Let’s start from today. From the November 7 interview with “Fatto Quotidiano” in which Francesco Guccini, commenting on the words of Vasco Rossi who in a post on Instagram spoke of a “return of fascism” in Italy, took things further. “Of course it is a regime”, the Maestrone di Pavana stated bluntly. Frank words like the character, a man from another era. Without regretting past virtues and putting current times on the index, “Between the Via Emilia and the West” is an opportunity to talk about a golden era of national music and to also try to interpret an era of transition like the current one.

Guccini between album and film

The recording – but also cinematographic – return of the singer-songwriter who for years retired to the woods of the Apennines dedicating himself to writing is not a real return but it is not something for nostalgics either. The re-edition of “Fra la via Emilia e il West”, a 1984 live album with completely remastered audio and the original drawing on the cover (in the photo) that our friend Bonvi created for the poster of the concert in Piazza Maggiore, is first and foremost one of those operations of “living memory” that are more necessary than ever. The album is released at the same time as the arrival in cinemas, from 5 to 8 December, of “Francesco Guccini: Between the Via Emilia and the West”, the concert film filmed in Piazza Maggiore in Bologna on 21 June 1984.

Bologna capable of love

At 40 years old, in 1984, Francesco Guccini (he turned 84 last June) had already churned out 14 albums and for some time – in 1976 with the album “Via Paolo Fabbri, 43 – he had achieved commercial success. The years of protest are almost a memory and Guccini takes stock of his twenty-year career. He does it with a concert in Piazza Maggiore in Bologna which welcomes over 160 thousand fans, many of whom are very young. On stage Guccini is accompanied by excellent musicians and exceptional guests such as Lucio Dalla, Paolo Conte and many others also arrive. Many pieces from that historic concert will end up in the double live together with others recorded on 5 June 1984 at the Kiwi in Piumazzo (Mo), on 3 July at the Parco della Pellerina in Turin and on 15 September at the Teatro Tenda in Lampugnano (Mi). In the 18 songs of the double disc, the singer-songwriter’s close relationship with his audience shines through, a confidential relationship, as if Piazza Maggiore were an immense Bolognese tavern where he could tell his own stories, playing with the audience.

The songs

The first piece “Canzone per un’amica” is the farewell to her friend Silvana, who died in a car accident. Antonio Marangolo’s sax then marks the jazzy melancholy of “Autogrill”, an “on the road” ballad about a desire that remains suspended. The dreamy arpeggio of “The old man and the child”, introduces with an ethereal atmosphere, the almost strangled voice of Guccini who narrates a post-nuclear story, with a dialogue between the two characters (the old man and the child) from an anthology of emotion.

“The Pensioner” is a minimalist picture of the inexorable time that passes and spares no one while “Canzone delle osteria di Fuori Porta” is a bossanova that tells of a disenchanted everyday life as the only remedy for a world that moves frenetically and unaware. Venice and Bologna they are portraits of cities but also a pretext to talk about indifference and beloved places that time has somehow transformed. “Small city” is another physical place that becomes space of the soul, namely Modena, which saw Guccini grow and which becomes a place of memories of a bygone time but also a symbol of that chiaroscuro of the Italian province.

The locomotive still runs

In the finale, amidst the jubilation of the audience, there is the most popular piece of the Guccinian repertoire. That “Locomotive” always left as a coda in all the Guccio concerts and in which the (true) story of a nineteenth-century railway engineer who launches himself at breakneck speed on the tracks with the “steam engine”, becomes a universal apologist for rebellion against every abuse of power.

With hindsight it can be said that “Fra la via Emilia e il West” closed a glorious and unrepeatable season of Italian author music with a huge street party. Listening to the album again today is not a “nostalgia-colored” operation like the crockery from “Incontro” but a way for everyone – old and young – not to forget “that never sincere worm that they call thought”.

Author: Francesco Guccini
Title: Between Via Emilia and the West
Type: Songwriting, Live
Year: 1984 (Emi)
Editorial rating: 8/10