Bandiera bianca
Track n° 2 of the album La voce del padrone

Track 2: Bandiera Bianca (Remastered)
"Mr. Tambourine, I don't feel like joking, let's put on our jerseys again, times are about to change." One cannot start talking about "Bandiera bianca" without mentioning the first legendary line, where Battiato tells Mr. Tambourine (the Italianization of Mr. Tambourine Man, a song by Bob Dylan, used here to represent lightness and leisure) to put his jersey back on, to set a limit because times are changing. In this surreal way, it pushes us into a piece that mixes not just musical quotes, hard-hitting verses that criticize society, but always enclosed in the Battiatesque kaleidoscope, becoming lighter and therefore understandable even to the casual listener. "We are children of the stars, great-grandchildren of His Majesty Money," quoting the famous song by Alan Sorrenti, Battiato tells us that it is useless to believe we are children of something sacred if we are all enslaved by material wealth. "Fortunately, my racism prevents me from watching those idiotic shows with electoral tribunes," one of the heaviest lines of the song, where Battiato scorns the entire Italian political class, defining this hatred as racism, almost as if he wanted to assert his intellectual/spiritual superiority over those who, according to Plato, should be capable of guiding society through knowledge. "And you want to put on perfumes and deodorants," meaning: how pointless it is to care for appearances if our being is rotten. "You are like quicksand, pulling everyone down," the moral decay of some characters (especially those financially advantaged) drags everyone down with them, normalizing even the most unhealthy aspects of their lives. "Some put on sunglasses to have more charisma and symptomatic mystery" may seem like an extension of the line about perfumes, but in reality, it is a demonstration of terrifying self-irony: during the period of "La voce del padrone," in many music videos, Battiato often wore sunglasses; this is quite beautiful because despite having a monstrous hatred for this society, with that small detail he practically says, "Yes, all this makes me sick... but I am part of it too." "How hard it is to remain a father when children grow up and mothers turn gray," in collective thought, the desire not to age has seeped in; even at seventy, one must stay young and take care of one's body; there is always that concept of appearance, where adults constantly try to rejuvenate themselves to avoid accepting their old age. "How many miserable figures cross the country, how wretched life is in the abuse of power," yet another invective against Italy of that time where the life of those who abuse their power is defined as miserable, as something cheap and forgettable.
Here we are at the chorus "On the bridge flies the white flag," a line taken from "L'ultima ora di Venezia" by Arnaldo Fusinato, and q