Francesco De Gregori
Encyclopedia
Francesco De Gregori is an Italian singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

. He is popularly known as "Il Principe Poeta" ("The Poet Prince"), a nickname referring to the elegance of his lyrics.

1970s

De Gregori was born in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 to a middle-class family, and spent some of his youth in Pescara
Pescara
Pescara is the capital city of the Province of Pescara, in the Abruzzo region of Italy. As of January 1, 2007 it was the most populated city within Abruzzo at 123,059 residents, 400,000 with the surrounding metropolitan area...

 before returning to the capital. His elder brother, Luigi, was a musician and had a personal career with the name of Luigi Grechi (the mother's surname), chosen later in order to avoid confusion with the more famous Francesco.

Influenced by Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

, Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...

 and the Italian singer-songwriter Fabrizio de André
Fabrizio De André
Fabrizio De André was an Italian singer-songwriter.Known for his sympathies towards anarchism, libertarianism, and pacifism, he also was a convicted atheist , and his songs often featured marginalized and rebellious people, prostitutes and knaves, and attacked the Catholic Church...

, De Gregori started to perform his songs (mainly personal translations of American folk songs) at the Folkstudio, in Rome, which was already frequented by his brother. On one occasion De André himself is said to have listened to De Gregori's work and appreciated it.

Later De Gregori formed a band with his friends Antonello Venditti
Antonello Venditti
Antonello Venditti is an Italian singer-songwriter who became famous in the 1970s for the social themes of his songs.-Biography:...

, Mimmo Locasciulli and Giorgio Lo Cascio, who all had success as singer-songwriters in the following years. De Gregori made his debut as a professional singer in 1972 with Theorius Campus
Theorius Campus
Theorius Campus is a music album by Italian singer-songwriters Antonello Venditti and Francesco De Gregori, released by It in 1972. It was the debut work for both artists, who sing together in "Dolce signora che bruci" and "In mezzo alla città", while the others are solo efforts.De Gregori and...

, in collaboration with Venditti. The LP included the early masterpiece "Signora Aquilone" ("Kite Lady"), but Venditti had more songs and, having a better voice, earned better consideration by the label. The duo subsequently broke up.

De Gregori's next album, Alice non lo sa (1973), was a commercial failure. However, the title-track, the mysterious "Alice", scored some success in several popular music shows and is still included amongst his best works today. The 1974 album Francesco De Gregori (also known as the "Sheep" due to the unusual cover by Gordon Fagetter) showed even more experimental and sometimes obscure lyrics, and again was a failure. RCA Music, however, continued to trust in De Gregori's qualities: this trust was repaid the following year, when De Gregori released one of the most successful Italian LPs of the 1970s, Rimmel
Rimmel (album)
Rimmel is an album of Italian singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori. It was released in 1975 by RCA Italia, and is generally considered among De Gregori's finest works, containing some of his most popular songs, such as "Rimmel", "Pablo" and "Buonanotte fiorellino".-The album:The LP was well...

. This work contained several of his most famous songs: this time De Gregori's talent for unusual and poetic lyrics intermingled in a more mature way with the music. Lucio Dalla
Lucio Dalla
Lucio Dalla is a popular Italian singer-songwriter and musician. He also plays clarinet and keyboards.He is the composer of Caruso , which has been covered by numerous international artists...

 provided musical ideas for "Pablo", the unusual story of an Italian immigrant in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. Jazzy themes were present in songs like "Quattro cani" ("Four Dogs") and "Le storie di ieri" (The Stories of Yesterday"). The latter, a song about the years of Fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

, had been already released on De André's 1974 album Volume 8, as it had been co-written during a stay in the Genoese singer's Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...

n estate.

Bufalo Bill
Bufalo Bill
Bufalo Bill is an album of Italian singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori. It was released in 1976 by RCA Italia. The title is an intentional misspelling of Buffalo Bill's name: buffalo is often rendered in Italian as "bufalo", although specifically defining a different animal in that language.The...

