Twenty-five years without Fabrizio De Andrè, songwriter (and sailor)

It has been exactly 25 years since Fabrizio De Andrè passed away (on January 11, 1999, at the age of 59). We want to remember him with this photo, which shows him happily at the helm of a sailboat in 1986.

Fabrizio De Andrè sailor

The great Genoese songwriter, Faber, to his friends, loved to travel. Especially in the latter part of his record production, from “Creuza de Mä” to “Nuvole,” the musical influences from distant countries are so evident that these records can be categorized as absolute masterpieces of world music (just think that David Byrne of Talking Heads included Creuza de Mä among the ten most important records of the 1980-90 decade worldwide!).

Prior to “Nuvole,” De André bought a sailboat (which he christened Jamin-a, after the 1984 song he wrote for an Algerian friend) and embarked on a two-and-a-half-month sail around the islands and coast of Greece with singer-songwriter and friend Mauro Pagani. Fabrizio De Andrè’s boat was hardly a “racer,” to the point that some even gave it a malicious nickname, “the rock,” because of its poor speed.

The trip should have been much shorter, but the two songwriters went as far as the coast of Turkey, in search of those Mediterranean sounds and colors (they returned inspired, tanned, but without having written a line of music. They would think about it later!) that then characterized the last period of De André, who passed away in 1999.

• Read also: History of the London Valour shipwreck