 |
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||
|
“Luigi
the cruel had fallen from the sky, suddenly he was there… the
rover, the unpredictable, with the railway as abode and a knapsack as
atelier… Luigi the bird wandered on his bike all over the hill
district, he was here and there… he wrote with great effort, Luigi,
the thoughtless, his gaze painfully lingering on the paper for an hour
or more… setting off was a vital joy for his migratory bird’s
heart… Luigi got onto his bicycle, waving his hat, he was already
far away. Night, stars. Luigi was in China. Luigi was a legend.” Hermann Hesse from "The last summer of Klingsor" Whoever knows Luigi Grechi may think these words have been dedicated to him… whereas when Hermann Hesse wrote The last summer of Klingsor Luigi wasn’t even born, of course. And yet, just like his namesake, he has also become a sort of a legend, as media have only obliquely and sporadically dealt with him, and his name is rather passed on through word of mouth, within a sect of diehard fans of good songwriting.
The
legend starts with Luigi being very busy playing with his friend Jonathan,
and reading the tarot cards to passers-by in Piazza di Spagna, in Rome,
back in 1970: the correspondent of “Ciao 2001”
magazine passes by and the young Grechi, although anonymously, gets
his first front cover. His last too, as even the first prize
for the best song of the year at the Tenco Award, for
his Il bandito e il campione – The bandit and
the Champion – won’t grant him the same honor again. Yet,
Luigi doesn’t know anything about it, he’s just shuffling
the tarot pack and tonight he’ll be in Trastevere, as usual, at
the Folkstudio, he’ll have a drink with his friends, he maybe
will play… Years
go by, Luigi is now in Milan, he is cataloging books in a library: on
TV quiz shows people are asked, twice or three times at least, to answer
millionaire questions such as “what’s the name of Franceso
De Gregori’s less famous brother?” … all bits of a
legend, coming one after the other like stones along the path, like
riddles to be solved; he is caricatured, renamed L’uigi (!) and
used as the main character of a crime-quiz-story in Settimana Enigmistica,
the best known Italian puzzle magazine. Meanwhile, between a book and
another, Luigi Grechi releases three albums for PDU
(Accusato di libertà, “Charged with freedom”)
and his legend curtly becomes part of a short story; Luigi thus hops
over to all Italian provinces, getting great and small opportunities,
although the ‘80s italian showbiz doesn’t have much to offer
to him. Nonetheless, Luigi stubbornly goes on writing and seizes every
opportunity to play: he quits his job at the library, he records a new
album for CBS and he writes Il bandito e il
campione. We are now in the year 1990 and Luigi has just finished
his Miramare 89 tour with his friend Francis
Kuipers, as a guest of his brother Francesco:
we don’t have to wait long before De Gregori
also records this lucky song in his CD of the same name, which will
be a top hit for months, selling over 450,000 copies. Thanks to this
and to an award at Sanremo Songwriters Festival "Tenco" in
1993, Grechi’s name is brought in again and he can thus go back
to recording studios and successfully increase his activity: new CDs
are released, “Girardengo e altre storie”
and “Cosivalavita”, until the most recent
ones, “Pastore di Nuvole” and “Campione
senza valore”. |
|
 |
 |
 |