This is Part Two of the Boris Grebenshchikov interviews. Here is Part One.
February 1986 interview by Joanna Stingray, author of Red Wave: An American in the Soviet Music Underground, and by American cameraman Dimitri Devyaykin.
Where do you think Russian rock is going?
*shrugs* In the same direction as all the things in Russia. For me, it’s like a spiritual opening. The people are actively trying and doing it, like finding themselves, finding their own selves, trying to explore their own possibilities. People are finally getting wise to the fact that they are as much people as anybody else. And they’ve got unlimited potential to do anything they want.
We’ve heard that there is a possibility that [your band] Aquarium’s music may be released in the West. And the words will be in Russian. How do you think that will affect people, your music? They won’t understand the lyrics, but how do you think it will affect them?
I don’t know but if it will affect them, it will be a small revenge, because for 20 years all [of] Russia was listening to The Beatles, The [Rolling] Stones, and everything, and 99 percent of the people didn’t understand one word. But what the hell, it’s rock ‘n’ roll. I think it gotta move you. If not, it’s okay, then it’s not rock ‘n’ roll, it’s academic stuff and you can look at it safely in some library and forget about it. But I think it will be a good learning experience for me, to see what will happen, how the people will react.
How do you think the Russian people will react to your music being put out in the West?
I think for most people that I know, most people that are listening to us here, it will be a reaffirmation of the power that we represent as a band. What’s the big deal? […] If somebody else says it’s okay, it’s okay, but of course we are not limited only to this country. Because I’m still doing what I’m doing as a part of a tradition. The Beatles and…rock ‘n’ roll.
Can you characterize the way people in the Soviet Union hear your music? What does it mean to them? When you say it moves them, what kind of emotional feeling do you think people have, in general?
You see, it’s really hard for me to evaluate how the music that we are doing moves people. But [if] I tried to analyze it, I would say that a lot of music, Russian popular music — I mean the music that people are really listening to, like all these singer-songwriters like Vysotsky, Ogudzhava, all others — we have a very old tradition of one person with a guitar singing something. It was not exactly very negative, no, but it was music which was based on minor chords. It’s very romantic but very sad music. It makes people [become] philosophical, think about lost loves, and drink maybe a bottle or two of vodka, hug each other and cry over the passing of time. And what we are doing is not exactly the opposite of it, but it’s some new thing because I am singing about the joy of being. Of responsibility but joy of being here and being able to love, to do something. So I think it was a kind of opening of some doors for people. Because the people who listen to the music, they put on our tapes and they begin to wake up to the fact that there are some mighty positive things. And they cannot only listen to the music and cry to it and drink to it. But they can do something by themselves. So it’s a very big thing for me to see all this waking up of young Russian bands all over the country. Certainly people got wise to the fact that they themselves can do something. They don’t just sit on their asses at their home and listen all day and all night to something, they can do something themselves. That was a big thing to me. I think it was a part of the thing we have done and it’s good to see. That we have reached this level at least. That people are waking up.
And who do you think are your fans? The intelligentsia, the average Russian who gets up and works 8 hours a day? Rebellious kids? What kind of kids come to your concerts, and are they different, the ones that come to your electric concerts than the acoustic concerts?
Yes, the people who are coming to the electric concerts are a little bit different than the people who are attending our usual acoustic gigs. Because the people who come for electricity, they want to see the power. So they get their power, but the people who are coming to acoustic concerts, they come to experience this very strange flow between us and them, between the creation of music. What I will try to do this time around, in this new phase of Aquarium, is try to blend the purity of acoustic things, with all these small nuances, with power. I don’t know if I will succeed or not of course, but we’ll see what comes out of it. And usually the people who listen to us, they can be anybody, because we’ve got a lot of people over 50 who love our music, we’ve got a lot of people under 16 who love our music. We’ve got a lot of intelligentsia. Yesterday two soldiers came up to me. Young guys, like 17. You can say that they are not exactly intelligentsia. They are just ordinary people, but still say, “We love your music” and “Thank you.”
Are you in some way an inheritor of the great traditions of Russian culture, of Tchaikovsky, of Rachmaninov, Prokofiev?
