There are three men crying at the grave of their friend. Their grief is real, shared, silent. A private grief that wants to be apart, modest. That's why they slipped away, they didn't attend the funeral—too many people, too much noise—they want to cry without an audience. And in fact, there is no audience! In fact, to tell the truth, there's no one there at all. Yet that should be the grave of someone famous!
-“But has anyone read the name on the tombstone?”
The sound of their suppressed laughter is akin to a wail and mingles with tears. Anyone passing by watching them could only believe they're in the grip of despair.
Before leaving, you hear a voice again: “There are three of us left... just like the Police!”
Those three are Giancarlo Bigazzi, Totò Savio, and Alfredo Cerruti, the fourth—the one in the grave—I don't know who it is. But the one who should have been there was Daniele Pace. And if you don't know who we're talking about, then think of four Italian songs, the first ones that come to mind, the most famous you know. There! In at least two (if not three) of those songs, one of those four guys had a hand in them (composed, arranged, produced). Serious professionals in the music field, feared and respected; people who move million-dollar interests, who make and unmake careers and dreams. In short, big fish, at the top of the food chain. Well-off bigwigs of that entertainment industry of which they know all of the most hidden mechanisms and whose absurdities (especially musical) they are gleeful beneficiaries.
By day.
Because at night those four new Mr. Hides, already companions of legendary drinking sprees and terrifying prank phone calls, gave life to an absurd and mutant creature: the Squallor!
It’s all Cerruti's fault who, one day, finds himself watching a small film—“Bedazzled”—in which a phantom group, the Drimble Wedge and the Vegetation, performs a song where the singer, instead of singing, recites the text in a detached tone. Cerruti likes the idea and decides to use it: he will produce a disc of poetic texts, recited by fine speakers on specially composed bases. And no one argues with Cerruti's ideas, he, there at CGD, is much more than the artistic director, he is a serious professional who was taken away from Ricordi with a lot of cash and a contract in which our man had written in black and white that he was FORBIDDEN to enter the office before 2:00 p.m.!
The project takes shape in '71 and, when the day of the start of the recordings arrives, everything is ready. There are the technicians, the sound engineers, and the usual friends: Savio, Pace, Bigazzi, and even Elio Gariboldi who will be the fifth Squallor until 1974; only the actor who has to lend his voice is missing. So while they wait for him, Cerruti orders the track to be played, to test the microphones and voice volumes, and begins to say everything that comes to mind. He goes on for a while, then notices that—at the control room—they are all laughing, Pace motions him to continue and he doesn’t need to be asked twice. Meanwhile, they record...
Thus the Squallor and “38 luglio”, their first 45 rpm (and also first hit: it will sell almost 100,000 copies!), are born.
It is the beginning of a story that will last almost a quarter of a century and of which 14 records (plus one remix), two films, and a gigantic amount of tributes remain.
Fourteen records resulting from recordings shrouded in legend, stories of nights drowned in rivers of alcohol, studios opened only for them until dawn and where everyone passed through (from Zero to Bertè, from Alunni del Sole to Little Tony, etc. etc.), among pranks, sex, riots, and revelries but also work and technical skills of people who handled the musical product like few others. Many of those present remained astounded to see how many and what musical ideas were “wasted” in that “game” which—some—seemed little more than the outlet of a group of jovial bluffers.
And, instead, it was a serious matter.
“Cambiamento”, their last album is from 1994 (but “(S)hit Squallor Remix” is from 2000). Meanwhile, Pace—as we have seen—passed away in '85, Savio follows in 2002 but from '90, following a throat cancer, will progressively lose the ability to sing, and Bigazzi and Cerruti will leave us one in 2012 and the other in 2020. So the history of the Squallor is the history of a lifetime.
One doesn't stop being a Squallor, it's like the Cows (the group of musicians, all suicides, who play at a concert told by Boncompagni in “Vacca”): a terribly serious nonsense, something that makes no sense to question its meaning.
Just as it makes no sense to make distinctions between one record and another or wonder which is better; if I prefer “Vacca” it's only for a personal reason: it's the record with which I got to know them. I heard the track that gives the title to the album in one of their rare radio broadcasts and I fell for it completely! I was convinced that Boncompagni was presenting a real group, when I finally realized that I had been fooled, I was absolutely impressed by that stuff never heard before.
Then I listened to the other records too.
And, in the end, I'm convinced of only one thing: there's nothing to laugh about here.
Sure, the sudden curse, the unexpected nonsense, the triumphant chaos of cocks and chicks that stuns, the pure madness of some passage, the smile, or the nervous laughter might also come out. The first time (or at most even the second time) you hear them. But then?
Let’s not make the mistake of mistaking this for comedy! Here there is no irony or humor, nor satire nor—much less—absurdity or parodic intent; one might believe to be confronted with the grotesque, but it would be a mistake. Of the “comoedia” there is neither the form, the structure, the intent, nor the moralizing background, nor the complex relationship between the comic and the object of its derision. The nonsense never has revealing ends and obscenity causes no embarrassment. But above all, of the comic, here one of the essential aspects is missing: the risk. Yet their verbal violence fires point-blank bursts at everything: the Church, the family, women, homosexuals, intellectuals, and above all the musical environment. But no one feels offended.
No one gets hurt with the Squallor (not even them).
The Squallor have nothing to do with all the more or less absurd bands that came before them and will come after them. Those four dandies were able to afford not to bother with censorship, the pressures of record companies, radio stations, industry magazines, and even the public. Because they could afford not to care about selling!
Which, then, as new Midas, they will sell and sell a lot; without concerts, promotion, radio broadcasts, television interviews, and other promotions. They will sell even beyond their will and intention; think of the case of “Bla, bla, bla” which in France is mistaken for a serious song and enters the charts!
And so, who were—“what” were—the Squallor in the end?
Cerruti will say, in an interview, that it was a way—for them—to save their soul. I do not doubt it. But whether it was a search for catharsis or just a damn serious game (for them!) really doesn't matter much. The real question is: for us, who have listened to them and still listen to them, what are the Squallor?
I can only answer for myself.
“Vacca” is from '77 and '77 was only told to me because in '77 I was still too young and naive. But it was told to me by those who were there and were little more significant than me and bore its signs. I was told about Claudio Miccoli who was beaten to death because he went to have a beer with friends in the wrong place or Cesare, who was only the older brother of someone I knew, who one day was found in an alley with still the needle in his arm.
In short, those were shitty years.
And that records like “Vacca” or “Pompa” came out during those years means something to me, for better or for worse. And, yes, it also explains why the Revolution never happened...
In the end, there remain certain evenings spent in the car singing “o tiempo se ne va e tu nun può chiavà”, there remain 14 largely unlistenable records and even a handful of great songs (all signed by Totò Savio).
And there is nothing to laugh about.
“Cornutone, allisciame ‘stu bastone”
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