(1976) confirmed De Gregori's qualities, and contained at least two classics: the eponymous song and "Santa Lucia", the singer's own favourite. However, during a concert held in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

 in 1977, De Gregori, who had always declared his inclination to left-wing ideas and ideals, was fiercely contested by a group of extreme left agitators. In a mock "trial", they accused him of using a left-wing message solely to sell records and insisted that music should be free. De Gregori was at risk of injury in the fray, and decided to quit his musical career. During the following two years he therefore worked as a bookstore and music shop clerk. The episode, known as the "Palalido incident", influenced several works by other Italian singer-songwriters, such as Roberto Vecchioni
Roberto Vecchioni
Roberto Vecchioni is an Italian singer-songwriter and writer.-Biography:Vecchioni was born in Carate Brianza, province of Milan, to a family of Neapolitan origin. In 1968 he graduated in Classical Literature at the Università Cattolica of Milan, where he remained for two years as assistant...

's "Vaudeville
Samarcanda (album)
Samarcanda is an album by Italian singer-songwriter Roberto Vecchioni, released in 1977. The work was highly successful, mostly thanks to the title track, and established him as one of the most popular singer-songwriters in Italy....

". The "Palalido incident" was one of a number of such incidents. At this time, De Gregori married Alessandra Gobbi whom he had known since High School,and they had two sons, Marco and Federico.

In 1978, however, he returned with another inspired album, De Gregori
De Gregori (album)
De Gregori is an album by Italian singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori. It was released in 1978 by RCA Italia.- The album:De Gregori was released after a period in which the author had retired from music, working as a clerk in a bookshop...

, containing one of his most famous songs, "Generale". He declared that he felt this song much too important for him to continue staying away from the music world. The following year he joined his old friend Lucio Dalla
Lucio Dalla
Lucio Dalla is a popular Italian singer-songwriter and musician. He also plays clarinet and keyboards.He is the composer of Caruso , which has been covered by numerous international artists...

 with a highly successful live tour, entitled Banana Republic
Banana Republic (album)
Banana Republic is a live album of Italian singer-songwriters Francesco De Gregori and Lucio Dalla. It was recorded in their tour of 1979 and released by RCA Italia...

, and published a studio LP, Viva l'Italia featuring American musicians. The title track was later adopted as the Italian Socialist Party
Italian Socialist Party
The Italian Socialist Party was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy founded in Genoa in 1892.Once the dominant leftist party in Italy, it was eclipsed in status by the Italian Communist Party following World War II...

 song, but De Gregori always opposed this choice.

1980s

After a pause of several years, De Gregori returned with the album Titanic
Titanic (album)
Titanic is the sixth solo studio album by Mark Seymour. It was the second in the Liberation Blue series of acoustic versions of songs by Seymour's band Hunters & Collectors...

, the first part of which was like a concept album devoted to the famous episode of the sinking of the eponymous liner. The ballad "San Lorenzo", with a rare piano performance by De Gregori, concerns the dramatic episode of the bombing during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 of the quarter in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 by Allied planes. The freshness of the music and lyrics made this an outstanding commercial success, as well as earning the praise of critics. Titanic has been recently declared the best Italian LP of the period 1975-2005, in a poll conducted for the authoritative Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera.

The following year de Gregori released a mini-LP containing his most long-standing success, La Donna Cannone. The 1985 album Scacchi e tarocchi
Scacchi e tarocchi
Scacchi e tarocchi is an album by the Italian singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori, released in 1985.The song "A Pà" is dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini...

("Chess and Tarots"), was not as successful, but contained another classic, "La Storia" ("History"). De Gregori's new melancholic inspiration was confirmed by the subsequent Terra di nessuno
Terra di nessuno
Terra di nessuno is an album by the Italian singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori, released in 1987.The song "Mimì sarà" was later sung by Mia Martini.- Track listing :All songs by Francesco De Gregori.#"Il canto delle sirene"#"Pilota di guerra"...

("Nobody's Land"). On the other hand, Miramare 19-4-89 showed a more bitter mood, but again was not as successful as his albums of the 1970s and early 1980s.

1990s and 2000s

De Gregori recovered his bestseller status in 1992 with Canzoni d'amore ("Love Songs"). In the 1990s he released fewer studio albums than collections and live albums. His next original work was Prendere e lasciare ("Take and Leave", 1996): from this point his song and his musical performance were marked by an increasing Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

 influence.

