It is strange that Alexander Gradsky, now packs opening talents, missed Alexander bashlacheva. In George Orwell’s 1984 in his door rang, two Cherepovets kid. One was called Sasha Bashlachev, other – Leonid Parfyonov. The address to the master listened, and you never know, blessed with unusual bard of the Vologda region gave music critic Artemy Troitsky: “As I understand it, their city barely listened and were escorted by naputstvuya words: “You, guy, first, learn to sing and to play the guitar, and then I show it”. I called the Town after that. Say: “What don’t you like it?” He says: “Oh, just Amateur”. “Okay, what verses?” “Well, poems – Yes, poems are good. I feel that for a long time he writes them. Texts, of course, masterful. I said, “Bashlachev told me that these verses are created instantly. Not lint it over them laboratory and clinical way.” What city on the other end laughed loudly and said, “Well, so this guy is a genius”. Mater (he is a master of) not wrong. In recognition bashlacheva, the poems came to him “out”.
“Alms for the crumbs of Nicaragua!”
The singularity of Sasha bashlacheva, born may 27, 1960 in Cherepovets, hatch in early childhood: in the three years he composed the first verse (though not very meaningful) verses, free to read before school, and at school easy studied German and – why-then – Polish (later, at University, in the same way – English), independently mastered the piano, freely composed poems, and even “built” comical spy novel volume four exercise books 96 sheets. Anyway, was a great inventor, leader, entertainer.
Sarcastic (not, perhaps, softer: ironic) attitude towards lying, hypocritical “Soviet reality” of the “human brains” bashlacheva also from the school. “At that time the USSR provided aid to various third world countries. Maxim (school friend – ed.) and Alexander for a laugh went around school with a sign: “Alms for the crumbs of Nicaragua!” Fortunately, school officials treated this as a joke,” writes Lev Naumov in the wonderful biography, “Alexander Bashlachev. People singing” (there are a few quotes from there). – In the tenth grade, Bashlachev wrote a political poem in which there was a dialogue Brezhnev and Vladimir Mayakovsky. Remained only one sentence: “Your comrade, a heart and the name we call a Rover!”. Teachers and classmates who took “the ode on man and Rover” at face value, “were thrilled”.
“Inner core” echoed in my artistic preferences (“Master and Margarita”, “One day of Ivan Denisovich”, “the Burn” Aksenov, “the Mirror” and “Stalker” Tarkovsky, “That Munchhausen” Zakharov, Alexander fell in love in adolescence and early adulthood), “hippopotam” appearance.
“On the street of Sacco-Vanzetti, my house is 22”
“Poetic-journalistic” gift bashlacheva broke in Sverdlovsk, at the faculty of journalism of Ural state University (Sasha almost came to Leningrad, but “flunked out” due to insufficient number of publications).
Here there is no rain. Sometimes just damp.
Here the sky is not, and only oxygen.
A long time ago – have you heard? – the fifth part of the world
Turned into a barren garden…
…To scream! … Where there is Not enough voices.
Ridiculous and awfully hard
Yourself for short bobbed hair
Pull of the viscous and rotten swamps.
(“Ah, why are cheerful date!…”, 1980)
I have spent seven hours here flew.
Now I know exactly
How broad is my native land,
Yes there is no sense in this latitude.
(I’m seven hours flew here”, 1981)
October wind singing long,
Long the wind was jubilant.
Churches – fire, poets – in the Volga
And a new king to the helm stood up.
He’s not in the crown, and cap
Not in the forehead a diamond star
And in the snowstorms of new, terrible
Wolves howled trains.
Russia, poor Russia!
How often we’re together
Break his arms from impotence
And drink vodka…
(“Heavy chains fell”, 1981)
Ekaterinburg, street Bolshakova, 79
“Baglajewska” places in Yekaterinburg modern – journalistic frat house at Bolshakova, 79 – room 225, his first refuge in the Urals as well as the famous “marginalia” – a tiny, narrow as a pencil case, a room actually designed for mops, idlers and buckets; platform from the abandoned house 22 along the street Sacco and Vanzetti, in which Bashlachev has lived almost all his student years:
Love – this is my haunted house.
And two that are still sleeping together,
On the street of Sacco-Vanzetti, my house 22.
