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Rating: Interviewed, in a stimulating one-on-one conversation, by a journalist from the cultural pages of the newspaper 'La Repubblica', Francesco De Gregori talks about his life and career, expanding into various fields (history, art, literature, politics, and more), showing a complex character, like few we have had in Italy in the music world (the great Guccini and De André, for example).
This is a great book, one that won't fail to keep you glued to its pages, such is the involvement in the exchange of topics between two deep minds.
Contents preview:
Chapter I, 'Warm morning': birth in Rome in 1951, the family's move to Pescara, the stay there from 1952 to 1959, the return to Rome, the relationship with parents and brother, his character, and the first contact with History;
Chapter II, 'Gesti d’artista': the nature of an artist's man, his relationship with the art market, the relationship between enjoyment and intellectual understanding of a work, with the evolution of the two dimensions until today's art, and what interests De Gregori when coming into contact with a work of art;
Chapter III, 'Mio padre, una storia comune': how the music world worked at the time of his debut and today, the influences of some singer-songwriters on his early writing attempts, and Fabrizio De André's influence on his first recorded songs, what he initially found in Bob Dylan's songs, the American culture he had known, and his brother's role in introducing him to music and leading him to perform at the 'Folkstudio';
Chapter IV, 'Dalla parte dell’America': the dominant role of American culture in post-war Italy and even after the student protests of 1968 with the Counterculture, the exchanges between America and Europe that contributed to the growth of American culture, and De Gregori's exposure as a child, like his whole generation, to that culture;
Chapter V, 'I sogni camminano ancora': how the figure of the singer is viewed in Italy and abroad, the role of song in society, the relationship between science and art, and De Gregori's relationship with Italian history;
Chapter VI, 'Il tempo della sinistra': the role of the left in Italian society in the '60s and '70s, the failure of the extra-parliamentary left, meetings with Communist Party leader Enrico Berlinguer, his past and present opinion on Socialist leader Bettino Craxi, and the 'political trials' by some militant groups at his concerts between 1976 and 1977;
Chapter VII, 'Vita dal vivo': the human and artistic relationship with Fabrizio De André during the creation of an album and a 'reconciliation' a few years later, the relationship with concerts, and the value and nature of a song;
Chapter VIII, 'Nella città dei fiori': the conflicted relationship with the Sanremo Festival, the impact of Luigi Tenco's suicide on the festival's dynamics, a turning point in its history before and after, and the dignity of the singer's profession;
Chapter IX, 'Questioni di stili': what style is, the lesser intensity of pain and suffering of an artist compared to common people, and the value of simplicity in writing, not only songs, for De Gregori;
Chapter X, '900 fosforo e fantasia': the 1900s started as a century of hope in progress and marked by tragic events, his choice as a young man to distance himself from the dominant culture's total condemnation of Fascism and understand the reasons it arose, and writing songs about events of this century;
Chapter XI, 'Le persone troppo gentili non sopravvivono in questa vita': the relationship with cinema as a spectator and his tastes, not being an intellectual and why, what an artist is and what an intellectual is, on the death of art, and a meeting with director Federico Fellini for an audition;
Chapter XII 'Prima del calcio di rigore': not defining himself as an avant-garde artist among those born in his generation, the meeting and memories with singer-songwriter Piero Ciampi, Lucio Battisti as an absolute and experimental figure, on Lucio Dalla, Bob Dylan as a singer (in his generation) of American society, the inability to sing about current events tied to politics compared to Dylan, and the absence of any moralistic content in a work of art;
Chapter XIII, 'Passo d’uomo': the theme of the 'decadence' of our times and the role of artists in interpreting it, the anthropological transformations due to technology and consumption, how he experiences them, and his inability to have words to interpret the complex and irreversible transformations of the world and offer messages for them;
Chapter XIV, 'Il tempo non è passato invano': how the conversations between the interviewer and the artist took place, the figure of an uncle who died as a partisan in the Porzûs massacre carried out by communist partisans, and the communist ideological dominance in discussing the reasons and responsibilities of the Resistance.
Enjoy the reading.
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