Francesco Guccini, author for third parties in the 1960s

I have selected an extract from the special issue of Ciao 2001 on newsstands dedicated to Francesco Guccini (the cover is at the end of this article). I chose the files (edited by Vito Vita) of twelve songs written by him and sung by others – excluding the much better known ones recorded by Nomadi and Equipe 84. Some are truly surprising…

At the bottom of the article, an afterword by Renato Marengo.

GIGLIOLA CINQUETTI : A love story

(Guccini; signed Pace-Panzeri-Pontiack)

45 rpm CGD N 9654, 1967

In March (the date of the matrices is 17 February) a song was released that Cinquetti was originally supposed to present at the 1967 Sanremo Festival in conjunction with Caterina Caselli (who included it the following month in her album DIAMOCI DEL TU): this time Pontiack’s signature was joined by those of Mario Panzeri and Daniele Pace, who according to Guccini’s testimony recorded the sample of the song, a not particularly relevant beat song, with a love lyric.

CATERINA CASELLI: Nightmare #4

(Guccini-Caselli; signed Ingrosso-Monaldi)

33 rpm DIAMOCI DEL TU CGD FG 5033, 1967

Beyond God is dead And To make a manthe aforementioned album by the singer from Sassuolo contains two other songs written by Guccini with Caselli during a stay of the two in Pavana at the end of 1966 and signed by Gino Ingrosso and Gianfranco Monaldi. The first, Nightmare #4is a typical beat protest song, introduced by a recitation against war and world hunger. In the summer it will be used as the B-side of I’m a liar.

CATERINA CASELLI: The white bicycles

(Guccini-Caselli; signed Ingrosso-Monaldi)

33 rpm DIAMOCI DEL TU CGD FG 5033, 1967

Guccini’s fourth song contained in DIAMOCI DEL TU, The bicycles whiteis inspired by the Dutch protest movement of the Provos, whose characteristics included that of using not cars or motorbikes, but white bicycles to travel. Released on 45 rpm as the back of The path of every hope.

THE MEMPHIS: What will I do

(Guccini-Andrews)

45 rpm Columbia SCMQ 7049, 1967

Cover by Bad Timewhich the British Roulettes they had published in 1964, for the second 45 rpm published at May ’67 from the Veronese group Memphis. The original, written by Chris Andrews, speak of a finished love: Guccini maintains the topic with results however far from those usual, with lines like “If one day you are already tired of me / you go away I will not cry, / but I will never live again”. Note that the B-side of the album contains a more congenial song instead to Guccini, the cover of I Am A Rock Of Simon & Garfunkel titled I am a rock and whose text, faithful to the original, it is signed by Danpa, pseudonym by Dante Panzuti.

JOHNNY & THE MARINES:

Those brave men with horseless carriages

(Guccini-Pontiack)

45 rpm The master’s voice MQ 2090, 1967

Johnny & i Marines, a group from Modena formed by brothers Urano and Gianni, known as Johnny, Borelli (their sister Ambra will have a decent solo career) have released two 45s. On the second, released in June 1967, the B side is signed by Guccini and Mansueto Deponti and is the story of the exploits of the pioneers of motoring at the beginning of the twentieth century.

MARTO: Hey Joe

(Guccini-Traditional-Guest- Thibaut)

45 rpm The master’s voice MQ 2094, 1967

In this case, we are in the presence of the cover of a cover: to write the Italian lyrics of this famous song made immortal by Jimi Hendrix, Guccini does not in fact rely on the original (the story of a femicide which is unthinkable today) but on the lyrics that Gilles Thibaut had written for the French version launched by Johnny Hallyday, and this explains the presence of the French lyricist on the label together with Reg Guest, arranger of Hallyday’s album. In this version, published in June, Joe transforms from a murderer into a young man who is not interested in the problems of the period such as the war in Vietnam or the atomic bomb. Martò, pseudonym of Giancarlo Martelli, participated with this piece in the Cantagiro.

GIULIANA VALCI: A useless discussion

(Guccini-Simon; signed Ingrosso-Simon)

45 rpm CBS 2811, 1967

In September 1967 a 45 rpm single by the talented Giuliana Valci was released which on the A side features a song by Mogol and Battisti, When the eyes are goodand on the back a cover of The Dangling Conversation by Simon & Garfunkel signed by Ingrosso and dating back to the period in which Guccini was not yet registered with the SIAE. After Dylan, Paul Simon is, as we will see, the overseas artist to whom the singer-songwriter approaches, finding him similar in terms of themes and writing of the lyrics: contrary to what generally happened with covers, Guccini remains faithful from a thematic point of view to the original (even in the quotes, “and you read your Emily Dickinson / and I my Robert Frost” translated to “If I read Emily Dickinson / and you choose Robert Frost”).

GEORGES CHELON: Believe me

(Guccini-Chelon)

45 rpm Pathé AQ 1357, 1967

Also in September ’67 another cover was published, unlike A useless discussion this time signed, on a 45 rpm single by the Marseille singer-songwriter Georges Chelon; the original is Fallait voira love song.