Il bandito e il campione of 1993 was a live collection that had remarkable success: the title track, its only studio song, was sung by De Gregori but the lyrics were by his brother Luigi Grechi. The title track of La valigia dell'attore ("The Actor's Suitcase", 1998) showed De Gregori at the best of his poetical and emotional capabilities again. The rest of the album, however, contained old pieces, plus some Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

 covers.

In 2001 De Gregori released his next studio album, Amore nel pomeriggio ("Love in the Afternoon") which is unanimously included amongst his best works. The song "Il cuoco di Salò" ("The Cook of Salò
Italian Social Republic
The Italian Social Republic was a puppet state of Nazi Germany led by the "Duce of the Nation" and "Minister of Foreign Affairs" Benito Mussolini and his Republican Fascist Party. The RSI exercised nominal sovereignty in northern Italy but was largely dependent on the Wehrmacht to maintain control...

"), arranged by Franco Battiato
Franco Battiato
Francesco Battiato is an Italian singer-songwriter, composer, filmmaker and, under the pseudonym Süphan Barzani, also a painter. Battiato's songs contain esoteric, philosophical and religious themes...

, is one of De Gregori's best and shows his typical attention to "everyday" figures (including outcasts and underdogs) and lives while dealing with historical themes.

Il fischio del vapore ("The Whistle of the Steam", 2002) was a collaboration with the folksinger Giovanna Marini
Giovanna Marini
Giovanna Marini, anagraphically Giovanna Salviucci in Marini , is an Italian singer-songwriter and researcher of ethnomusicology.-Biography:...

, who had already worked with De Gregori in a song for Titanic. The album is a collection of old popular and social Italian songs from the 19th and the early 20th centuries.

A biography of Francesco De Gregori, "Quello che non so, lo so cantare" ("What I Don't Know, I Know How to Sing"), edited by Enrico Deregibus, was published by Giunti
Giunti
Giunti may refer to:* Federico Giunti , footballer* Ignazio Giunti , racing driver...

 in 2003. In 2005, De Gregori won the Targa Tenco for the best Italian album of the year with Pezzi, an album with strong rock elements. In February 2006, only eleven months after the release of Pezzi, De Gregori released a new studio album, Calypsos, with nine previously unreleased tracks. Amongst these was "Cardiologia" ("Cardiology"), a song where the Roman singer-songwriter returns to using the words "Ti amo" ("I love you"), more than thirty years after "Pezzi di Vetro", and the song "Per le strade di Roma" ("By the Streets of Rome"), which outlines a merciless picture of the Rome of the third millennium, archetypical of the Italy of today.

In November 2006 a triple CD Tra un manifesto e lo specchio that collected together his most representative tracks was released. As well as the celebrated track "Diamante" ("Diamond"), this contained pieces written by Zucchero
Zucchero
Adelmo Fornaciari, Commander , more commonly known by his stage name Zucchero Fornaciari or simply Zucchero /ˈtsukkero/, is an Italian rock singer. His music is largely inspired by gospel, blues and rock music, and alternates between ballads and more rhythmic boogie-like pieces.Zucchero is the...

 and included on his album Oro incenso e birra
Oro incenso e birra
Oro Incenso e Birra is the fourth studio album released by the Italian singer-songwriter Zucchero on 13 June 1989. As with his previous album Blue's, the album is credited to "Zucchero Sugar Fornaciari". Its title represents a pun on "oro incenso e mirra", the Italian for "gold, frankincense and...

 ("Gold, Incense and Beer"), a demo of "Mannaggia alla musica" ("Damn to the Music") from 1979, originally written for Ron
Ron
Ron is a panchayat town in Gadag district, North Karnataka in the Indian state of Karnataka.Of historical importance, called Dronapur in ancient times...

 and previously presented on the live album Bootleg, and the B-side of the single "Viva l'Italia" ("Long Live Italy"), the celebrated "Banana Republic", sung without Lucio Dalla
Lucio Dalla
Lucio Dalla is a popular Italian singer-songwriter and musician. He also plays clarinet and keyboards.He is the composer of Caruso , which has been covered by numerous international artists...

.

Awards

  • 1988 - Targa Tenco: best album for Terra di nessuno
    Terra di nessuno
    Terra di nessuno is an album by the Italian singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori, released in 1987.The song "Mimì sarà" was later sung by Mia Martini.- Track listing :All songs by Francesco De Gregori.#"Il canto delle sirene"#"Pilota di guerra"...

