44 Facts About Francesco Guccini

Francesco Guccini is a writer, having published autobiographic and noir novels, and a comics writer.

Francesco Guccini was harshly criticised after releasing Stanze di vita quotidiana and answered his critics with the song "L'avvelenata".

Francesco Guccini's lyrics have been praised for their poetic and literary value and have been used in schools as an example of modern poetry.

Francesco Guccini has gained the appreciation of critics and fans, who regard him as an iconic figure.

Francesco Guccini has received several awards for his works; an asteroid, a cactus species and a butterfly subspecies have been named after him.

Francesco Guccini's father from Tuscany, Ferruccio Guccini, was a postal employee, and his mother from Emilia, Ester Prandi, was a housewife.

Francesco Guccini's years spent in the somewhat archaic society of the mountains of Central Italy was to be a strong inspiration throughout his career, and it became one of the key recurring themes of his songs and books.

When World War II had ended, Francesco Guccini moved back to his family in Modena.

Francesco Guccini studied at the Istituto Magistrale Carlo Sigonio, the same school Luciano Pavarotti had attended, earning his high school diploma in 1958.

Francesco Guccini spent his teenage years in Modena, as he later recounted in his second novel Vacca d'un Cane and in songs including "Piccola Citta", which paints a bitter portrait of the city as "a strange enemy".

Francesco Guccini then worked as a journalist at the Gazzetta di Modena for two years.

In 1958 Francesco Guccini was guitarist and vocalist in a group first called Hurricanes, then Snakers and finally Gatti.

Francesco Guccini wrote his first songs while in the Snakers, in a style inspired by The Everly Brothers and Peppino di Capri.

In 1961 the Guccini family moved to Bologna, and Francesco enrolled at the University of Bologna to study foreign languages.

When he returned to Bologna, Francesco Guccini was asked to join the band Equipe 84, but he declined to continue his studies.

Francesco Guccini later quit university just before taking his degree.

Record Producer CGD commissioned Francesco Guccini to write a song for the 1967 Sanremo Festival, "Una storia d'amore", to be sung by Caterina Caselli and Gigliola Cinquetti.

The song, though, was not selected for the event, and Francesco Guccini was embittered by the edits made by two lyricists engaged by CGD.

From 1965 onward, Francesco Guccini spent 20 years teaching Italian at the off-campus Dickinson College, in Bologna.

In May 1967 Francesco Guccini made his first appearance in television, on Diamoci del tu, hosted by Caterina Caselli and Giorgio Gaber singing "Auschwitz".

Francesco Guccini wrote several songs for Caselli and for Nomadi, who made his song "Dio e morto" become widely popular; it became one of his most famous songs, despite being censored by the RAI for blasphemy.

In 1970 Francesco Guccini released his second album, Due anni dopo, recorded in the autumn of 1969.

Francesco Guccini's fame began to spread beyond Bologna, partly thanks to the appearance in the TV show Speciale tre milioni, where he sang some of his songs and befriended Claudio Baglioni.

The turning point in Francesco Guccini's career was in 1972 thanks to the album Radici, about the perpetual search for one's origins.

Francesco Guccini later wrote two songs with him, "Keaton" and "Ballando con una sconosciuta".

In 1973 Francesco Guccini released Opera buffa, a light-hearted and playful album, which showed his skills as an ironic, theatrical and cultured cabaret artist.

Francesco Guccini was perplexed by the release of the disc, especially because of its arrangements and because it was recorded live.

Francesco Guccini received harsh criticism, including a slating by the critic Riccardo Bertoncelli, who said the singer songwriter was "a finished artist, who has nothing else to say".

Francesco Guccini answered with the song "L'avvelenata", a few years later.

Francesco Guccini had his first commercial success in 1976, with Via Paolo Fabbri 43, which was the sixth best-selling album of the year.

Francesco Guccini sang with a more mature and determined voice, and the musical structure was more complex than in his earlier works.

Later Francesco Guccini was reluctant in performing the song during concerts, saying it was obsolete.

The most popular song was "Eskimo", but Francesco Guccini claimed the highest point was the title track, a ballad about an emigrant uncle of his.

In 1981 Francesco Guccini was the co-author, along with Giorgio Gaber, Sandro Luporini and Gian Piero Alloisio, of the musical Gli ultimi viaggi di Gulliver.

The subsequent tour was the first in which Francesco Guccini performed with a backing band; previously, Francesco Guccini used to perform solo, or with just one or two guitarists.

In 2006 Francesco Guccini received one vote in the 2006 Italian presidential election.

On 21 April 2008, an article on La Stampa affirmed that Francesco Guccini had stopped smoking, and that this had caused him to gain weight and lose his inspiration.

Francesco Guccini denied it on 18 May 2008, in TV show Che tempo che fa.

Francesco Guccini is the voice of what was once called the "social movement".

Francesco Guccini has been seen as a sociopolitical chronicler and some of his songs express his opinion about a political issue.

Francesco Guccini defines himself an anarchic, and he expressed his thoughts about the relation between music and politics in his song "L'avvelenata"; "I have never said that with songs you can make revolutions, nor that you can make poetry".

Francesco Guccini collaborated with Loriano Macchiavelli for a series of Noir books, and published a Dictionary of the dialect of Pavana which showed his ability as dialectologist and translator.

Francesco Guccini is a lover of comics, and some of his songs reference them.

Francesco Guccini wrote the soundtrack of the 1977 movie Nene, directed by Salvatore Samperi, and his song "Acque" featured in the soundtrack of Nero, the 1992 movie directed by Giancarlo Soldi.