"The first 20 years of Agatha Christie were a testing ground"
Vadim Samoilov found Russian rock in its heyday and believes that today the genre is once again entering a phase of great growth. The Agatha Christie leader sees in young musicians the same protest impulse that once brought his generation to the stage, although he now defines his own path differently: not through denial, but through creation. On the eve of his performance at VK Fest, Samoilov told Izvestia about the new generation of listeners, the lessons of the Sverdlovsk rock club, the last conversation with Alexey Balabanov and why, years later, the story of Morphine still haunts him.
"The love of music bordered on mass hysteria"
— On July 19th, you will perform at VK Fest. Most of the festival's audience grew after the Agatha Christie group's heyday. Which is more difficult — to hold the attention of an old listener or to win over a new one, brought up in the era of streaming and short videos?
— "Agatha Christie" is a living classic of Russian rock. When we created our compositions decades ago, they were already quite multigenre. This symbiosis, which includes both electronics and live instruments, is always on trend. Therefore, it's a sin to complain: everything is fine with both the old audience and the new one. We inevitably catch the eye of young guys who are starting to get interested in rock music.
Performance by Vadim Samoilov
In general, in every city, at Agatha Christie concerts, only a third of the audience are music lovers who know who we are. The rest are inexperienced viewers. And VK Fest is a good and interesting challenge for an artist, because it is a festival with a very different audience. If you go out on this platform, you have to be relevant. I accepted this challenge a long time ago: I continue to create new music, make collaborations and participate in such events. I choose the path of heritage preservation and expansion.
"Is it working?"
— Of course, today we are seeing an increase in young people. And this is a completely different listener. If we recall the nineties, when Agatha Christie was phenomenally popular, then the love of music bordered on fanaticism and mass hysteria. And the cases were very funny. One girl wrote that she was a fan of Na Na, and then she saw Agatha Christie and realized that she loved us. And unlike the Nanai people, we didn't look like sex symbols (laughs).
The younger generation that is joining our ranks now are those who are really imbued with creativity. Not by me or anyone else personally, but by music, our heritage. They are intelligent, informative, and well-read people. We have a fairly high tone at the venues.
— An interesting point you mentioned about the letters. What did they write to you about?
— Personal letters were passed around mostly at concerts, and some of them were very extravagant. Someone even wrote in blood! But the phenomenon of fanaticism is a big question for psychologists. It's probably some kind of void inside that a person wants to fill with something. Therefore, he gets attached, in this case, to what he means by this music, by this hero, absolutely not knowing what kind of person he is.
"Rebellion and protest are imbued with the stupid energy of youth"
— Follow VK Fest in your Legend festival schedule. The event will take place in August at Gorbunov Recreation Center. Gorbushka is a cult place for rockers. What does it mean to you today?
— The audience at this festival is just a sophisticated one, who, together with Gorbunov's DK, has lived the whole history of Russian rock music. Artists from young to old gather. We see each other every year, and we see age—related changes - for the better and for the worse (laughs). It's a curious gathering!
The soloist of the Agatha Christie group Vadim Samoilov during a performance at the festival "DC Gorbunova — Legend of Russian rock"
And yes, indeed, it's about something else. There is a retrospective moment. It's an undying interest in rock music and an undying desire to feel like a bunch of revolutionaries, like we were 40 years ago.
— Back then, rock was the music of protest. Does it have that in it today?
— Protest in rock music persists. There were ten years of slight oblivion of this genre. Not because it didn't exist, but rather because of the commercial approach of the music media, which are fighting for a rating so that, so to speak, the button is not switched. There is a lot of entertainment content, but very little of anything profound or even disturbing.
Rock musicians have appeared — there are a lot of them. But maybe the big bright stars haven't lit up yet. I have been on the jury of various festivals. I listened to a lot of musicians. Sometimes I noticed that he is still raw, does not have a professional form, but the ideas are very interesting. I usually subscribe to a dozen or more of these groups and just watch them develop. And there are things that are quite accomplished. And the history of conflict with the world, which is uncomfortable for them, can be traced. This is how rock differs from popular culture, which is usually about love.
But now there is mass interest in the vocal and instrumental ensemble again. Therefore, we can expect a revolution from rockers. We are experiencing a big boom, similar to the one in the 1970s, which led to a massive wave of Russian rock.
— Are there any specific names of artists that you pay attention to, and about whom you can say that they are changing the musical landscape right now?
— There are objective indicators — those who broke through: "Bond with a button", ZOLOTO, "Culture Room". The boundaries between genres are blurred now. But they can be called rock musicians to a sufficient extent.
