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The Russian Connection (Связь с Советской Россией)

THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION

IN AN EXTRACT FROM HIS NEW BOOK, HUNTER DAVIES
TELLS OF HIS EXPERIENCES WITH RUSSIA'S BEATLE PEOPLE

Last summer, Hunter Davies, his wife Margaret Forster, and his 13-year-old daughter Flora, were invited to the USSR as guests of the Soviet Writers Union, to have a holiday with 500 Russian writers who were on their holiday.

His experiences there are described in his new book, “Back In The USSR”, which was published on July 20 by Hamish Hamilton (£12.95), with all royalties going to Amnesty International.

When they discovered that he was THE Hunter Davies, authorised biographer of the Beatles, everybody wanted to ask him about the Fab Four. In the 60s, they read his biography 'illegally', copies which had been smuggled into the Soviet Union. Now, Beatles records are officially on sale and Mr. and Mrs. Gorbachev have both said they are Beatles fans.

In this extract. Hunter is back in Moscow, on his way to see a girl known as Rita, whose address he has been given by a friend on the beach at the Black Sea. All he’d been told was her first name and that she was the Secretary of the newly formed Beatles Fan Club of Moscow...

Rita’s flat turned out to be very' smart, the biggest and the best appointed I had seen. She was aged about 35, rather sombre-looking, tired round the eyes, wearing smart green dungarees.

As she let me in, and I admired the flat, she explained it was her parents’ flat. She lives with them, now that she’s divorced, along with her 12-year-old daughter, Zoya. “She likes good pop music, not people like Rod Stewart. She’s a Beatles fan.” Rita got out a photograph of her daughter, taken with a background of Beatles photographs.

We were in a rather formal room, but in a corner there was Rita’s desk and personal possessions, like a very tidy student’s. I could make out a paperback copy of my book on a shelf, plus photographs of George and John and Che Guevara, who appeared to be her three main heroes. She showed me a scrapbook site kept, everything published in the Russian papers about the Beatles, going back to 1967. There was only one English cutting, from the ‘Morning Star’, the only English paper normally available in Moscow.

She was educated at one of the Moscow Pedagogical Institutes where she studied Spanish and English. She first heard the Beatles in 1964 when she was in Hungary with her father. “I saw them on television and there were all these girls crying and I couldn't understand it. I said to myself, what’s all this stuff? I disliked them.

“Then in 1966, when I was again in Hungary with my father. I bought one of their records and listened to them properly. It was ‘Sergeant Pepper’ and that made me realise how good they were. That’s still my favourite. It captures the spirit of our generation.”

In May 1986, she got together with a group of her friends, all Beatles fans, and decided to begin a Moscow branch of the Beatles fan club, with her as the unofficial secretary. She stressed the unofficial. Not because the authorities would object. The Beatles are now, at long last, okay people, after years of being an underground phenomenon.

I suddenly remember that a year ago, in London, a Russian emigre had sent me the manuscript of a book she had written, called “The Beatles In Russia”. The title had surprised me as of course the Beatles were never there, but it was a most interesting document, showing the effects of the Beatles on Russian youth and culture, on music, clothes, language and design. I’d sent it back with a brief note, suggesting some British publishers who might be interested, but holding out no hope, thinking it was far too esoteric for a British audience.

It turned out this lady was a friend of Rita’s. They were all part of the Sixties' Beatles worship in Moscow. According to Rita, her friend, Irina Pond, has since had some of her stuff published. She keeps in touch from London with any Beatles news.

"We had planned to have a big opening meeting of the Beatles Moscow Fan Club, and we worked out a programme. We have a text on their life story, using slides and bits of films and of course the music. We were going to do it in May, using a Moscow group called the Twins. They only play Beatles music, so of course we needed them there. But the drummer caught a cold and we had to cancel. We’re now going to do it next month. Everybody in Moscow wants to be there.”

WORKSHOP
They have booked a new place called the Rock Laboratory, a workshop used by sixty of Moscow’s pop groups, a place where they can play and work and try out new things, from heavy metal to folk. There is a director and he does censor certain groups and certain songs, but it is a huge move forward, when you consider the situation five years ago, when all rock and roll was frowned upon.

“There are still rows," she said, rather sadly. “Some authorities still believe all rock is subversive.”

She herself writes pop songs, she said, and has been in trouble for them. I presumed this must simply be a hobby, a part-time amusement with her friends, but she said no, she was a professional writer of pop song lyrics and was in the appropriate union, part of the dramatists union.
But can you make a living in Russia, writing pop songs?

“No,” she said smiling. “I make kopeks.” She then got out a few of her albums and pointed to her name on several of them. Lyric writer — Rita Pushkin. I asked if she was related to the famous Pushkin, but she didn’t know. It was a big family.

She used to write a lot of songs for one of Moscow's best known groups. Autograph. (They appeared from Moscow on the Geldof Live Aid show.) She’d finished with them now. She considers them too cold and unemotional in their music, though very professional. She now writes mainly for Carnival, especially their lead singer, Alex Barekyn, whom she much admires.

She estimates there are 120 full-time professional rock groups in the USSR, with the best known being Autograph, Time Machine and Bravo, a new group. There is just one professional heavy metal group, Aria.