SONIA: Listen to me

(Pallavicini-Guccini)

45 rpm La Voce del Padrone MQ 2126, 1968

This collaboration between Guccini and Vito Pallavicini for this song is strange, a sort of appeal addressed by a woman, it is not clear whether her girlfriend or her mother, to the jury of a court for the release of a boy whose guilt is not specified (“You have to judge / a boy who has made a mistake / Hear me and understand me, / in the law there isn’t / a line of pity / Who di you weren’t wrong? / If for you they have I value these tears, / listen to me because I’m crying for you too”). Listen to me it is found on the B side of Sonia Natali’s third solo 45 rpm without the Sorelle, released in May 1968.

THE SISTERS: Peaceful pirate Solomon

(Guccini-Godi)

45 rpm Columbia SCMQ 7076, 1967

Sonia & the Sisters were a beat group. When Sonia Natali decided to pursue a solo career, her sisters Nadia and Luana published this song: a waltz aimed at the children who followed Carosello at the time, with the Amarena Fabbri adverts featuring the cartoon of Salomone the pacioccone pirate, for which Guccini wrote the lyrics (an activity remembered years later in Eskimo).

THE ROYALS: Mrs. Robinson

(Guccini-Simon)

45 rpm La Voce del Padrone MQ 2143, 1968

A group from Padua, custodian of three 45s between 1966 and 1968, the Royals also published three songs by Pontiack-Verona, I won’t know, The stars in the sky And Yesterday, today, tomorrow. But in these cases Guccini has nothing to do with it: these are in fact songs written by the singer and guitarist of the group Gabriele Zambon, who is not a member of the SIAE. For that matter Mrs. Robinsonis a further sign of Guccini’s rapprochement with Paul Simon, and in 1970 it will be taken up by Bobby Solo on the album BOBBY FOLK. The text is faithful to the original, but eliminates the reference to Joe Di Maggio.

CATERINA CASELLI: Wet as a chick

(Guccini-Caselli; signed Pace-Panzeri-Callegari)

45 rpm CGD N 9683, 1968

The back of The clockpresented at Un disco per l’Estate and published on 45 rpm in June 1968, is a song to which listening one recognizes some verses which two years later we will find in To the sad: in fact the song, written by Guccini and Caselli more than a year before publication, is in fact a first draft of the following one, a blues with lyrics partly in Italian and partly in Sassuolo dialect. Guccini will translate it entirely into Modenese, change the title and write new music, still blues but different.

CATERINA CASELLI: “Cima Vallona”

(Guccini)

CD SOMEONE CAN JUDGE ME Sugar Music SGR D 77815, 1997

Despite being published only in 1997 in an anthology CD, this piece dates back to 1968: it was announced in the magazines of the time as a new release by Caselli but in the end it remained unreleased due to the topic covered, the terrorist attack of 25 June 1967 against some Italian soldiers by South Tyrolean terrorists – an event that went down in history as the Cima Vallona massacre, from the place in the province of Belluno where the explosion occurred. Two years earlier, in September 1966, Vedette had been more courageous than CGD, publishing a Pooh song that addressed the problem of South Tyrolean terrorism, Brenner ’66.

If there is a Great Old Man of songwriting in Italy, beyond his personal data, we can certainly say that it is Francesco Guccini. And a special issue in Ciao 2001, on newsstands these days, was rightly dedicated to him. The special contains numerous extensive and significant articles published between 1967 and 1987 and new reviews of his great discography.

I got to know Francesco Guccini well in Milan, since the beginning of his career, when he was still doing more of a sort of cabaret than singing concerts. With him, as is written in one of the 1974 articles that we have republished, I also experienced a misadventure, in defense of young “long-haired” protestors at the first Tenco Prize in Sanremo, with the police who were almost about to handcuff me because I was trying with a certain vehemence to make them understand and tolerate the position of those in the public, in those rebellious years, who preferred rock and committed singer-songwriters to pop music. Francesco, with his gigantic figure and authoritative “big voice”, supported me with energy.

The editorial I wrote with Maurizio Becker, who co-directs these new versions of the glorious Ciao 2001 with me, starts by recalling that since the beginning of the 1960s, philosophical or social motivations began to be heard in Italy too, in the lyrics of the first Italian groups that made music that was not just escapist, highly appreciated by the young people of the time who began to listen to a lot of anti-war rock music. The first singer-songwriters were therefore being born whose lyrics, also entering into the social sphere, became increasingly more involved given the approaching ferment of the youth revolution of ’68. And Francesco Guccini began to be appreciated both as the author of intense songs linked to contemporary events, for Nomadi, L’equipe 84 and for other more committed colleagues and finally, singing and playing them himself, his stories. And Ciao 2001, in addition to dealing with the big international rock stars, began at the beginning of the 70s to give space to Guccini as well as Bob Dylan and the most famous folksingers of those years.

Renato Marengo