Francesco Guccini
Stanze Di Vita Quotidiana

In the caustic Italian 70s, even a 'little song' could cause a scandal. The fault of an eager music critic, very young at the time, Bertoncelli Riccardo. He wrote a few lines about "Stanze di vita quotidiana," the brand-new album by Francesco Guccini, and chaos ensued. He was just doing his duty, writing what he found most right to write about that "infamous" album, which is to say, that he didn't like it.

Guccini, whom everyone points to as a likable 'bonaccione' from Emilia, is actually an unfair and resentful person. So much so that, after the alleged affront, he dealt Bertoncelli an insult as cowardly as it was exaggerated: "Tanto ci sarà sempre lo sapete, un musico fallito un pio un toerete un Bertoncelli un prete a sparare cazzate," a famous verse from the track "L'avvelenata," a song included in the album "Via Paolo Fabbri, 43," immediately following "Stanze di vita quotidiana."
Exaggeration beyond limits, because one must also know how to accept criticism (what should Renato Zero write then?), but above all, one must know how to accept them when it's clear that one is blatantly wrong. No one questions the artistic value of works like "Radici" (and anyone who does is in bad faith), or of historical albums (at least for Italian music) like "L'isola non trovata" or "Due anni dopo," but questioning works like "Stanze di vita quotidiana" is almost a duty rather than a whim.

It's not that he was ever a fine music composer (and for that matter, neither will Gaber, for example), but he knew how to write verses that few others would have been able to craft. Long tales like "La locomotiva" or pages of history like "Primavera di Praga" are not the kind of stuff you hear every day; in fact, it’s rare to hear such intelligence in a single song. "Stanze di vita quotidiana," however, is not "Radici;" it is much less; it is the finished grandiloquency.

It is the (vain, let's not deny it) effort of an artist who wants to rise to a local guru, who wants to amaze everyone with complex and articulated words and phrases, wanting to show us how good he is at using Dantean metrics, but who, in the end, has little or nothing to say. And clumsily tries to cover up this thematic aphasia with big words, metaphors, axioms, hendecasyllables, and other poetic tricks as old as the world that, honestly, no one felt the need for.
Take any song, say, "Canzone per Piero." The theme: the memory of youth and the current condition. A very high theme, which Claudio Lolli also sublimely addressed a few years earlier (remember "Michel"?). But when addressing certain themes you bring in Edgar Lee Masters or phrases like "Io troppo giovane sono invecchiato", you risk floundering in difficult terrain: Masters' quote makes no sense, apart from an exaggerated self-esteem typical of certain Guccinian tracks, while the song’s verse verges poorly on involuntary ridicule. Of course, the hendecasyllables are perfect, the reminiscent rhymes typical of Dante's "Commedia" are prominently highlighted, but still, one has to wonder, to what end?

The same goes for at least three other tracks, "Canzone delle ragazze che se ne vanno" is practically, more or less, the same concoction. And even the music, more or less, is identical to the previous song. A couple of words also for "Canzone della vita quotidiana" in which Guccini sketches the useless efforts that man makes to live serenely while destiny (fate, the Almighty, you choose who) enjoys changing (for the worse) our existence. Typical leftist anxiety that subtly snaked among the so-called committed songwriters of the mid-1970s. The description is merciless but does not correspond to reality, unless one wants to make a bundle of everything, and here too, as if to change, the metaphors and free rhymes are wasted and abundant.
It doesn't get any better with "Canzone della triste rinuncia." What it's about the title explains very well, but the text, besides being pretentious, is cryptic and controversial. You could highlight a thousand meanings, just as one could claim that in the song, there are very few meanings. And this time, the music is not only anonymous and faded; it is also depressing, monotonous, and as predictable as a traffic light at a road intersection.

Of course, not everything is to be thrown away. Let's say that there's a need to save the track that opens the album and the one that closes it (emblematic as an observation: the Latins said that virtue lies in the middle, here instead it is precisely the so-called 'middle' that does not work). "Canzone delle osterie fuori porta" has a certain efficacy, especially literary, and the text is less cryptic and pretentious. Very beautiful some verses, which have rightfully entered the history of Italian songwriting music, such as "Ma non ho scuse da portare, non dico più d'esser poeta, non ho utopie da realizzare, stare a letto il giorno dopo è forse l'unica mia meta". By all means, heaven forbid one be optimistic, but at least it goes straight to the heart of the matter without too much circumlocution.
Beautiful and underrated (perhaps even by Guccini himself) is "Canzone delle situazioni differenti," a long metaphor of the ills that plague man. There's a bit of everything inside, quotations, and counter-quotations, yet this time, the lightness of touch wins. It is still a gloomy and very melancholic track: "Dicesti qualche cosa sorridendo: risposi, credo, anch'io qualche banalità scoprendo il fascino di un dialogo fra i sordi", up to the definitive hope, shouted as if mandatory: "O sera scendi presto! O mondo nuovo, arriva! Rivoluzione, cambia qualche cosa!". Two well-made tracks, and it almost pains for the lost opportunities.

If it had been less grandiloquent, less pretentious, a little more musically lively, less depressing, it could have been an excellent example of Italian songwriting. As it stands, apart from two exceptions (splendid, anyway), it’s more like a non-violent instigation towards the brink of depression. And in any case, over time, in 2000 to be precise, Guccini himself would repudiate the album: "Lo incisi in situazioni psicologiche difficili. Avevo un produttore, Pier Farri che mi sballottava da Roma a Milano senza il minimo motivo. Fu terribile". His words.