In the popular music field, the numbers are much greater, groups doing middle-of-the-road sort of music. Two of the most popular singers, both women, have been made People’s Artists — Sophie Rotaru and Alla Pugacheva. I've heard the famous Sophie on many occasions, in taxis and hotels, and thought she sounded good. Rita was not that impressed. She liked strong rock and roll, or music with more heart and message.

“It is a great time of change in Russian rock and roll. Because it was blocked in the past, it was very hard for groups to be heard or succeed. Now there are several excellent groups coming through, playing their own brand of rock, with a Russian sound.”

During the last two years, she has noticed one remarkable change. For most of her life, young Russian people interested in pop music always went for Western originals, as that was clearly the best and most innovative, rather than the despised Russian cover versions of Western music.

“I should say that, in discos, most of the music played is still Western, but when people are listening at home, serious fans of rock music, who are following what’s happening, I should say that it’s now 50-50, between listening to Western and Russian rock. It’s equal. That’s a huge advance, in just a few years."

I remarked on the number of individual photographs she had of George and John, yet none of Paul and Ringo. Did she not like them as much? No, it wasn’t that. Just that she much preferred George and John.

“George was always in the shadows of John, but I became very interested in him when he started on Indian philosophy, and he began to come out of the shadows. George has an interesting mind construction and an interesting soul. He was not as successful at the beginning when he went on his own, but he began to express himself in his record ‘Wonderwall’, and with 'All Things Must Pass’. I like George’s brain.

"John to us is a rebel, with a great sense of humour. Our generation have got great sympathy for him. John has secrets in his lyrics. Everything he wrote had a double meaning, which of course makes it hard for us. Look at ‘Double Fantasy'. That's very interesting. I know lots of my friends who have translated it into Russian, and everyone has got a different translation. No two are the same. John has something of Lewis Carroll in him.

"It was a terrible shock when he got killed.

I didn’t believe it. My friend who works in a news agency phoned me at midnight on December 9 and said he’d seen the telex, seen it on AP and UPI. It was some time before it was put out on the Russian radio, but by that time all my friends knew. Everybody was ringing everybody to tell the tragic news. It took five hours for the official announcement in our press, but by then everybody had heard the news.”

She then got out a tape, a demonstration tape, not a commercial one, of a song about the Beatles which she’s written for Carnival to perform. It’s called "We Listened To The Beatles’’. So far, the authorities had not allowed it to be officially on sale. She didn’t know why. You often could not work out what it was they objected to. For example, Beatle albums were now generally on sale in Russia, though you had to queue and be very quick, but for some reason, on the Russian album of “Hard Day's Night”, the track “When I Get Home” had been omitted. There were worse tracks, with reference to drugs, which had got through. She shrugged her shoulders. You just had to wait, keep hoping. Perhaps one day her song would be available. You have to admit, she said, things are getting better all the time.

She then played her song, rather serious and mournful, but with a nice gentle rocking background. I got her to translate the words:

Whether the sunshine was dancing,
Whether the rain was working hard,
It made no difference to us,
We listened to the Beatles.
And the rainbow coloured walrus and his friends were knocking at our window.

CHORUS:
Oh we listened to the Beatles,
Oh we listened to the Beatles,
Oh we listened to the Beatles at that time.

The fool on the hill was inviting us for tea
And Lucy was descending from the skies
Everything was like a happening,
But our parents did not believe in the miracle of it all.

CHORUS

And the silver hammer came down
Upon the heads of the nails imagined by John
We were starving for music and news.
From far away on the flowery roads
The Lonely Hearts Club was opening.

CHORUS

Why should we remember all that?
Why should we remember all that?
Then someone calls us on the phone at midnight.
And asks us to tell them the words.

CHORUS

And now in the office when we’re not occupied
We hear the sound of what seems like guitars singing
And we fix securely to the walls around us
The portraits of Paul, George, Ringo and John.

I gave a lone clap. I thought it was terrific. Such a shame it could not be heard in Russian — because it was obviously a Russian song, in a Russian style, despite the content. She’d written the words first, then her friend in the group had put music to it. They’d recorded it in a private studio. "It’s meant to be in the style of ‘Sergeant Pepper', using the same sort of instruments.”

She was clearly a serious Beatles fan, interested in the words and music, not trivia about their lifestyle, which was a refreshing change. She had obviously studied their music, just as PhD. students are now doing in Britain and America, and seen themes and patterns. The conversation never got round to what is Yoko really like, or are Paul and Linda really happy.
She hasn’t got a great deal of research material, or memorabilia, apart from a few British records, photographs and books. She would like more, if she could get any. She gave me the name of a real Beatles freak I should visit one day in Leningrad. He has turned his whole flat into a Beatles museum. I would be amazed by it.

She showed me round the rest of the flat. The next room was an even larger, more imposing room, with drapes and posh sofas, but no signs of any Beatles stuff. This was obviously her parents’ room.

ARMY
I asked what her father did, which I’d wanted to ask earlier, but it didn't seem appropriate. She said he was in the army. Not the sort of Dad, perhaps, to approve of all this pop music and Beatles worship? "Oh, he’s always been very liberal. In the Sixties, when we were all young he brought back a guitar for one of my friends.”

I thanked her for all her time, and the coffee and biscuits which she had provided. I gave her my last copy of ’Beatles Monthly’, plus a photo of John, and promised to keep in touch.

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