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Rating: In the mid-seventies, Fabrizio De André must have realized that his unparalleled music needed a series of changes, starting with suitable arrangements that would make it more accessible to the public, and this was one of Fabrizio's countless talents, the ability to recognize arrangers more skilled than himself and allow them to invent new versions freely. This is the case, for example, with the PFM boys who, in the late '70s, collaborated with Fabrizio to create one of the greatest partnerships Italian music remembers, so much so that the PFM arrangements lasted in Fabrizio's concerts until the last tour in 1998. From this partnership, two live albums were created. The best is undoubtedly the first, which I will try to describe.
The opener is "Bocca di Rosa", with a long instrumental introduction, followed by "Andrea", written with Massimo Bubola, a song about a "different" boy that came from "Rimini," the album from the previous year. "Giugno '73" is a splendid autobiographical ballad about the separation from his first wife Puni, Cristiano De André's mother, opened by a fantastic bass introduction by Patrick Dijvas. "Un giudice" is festive, with Flavio Premoli dominating on the accordion (Flavio was one of those child prodigies who at 12 won every possible award,
says Fabrizio about him), then there are great versions of "La guerra di Piero" and especially of "Il pescatore", which is literally revitalized by PFM. Perhaps the only avoidable moment of the album (but no, in the end, that's okay too) is "Zirichiltaggia", a song in the Gallurese language, a quarrel between two shepherds over inheritance issues
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"Volta la carta" is from the previous year and is another anti-militarist piece, while the track that concludes the album deserves separate consideration. Summer 1975, Fabrizio and Puni (his first wife) have just purchased the Agnata estate, in Tempio Pausania. One evening they are both invited to a party in Santa Teresa di Gallura, in a villa of those bourgeois folks whom Fabrizio didn't particularly like, yet they attend anyway. The other guests expect Fabrizio to sing, but Fabrizio is not in the mood. He wants to talk, to compare his opinions with those of the other guests about what was happening in Italy at that time (Paul VI had brought up certain stories about satanism, rampant terrorism, etc.), but they don't care, they try to put the guitar back in his hands. Then he gets really pissed, gets terribly drunk, tells everyone to fuck off, and leaves alone, leaving his wife at the party. When the next morning his wife Puni finds him completely drunk in their estate's garage, Fabrizio had written the lyrics and music for "Amico fragile". Obviously, PFM also turns this song around, in the original the guitar escapades were barely hinted at and aborted immediately, here instead Francone Mussida's guitar is one of the strengths of the song, and indeed of the entire album.
From this album, his career underwent a total relaunch, although shortly thereafter Fabrizio would go through one of the toughest experiences of his life: the kidnapping.
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