Lucio Battisti
Una giornata uggiosa

In 1995, Tullio Lauro, a journalist, somehow came into possession of some demos from 1979, in which you can listen to Battisti, just voice and guitar, trying to figure out the right arrangement for some songs that would later form the backbone of what would be the last album signed by Mogol and Battisti: "Una giornata uggiosa." Some things are beautiful: for example, Battisti had found a wonderful melody for "Arrivederci a questa sera" (cutting out two rather embarrassing Mogol verses, which talk about Chinese restaurants and miao miao), here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvM73dTxN3g&list=RDmvM73dTxN3g&start_radio=1. On YouTube, you can find the entire album in demo version.

But there is a small (well, not so small) problem: almost all the demo versions are better than the ones that were officially released and that we all know (with the exception of "Con il nastro rosa", which stands on its own). In fact, this last work by the Mogol-Battisti duo, I hate to say it, isn’t really that great; of course, you never throw away anything by Battisti, but here, maybe there’s actually something that could be tossed. By then, the two would only speak once a year, Battisti would send the music, Mogol (who was elsewhere) would write the lyrics. In a beautiful interview on Swiss Radio in 1979, Battisti already hinted that the era of pop songs, and thus his partnership with Mogol, was basically over and his objectives were elsewhere (here is the first of three parts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9AM5zN_P7g). In 1980, after the release of this very album, the two broke up (there would be many reasons, and everyone has their own version) and maybe it was for the best, considering that Mogol, apart from a couple of cases, here wrote some of the dumbest lyrics of his collaboration with Battisti. In my opinion, he simply didn’t feel like it anymore.

What’s more, the album, recorded in London, suffers from the usual excesses courtesy of Geoff Westley, who stuffs horns and the like at every opportunity, making some tracks really heavy. The exception, of course, is the song that closes the album, "Con il nastro rosa." The long final solo by Phil Palmer (shamefully cut in the single version, because even then radio stations were always in a hurry) puts the seal on a most delicate and sweet song that would enshrine expressions that are now common in everyday language, including "lo scopriremo solo vivendo" ("we’ll only find out by living") which superseded the archaic "chi vivrà vedrà" ("who lives, will see"). The title track foreshadows and explains a lot: strangely nervous and restless, opening with a torrent of rain, packed with synthetic sounds, it signals that Mogol too was now tired of his own life and dreamed of escaping (which, in fact, he later did) from the "Brianza velenosa" ("poisonous Brianza").

"[,,,] Una giornata uggiosa seemed to metaphorically project Battisti beyond a wall on the other side of which everything existed except what he had been up until that moment: despite the eco-friendly overtones so dear to Mogol, that’s exactly how things were [...] But it wasn’t just a literary matter: the truth was that Battisti had actually begun a genuine process of destroying himself and everything that represented his popularity, his image, and his past" (Dario Salvatori)

So it’s no surprise that at the end of the year, this album ended up being "only" the fifth best-selling album in Italy, far from the top spots Battisti was used to (two years earlier, the much more successful "Una donna per amico" shattered every sales record, selling over a million copies). Should we also save "Arrivederci a questa sera"? Fine, but perhaps "Orgoglio e dignità" is even better. Everything else, honestly, doesn’t quite live up to the legend at hand. The diptych "Questo amore" and "Perché non sei una mela" comes off as a kind of experimental outing, a bit offbeat, at times fascinating, at times bewildering ("Perché non sei una mela" at one point takes a turn with sounds so pompous they almost drown out Battisti’s voice: Westley in kamikaze mode), just as the most useless and stupid song by the Mogol-Battisti duo, "Una vita viva" (sleeping on the moss; playing as a full-back; running from a jerk; that everyman who is your dad: let’s just not).

Things like "Amore mio di provincia" wouldn’t even be that bad, but, I insist, in the demo version they sounded far better; after all, did an ironic song like this really need such a grand arrangement?

There’s also a song, "Il paradiso è qui", that was left out. The reasoning at the time was that Battisti considered the album already too full, and an extra track would, in his view, lower its musical quality. The song, which talks about emigration (Italian emigration, to be clear), was initially thought up for Bruno Lauzi, who did not want to record it (reasons unknown). The whole thing is quite strange: after 1973 and after the trip to South America that would lead to "Anima Latina," Mogol and Battisti’s relationship suddenly cooled, and Battisti, previously prolific in writing songs for others between the late ’60s and early ’70s, decided not to write anything else for other groups or singers. So the idea of a song written at the end of the ’70s for a third party, Lauzi in this case, is unusual. Still, to be honest, this song isn’t much either, and musically it comes off as confused: perhaps, beyond the technical excuse, Battisti just didn’t like it, and you can listen to it here if you like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWGaibMkfXY&list=RDsWGaibMkfXY&start_radio=1.

Battisti wanted to hide himself, and to destroy his own myth, to the point of not even appearing on the album cover (it would be the first of many times: think of the famous white albums), so the overpass on Via Piranesi, on Milan’s ring road, covered the entire, dreary cover, shot by Ilvio Gallo who waited a long time for the sky to become just the right kind of "uggioso." Battisti had closed a cycle, unfortunately not with his best work (net of some gems included here), but he made one last, fleeting, TV appearance (apparently due to a lost bet): on May 4, 1980, he appeared—dressed questionably—on Swiss German TV and lip-synched "Amore mio di provincia": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL7wat0H1P0&list=RDgL7wat0H1P0&start_radio=1.