  • 1989 - Targa Tenco: best album for Mira Mare 19.4.89
  • 1998 - Targa Tenco: best song for La valigia dell'attore
  • 1999 - Targa Tenco: best singer (with Giovanna Marini
    Giovanna Marini
    Giovanna Marini, anagraphically Giovanna Salviucci in Marini , is an Italian singer-songwriter and researcher of ethnomusicology.-Biography:...

    ) for Il fischio del vapore
  • 2005 - Targa Tenco: best album for Pezzi

Discography

  • Theorius Campus
    Theorius Campus
    Theorius Campus is a music album by Italian singer-songwriters Antonello Venditti and Francesco De Gregori, released by It in 1972. It was the debut work for both artists, who sing together in "Dolce signora che bruci" and "In mezzo alla città", while the others are solo efforts.De Gregori and...

    (1972, with Antonello Venditti
    Antonello Venditti
    Antonello Venditti is an Italian singer-songwriter who became famous in the 1970s for the social themes of his songs.-Biography:...

    )
  • Alice non lo sa (1973)
  • Francesco De Gregori (1974)
  • Rimmel
    Rimmel (album)
    Rimmel is an album of Italian singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori. It was released in 1975 by RCA Italia, and is generally considered among De Gregori's finest works, containing some of his most popular songs, such as "Rimmel", "Pablo" and "Buonanotte fiorellino".-The album:The LP was well...

    (1975)
  • Bufalo Bill
    Bufalo Bill
    Bufalo Bill is an album of Italian singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori. It was released in 1976 by RCA Italia. The title is an intentional misspelling of Buffalo Bill's name: buffalo is often rendered in Italian as "bufalo", although specifically defining a different animal in that language.The...

    (1976)
  • De Gregori
    De Gregori (album)
    De Gregori is an album by Italian singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori. It was released in 1978 by RCA Italia.- The album:De Gregori was released after a period in which the author had retired from music, working as a clerk in a bookshop...

    (1978)
  • Banana Republic
    Banana Republic (album)
    Banana Republic is a live album of Italian singer-songwriters Francesco De Gregori and Lucio Dalla. It was recorded in their tour of 1979 and released by RCA Italia...

    (1979, with Lucio Dalla
    Lucio Dalla
    Lucio Dalla is a popular Italian singer-songwriter and musician. He also plays clarinet and keyboards.He is the composer of Caruso , which has been covered by numerous international artists...

    , live)
  • Viva l'Italia (1979)
  • Titanic
    Titanic (album)
    Titanic is the sixth solo studio album by Mark Seymour. It was the second in the Liberation Blue series of acoustic versions of songs by Seymour's band Hunters & Collectors...

    (1982)
  • La Donna Cannone (1983, mini-album)
  • Scacchi e Tarocchi
    Scacchi e tarocchi
    Scacchi e tarocchi is an album by the Italian singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori, released in 1985.The song "A Pà" is dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini...

    (1985)
  • Terra di Nessuno
    Terra di nessuno
    Terra di nessuno is an album by the Italian singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori, released in 1987.The song "Mimì sarà" was later sung by Mia Martini.- Track listing :All songs by Francesco De Gregori.#"Il canto delle sirene"#"Pilota di guerra"...

    (1987)
  • Miramare 19-4-89 (1989)
  • Catcher in the Sky (1990, live)
  • Niente da Capire (1990, live)

  • Musica leggera (1990, live)
  • Canzoni d'amore (1992)
  • Il Bandito e il Campione (1993, live)
  • Bootleg (1994, live)
  • Prendere e lasciare (1996)
  • La valigia dell'attore (1997, live)
  • Curve nella Memoria (1998, collection)
  • Amore nel pomeriggio (2001)
  • Fuoco amico (2001, live)
  • Il fischio del vapore (2002, with Giovanna Marini
    Giovanna Marini
    Giovanna Marini, anagraphically Giovanna Salviucci in Marini , is an Italian singer-songwriter and researcher of ethnomusicology.-Biography:...

    )
  • Mix (2003, collection)
  • Pezzi (2005)
  • Calypsos (2006)
  • Per brevità chiamato artista (2008)


External links

Official site of Francesco De Gregori Buonanotte Fiorellino
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