But there is an even more raw and harsh wave. I advise you to listen, for example, to the band "3/2". Also, "BIBN" is heavy rock with elements of punk, very provocative in lyrics. They are a denial of reality, which contains a lot of falsehood. For a child, there is always a lot of falsehood in the adult world. and, in fact, that's what they're protesting against.
In general, the rebelliousness of the younger generation relative to the previous one is an eternal problem of fathers and children. Therefore, rock music and rap, which is also slowly becoming an academic genre, will remain.
— When you hear these young artists protesting against something, do some of the ideas seem naive to you?
- yes. Rebellion and protest are imbued with the absolutely pure and stupid energy of youth, when you don't fully understand how the world works. Agatha Christie had a period when the highly social songs "Rats in White Gloves" and "Cannibal Dwarves" appeared with hints of officialdom. But quickly enough, we became more interested in the inner metaphysics of man. After all, the reason for how society lives is in its nature.
But I'm still not a conformist. It's just that my way is not to criticize, but to suggest. I speak at various venues and participate in discussions to transform what we have into something better.
Maybe now my songs don't sound like a clear protest. But there are sharp characters who come to catharsis — understanding themselves. In each one, I try to place a ray at the end of the tunnel, which is a landmark. It's not for nothing that all religious texts have the idea of working on oneself for the better. I believe that this is a dominant topic that we all need to develop so that one day humanity stops solving its problems by killing each other. I believe that this is possible in the future for several decades.
"After 40 years, I managed to create a dream team"
— Did it happen at the dawn of your career and your youthful maximalism that some art councils came and said, "Guys, don't do this"?
— There was an episode. At first we were called the "vocal and instrumental ensemble of the secondary school No. 1 in the city of Asbestos", and then the "vocal and instrumental ensemble of the Radio Engineering Faculty of the Ural Institute of Politics". I very often performed with my author's material at amateur performances. Many guys signed their works with the names of Soviet poets and composers so that they would not have any complaints about them. For example, by David Tukhmanov. And I had a principled position about my own writings — I always put the authorship "Vadim Samoilov".
Performance by Vadim Samoilov
And one day they told me: "Let's have a chat." We went to the Kirovsky district Komsomol committee — there was a small stage there, and we played a small concert for several people. We must pay tribute — everything was friendly. Back then, there were already rock festivals in Sverdlovsk, and Nautilus was moving towards huge popularity. I was told: "Maybe you will join the Union of Composers, because here only its members can give works to the public space." Well, I replied, "Maybe I will." That was the end of it.
And just a year later, we became members of the Sverdlovsk Rock Club, and this public organization already allowed the lyrics to be performed in a more simplified manner.
— The Sverdlovsk Rock Club celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. When did you feel that something big was being born?
— There was a feeling that something was happening from the very beginning. The band and I hadn't performed at the first two festivals yet, we just came and got to know the musicians. And on the third, they already took the stage. And the whole story was unfolding before my eyes. It wasn't just the musicians. Directors Balabanov and Kolyada, engineers who soldered the equipment themselves, designers, journalists — a whole subculture was born.
The first rock festival can be compared to a costumed corporate party. I went up to Sverdlov's recreation center and gasped: ordinary people, with whom I talked every day, made themselves prosthetics, made up something, put on some clips. Rockers are a huge herd! (Laughs). These were excesses, something like shouting: "We can, we are!".
It quickly went away and the very essence remained. The Sverdlovsk Rock club had very high requirements for professional performance and a fairly strong community. It was a good example of creative partnership and human friendship that influenced my development. Back then, no one was competing, chasing money and a place on the charts. It was a hobby where we willingly shared with each other, creating something in common.
It's like a relationship in a construction company. All together, it gave me a model of team relationships that I've been working towards for a long time. The first 20 years of Agatha Christie's existence were a testing ground. All with character, young. The limit comes when you realize that you are giving more energy not to music, but to sort out some situations. And you have to make decisions and move on. After 40 years of playing music professionally, I have managed to create a dream band.
"I just filmed myself in a movie where he's dying, and he died."
— You remembered Balabanov. A monument to him was recently unveiled in Yekaterinburg. What connected you?
— Alexey and I have a long-standing friendship. The acquaintance with Balabanov took place in the late 1980s. We became closer in the 1990s, when we started touring with Agatha Christie. Alexey was a regular guest at our concerts and was willing to express his sympathy. And all this resulted in the fact that I wrote the music for his films "Brother-2", "It doesn't hurt me". I worked at a home studio, then I came to Lenfilm. There I became friends with the entire film crew, who then shot Sergei Bodrov's debut film. Master Balabanov secretly supervised it. Almost every day after the installation, Bodrov and I came to Balabanov's house. We talked, sometimes we drank something.
Directed by Alexey Balabanov
— What were you talking about?
