Francesco De Gregori
Titanic

THE REVIEW

"Captain, I did not want to tell you, but there is a white woman in the middle of the sea... so enormous, fresh and dark, that one never tires of looking at her..." Nature certainly does not play a favorable role to make the maiden voyage of this sensational ship positive, as large and modern as ever "this ship goes two thousand knots, among the solitary ice, and has a million-horsepower engine that instead of hooves has wings."

"The ship is lightning, torpedo, fuse, dazzling beauty, phosphorus and fantasy; molecules of steel, pistons, horses, rage, and rapid war and poetry... in this electric and fast night, in this cross of the twentieth century, the future is a lit cannonball, and we are almost catching up with it..." De Gregori dons the guise of a futurist poet and, word after word, impression after impression, he conveys with extraordinary poetry the enthusiasm surrounding this marvel of modern times. But how will the artist stand before this forced progress? The answer comes decisively: "But the captain says to the ship's cabin boy, Mr. cabin boy, I see nothing... there's just a bit of fog, heralding the sun, let's move forward calmly..." and a musical coda alludes to the tragedy we all know all too well.

According to the Roman artist, it is not the time to let ourselves be carried away by the waves of enthusiasm towards such a superficial progress: he had indeed warned us of the reality of things by placing characters whose existence we too often forget on the famous ship. Poor people who suffer, exploited "but mother, they steal my life from me, when they make me work; for a few dollars at the boilers, below sea level" uneducated people "but mother, to tell you the truth, I don’t know what Italian is, and even if I travel the world, I don’t know geography" people seeking redemption and well-being by emigrating to America, people who feed on dreams and illusions, people whose departure conceals immense pain "son, with what eyes, with what eyes should I see you, with the pants worn at the back and these brand-new shoes" "son who had everything, and lacked nothing, you are going to mix your face with the face of other people, and you will probably marry in an American brothel, you will have children and a strange woman, and who do not speak Italian."

In the title track, we encounter the comparison between different types of individuals: "First class costs a thousand lire, second a hundred, third pain and fright and the smell of sweat from the hatchway and the smell of dead sea", those who go to America to achieve success and well-being "we first-class girls who go to America to get married" and those who seek a means to survive "we are third-class boys who go to America to avoid dying" for whom the ship is, compared to the reality they are accustomed to, a paradise "But who said that traveling in third class is bad? This bunk looks like a double bed, we are better off here than in a hospital. We have always been called peasants, but they treat us like gentlemen: when it rains we can stay inside but in good weather, we dine outside".

It's better to look around, in short, before chasing unreachable cannonballs.

But Titanic is not just this: it is the splendid love song "Belli capelli" and the equally beautiful "Caterina," an ode to the Tuscan singer Caterina Bueno, who passed away in 2007.

The other tracks are perhaps less incisive, despite the charm of the intense anti-militarist piano ballad "San Lorenzo" and the famous "La Leva Calcistica della classe '68," which makes generations of young boys dream. Not to be dismissed are even the two livelier tracks: "Rollo & His Jets" and  "Centocinquanta stelle".

I bid you goodbye and strongly recommend this album, not by chance among the most appreciated in the discography of De Gregori as well as in all our singer-songwriter tradition.