Francesco De Gregori

Born in Rome during 1951, singer/songwriter Francesco De Gregori absorbed formative influences from American musicians Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen alongside Italian artist Fabrizio De André. The last of these figures encountered De Gregori laying down tracks at a renowned Rome studio and responded with sufficient interest to extend guidance to the emerging performer. Following a 1972 contract with IT, the joint LP Theorius Campus appeared alongside Antonello Venditti. Reviewers, however, registered little enthusiasm for that project, a response that persisted with the solo debut Alice Non Lo Sa in 1973 and the self-titled collection issued the next year. Momentum arrived only with 1975’s Rimmel, whose maturing, reflective, and intelligent lyrics benefited from musical contributions by Lucio Dalla and additional collaborators.

Bufalo Bill reached stores in 1976. During a 1977 Milan concert stop, extreme left-wing protesters verbally confronted De Gregori, charging him with promoting capitalism and commercial compromise. He departed the stage visibly distraught, suspended new recordings, and took employment as a bookseller until re-entering the Italian music scene in 1978 with the album De Gregori. That set contained “Generale,” a piece that would rank among his most cherished and which the composer considered too strong to withhold from listeners. A subsequent tour shared with Dalla and the then-unknown Ron yielded the 1979 release Banana Republic. Over the following fifteen years a modest sequence of studio albums appeared, among them the 1982 masterpiece Titanic and 1992’s Canzoni d’Amore.

After several years contributing journalism to the newspaper L'Unità, De Gregori—known as “Il Principe” for an introverted, occasionally haughty approach to media encounters—resumed recording with 1996’s Prendere e Lasciare and the widely praised Amore Nel Pomeriggio in 2001. He joined Pino Daniele, Ron, and Fiorella Mannoia for a 2002 tour while also partnering with folksinger Giovanna Marini on Il Fischio del Vapore, an anthology of historic Italian popular and protest songs. Three years afterward the rock-oriented Pezzi appeared, followed by Calypsos in 2006.