(“The train №193”, 1984)
From Sverdlovsk Bashlachev went to a lifelong friends of Alexander Izmaylov and Sergey Nokhrin (poet, writer, Director, died in 2001; “remembering Sverdlovsk, I resemble eyelashes drops of dry wine, but with a name “Nohrin” I want to get up and immediately go to the East”). At the faculty of journalism, these three were “the founders of the” movement “of parallelepipeds”. Classmate Sergei Solovyov (quote from the book “Alexander Bashlachev. Singing man”): “Every day they drew a picture said to be of parallelepipedal, it was all of parallelepipeds. Two bricks on each other “Love”. Two bricks vertically “Friendship”. Six bricks are hanging on the hooks – pattern “I would” (this phrase Pushkin said that when the Decembrists were executed). The sky flying several blocks by wedge – “Flying birds”. A discordant line of parallelepipeds-bricks on the ground – “Are transitional animals”. Only one paper ball and the caption: “Bitch!”… The following year they had a tomb of a fictional artist parallelepipedic Landau of Perlovich, a contemporary of Pushkin, and honor guard always stood with bandages (paraphrase “races on gun carriages” – a series of solemn funeral of Brezhnev, Andropov, and then Chernenko, ed.), the day of death was noted”.
Ekaterinburg, street of Sacco and Vanzetti
The poetic workmanship of Alexander honed at the Cherepovets group “Rock-September”, which was sent from Sverdlovsk lyric lyrics for songs. Subsequently, she received all-Union fame, this is her undoing: Seva Novgorodtsev told about “Rock-September” on the BBC (and the tape gave it Bashlachev) and vigilant “bodies” to cover for her. The group leader Vyacheslav Kobrin moved to Tallinn, got a solid house… Bashlachev such a “bourgeois” lifestyle was, of course, alien, friend, he in the end lost, gained friends:
With eighteen years of age
He played horrible
For painted women and drunken men.
He ate in between a couple of cold meatballs.
The musician was bald.
He has lost the talent.
There were many wrinkles.
He loved that moment,
When you turn the light off and it is time to remove the tool.
(“Musician”, 1984)
The rest of him, the short period of Sasbach (so Alexander called himself) thought to assemble your own band. But it remained a loner. Differently and could not be near Bashlacheva, with its extremely individualistic style, with its frenzied energy, put there was no one. And there is no need.
“And in the chest – a spark of electricity”
Birth of “supernova” bashlacheva is autumn 1984. In that short period (like the time he focused, pulled the socks up), Alexander became good friends with Yuri Shevchuk and DDT, and – thanks to a friend, Cherepovets journalist Leonid Parfenov (who today does not know Leonid gennadevicha?) – with Artemy Troitsky. It is in the parents ‘ apartment in Cherepovets Parfenova Bashlachev Trinity shows his now legendary stuff (especially “under” them have learned to play the guitar), the primacy of which, without doubt, the “Time of bells”. Some believe that Russian rock came out of the “Bells”, as Russian literature – a native of Gogol’s “Overcoat”:
Well now go round-yeah-about
In his field, as the underground?
If we do not cast the bell,
So this time bells…
Zagremit, whistle, Zedelgem!
Feel it in your bones to the tips.
Hey, guys, feels livers
The terrible laughter of Russian bells?
(“Time of bells”, 1984)
But from an early age I do not know how to stand in line
Sun blinds me when I look at the flag
And I’m tired of you stretching your
Open hand to shake the fist
(“Black holes”, 1984)
Trinity, who agreed to listen to the provincial bard, rather, not to offend an acquaintance Parfenova, in shock, before him unique, precious nugget with the potential of a genius. “This is one of my favorite memories of my entire life, one of the nicest shocks,” says since then, Trinity.
The fate bashlacheva is changing rapidly and suddenly, he throws him a hateful Cherepovets newspaper “with the poetic name “Communist”” (Negrino: “Serezha, never, you hear, never ever cross the threshold of the party Department, where I now have a place to be”), included in the rock community of Moscow and Leningrad. The legendary “Kamchatka”, Grebenshchikov (unchanged idol, along with Vysotsky and Morrison), Choi, Naumenko, Mamonov, Aguzarova, Kurehin, Kibirov, underground concerts (often due to “anti-Soviet” – “under the hood” of the KGB), travel around the country, far and wide – from the Baltic States and Ukraine to Siberia and Central Asia, Yanka Dyagileva, Letov, Revyakin, “the appartment” Pugacheva and ascension, admiring reviews Gurchenko (“From “Bells” still chill”, she said Parfyonov many years later), the offer to star in a movie… “Really genius” – States all around. Success, big plans, joy, happiness – the description of the state bashlacheva his own words…
And in the chest – a spark of electricity.
Hats in the snow.
