Francesco De Gregori, 20 concerts in the theater in Milan

More Showman, Less Prince: De Gregori Desecrates Himself

The solemnity of “Letter from a Mexican Cosmodrome”, the song that accompanies his epiphany on stage, with a pinch of mysticismis immediately swept away by his welcome to the audience. “There are some new things in this round of concerts,” he explains immediately. “De Gregori speaks. It’s about time, you might say. But be careful: he speaks, but he doesn’t say much. I don’t want to explain the songs. But simply tell about myself,” he says, speaking about himself in the third person. And so far, nothing extraordinary. But then a grin appears under Francesco De Gregori’s thick white beard: “I started this job many years ago and some accused me of writing incomprehensible things.

There is nothing worse: it hurts more if they tell you that what you write sucks. Often, however, there was bad faith in those criticisms. They said things to me like: ‘But is Pablo alive or dead? Because if he is alive he cannot be dead, if he is dead he cannot be alive (he mocks the critics of the time, ed.)’. .But go away…”. And from the stalls of the Cavea del Parco della Musica, where the Roman singer-songwriter stopped last night with his summer tour “De Gregori live” (evidently he didn’t want to rack his brains to find a more imaginative title), they get up laughter and applause.

At 73, the Prince of Italian singer-songwriters rediscovers himself as light-hearted and self-deprecating and shows himself to his audience in clothes that clash with the aura of the austere and angular singer-songwriter. Perhaps the association with Checco Zalone, with whom he published the joint album “Pastiche” last April, before sharing the stage of the Terme di Caracalla with the comedian from Puglia in June, has reawakened some showman skills that were there, hidden between the light pages and the dark pages, and that were just waiting to be rediscovered. On the stage of the Cavea the Roman singer-songwriter he makes fun of himself and his songs, desecrating himself and them. Like “Un cuoco”, one of the most famous of his lesser-known songs included in the setlist, taken from an album from the mid-90s (“Prendere e lascia”) and inspired by a work by the German engraver and sculptor Max Klinger: “When I wrote it, I didn’t understand it either.”, De Gregori smiles, disheartened.

And so the “Buffalo Bill” to whom he dedicated in 1976 the song that gave the title to the album of the same name “when he came to challenge the cowboys of the Maremma he took it solemnly in that place there”, the act of Dolly of the deep sea of ​​cleaning with a piece of bread the blood-stained hands of the son of the child of the flowers in “The Killing of Santa Claus” becomes “a strange para-Eucharistic ritual” and who knows why Peg-Leg Pete in Paris ends up in a hotel without an elevator.

De Gregori also talks about himself: “I wrote ‘Atlantide’ in a period in which I was happy from a professional point of view, because the previous album had gone very well, but not from a personal point of view. And like me, I would say, also the two women with whom I had a relationship…”, says, always with a marked irony, the Prince. In the audience, among others, also smiling, Pierluigi Pardo, Motta and Carolina Crescentini.

The most traditional De Gregori, who with the air of a carpenter and a philosopher reels off classics such as “The football draft of the class of ’68”, “The story”, “The cannon woman”, “Pieces of glass” and “Rimmel”: “This is live Italian music. You can hear the instruments, including the mistakes. Because we’re not making a record here, eh. There are no bases, there are no tricks, there are no deceptions”, he points out, introducing the band composed of Guido Guglielminetti on bass and double bass, Carlo Gaudiello on keyboards, Primiano Di Biase on Hammond, Paolo Giovenchi on guitars, Alessandro Valle on pedal steel guitar and mandolin, Simone Talone on percussion and Francesca La Colla on backing vocals. The summer tour will close, after the Prato stop tomorrow evening, on September 6th in Pietra Ligure, in the province of Savona. Then from October 29th to November 23rd De Gregori will be at the Teatro Out Off in Milan for twenty nights with “Nevergreen (Perfect Strangers)”, a show that will see him dust off the lesser-known songs from his repertoire. If he goes on stage with this spirit, there will be (still) fun.