Roberto Vecchioni
Robinson, come salvarsi la vita

While browsing through DeBaser on Vecchioni's page after his victory at Sanremo, I noticed a gap between "Calabuig" and "Montecristo," and I felt it necessary to quickly provide my interpretation of this umpteenth Vecchioni gem, during one of his most successful recording periods.

Autumn 1979. The professor offers his listeners another anthology delight, inspired by the famous castaway from the 18th-century novelist Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe. The arrival of "Robinson, come salvarsi la vita" in stores was quite troubled. Its release was delayed by a few months due to some legal troubles of the singer-songwriter.

The track that opens the dances is "Signor Judge," a light piece with a syncopated rhythm that was released early on a 45 rpm to promote the long plain. The song narrates his indignation and mockery towards a judge who, having left for vacation, leaves him detained in the Marsala prison for some time. Vecchioni was arrested because he was accused by a young boy of drug trafficking (marijuana) during the Unit's festival in the Sicilian locality in 1977. He was later exonerated because the kid had made up everything. The sarcastic "Roland, chanson de geste / chanson sans geste" follows. The song pokes fun at medieval poems that excessively praise the figures of distinguished knights and heroes. The first verses open with "the deeds" of Roland (Orlando) romanticized by seductive female voices, who narrate the lament of love of the brave fighter's wife according to the Saracen soldiers during the ambush at Roncesvalles in the year 778. Shortly after, a well-paced beguine base enters, unveiling the "deedless" story of the character, behind which lurks a cynical braggart, who perishes, according to historians, due to simple disputes between the army's rearguard and Basque peasants armed with mere slingshots. Thus, everything calms down, and here comes a melancholic "Mi manchi," accompanied by a guitar, a piano, and a violin, in which the painful and intimate autobiographical tone returns. At that time, Vecchioni was about to finally separate from his wife Irene and tried to fill the great gap forming with the memory of Adriana, his youthful love ended around '67-'68. The accomplished artist battles with a dissatisfaction of spirit created by the emerging emotional deficiency: "he had 3 fake gold coins, maybe that's why he didn't smile, maybe that's why he didn't say I've won." Adriana had been "12 years without returning." The return is obviously metaphorical because the woman only resurfaces in thoughts. The song in the end connects to a new and fresher version of "Luci a San Siro," almost forming a single track, as in a conjunction of moments and sensations of young Vecchioni, in the reminiscence of that ancient love. "Come salvarsi la vita" closes the first part of the album. The track is the first brief interlude with strange allusions to something cowardly and cunning. The second part of the album resumes the legal mishap with the fictional "Letter from Marsala" written "to a hypothesis of a woman" from the prison where Roberto is held that summer. That sense of loss and solitude already perceived in "Mi manchi" reconnects internally. The atmospheres are similar, as is the simple and delicate sound structure.

With "Robinson," the music returns to high levels, and the use of themes of dream and double arises, much loved by the singer-songwriter. Emerges the child within each one, who with a spirit of adventure innocently dreams of imitating the castaway. The child then matures, and "now locks his things to protect them, has a gun in hand, and Robinson smiles at him from the mirror." The English adventurer fully enters the self. "Robinson" also represents the emblem that encapsulates the weaknesses and merits of the sober English middle-class society grappling with the island. In "The Sorcerer and the Player" two years after "Samarkand," Vecchioni paints another portrait on the theme of the "black lady." A slower and quieter beguine forms the background to the story of an old wizard who plays with Death and understands the love for life after spending it in spells and enchantments, enough to selfishly ask her for a little more time to deliver that of his son. With the second interlude "Allonsanfant", what begins in the first is completed, and finally, the message is outlined drawn from the film by the Taviani brothers entitled precisely "Allonsanfant," on the story of the 19th-century revolutionary Fulvio Imbriani who betrays the cause and comrades for greed of money and to save his skin. But Roberto is not serene, and in the finale, Irene is the missing part of his equilibrium.

In the insistent "Vorrei" there is a desperate attempt to plead with the woman who continuously escapes. In this circumstance, the train that in the song "The Last Show" of '77 took her away from him once again reappears: "Yes, I know you came back, I know, but in here I keep seeing you leave. I would like to break the memory of a train." But now there's nothing left to do. Irene has definitively distanced herself from him who remains irreparably alone just like he was in prison, alone like Roland and the sorcerer in the last journey, like Imbriani after betraying everyone, like Robinson stranded on the island.