Louder and jerk-ka
Rock-n-roll – nice paganism.
I love being bells.
(“Time of bells”, 1984)
“On the rocks hard, but right in millstone”
After only a year and a half Bashlachev, rooted to the spot, – near the ravine of the cliff, gradually, but rapidly passing into the abyss. Behind the death of his son Vanya, a speech given “through I can not” and do not bring delight and inspiration, rather, it is violence against themselves, the new songs don’t come. Besplatnosti, poverty, emaciation and hopelessness, apathy, mixed with aggression, fatigue from the “hangouts” (“absolutely idle, without a king in his head, worthless and empty inside” – Leonid Parfenov), nervous breakdowns, exhaustion, insomnia, crying at night, failing to join Orthodoxy (“what are You, crazy? Where do you climb? Not ready for this!” – discourage friend of the priest). Increasingly and insistently accompanying him since his youth thought about early, already impending death. Bashlachev cuts long hair and the famous bells, always sweetsie on his wrist.
And I’m ready for any rack.
Lift me up, honey, Oh!
I’m all for saying thank you.
Oh, save me, save me, God!
(“In the open field – rain…”, 1985)
Something stuffy. Something sickening.
Something boring. And all anxious.
It is alarming and scary, my friends!
And it is impossible to rise.
(“John”, 1986)
Greeted him, according to Parfenov, “frightened and shivering” from the change in condition and appearance. “I have no funny songs anymore.” At the end of 1987, he promised what he recently could not even dream of: a selection of poems, “official” concert before a large audience, the record on the firm “Melody”, the film role. That’s it, a little more… But Bashlachev answering his main question: why? for what? Even if you call the program “Time” – why?
Oh, pulled, carried, brought, feel free to me
On the rocks hard, but right in the millstone!
(“Mill”, 1985)
In the morning of 17 February 1988 were waiting for him on the set of the film “City” was in full swing in preparation of this record on the 19th was assigned to the concert. “Come Mariana [Choi] and said, “don’t wait” (Director, artist, writer, MiTek Victor Tikhomirov). The same morning, 27-year-old Alexander Bashlachev, leaving behind six dozen songs and two hundred concerts, stepped down from the eighth floor of the house number 23 on Kuznetsova Avenue in Leningrad.
Poets come to the end. And don’t you dare shout them –
It is not necessary!
Because God… He’s not lying, breaking their mirror.
And again the seven circles of restless, noisy Lada
You look in his mouth, running up the caliber of the barrel.
(“On the lives of the poets”, 1986)
“The rest is silence, which before his death he desired the most. After five and a half months, in early August, Bashlachev was born the son Yegor.
“I never lie”
What kind of force pushed him out the window? Witnesses to the suicide not. They say, “stuffy”, “sparest” of the Soviet regime. Say, untimely: it was ahead of its time and was not understood. Say, creative crisis, whereas from the genius waited for new “exploits”. They say the lack of recognition on the background of the breakthrough of others, with whom together began on “Kamchatka” (that is, to be precise, it turns out, envy?). They say poor living conditions. They say alcohol and drugs. They say that a vow given in Sverdlovsk friend-classmate Evgeny Puchkov: if one dies – then leave and another; Puchkov out of the window for six months before bashlacheva. They say all together.
to dissipate black smoke
to dissipate black smoke
to dissipate black smoke
scattering black smoke…
(“Mill”, 1985)
But, whatever it is, all by bashlacheva. Towards the end of his life he was drawn to “the eternal” and not “political”. It didn’t stick nor fame, nor money, “he had to meet an understanding in the first place There” (sound engineer Vyacheslav Egorov). Above all mortal he put honesty, modesty and sensitivity (read the interview, included in the book Lev Naumov “Alexander Bashlachev. Man singing: “I never lie. I never lie… If something is to condemn it himself in the first place… To plural treated us, we also need plural to relate to each other and to those who hinder us… Even those I hate, I still love you”). He, in the blood razrivaushiy fingers on a guitar, pluck a voice even in front of three listeners, called the merchants of rock “speculators”: the passionate preachers on stage – and boring burgers then, driven by ambition and greed, occupying someone else’s way, betraying her. Did not tolerate the definition of “art”, saying: “nature”.
