Francesco Guccini
Guccini

"Guccini" (1983): a sparse, subtle album (30 minutes, 6 songs, 3 per side). Wedged between two "major" albums (the previous "Metropolis", 1981, which remains my favorite even if it isn’t objectively his best, and the following "Signora Bovary", 1987, which best defines Guccini’s jazz coordinates), it comes across as a minor work, certainly less "musical" than its predecessor (which was surprising in some ways) despite a handful of absolutely unassailable tracks (and much loved by fans). I enjoy reviewing it because it was the first Guccini album I ever listened to, many years ago (then I caught up with his work in chronological order—definitely a wiser choice), and despite everything, I still remember it fondly (my dad had two musical heroes, totally different: the Rolling Stones and Guccini, and the tapes spinning in my house in the ‘90s were my first source of knowledge).

"Guccini" opens with "Autogrill". A guy, a so-called music critic, nailed it once (maybe), saying that "Autogrill" is like "Find the River" by R.E.M.: you think only a handful know about it, then you discover it’s actually the most beloved song of the group (or artist) in question. "Autogrill" is wonderful, plain and simple: borrowing the words of Professor Paolo Jachia, "it shines with a vivid light and is in every possible way an epiphany, a brief appearance of magic in the elsewhere." In it, the thread of thought seems to overlap with a functional and analytical reading of reality, resulting in something extremely surreal. The girl behind the counter; blonde without quite looking the part (BEAUTIFUL); feeling like you’re in an old Fox movie; as often happens, the face of everything changed; I left her a nickel tip, took my change and left (last year I wrote a review about "Osteria delle Dame", a live Guccini recording rediscovered years later, from 1983, where during an evening at Osteria delle Dame in Bologna, he gives a funny digression before singing this song, discussing exactly how much a nickel tip is worth after factoring in the dollar's devaluation, the Italian exchange rate, and so on).

"[...] Even the underlying themes are the usual ones in his poetics—the melancholy of the present, the desire to escape from it, the randomness that then brings the final breaking of all attempts" (D. Salvatori, Il Dizionario della Canzone).

"Autogrill" has been sitting there, unflappable, for 42 years now, a kind of melancholy and dreamy friend who drops by from time to time, with that final sax outro by Claudio Pascoli (oh, the saxophone, what a heavenly instrument). In fact, it’s worth noting that the entire so-called "Guccini clan" is present on this album: Ares Tavolazzi, Ellade Bandini, Vince Tempera, Massimo Luca, and Juan Carlos Biondini, who might (maybe) be the main architect behind the later "shift" found in "Signora Bovary" (here too, listening to Osterie delle Dame is illuminating).

The two best tracks, after "Autogrill", are, in my opinion, the final two songs on side B: "Inutile" and "Gli amici". The first is a song that strikes me as more telepathic than anything else, in the sense that I myself lived through an experience, if not identical, almost exactly the same as the one told in the track, and there are lines that are imprinted on my skin like a tattoo ("And to think that I wanted to give you a slightly different birthday"; "Yet despite everything, we had a good time together, even if there was no future") and that rhyme nembi/cumulonembi, which only Guccini could pull off (or even think of). "Gli amici", instead, is a fun, cheerful song, one of those bursts of joy that used to hit Guccini every now and then: "my real friends, unfortunately or luckily, are not wanderers or 'abbailuna'", and on a very "sax-heavy" rhythm recounts that "if and when we die, but that's uncertain, we'll have a made-to-measure paradise", which consists of "the usual bar", but there "drinks are free and do no harm". Now, say what you will, but I love playful, irreverent Guccini (who doesn’t even spare the Almighty), especially when he uses these kind of songs as closers, because he's impeccable at blending the melancholy of the previous track with the irony of an almost perfect ending.

But that's a question of taste. And I can’t give it top marks because of three tracks which always struck me as quite minor (not bad, heavens no, Guccini has never made a bad song): so, despite the surprising electric guitar (which actually does a pretty good harmonic loop, I must say) in "Gulliver" (is he the dwarf or are the Lilliputians? "For ages and oceans you learn nothing") if I compare it with other songs from the previous album, take the magnificent "Antenòr", it seems less effective. Again, it's a matter of taste: I used to love "Argentina" in my youth, today less so, but that’s just how it goes, repeated listens over the years, and besides, what do I know, there are so few things these days I’m as crazy about now as I was crazy about twenty years ago—among them, "Autogrill".

Obviously, this is a personal review and a personal opinion. Not that it matters—Guccini means the world to me, I’ve been to 5 or 6 of his concerts and every time it was a show: between songs he would chat endlessly, jokes and anecdotes flowing. Now he’s a bit worn out, and he feels all his 85 years (who wouldn’t?), but he’s always been a lovely person, incredibly smart, super cultured (his lyrics are the best in Italian music, I have no doubt), and endlessly entertaining. Let’s raise a glass of red! Viva Guccini: il Maestrone.