Roberto Vecchioni
Elisir

Now, Vecchioni has always fascinated me more for his scholarly (and how could it be otherwise) use of words than for the musical aspect, but this happens with pretty much all the "intellectual" songwriters of the Peninsula. There was a time when I listened to him a lot, and a time when I drifted away: it happens, great loves come and go. Then, he’s someone who took a beautiful Don MacLean song, "Vincent," which, however, had a rather awkward original lyric, and gave it new life: just to say, he’s a true artist. The album "Elisir," dated 1976, has always fascinated me, because it’s the pre-Samarcanda record, that is, before the popular success that until then had eluded him (despite a fervid activity as a lyricist, and despite having already notched up two hits that made Nuovi Angeli into chart stars: "Donna Felicità" and "Singapore"). I like it because musically too it’s a well-made album, with prog undertones, a mature folk feel, and some beautiful arrangement ideas (the drumming in "Un uomo navigato").

But I’m not here to talk about this album as a whole, but about a book, which brings us back to the record. In 2022, during a Malpensa-Catania trip, I stumble upon a bookstore at the Varese airport that has on display, for 18 euros, a book with a title as terse as can be: "Canzoni." I’m intrigued. It’s signed by Roberto Vecchioni (who provides a hefty, almost 40-page preface: a compendium of Italian songwriting, from Mogol to Fossati, from Guccini to De Gregori) and Massimo Germini and Paolo Jachia, who are the book's real authors (361 pages, published by Bompiani). The former describes himself as a "guitarist, admirer of Italian singer-songwriter music" (he’s played with half the Italian music scene); the latter is a professor of semiotics and language theory at the University of Pavia. These two heroes have selected some of Vecchioni’s songs (about thirty) and analyzed them word by word, metaphor by metaphor, synesthesia by synesthesia (there are those too). Three of these 30 are songs included in the album reviewed here. I share extensive excerpts from them, hoping they may interest, or intrigue, someone.

A.R.

[...] Arthur Rimbaud, born in 1854 and died in 1891, is above all, we can say, along with Vecchioni, the builder and founder of a new poetry and a new way of writing: from him specifically, in the late nineteenth century, French Symbolism emerged. But many later artists took lessons from him, for example Thomas Eliot, author of The Waste Land from 1920, and the French chansonniers who, in the late twentieth century, along with Bob Dylan, are sort of the fathers of all the great Italian singer-songwriters (and Roberto indeed moves in the wake of these great traditions). Rimbaud was not only a great poet but also a politically angry citizen [...] In him, the battle against the bourgeois hypocrisy of his time is constant, and this is the meaning of a central line in Vecchioni’s song: "E sua madre nel fienile, nel ricordo/vecchia scassata borghesia," where the distance and polemic against his family and France typical of Rimbaud is quite clear [...] Rimbaud senses his impending death and does not want to die in Africa, he wants to die at home, and perhaps for the first time, he feels a deep nostalgia. Vecchioni thus takes into account the ending of Rimbaud's poem Le Bateau Ivre, where, after having traveled all over the world, the boat becomes (and wants to become, according to Rimbaud) a paper boat in the puddle in front of home. [...] However, this song hides other significant references, clues that help construct a suggestive and ultimately precise portrait. For example: "E una negra grande come un ospedale" alludes to a Black woman whom Rimbaud really met, in 1884, in Africa, and who may have cared for him when he was ill. Then Vecchioni also considered lines by the Argentine resistance poet Juan Gelman ("Portoghesi, inglesi e tanti altri uccelli da rapina/scelse per compagnia") and the film Una stagione all’inferno by Nelo Risi from 1971, dedicated precisely to the great French poet (the barn "comes" from the memory of a scene in the film) [...] Let us clarify and emphasize that this song unfolds on two planes. The first, as already stated and now clarified, focuses in a summarized yet striking way on Rimbaud's life [...] The second pushes instead toward a poetic identification, and is characterized by a strong subjective echo that the tale of Rimbaud’s life and art arouses in Vecchioni. Thus, if the verses speak of Rimbaud [...], the refrains are instead Rimbaud (and in a way Vecchioni himself) speaking in the first person: and it is here, in the worship of poetry as a search for existential truths, that the strongest bond lies between Rimbaud and Vecchioni's way of thinking about poetry (and song!). [...] In the lines "già grande si buttava via/E sua madre nel fienile, nel ricordo/vecchia scassata borghesia" Vecchioni actually establishes an almost logical connection between two facts that apparently have no link, and yet are connected psychologically. The pathology is not homosexuality (Rimbaud was probably bisexual, like Verlaine), but the destructive and self-destructive behavior that arises from an unresolved childhood fixation: precisely a "negative mother" ("scassata") who continues to live in Rimbaud’s memory and in his "not-adult" life. [...] Thus, if Alessandro (in the song Alessandro e il mare) plays with his shadow until he dies from it, imprisoned by the memory of his father and his Oedipal prohibitions, Rimbaud plays with words until he destroys himself ("ribaltare le parole, invertire il senso fino allo sputo") and has no pity or attention for those close to him, nor for himself, [...] So we can better specify that the overall development of the song is the film of a slow and drawn-out suicide: the first frame is the squalor of a room in Soho and the "dislove" of Rimbaud and Verlaine, and then there is Rimbaud’s desperate and lonely life with arms and slave traders, but this entire journey, this entire falling, is rooted in what happened "before the beginning," namely, at the start of Rimbaud's life, in his childhood, marked by a mother and a bourgeoisie that are "old and broken" [...] To confirm these thoughts, let’s turn to the second refrain. Here Vecchioni talks about the poet’s journey toward Marseille and an unlikely salvation (another real historical fact, the trip indeed took place in 1891 with the poet already ill and presumably nearly dying), but it is also imagined that Rimbaud himself is speaking in the first person, drawing a dramatic assessment of his life, of his existential failure: "Ho visto tutto e cosa so?/Ho rinunciato, ho detto No/ricordo a malapena quale nome ho." Here, aside from the fact that in these lines one may sense an echo of Il fu Mattia Pascal or Uno nessuno centomila by Luigi Pirandello, or a reference to the protagonist of Kafka’s novel The Castle, where the protagonist becomes only K. [...], what matters is the deeper psychological dimension conveyed by the tone and meaning of these words, and here we return to the negative image of the mother and childhood: it is from here, from this negative, historically attested, relationship with his parents—one prematurely lost, the other petty, cold, and mean—that a progressive process of annihilation, self-annihilation, begins in Arthur, until he has no name, until he is nothing [...] Vecchioni’s song presents a double judgment on Rimbaud: one—agreeing—on the extraordinary greatness of the poet Rimbaud [...], the other—with some reservations—on the despair of his existential and human journey. Behind this song, the autobiographical side of Vecchioni stands strong, his existential labor as a man and as an artist, and his, here implicitly, proposing a different way of living and making art, a way that we find at the core of his songs if not from the '70s, then certainly since the mid-'80s. Regarding the arrangement (once again by Mauro Paoluzzi) and the musical side, the piece opens with a beautiful one-minute introduction featuring a string quartet, realized by Lucio Fabbri overdubbing the individual instruments, setting up the entrance of two acoustic guitars. At this point the band with its traditional instruments [...] accompanies Vecchioni throughout the song, with the addition of a violin in a brief instrumental transition after the first refrain. [...] The ending features a minute-long instrumental section with the full band and the violin playing the poignant melody to signify the existential pain of "Arthur Rimbaud": note that only in the conclusion is his name finally and explicitly mentioned.

