75 times Francesco: the new youth of De Gregori

In 2015, on the eve of his sixty-fourth birthday, he quoted “Whem I’m sixty-four” by the Beatles: «There is a song by the Beatles called “When I’m sixty-four” and which is characterized by a happy and joyful melody: well, I reflect myself in that little tune. My future seems pleasant, I enjoy it: I can’t ask for more.” Eleven years later, the perfect soundtrack to represent his age remains that melody, that “music”, even if the years are no longer 64 but 75. There is a season in life in which many artists choose to hole up in their comfort zone. They become, to quote Umberto Tozzi, “fuck you”. And then there is Francesco De Gregori, who instead seems to have taken the opposite path. For decades he was the self-effacing singer-songwriter par excellence. The Prince, not surprisingly. Grumpy with journalists, parsimonious in interviews, allergic to simplifications. The emertism of his lyrics has made him an almost austere figure in the Italian musical panorama: a poet reluctant to explain himself, more inclined to subtract rather than add. Yet precisely now that with his artistic history he could afford the luxury of distance, at 75 years old De Gregori seems to be having fun (as in the photo above) and surprising as he never did during his life and career: it is as if he were experiencing a new artistic youth, made up of unexpected openings, experimentations, divertissement. And even small betrayals of one’s image.

Two years ago, historic fans didn’t take very well to his willingness to lend his songs to companies for some commercials. De Gregori had never done it. And no one thought he could never do it. The songs in question were “La storia” and “Sempre e per semper”, both of which ended up in the raucous advertisements of a well-known energy company. A surprising move, for those who remembered his almost ascetic rigor, but which for the Prince must have represented something significant, perhaps the signal of a different relationship with his own repertoire, less sacred than in the past. Perhaps, trivially, in this phase of his career – and of his history – De Gregori does not want to do like the Buffalo Bill of the well-known song, which recalls the glorious times of the West. «But can’t you see how time passes, how it makes us change?», he sang in 1996 in “Battere e levare”.

Even before the operation relating to “La storia” and “Sempre e per semper”, De Gregori had launched a sign of openness, of lightness with the collaboration with Checco Zalone for the album “Patiche”. A meeting which, on paper, would have made many custodians of Degregorian orthodoxy turn up their noses, but which instead tells of the Prince’s curiosity in this phase of his history. Standing next to a symbolic figure of popular comedy means accepting the risk of misunderstanding, leaving the ivory tower to enter a territory where irony and lightness coexist with the craft of song: «I went to harass Checco in his city, I didn’t know him. From there we made friends, we talked and by hanging out with him I heard how he played the piano. So the idea came to do something together, to use this well-known talent of his, but only up to a certain point.”

This new lightness does not erase the De Gregori of “Rimmel” (which also celebrated its 50th anniversary last year: here is our special) or of “Viva l’Italia”. If anything, it completes it. He who practiced reticence for years, in his seventies decided to grant himself further freedom: no longer having to correspond to the image built around him. The greatest freedom, perhaps, is precisely this: betraying one’s past. Don’t deny him, but escape his tyranny.
«Will you still need me, will you still feed me / When I’m sixty-four?», Paul McCartney asked his lover in that Beatles song. Let’s paraphrase it: we need This De Gregori, at 75 years old? The answer is Sal Da Vinci-esque: forever yes.

At this link our special on Francesco De Gregori