We can of course take this part of the tradition, from Tchaikovsky, from Rachmaninov, and yes we can safely say I am part of the tradition, [mainly] just because I live here in the same land and I experience the same connection with the Earth, with anything, with the spirit of this land. So I’m doing the same thing that they were doing in their time. But I consider myself really part of a much older tradition. Because I got a strong connection with the British, Irish, Scottish. I mean in ancient Ireland, there was that strata of people, Bards or people who preserved the spirit of culture, who preserved in their songs, and they were just helped to pass through time, that flame. Later it disappeared, but I see what we are doing as a continuation of that kind of tradition. Because I can feel the spirit quite clearly. When the flame burns, I feel it. For me, when I discovered The Beatles, it was like a rare awakening of this flame in me. And since that time, I am feeling it constantly. And I think that all the people who are doing something creatively are feeling the same kind of thing. That’s what I’m talking about, because it’s not only Russian tradition, it’s a tradition of a culture itself. When people preserve and create and rediscover the things without which humankind cannot exist. Without which life would be empty. It’s love embodied in music, in life. That’s what we try to do.
We’re hoping this interview will be included in an official program about Soviet rock ‘n’ roll. But we’re taking the precaution of shooting this interview with you first, to be sure that we have it. So that when we come back and have a contract and everything is official, and even if they say no, we can eventually carve this out. Do you think this is a fair expectation on our part that this might be difficult to do this interview with you? And if so, why?
Because the officials are not yet accustomed to the fact that we exist. ’Cause it takes some time to grow accustomed to something that evolved right in the middle of Russia. They thought we are just punks or socially unstable people, anything, I don’t know. And now they are starting to find out that we are not as bad after all, we are just continuing the ever-present Russian tradition of doing something, with permission or without permission. I hope that with time, they will get accustomed to the fact that we are not absolutely not against the system, we exist such as we are only because of the system, and we are [an] integral part of present-day society here.
We are needed because — what the hell, we are Russian. We are living in a socialist country, and we love every minute of it. Not every minute of it, but most. Because we do have a lot of advantages living here and not in America or something. Because we really have no commercial pressure. We really don’t have money, which can be a drag, having money I think. And so I hope that soon they will discover they cannot live without us. Not because we are such good people or anything, but only because we are doing the thing that must be done. So I hope that sooner or later we will have official permission to do this, to do such interviews.
For Western kids or people watching this, who know very little about the Soviet Union, and even less about Soviet rock ‘n’ roll, many of them don’t even know it exists — is there something you’d like to say to them, that you haven’t said in the interview?
I guess, here in Russia, rock ‘n’ roll may look less glamorous than in the West. We don’t have, like, Rolls Royces or caviar up to our necks or champagne raining on our heads. But in essence, I mean it’s much more pure to my mind. Here it’s rock ‘n’ roll all the time. When you get up in the morning, it’s pure rock ‘n’ roll until you drop to sleep. We don’t have any time off. It’s a 24-hour job, and it’s great. I think people should come here more often and look at what’s happening. Because I know personally a lot of American people, young students, who are coming to Russia. Like, “What’s this all about?” “I saw the Hermitage and a couple of palaces and museums” and stuff. And then they get into different circumstances, and they get in touch with somebody who is really living a life, and they become addicts. They come back to States and write long letters — or just do not write anything, just drop out of all the stuff they were doing, because when you compare the States and Russia, Russia got an awful lot of pluses, because it’s fantastic. And I think mainly because such a thing as money doesn’t come much here. It doesn’t exist. Nobody has money and nobody needs to.
’Cause we are living outside of all these gadgets and stuff, VCRs and synthesizers. Well it’s nice to have them, but we are concerned about slightly different things, such as having friends and having fun, and loving each other. So I think Russia is very much a rock ‘n’ roll country.
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Boris Grebenshchikov is still making music today. He played in Russia the day before Putin invaded Ukraine; he has not played there since. Grebenshchikov has spoken out against the war and was recently interviewed on BBC’s HARDtalk: Culture and Protest in Russia.
Due to Grebenshchikov’s outspoken opposition to the war in Ukraine, his books are required to contain this statement: “This book quotes the works of B.B. Grebenshchikov, included by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation in the register of foreign agents.” He currently lives in London and recently worked on the album Heal the Sky alongside Western musicians to benefit the largest children’s hospital in Ukraine. Listen to one of the tracks below.
The Nomadic Journal 