VELASQUEZ

"Velasquez" is a song of struggle, of battle, but it also shows the split between the courage to fight for an idea and the fear of fighting for an idea. Velásquez is the indomitable sailor who travels the world to save peoples and is never afraid, whereas the man who fights with him (and it’s he who sings) has many fears and would often run away from battle: "Fino a quando inventeremo/un nido di rose ai piedi dell’arcobaleno/e tante stelle, tante nelle notti chiare/per questo mondo, questo mondo da cambiare?" [...] Vecchioni declares: we tried many different arrangements but the best is the first one, taken from Neil Young’s Cortez the Killer [...] After the last refrain the author gives us a two-minute electric guitar solo for a total of seven minutes and forty seconds, unthinkable today, and which makes the song memorable and evocative [...] To understand this song, one must recall the overall meaning of Elisir from 1976, the album that contains it. According to Vecchioni, the common thread of the whole record is the theme of the journey. So Velásquez could somewhat resemble Dante’s Ulysses [...] Velásquez however is not just a song of political love and a search for truth, but it is also a strongly dramatic song because the protagonist understands that in pursuing this idea of truth and freedom he will encounter many obstacles in his journey, but those are not only outside him but also within him, which are earthly fragility, his inability to always be a perfect hero [...] Hence, this song, through a not overly painted and slightly stylized atmosphere (the storm, Cape Horn, the topos of journey and return, Velásquez himself, about whom we never really learn much), instead tries to describe Vecchioni’s inner turmoil, torn between being an ordinary man and his role as artist and intellectual engaged in the struggles of the '70s. [...] Thus, the song presents not a mythical hero, but a man who is able, albeit laboriously and with turmoil, to choose, to decide, to fight or at least to maintain a difficult coherence ("Ahi, Velásquez, [...] con te non si torna una volta sola indietro"), always desperately searching for truth, for authenticity ("Ahi Velásquez, com'è duro questo amore/mi pesa la notte e prima di ricominciare/e tante veglie, come soglie di un mistero/per arrivare sempre più vicino al vero") [...] With all his contradictions, but also with his courage and determination. "Ahi, Velásquez, certe sere quanta voglia/fermare la vela e ritornare da mia moglie/e tu mi dici: 'Fatti scrivere', è normale/per te bisogna sempre scrivere e lottare."

