cry and laugh, you're not crying and laughing with me…”
“Angela, the mother of my daughter Teresa. We just baptized your son, my nephew Pietro.”
100 Pennsylvania Avenue?
“Eloise, an American student of mine at Dickinson College in Bologna. I followed her to Pennsylvania. She came from a progressive family: the only one in the suburbs who didn't have a flag in their yard. But the only one who was enthusiastic about me was an aunt in Florida who gave me a long phone call that I didn't understand: she thought she spoke Italian, but in reality she spoke Calabrian. It ended in a big argument, all the relatives against me, with Eloise shouting, “But I love him!” It was traumatic. I was thirty years old, but I was still a boy, immature. Now I understand the mentality of these Americans and I wouldn't do it again; but now I'm 83. And Eloise Vitelli is the Democratic leader in the Maine Senate.
«And I would like it / because I'm not there when you're not there…».
“This is the song for Raffaella, my wife. One evening she came with her friends to Vito, the Bolognese restaurant I visited. I began a slow, respectful, old-fashioned courtship. Hand in hand, step by step…”
Lucio Dalla was also with Vito.
“We were never really friends. We had no self-confidence, Lucio was a bit mysterious, sometimes grumpy. He never spoke about his homosexuality. He idolized his mother, even though he had never met his father. In Bologna it was said that he was the son of Padre Pio. And then we were too different. He is a citizen, I am a mountaineer. He teased me: What are you doing in the mountains all day? And I answered: nothing. Even though in reality I did a lot of things.”
What?
“Go for a walk, go mushroom picking, plant trees. And cultivate my vices. Tom Antongini, D'Annunzio's secretary, said: Honor your vices, they will be your only friends in old age. I, on the other hand, had to give up cigarettes, women and books. Saying goodbye to books is particularly painful. But I can hardly see anymore.
At Vito she also met Vasco.
“He complimented me on Avenvelenata, a song I don't love.” Do you think we even became friends with Bertoncelli, the one who said “nonsense”?”
Bertoncelli is the critic who made Rooms of Daily Life.
“A record I hated and still hate. First they forced on me a Brazilian drummer named Mandrake, who was addicted to all kinds of drugs…”
Have you ever tried?
“I come from the alcohol generation, not the drug generation. And then marimbas, xylophones, vibraphones… A guru came from London, in a white tunic, with two tablas, the Indian drums. The attack of the “Song of the Inns at the Door” is his work.
It's a beautiful attack.
“But Indian music has mysterious divisions: This is a song in three quarters, the Guru was tuned to 17/28ths…”
How was Little Ignoble History born?
«From three stories that three friends told me. It was the time of secret abortion. He would leave you, but he would find your address and the money.
And the locomotive?
“A literary proposal, not a political claim.” In a book by Romolo Bianconi, “Thirty Years of Workshop”, I read about this limping character who, in his youth, had thrown himself with a locomotive against a “men's train”…» .
But wasn't he dead? “They picked him up while he was still breathing…”
“No, he survived. “Il Pensionato”, my elderly neighbor on Via Paolo Fabbri in Bologna, also told me about it. The hero of the locomotive was called Pietro Rigosi. Now they want to dedicate to him the square of the Poggio Renatico station from which he left; but these days it's hard for me. In Lucca they didn't want to dedicate a street to Sandro Pertini…”
What was the pensioner's name?
“Mr Mignani. I remember one New Year's Eve with friends: we thought he was alone and got him a bottle. The next day he returned the favor with the wine he made at home: very good. The neighbor, Mrs. Irene, called me carefully at dawn: “I heard that you made a song about the pensioner. My husband and I would prefer not to show up…”.
You told the Corriere that you were never a communist.
“I confirm. I have a romantic sympathy for anarchy, another quality that brings me closer to De André. But I have always voted socialist, even if I was not a Craxian.”
Have you never voted for the PCI?
“Never. I had the myth of Roosevelt's America, not the Soviet Union. And I wrote an anti-totalitarian song about the Prague Spring, which ended with Jan Palach burned like Jan Hus and sent to the stake as a heretic.
Here in the Apennines, many former communists are now voting for Salvini.
“You can see that they weren’t really communists; They were already members of the Northern League without knowing it. More security, less taxes, little or no culture. The right can be more or less fascist, the left more or less Marxist; The league has no philosophy.
And the 5 stars?
“You have the philosophy of the moment. More stomach than head. Of course, there is great satisfaction in telling everyone to fuck off. But then?”.
She hugged Prodi at the Mulino meeting.
“I was there for Ezio Raimondi, my teacher training teacher. Prodi is a good man. Even if it brought me attacks from the left. I also received an anonymous letter: “Since you became friends with Prodi and Fazio, you have sworn off La Locomotiva.”
What did you vote for in the PD primaries?
«Raffaella and I couldn't find any free space. In the end, I might have voted for Schlein. Although I have nothing against Bonaccini, who comes from Campogalliano, the town of my maternal grandfather.
Meloni is an admirer of hers, she also invited her to Atreyu, but she didn't go. Why?
“Nowadays I rarely leave my mountains. Should I do this to go to Atreyu? I politely declined.
I insist: why?
“Because I don’t like fascists.”
Meloni is not a fascist.
“But I hear many repeat about them what was said about Mussolini: “The Duce is a genius, it is the people around him who ruin everything.” However, the Duce was not a genius; and I'm afraid Meloni isn't either.
What do you think of Guccini?
«Intelligent and shy. And he responds to shyness with a touch of arrogance, as if to say: I'm here. I know, because I'm shy too.
Is it true that you met Pope Francis?
“Quickly. I recited to him the first verse of Martìn Fierro, the Argentine national poem. He must have thought I was crazy.
In Byzantium you describe a city “floating between two worlds and between two eras” in which Greek and Latin were no longer spoken, but Alemanni and Gothic.
“I have always felt the charm of languages unknown to me: on the new album Canzoni da tavern I sing a verse from Bella ciao in Farsi, as a homage to Iranian women.” We also live in a time between two eras. A turning point in history.”
What will happen to Italy, to the world?
“Let them do it. It's enough for me to stay well covered and write crime novels with Loriano Macchiavelli. Now I write short stories.
Does death scare you?
“NO. Of course it's pretty annoying: not being there, not feeling… But after a certain age you get tired.”
How do you imagine life after death?
“There isn't. But I'm an agnostic, not an atheist. So you never know.
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December 10, 2023 (modified December 10, 2023 | 06:48)
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