Fabrizio De André
Una storia sbagliata / Titti

Who knows what flashed through Fabrizio De André's mind when in 1980, for the first and only time in his career, he was offered (as he liked to call it) "a commissioned song", nientepopodimenoché by mamma RAI.

 It was certainly contrary to his character, as his anarchic nature as a modern free thinker would not have allowed him to sit at a table with the bigwigs of Viale Mazzini. But the crucial point of the meeting was that the work would be used as the theme for documentaries about two crime stories, one of which involved one of the most illustrious intellectuals of the 20th century, Pier Paolo Pasolini.

 Like many of his generation, whom Pasolini inspired with a vision of a universal and secular world, De André too felt resentment and aversion when, on that misfortunate November night, in the core of the dramatic decade that had just ended, the assassination of the director and writer from Bologna occurred miserably, thus, taken by a sense of recognition towards him, he decided to pay him homage with this new project titled “Una storia sbagliata," accepting RAI's proposal.

 Fresh from the triumphant tour with P.F.M., which was followed in August by a traumatic kidnapping in Sardinia that lasted four months, De André theoretically had all the requirements to afford a considered break, but without stopping, he had already begun work on that new album later renamed “L’indiano”, with the precious complicity of his friend Massimo Bubola, already successfully tested in the previous “Rimini”, so this tempting and respectable sack of flour, landed from the large Roman building of State TV, was grabbed on the fly by the two friends, kneaded properly, and baked in the fall on a sumptuous 45-rpm platter, the last ever of his discography.

 Let's start this time “in direzione ostinata e contraria”, as Faber would prefer, from side B, “Titti”, one of the lightest and most carefree pieces not exactly peculiar to the Genoese singer-songwriter's discography, which strongly recalls that more laid-back style characteristic of some songs from “L’indiano”, mentioned earlier.

Loosely inspired by the novel “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands” by Jorge Amado, it narrates the inner conflict of the young widow Titti, still in love with her late husband, who tragically expired due to the vices and libertinage of his nature, in contrast with the new partner, a calm and caring figure but lacking in stimulus and nerves: “Titti had two loves, one from the sky, one from the earth, of opposite signs, one of peace, one of war.”

 Let's flip the record on the turntable to shed light on the more celebrated “Una storia sbagliata”. A brilliant guitar and a delicate harmonica open the dance of this splendid triple meter ballad, then settling into a rhythm masterfully composed of bass, drums, and piano. Fabrizio captivates us, performing the song excellently and with a tone consistently coordinated across all the words that flow quickly and confidently, highlighting the waste of atrocities and biases spewed over the years by the press, media, and the so-called “ordinary people”, blatantly ready to judge harshly like learned and skilled bourgeois inquisitors, that scandalous “different story”, in contrast with a more aware minority of “special people”, healthy carriers of awareness of the “common story” which takes shape with these lives, gently escaping the sighs of the “wind that molded them along the edges” and slipping away from a clumsy spread of mediocre bigotry.

 The topics seem to revolve exclusively around the Pasolini case, but are skillfully mixed with the protagonist of the other episode of the "RAI special," namely Wilma Montesi, who was murdered in Torvaianica on “a beach at the foot of the bed” in 1953 and victim of a story “quite well covered up” due to the involvement of family members of well-known politicians of the era in investigations. The ability to unite the tragedies, that of a giant of Italian culture and a young twenty-year-old of humble origins, is at the base of De André's genius, who in his distinct realism and by grabbing again, with more ease, that theme already heard in “Tutti morimmo a stento” about equality in death, certainly does not do justice to the two, but somehow tries to avoid another blow to the jugular, cast by a filthy clump of hypocritical moralists and reactionaries, asking them, "What else do you need from these lives?".

Unfortunately, the choice (debatable or not) not to include the songs in "L'indiano" will weigh heavily on them, making their listening possible only to vinyl buyers or to random radio broadcasts, as their publication in an official collection of Fabrizio De André will only occur on compact disc 25 years later.

Finally “a just story”.