The baddies have won. Never lose the sense of power.
a cura di Gaia Moretti and Naomi Sabato
Mine, my personal one?
Well, for me it has been central because historically it coincided with my turning into an adolescent, so let’s say that the advent of counterculture coincided with my knowledge of the world. One of the essential traits of counterculture is that it pleaded to be turned into active life, this is one of its essential traits; right from the Beat Generation books which were the pillars of counterculture in the literary milieu. The emergence of the Beat Generation had this aim, an essential one in my view, which then spilled out onto the alternative Rock culture of the times; and it was that of being role models in life i.e. I was reading Robert and could be impressed by the exploration of the characters, psychology, of the context and historical narrative in which they were cast. The fundamental difference we find instead with Jack Kerouac and his novel On the Road, regarded as a sort of Bible at the time, is that he told people “this is how I live”, and impressed on them the fact that literature was an active part of life and not something that should be inhabited from an intellectual point of view only. Poets were doing the same thing, and they also gave voice to a number of causes such as free drugs and homosexuality, as Gilbert – for instance – was doing. This means that they weren’t only literary models but also political ones, and the same thing was being done by music in the 1960s, a total turning point, more or less on the wave of the literature I mentioned earlier i.e. what rock bands or individual artists starting from Bob Dylan were bringing was that very thought; I saw a different life and not just a song that was more or less nice and/or more or less evocative, what we are asking you is to resort to a lifestyle, which was an opposing life form, in this sense you could perhaps define counterculture. You could say, however, that at times this became mainstream, ruling because also at popular level, in this context there was confusion between the two things – probably something that will never happen again in human history – in which at a certain stage the vanguard and the masses were almost about to converge, and at their epicentre were the Beatles, in the sense that the Beatles were both the best-loved and appreciated thing also at commercial level – as they suited everything – but, at the same time, they were being pulled by Abby Hoffman, by revolutionaries, by all those mad people or those diverging on culture who wanted them alongside themselves, it was – as I said earlier – a unique time in history. The answer to the question you asked could be much broader, counterculture was cardinal for me, it was my life, something that I was trying to bring into my life, I must say I’m still the product of that. I should also say that my first job as a journalist was for Muzak, an important magazine at the time which focused on counterculture. So, in every respect I grew up around counterculture and I wanted it to be part of my life.
These are difficult questions because it’s very hard to pick the thread and understand where exactly it fell and where it survived, it’s hard because there are thousands of forces at play and variables. Certainly in everything that constitutes an idea of progress and acceptance of diversity, this is the result of counterculture, if we can say nowadays that progress has been made in how women are viewed, in the acceptance of diversity. Then there are some unbelievable flaws, for someone like me who lived through counterculture, to hear people still talk about racism nowadays is truly unbelievable as well as wrong. Had they asked me in the 1960s, I would have said that it was a fight that needed winning and that we would have been over it, and yet we are still here.
I recently also wrote an article and would like to share some of it with you.
During some open-air screenings in Rome, a lovely events supported by many – of course with left-leaning views – someone broke the nose of a young man linked to the initiative by the Amici del piccolo America (Friends of the small America cinema) organization. The young man was attacked for wearing a T-shirt in support of this organization. While heading to a screening of First Reformed a film by Paul Schrader, a group of young people accused them to be Anti-fascists, precisely because of the T-shirt they were wearing, and demanded they take it off. When they refused, they got beaten up. The same thing happened to me fifty years ago and not just then, I have been attacked many times, for instance when they set my car on fire. In any event, back in the day these things used to happen, it just took a distinctive look which, at the time, was just like that, and you could be beaten up. What I was saying though is that fifty years ago it was ok, but that fifty years on exactly the SAME thing should be happening for the same reasons, is like science-fiction, I really can’t swallow it. That’s why I say that society is in tatters, patchy, contradictory. There’s a bit of everything. Fortunately, society nowadays acknowledges and accepts certain things such as homosexuality or, generally-speaking, sexual freedom. Sexual freedom was wholly and entirely born out of counterculture, especially in Italy which was considerably backward compared to other places, Northern countries on the other hand were much more used to the idea of sexual re-direction. Italy instead was a bigoted country, with a deep-seated Catholic way of thinking also at institutional level and in everything; the sexual freedom we enjoy today is entirely linked to the process.
After, meaning when?
No, I’d say that the real cut-off point came in the 1990s where everything essentially died off. One thing that survived until the early 1990s was the feature and thinking that music was an essential part of life, that music reigned over everything and that everything revolved around it. Gradually though this view lost ground, starting from the end of the 1980s – where music was a fundamental pivot – and getting to a total breaking point in the 1990s, when there was a completely different dissemination process and nullification of the power of music, which nowadays is in fact of very low quality.
The answer is varied, a few years ago I wrote a book called “Il buio, il fuoco, il desiderio”, partly on the fact that music hasn’t died and will never die, let’s say that what died was a historical era. This is due to a variety of things, a general anaesthetization of society through the invasive impact of the media which are highly destructive.
In the 1960s it was a bit like a family, not many really, I’d say The Beatles, Pink Floyd. All these characters expressed a utopian dream, that music be a world that could be superimposed on the real one, and perhaps replace it, replace it with something better, with an alternative one full of rules, behaviours, interpretations, views on the system, everything in other words. I’d feel like mentioning John Lennon, probably a central figure, but there are many others still and they all told this utopian dream.
Nobody, I feel close to all those I mentioned. I feel closest to the actual generation, i.e. I don’t want to sound like someone lost in tradition or nostalgic thoughts, indeed these are terms I don’t like, I like living in the ‘here and now’; let’s say that those are things one subjectively misses, but it’s not nostalgia, rather I am cross because I’d love a Bob Dylan linked to the present times, and I feel angry that my children do not have anything quite so powerful themselves.
Entirely, let’s say that what is still around is a certain breadth, in the end among the consequences of the revolution of those years, there is that of opening doors in terms of subject matters. Today, too, we find this thing again, we talk about everything. So it’s not the topics that are missing but there is a general weakness, what is lacking to a certain extent is the strength, power and ambition, the desire to uproot something, to be a driving force.
It’s safe to say it’s the guitar. Up until a certain point though, now it’s not been the case for over twenty years, let’s say between the 1960s and 1970s it was the guitar on the one hand, and the sax on the other, thinking of jazz which had in those years a tremendous impact, in some cases it was also the important genre, with the most extreme characters.
No, I wouldn’t call it elite, they were two sides of the same coin, then they had different natures; the classical one was more honest and straightforward, suitable for lighter things – precisely, it was the leading instrument in those years, as it was the only instrument that could be played solo but also as accompaniment, it was highly gregarious. The acoustic guitar was like a rucksack, the electric one too, but it was more expensive and was used more in rock bands, but I believe that the electric guitar and the classical one were two sides of the same coin where you simply change what you use it for.
Not the fact that it had an influence on me, but that I was born around it and grew up with it. It was like learning Italian, one’s own mother tongue shall we say.
Yes, the advice I think I can give everyone is to try never to lose track of the sense of power of what you could have.
Clearly Woodstock in music terms was in some ways the enactment and practice of a delegation festival, there was a lot of stuff of this kind in it, it was somewhat overused, becoming a bit of a cliché. More generally speaking though, I’d say those movements that would then go on to become political, hence the student movements, starting from the American ones and moving on to the Italian and French ones.
It may be banal but I’d say capitalism. There’s a friend of mine who always says a nice thing i.e. the baddies have won.