The problem of the anniversaries is not the time that passes, but the fact that they force us in comparisons with other eras, other contexts. Let’s take Rimmelthe third album – and a great classic, absolutely – by Francesco De Gregori: this year he celebrated fifty, in these days the prince is about to start with a long celebratory tour that will last until 2026 (he had also done it in 2015, more reduced, it is known that the anniversaries, like the wine, more aged and more good) and that in some way it makes us put our eyes and ears on an album that, in this time, in this time. He has never gone. And that, of course, is a masterpiece. It is not to make the usual speech from Boomer, but the doubt comes: among others fifty years, we, of this 2025, what will we remember? And so backwards to 2024, 2023, etc. Little, very little. What happened?

When revolutions succeeded

Let’s understand: Rimmel It was an epochal album, a revolution for Italian music and, as such, it was not a gala lunch, for anyone. First of all for De Gregori, who at the time of the release, January 1975, had not yet turned 24 years old and found himself in his hands a bomb, which there and there procured a huge and sudden success and a lot of trouble. The first two albums, Alice doesn’t know (1973) e Francesco De Gregori (1974), they had not even entered the ranking of the hundred best -selling of their respective years, Rimmel It would have been the collection champion of 1975, with almost half a million copies, transforming him from a little naive artist, who sang for very few, mostly to the historic folk studio, to mass phenomenon, and all this without having really searched for such a affirmation. But by now the nut was taken, the breach was open: 1976 would have been the year of his friend Venditti with Lilly And of Guccini, immediately afterwards the big stages would have taken and there would have been no more for anyone.

Obviously, we said, in the face of an enormous success of the public, De Gregori became enemies everywhere. Among the critics for example, they tightened Rimmel – at least some, at least the most across the Alongrants – For his being not so, let’s say, fundamentalist: the same Rimmeleven with all its nuances, hermeticism and the rest, it was still a love song, an explosion of colors in the arrangements, a romantic piece, albeit on a bad story, like the other ace of the lot, Goodnight Fiorellinounleashing those who accused him of writing texts from Baci Perugina And who, instead, cared to have taken the wrong road, moving away from politics and commitment. Above all, the extra -parliamentary left, which will first count on him to enrich himself behind his themes – De Gregori was declaredly of the PCI, “like almost all the young people of that time”, he said recently – and then he will come directly to stop his concert. But here we are already in 1976, at the famous Palalido trial, when the helpful guts, who asked for free live events for everyone, will reproach him cachet and anything else, physically attacking him in front of everyone. In the middle, there was already the following of Buffalo bill, Another masterpiece, however, more bare in the arrangements, with which De Gregori, who did not live well the success, had been self-proposed, without however succeeding.

Other times, we would say. Times when you could put your skin back for a disc or song, with lots of launches of paper bombs on stage and so on (it touched, among others, to Dalla and Bennato). And in which, however, here, masterpieces like this came out. Because if on the one hand the first reaction a Rimmel He must warn us from any generational reaction – the elderly wise from the time, or presumed such, criticized De Gregori, let alone today – on the other hand he must not however hide the scope of an epochal album, full of solutions at the time innovative and not trivial on a technical level, as well as by an inspiration from the state of grace. Songs like Yesterday’s stories And Pieces of glassamong many, they mix the political commitment – that, in the face of many, there was all right, only in a different form – with sentimentalism and symbolism, brought everything on a new, more personal, but not appeared. On the contrary.

What are we losing?

Yet, here, even with all the difficulties of the case, the revolutions took place, all right. And the movements of air were felt. Today it is more struggling, we always shout at great success, but then it seems all stagnant, stopped. For now, perhaps, the face that we will remember more than 2025 – and also deservedly – is that of Lucio Corsi, but the difference with the De Gregori of 1975 is abysmal: the first is an alternative response and that in many ways he looks to the past for today’s music; De Gregori was simply the future.

And then, again, you have to think about the context. The artists in the seventies did not burn immediately, but they were given time to mature: Rimmel The third test in the studio of De Gregori was “only”, after the first two who, in fact, had not spilled. And above all there was an industry that, despite the defects it has always had, thanks to a different education of the public enhanced the novelties, diversity. Other than homologation. In Rimmelit must be said, it is not that the records believed a lot, but also for this reason his success was enormous: because he started from the bottom, from the radio, from the people. People more trained to think critically, to listen. Also because, of albums ugly, the rankings of the time were also full, yet it was not insensitive to such exits, which in turn, gather, made up a much wider part of the catalog than they make up today. Translated: it is difficult to believe that at the time the artists were all genes and in 2025, they are simply all scarce. If no more discs come out like Rimmel – And in fact they come out less and less – the problem lies in the middle, in the gears. And it is also our fault.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd3vlpz_mbgundefined

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