Bologna, August 6, 2026 – He was the only music critic to have the honor of a wide mention in a song that entered the history of Italian singer-songwriter music, Riccardo Bertoncelli.
“There will always be, you know, a failed musician, a pious one, a theorist, a Bertoncelli or a priest spouting nonsense.”
It was 1976 and thus Francesco Guccini, in Avvelenata, responded to the equally famous review from the previous year in which the journalist had heavily criticized the album ‘Stanze di vita quotidiana’. It ended with a clarifying meeting at via Paolo Fabbri 43, which was also the beginning of a long friendship.
Bertoncelli, when did you last meet Guccini?
“Four years ago we had lunch together with a group of friends from the Giunti publishing house, for which he was publishing. And, as always on these occasions, Francesco was the protagonist at the table, funny, engaging, full of anecdotes and information. Every time I was amazed by his ability to explore distant and different worlds, worlds of the past, which I always thought were his perfect dimension. Then we saw each other at the presentation of his album ‘Canzoni da intorto’, also in Milan. He had told me he loved rum, but the one he was drinking was of a very poor brand. I, passionate like him, brought him a fine bottle. I wanted to pamper him a bit.”
A friendship, yours, born after the back-and-forth between review and song. What do you remember of your first meeting?
“He was 12 years older than me. I found myself facing an adult man and was immediately captivated. A big man who made me enter his imagination, his universe crowded with very different characters, some unexpected. For example, he didn’t like Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation much, which he had discovered during military service, while he had a true veneration for Guido Gozzano, he read the English poets of the 1600s, on whom he had done a highly admired thesis, he said, by professors, at university. And then comics, perhaps the only topic on which we agreed, especially the original Donald Duck drawn by Carl Barks.”
And the music?
“He liked the storytellers, those who staged great popular epics, as he did with a legendary song, ‘La locomotiva’. He definitely had tastes outside the ordinary, he discovered the first Dylan thanks to the singer-songwriter friend Deborah Kooperman, but then he stopped at those albums. Once I asked him to show me the album of a group he really considered essential. He went to the basement and came back with two vinyls of a New Orleans group unknown in Italy, they were called Firehouse Five Plus Two, a dixieland revival group from New Orleans, formed by Disney illustrators who performed in their free time dressed as 19th-century firefighters.”
What will you miss most about your friend Guccini?
“His continuous journey through culture, the knowledge of eras and figures that only he knew how to evoke with enthusiasm and the ability to attract attention that only true storytellers have: And he was like that both in books and in songs and at lunch with friends.”
Read more The last time we saw Francesco Guccini in public (surprisingly)