CANZONE PER FRANCESCO

Vecchioni states: "This song is a portrait of Francesco Guccini, but it is also a snapshot of a particular historical and artistic era, the passage from the singer-songwriters of the '60s (Tenco, Paoli, Endrigo...) to the 'second wave,' to the singer-songwriters of the '70s. But, to really understand all this, we must consider how this 'second wave' was physically born and the great myth behind it, that of the symposium. I spent the '70s with Guccini, Dalla, Lolli, and Branduardi. We were together because a new poetics was taking shape, we talked about what we wanted to say in art but also about life and daily things. Along with our songs, we sang popular and Neapolitan songs but also Celentano and Modugno. The meetings were very 'wine-filled,' almost unconsciously reviving the Greek symposiums. [...] I became friends with Francesco at the Club Tenco. In those days in the mid-'70s he was sad for several reasons: a dear Basque friend of his had died and he was going through a hard professional time after an article by Bertoncelli. The song is an attempt to console him for all his misfortunes [...] And, indeed, the 'Bertoncellian' idea is found in the song in the words: "E il giornalista in fondo è un modo di campare" and, in contrast, in the song Vecchioni says "coi ragazzi c’era un fatto personale,/non han capito chi ci marcia su e chi vale" (and in fact, just for the record, then as now, we can say that there are those who do journalism not to tell the truth, but to "get by," that is, to piece together a paycheck, often not well deserved) [...] For example, and more specifically as far as the song’s lyrics go, the "loro" in the line "loro han soltanto meno dubbi e meno anni" refers especially to the students of '68 and their dogmatic certainties, while the following line recalls in particular a novel by Italo Calvino, Il castello dei destini incrociati published in 1973. Most of the other references, aside from Luci a San Siro, are to Guccini’s songs. The first to be mentioned is La locomotiva, then there’s L’isola non trovata (where Guccini in turn quotes the poet Guido Gozzano), and then Auschwitz ("Susanna è andata su per il camino"). The last quote ("Bologna è un vecchio che ripete la mia vita/l’ultimo amore, l’osteria che mi è restata") refers to Canzoni delle osterie di fuori porta [...] Now, to better understand all this context, a faithful snapshot not only of Guccini himself but of a whole precise historical season, the '70s, it is appropriate to quote an article Vecchioni wrote for Amilcare Rambaldi entitled Note in margine al Club Tenco [...] Canzone per Francesco, like the whole album (Elisir) it’s on, owes a great deal to Bob Dylan, particularly the album Desire released at the start of 1976, and to Neil Young, so dear to Vecchioni at the time. Then let’s note that in the first verse, where Guccini speaks, the voice is specially treated to sound doubled. The arrangement, as usual by Paoluzzi, has a pleasant "band" flavor [...] but with a lovely acoustic guitar arpeggio and a flute that rounds out the sound and possibly recalls Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. [...] It ends in a fadeout with a dialogue between two flutes, once again Paoluzzi’s original solution. [...] Vecchioni writes: The tall, big guy, seated like a tourist ‘Ahi, ahi, fai da te’ on an ultra-bourgeois sofa in the best hotel in Sanremo, was Francesco Guccini. He wore a Nikon around his neck, presumably to snap photos and never forget again. I was the other one, small, slim, faded, and I hadn’t yet written either Samarcanda or Stranamore but I had written Luci a San Siro. And I had a Canon around my neck, for the same reasons as him. I sat in front of him with suspicion (a lot) and reverence (little), and we took photos of each other. Francesco ordered five bourbons, I ordered five cognacs, so I understood he was packed with stories and prairies, insults, wars in Vietnam, Hemingway and Donald Duck; I, on the other hand, Breton, Sartre, subtle melancholies, impenetrable sweetness, and my own upside-down, halved self; a real mess, honestly. [...] It was that meeting, that mixing, that blending into a shared mood that made us feel like buffoons and seers at the same time. We chased difference, beauty, the message, the musical parable, we confessed ourselves without shame and knew and took pride in it; we wondered at a cultured metaphor, an image we wished we’d written ourselves. Meeting at Pipistrello (an old tavern) was like closing doors and windows to banality, to the ‘consoling’ everyday of the pop song, and sniffing out other paths, our own, which sometimes brushed against each other without joining. More than the concert itself, in which we all, Guccini included, were terrified and drank impossible amounts, that was when the ‘new’ emerged: song as truly spoken language, not candied pink; song as testimony, a journey with no secondary motives, beyond sales, notoriety, success. And yet fate was playing a big trick on us: we would be the ones to invade the market in those and following years, and the industry, ever cunning, already understood it in 1975, giving us a lot of freedom and raking in billions. Of those three days in Sanremo in 1974 I remember almost everything. [...] No one has remained a closer friend to me than Guccini, even if we rarely see each other. [...] We made a group with masters of comics, design, active politics, committed television: we recognized each other by our gaze and our scattered, irreverent demeanor; in a few years, we built a new free, provocative semantic form, always outside the box. [...] on the great possibilities that singer-songwriter music had to become a real structure, a true art form of the late 20th century and not just a correct commentary or pastime. But this Amilcare (Rambaldi, the patron of Club Tenco, ed.) already knew perfectly well 25 years ago, before shoving us by the seat of our pants onto the stage because we trembled like children. His children."

And if you’ve gotten this far, take the album in question, fully open the cover, and enjoy the Game of the Goose. Just like they did in 1976, or at least that’s what they tell me.