Giorgio Gaber
Io se fossi Dio

Fifteen years ago, almost half my life. Tucked into a studio tangled among the stony labyrinths of Via della Madonna, between the paradoxically always uphill slippery steps and the scent of parsley from window sills, I'm listening to the first Gaber, the ironic, amused, and relaxed one of "Cerutti" or "Torpedo blu." Marpione looks at me surprised and warns me. "If you expect him to pick you up tonight, it means you don't know him well." Pause. Wonder mixed with reflection. He turns his back to me, towards a worm-eaten shelf containing a bit of casual cultural knick-knacks, literary and musical. From the incomprehensible poems of Pietro Zorutti to the yellowed comics of Capitan Miki, through a BASF cassette tape of the Inti-Illimani concert, first half of the '80s, stealthily recorded in good faith with a Geloso recorder in a somewhat acrobatic position on the creaky branches of an olive tree not far from the makeshift stage. There were also some rare LPs of De André and De Gregori. He bends on his aching knees, barely concealing a necessary curse, and listing the narrow spines like so many poplars of the old 33s, he discovers a completely black cover, as if hastily made. "This is Gaber. I've never heard him so angry. Try it and tell me if it's the same."

Index and middle fingers saturated repeatedly caress those same bass strings. A few tones will shift upwards. For a quarter of an hour. It's 1980 and the good Giorgione is angry. In a couple of months, Italy will lose over 160 innocents between Ustica and Bologna, and for Gaber, it's time to turn a page by staging the Last Judgment. His own. He takes on the guise of God and prefaces a fateful trial. The lightning bolts to hurl are already ready in the quiver and there's nothing left but to spew them out. God according to Gaber is insecure, distracted, imprecise. He demands proof of how to truly be everywhere, to follow everything and scrutinize every man, every action. He admits having limits as a man but reserves the right to remind them as God. Nobody is perfect, not even Him. Too much reasoning, too many interpretations that often do not solve problems on Earth. He attacks Him without fear, without sensing any malicious smell, advising Him with iron presumption and glacial firmness. He never goes back, has no regrets even if he realizes he is an integral part of the system he dislikes. He wants to feel superior, even for a bit, but violently, accusing Him of forgiving too much if not everything. His God is unyielding, devoid of ultimatums, gentle with the good, assuming they exist, and uncompromising with the rest, a God who accuses by launching attacks on hypocrisy, opportunism, deceit, and those dark souls pretending to be pure, targeting every category.

He doesn't spare journalists, accusing them of earning their "honest" pay by erasing every trace of morality. With wicked opportunism, what dispenses pity becomes news, even in appalling conditions, from the carabinieri killed by terrorists and the suffering mothers before the cameras, to telegrams of circumstance that the powerful of the moment send on occasions of mourning, with deeply false phrases. And there's no space for real news. And the militants who even at that time could switch sides. Ready to follow the more loaded cart. Omnipresent in protesting enduring police charges or clashing with them descending to the level of criminals. At the time, terrorism and the political atmosphere claimed various victims and when a policeman left his skin on the pavement yesterday's hate turned to pity. And maybe it still happens today. And he also attacks policemen who often imprisoned or killed innocent people. And he wasn't entirely wrong. Indeed.

He doesn't spare the brigatisti, even though there's little to spare, accusing them of spreading panic without even having a precise idea. People maimed or killed without reason or to satisfy those terrible vanities they stubbornly revel in. Here his God becomes blasphemous, where by stating they have gone mad, he would almost justify their basic ideas only to turn away in face of the degenerations achieved by criminal actions. Seemingly ambiguous but it's not, because he is angered by a state always prompt to instrumentalize his positions. There's also room for the political currents Gaber navigated. He attacks the "companions," from Communists who were losing the image and strong vigor that defined them. He strikes the radicals who tried to imitate them with progressive tendencies, boasting meaningless referendums to easily pass to "opposing" factions. Not to mention the unction of the Christian Democrats, and the socialists where Gaber becomes a sad prophet of one of the most abject pages of Italian politics. And it's with Aldo Moro, recently murdered, that he really gets angry. With fierce courage. Etched in vinyl.

That God becomes merciless but rudely just, avoiding any classification, destroying the recurring post-mortem hypocrisies that still taint the memories of everyone. When one is alive, he is an asshole but when he dies "...he was always a good guy." His God doesn't change his judgment, indeed, he criticizes when alive and criticizes when dead. And if Moro was a run-of-the-mill politician while alive, to Gaber he is also while dead, despite his party colleagues considering him much as a dangerous element only to tear their eyes searching for paper tears behind the still warm coffin. And when a run-of-the-mill politician is shot by a brigatista, he does NOT become the only statesman. Nor a martyr. That's enough now. The strings are sweaty and the diaphragm relaxes. A breathless sigh extinguishes the last scream of anger, dissolves the last roar. A retreat in the calm countryside serves to soothe nerves tense for too long.

The "half record," actually etched on one side only, was of course buried by censorship for obvious reasons. "Carosello" declined any possible publication due to potential legal ramifications, forcing Gaber to release it, very discreetly, on a little-known label, F1-Team. Today, it appears on "Anni affollati" and, honestly, it's still terrifying.