‘And now, to wrap things up, I need something about \u201cLa locomotiva\u201d\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u2018Com\u2019on! I\u2019ve already written about that thousands of times\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Trust me, we need it. It\u2019s your most famous song, and people \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Hold on! You make it sound like it\u2019s the only thing I\u2019ve ever written. I\u2019ve done other songs \u2013 I\u2019m not sure if you\u2019re aware of that. I like singing it at the end of concerts, but what do you want me to say about it that I haven\u2019t said already? Everyone knows that story today!\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018But just a few lines, a short page, even just half.\u2019<\/p>\n
I\u2019m wondering whether I should hit Beppe Cottafavi, the editor of this book, with whatever blunt object I happen to find within reach. The phone? Too soft. The small vase with the pens and pencils? But they would fly all over the place and it would be a pain to pick them all up.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018But that story about Roberto Leydi, for example.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Yes, Leydi, the great folklorist. They had just opened the DAMS department. He was teaching there and I went to hear him speak because I was interested in his lectures. At the time I was doing research on folk songs here in the Apennines. Later we met, in Bologna at a storytellers\u2019 festival, in \u201971 or \u201972, I think, I\u2019m not sure. During a break, I took him from Piazza Maggiore to the Osteria delle Dame to show it to him. I was planning to invite Bruno Pianta to sing, a folklorist who collaborated with Leydi. In the end he actually came, and I sang \u2018La locomotiva\u2019 for him there. He said it was the greatest folk song of the post-war period. Folk song, you understand, not the greatest songwriter\u2019s song or anything like that\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Well, actually, it is very much like a folk song. But how did that whole scene come into being?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Back then, my friends and I sang a little bit of everything: the anarchist songs of Pietro Gori, for example. As I said, I was doing research on folk songs. I bought a little Philips tape player. Later I became more familiar with recording, and a friend got hold of a professional tape recorder, while I bought a nice microphone, with two heads, for direct and background sounds. I still have that microphone somewhere, but I don\u2019t know what became of the tape recorder \u2013 it doesn\u2019t matter. But that was the general atmosphere. There was another song, \u2018Nel fosco fin del secolo morente\u2019, which I always called the \u2018grandmother\u2019 of \u2018La locomotiva\u2019. So when I read that book by Bianconi, Trent\u2019anni d\u2019officina (\u2018Thirty years in the workshop\u2019), that song almost wrote itself. I also talked to my neighbour, Mr Mignani, the one I described in the song \u2018Il pensionato\u2019. Mignani told me the real story of the railway worker, who was mentioned in passing in Bianconi\u2019s book. Mignani was an old socialist: I think that under the fascists he even got punished with a dose of castor oil. He knew Rigosi\u2019s story well, the train driver in the song.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018\u201cI don\u2019t know what he looked like\u2026\u201d and so on\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u2018Actually, the first line was the last one I wrote. The song began \u201cI know the time of the events, the job he did\u2026\u201d. But then I realised that something was missing \u2013 a beginning, an introduction. By the way, I want people to know that the expression \u201cheroes are all young and handsome\u201d should be understood ironically. It\u2019s not meant to be pretentious, even if there\u2019s something intentionally pretentious about the song, just like in anarchist or popular songs.<\/p>\n
\u2018But was Leydi the first one to hear the song?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Not at all. First there were my Bologna friends, the ones at the Osteria. Whenever I had a new song, I played it for my friends. You know, guitars, wine and all that. Then I always had to play new songs for my cousin Alberto Prandi, from Carpi. He was a member of the Federation of Anarchists of Carpi, together with a friend, who isn\u2019t a friend anymore because he became a Lega supporter, imagine that. I would occasionally go to Carpi with a few friends from Bologna to party. We would arrive in the afternoon and have a snack \u2013 Lambrusco and salami. In the evening we\u2019d have dinner at some country trattoria. It was on one of those occasions that I played the song for him: it floored him, of course \u2013 it seemed to have been written just for him.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018And in public?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Well in those days, as you know, I didn\u2019t give concerts. I would sometimes play at the Dame, but I think the first public performance was at the first edition of the Club Tenco in Sanremo, in \u201873, though I could be mistaken. I had to do two evenings, the first and the last, to fill in for a colleague who didn\u2019t show up. Both concerts ended with \u2018La locomotiva\u2019: it was there that I saw raised fists for the first time.\u2019<\/p>\n
From: Guccini, Francesco, Non so che viso avesse. Quasi un\u2019autobiografia, Milan, Mondadori, 2010, pp. 110-113.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
‘And now, to wrap things up, I need something about \u201cLa locomotiva\u201d\u2019. \u2018Com\u2019on! I\u2019ve already written about that thousands of times\u2026\u2019 \u2018Trust me, we need it. It\u2019s your most famous song, and people \u2026\u2019 \u2018Hold on! You make it sound like it\u2019s the only thing I\u2019ve ever written. I\u2019ve done other songs \u2013 I\u2019m not […]<\/p>\n