•
Rating: I searched the site for reviews on Fabrizio De André and couldn't find any. Perhaps I did the search wrong, just in case, I'll write one on the concept "Storia di un impiegato", year 1973.
It is an album deeply influenced by the political and cultural climate of the '70s: it tells the story of an office worker living a serene family life. Then, the memory of the French '68 triggers within him a process of political maturation that leads him to renounce all bourgeois values he believed in during his first thirty years. The awareness is definitive but also painful: his rebellion is "anticipated" by the system, of which he is a functional element, like everyone else, like "the lifelong partners in power" targeted by his protest.
Disillusioned, he becomes a "bomber", ends up in jail, but conscious that good power is nothing but a "fool's utopia" (literal).
Recorded with the collaboration of a young Nicola Piovani, it is an acidic album, you can feel the dark atmosphere that characterized the Seventies, the tones are quite different from the subdued utopias of the recently previous "Buona Novella", still influenced by the hopes that spread in the late Sixties.
The music ranges from folk ballads ("Canzone del Maggio", "Il ballo mascherato", "Il bombarolo") to the almost progressive "Ora di libertà", a supreme celebration of De André's anarchism. The compositional pinnacle of the work is the piano confession "Verranno a chiederti del nostro amore", in which the anarchist, now in prison, stages a dialogue with his wife and foresees for her a return to a bourgeois life, the same one he rejected.
An indispensable album: times have changed, but some reflections, properly updated and contextualized, cannot leave one indifferent.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Introduzione (01:42)
Lottavano così come si gioca
i cuccioli del maggio era normale
loro avevano il tempo anche per la galera
ad aspettarli fuori rimaneva
la stessa rabbia la stessa primavera...
Loading comments slowly
Other reviews
By francescogenovese
Story of an Employee is perhaps the most beautiful album by De André... a De André who speaks anarchistically, talks politically.
The employee would like to change, to be like them... the kids from the student protests, but he can't because his life is now 'marked.'
By enbar77
De André attacks with quick thrusts and with skilled mono-tone basses that which the law would like to conceal or highlight the exceptional difference between judge and condemned.
An album to be listened to with extreme attention, in even religious silence, if possible, both to musically gather the testimony of those years, and to understand the power of the lyrics.
By majortom79
"He has a story and truly bites," and in this case, the story bites fiercely and sparks intense debates.
It is not an exhortation to violence, nor a blessing of terrorism, but the exact opposite—a cold and very harsh analysis of the social and psychological implications behind such actions.
By Knopfler76
Yesterday's newspaper reports him dead, rusted. The gravediggers often collect them, among the people who let themselves be rained on.
It’s a mirror of a country that believed it was something it never became, of music that was culture even before it was made.
By POLO
De André doesn't sing but humbly and self-effacingly serves the word.
Fabrizzzioneeeee, on the other hand, sings with his gum raised to the left because who knows, maybe it's chic, but who cares really.