My cross – the sign of action, so as to lay down his head
For being early to die
Because it is very nice to live
For being early to die
For what really need to live
(“When we are together”, 1986)
Nobody knows the reasons, is to believe. “Sasha was looking for a new language – a kind of “Name Names”, and apparently found him and realized that he didn’t talk to anyone. As it is written in some book: “the Angels cannot use the human eye, for them it is inexpressibly painful.” So around here. He was not interested in talking in our language, but on his he was not with anyone,” producer and writer Andrei Burlaka. Maybe he, like Bulgakov’s the Master, went out to meet the chief, that is your first Name? Of the lost souls – through repentance – to peace?
Name names
Yes not washed clean, if whole blood Yes we got away with trouble,
and the broken trough.
Instead of icons
will be a Terrible judgement – for yourself – to judge us mirror.
Name names
will uproot all that before the deadline closed.
In the sieve of time
gonna leave the pain, Yes a twig, so true to the term ascended.
(“Name of names”, 1986)
Here, Yes, even in the framework of nascent capitalism, he sure had no reason to stay. Journalist Sergei Guriev: “There postcommunisme cooperatives, which began to do concerts where “Mirage” and “DDT” acted in one program… With the death bashlacheva it actually matched… kind of strange symbolic coincidence.”
We carve the sparks themselves
In spite of a total flood.
The spark will kindle a flame
And hurt burn us… the ass.
(“We carve the sparks themselves…”, 1985)
“Bashlachev – this is the window where no one wants to look”
Artemy Troitsky:
– Bashlachev said that the song is literally “overshadowed” him, Yes, sometimes so suddenly that he barely had time to write them down on paper. Moreover, the meaning of certain images, metaphors, allegories, he himself was not at once clear – and he continued to decipher them for yourself months later after writing.
Yuri Shevchuk:
– Sachbuch came to me and said, here you have a whole orchestra, I would create a group. I told him: Sasha, where are there the reels, in such a dense metaphorical text? The drums just kill it. He still tried, but nothing came of it, of course, with the orchestra. I said to him, your brilliant lyrics and a guitar – that’s enough, and the sax solo is monstrous. I also don’t like the romances on poems by Pushkin or Tarkovsky – music spoils the text as “butter oil” is obtained. Sasbach there. I have raved about the music, hence the tests I have lighter – they leave a space for sound. And a poem is quite another.
Konstantin Kinchev:
– The bar put it all be healthy. Man you have live shows on their notebooks, shows the formula of writing – what’s the word for what clings. The whole structure he had developed, and here technology very much. After all, every word must flow from one another, emphasizing and reinforcing it, the words are converted in the offer, which stimulates the birth of the next sentence, consisting of the same words. And he would draw graphs and diagram, arrows painted as one word with another should correspond. Not in rhyme, case, and must exactly correspond report. And stylistically, how they should be fastened and, therefore, begin to play with this cut, burn like diamonds.
Anastasia rakhlina, spouse:
– Sasha did not use drugs. Point. On the contrary, he had a coherent theory about drugs as some kind of Elevator, which, of course, possible where-that to rise in their, shall we say, intellectual quest, but, first, you still come back, and secondly, the soul must work itself. Because the gift, as already mentioned, nothing is given. Where did all this talk come from, of course – where did the film about Sergey Alexandrovich Yesenin and the story of his murder. Because it’s so much more interesting.
Leonid Parfenov:
– Drink it, in my opinion, no more. I’m really drunk Sasha actually seen only once – before the festival in the Fort, is under the Cherepovets. And he himself the next morning in order to lead – we the jury had to sit. And together they drank only Bulgarian wines, and more than a bottle of money simply was not found.
Yegor Letov:
– I believe that suicide is the only way and natural end for an honest man in our conditions. If you have an honest mind, you must realize that nothing is going to change. The farther you go, the farther you expand as a person, all have less in common you have with what is outside, that is, after a while nobody will be able to take, you’re leaving just in a vacuum. If you find some strength, then go on and become, apparently, a Saint. But if you have this honesty of consciousness, I understand that I will never be able to do, nevertheless, want to change, that is really touches you, then the only solution is somehow to die. Or be killed reality or yourself.
Boris Grebenshikov:
– Bashlachev never be forgotten… Because with this raw breed, which he got, no one can do it, no one wants to her to even approach. It remembers, Yes, 1%. You can print hundreds of records to go out and distribute all. But people will not take – they will never make such kind of art will not be able to perceive. And the last five thousand years show that it is impossible to do anything. Knowing humanity, I can say that nothing will change. But unless we try, things get worse. As Alice said in Wonderland: “in order to stand still in such a situation – should be run”. If you stop, you will carry back… It’s art for some special people, ordinary people are not able to withstand. That is, I would say that this window where no one wants to look.