— We discussed the modern world, modern man, the state of affairs in the country and our personal situation. The last hour-long conversation with Lesha Balabanov took place three days before his departure. He said that he did not understand and did not know this world, that he knew the world that was gone.: "I've said everything about that world." So I just filmed myself in a movie where he was dying, and he died.
Monument to film director Alexei Balabanov on the square near the Youth Palace in Yekaterinburg
— Almost prophetically!
— Yes, I directed it. He is a prophet. It can be said less pretentiously: a hyperintuitive person. All Balabanov's images are very authentic. He supported the simplest people, and sent the selfish to the dustbin of history. There is an unambiguous assessment of everything. And a great longing, of course, for the confused honesty and kindheartedness that he also experienced while in a young Sverdlovsk rock club.
"I'm a self-made rocker"
— I have heard a story that speaks about his creative method, that on the set of "Cargo 200" he forbade the team to approach the performer of the main role Agniya Kuznetsova, creating a kind of isolation for her. Were there any challenges in terms of musical collaboration?
— The fact is that he specifically, apparently, wanted to drive her into a state of reliable emotional experience — this is the basis. He said, "The main character must be zhalka."
A shot from the movie "Cargo 200"
Well, the fact that directors sometimes use such rather harsh methods to achieve this authenticity in cinema was also a great discovery for me when I got to know this world. Although I would not tolerate such an attitude with myself if I were an actor. I'd say, "Fuck you if you're not talking to me!" (laughs). That's why I'm not an actor. That's why I'm a self-made rocker.
As for working with music, you see, I went into the project with Balabanov and Bodrov with one simple understanding: the director has the last word. But I was lucky that Alexey and Sergey and I had the same views on what should happen, and it was a pleasure to work with them.
— Are you interested in collaborating with cinema now?
— I have an open gestalt. At one time, Lyosha Balabanov shot "Morphine" based on Bulgakov. The idea was for me to start making music. I suggested making a symphony, maybe even chamber music. But the budget of the film did not allow, and they went the other way. And now, of course, I would like to re-tell this story. Maybe someday I'll do it.
— If, for example, you are offered a completely new movie, will the genre and the story be important to you?
— The genre is not so important, but it should be a meaningfully interesting story that resonates with my taste in art, undoubtedly. I won't fit in anywhere, that's for sure, just like I won't sing with anyone. I've spent a lot of years on my identity. I have a specific vision of what I should do, and a step to the left or a step to the right is simply impossible.
A shot from the movie "Morphine"
— Do you see the prospects of collaborations with young artists?
— A young artist doesn't need to collaborate with me.
- why?
— Because the listener may get the feeling that a young artist is trying to get out at someone else's expense. There are exceptions. For example, even before the start of the SVO, a team from Mariupol wrote to me with a proposal to record a track remotely. I say: "You know that I, Vadim Samoilov, am going to the front?" He replied, "Yes, I understand everything." As a result, neo-Nazis came to this man. He lives in Russia now.
"I am lucky to live in an era of change"
— You have been to Donbas more than once. If we're not talking about politics, but about human stories, what have you learned?
— I started going there in 2015, to Donetsk and Lugansk. When you see with your own eyes the consequences of the fighting in civilian facilities, in homes, it is shocking. I remember Debaltseve. As we drive up, the local old men begin to tell us how it all happened: how the tanks came in, how they deliberately turned the cannon and hit the nicest huts. One local grandmother said: there is no wall, there is no half-roof, but I live. And then I read a poem of my own composition. This love of life against such a background is very memorable. There you realize that you're not just coming as an artist. For people, this is a message that they are not alone. We can sing Agatha Christie songs together, but that's not the point. After such trips, you especially acutely realize that there are things more important than you personally.
We also went to the units. In the early years, they were completely simple guys — who was wearing what, without any etiquette. Real miners. You know, these are the heroes of Balabanov's movies. "We are for the truth", "What is the power?" — it's all about them. Danila Bagrov is in every look. This is some kind of new Russian archetype: half Ilya Muromets, half Ivan the fool.
After the start of the SVO, we met with the guys who were the first to attack. Every time I see them, I understand that their fighting spirit is not wasted, as is their faith in victory. Russian Russian officer and soldier — honor and praise. Now we perform more often in their vacation spots. The only task is to get a little emotional relief. That's why there are only hits, photos, hugs, conversations. This is psychotherapy.
— You have found different periods of the country's history, different stages of rock development. How do you look at everything, looking back?
— I am lucky to live in an era of change. I think that's enough for you too (laughs). You find yourself involved in big events that affect everyone. Perhaps my main interest today is man and his nature. This is also evident in creativity. I am interested in exploring whether we are capable of changing and whether one day we can reach a new level of existence. It's not easy, but it seems to me that living in an era of change is still interesting.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
