Igor Sandler spoke about the scandal that started his friendship with Alexander Barykin
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For many years now, every year I have been holding Evenings in memory of rock musicians and cultural figures who, to my great regret, have left this world. A recent such evening was dedicated to the memory of my great friend and great composer Eduard Artemyev. I recalled the history of our friendship with him in this column, even when the maestro was alive, and it was quite recently. Alas, time is often fleeting and merciless. The past two years turned out to be a time of very heavy losses in music. And at this evening we remembered many great ones who left us physically, but whose legacy is alive and eternal. From their “far away” they were undoubtedly with us, playing along and singing along to an excellent galaxy of artists who remembered departed colleagues and friends not only with life stories, but also with their music: Dmitry Chetvergov and Masha Katz, Alexander Buynov and Mariam Marebova, Alexei Glyzin, Elena Maksimova, Viktor Saltykov and many others.
There is a popular phrase that a person dies twice: once physically, the second – when they forget about him. The very idea of these evenings came to my mind when my good friend Sasha Monin, the legendary vocalist of the Kruiz group, died, and soon Alexander Barykin, with whom we had been close friends for more than 30 years, passed away. I began to do everything in my power so that in the memory of friends, colleagues and future generations my friends would continue to live.
The history of our friendship with Barykin began in 1977, long before the Karnaval group, which later became not only the main thing in the fate of Alexander, but a kind of standard of domestic reggae and rock standard. And then Sasha, as part of the VIA “Merry Fellows”, came to Saratov, and I was a student at the conservatory. Of course, I wanted to get to the concert of this ensemble, I went up to the Philharmonic, I see: some guys are standing at the service entrance, talking. I decided to get acquainted, modestly approached. One of them asks: “Oh, who are you?” I said that I was a student at the conservatory, and in turn asked who they were. He replied that they were from the group, in the evening there was a concert. This was Sasha Barykin.
We talked about music – I said that I had a large collection of foreign vinyl records at home, which in those days was, of course, an unheard of treasure and a great rarity. He caught fire, says: “Let me take you to a concert, and you invite me to your place, listen to the records.” In general, Barykin and I hung out with me for a day, and only in the evening he remembered that the Merry Fellows should have a rehearsal and a concert in the evening. They rushed to the Philharmonic, managed to, but Sasha earned an unpleasant conversation with the leader – Pavel Slobodkin. Since then, we became friends and remained so until his very last day. In a difficult time for him, I invited him to Israel, took him to the holy places, which he was very happy about, came to life a little, came to his senses, began to write music again …
Saying goodbye to both Barykin and Monin was a great personal loss and shock for me. Unfortunately, my other friends and legends of world rock culture also began to leave for the other world. It was these experiences that inspired me to hold great evenings-concerts, when contemporary musicians pay tribute to those who made the music world the way we know it today.
I often say that a person is not only and not even so much a physical shell as his spiritual definition. Man is what we remember. And we remember childhood, relatives, studies and, of course, friends. I really do not want to forget my friends and my idols, those who left. To my great regret, every year there are more and more of them. Last time, they remembered and paid tribute to the memory of Alexander Gradsky, Pyotr Mamonov, Vyacheslav Gorsky, Charlie Watts …
This year we dedicated an Evening in memory of the legendary composer Eduard Artemyev, as well as musicians who left in 2022-2023: Jeff Beck, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dan McCafferty, David Crosby, Andy Fletcher.
With Jeff Beck, I have an amazing and funny story about how I “illegally” interviewed him during his visit to Russia. Recently, I already talked about this in detail here. Now a strange realization has come: I recalled this story many times during Jeff’s lifetime, and it always seemed very funny to everyone. And so, standing on the stage, at the Evening of Remembrance, I told about this interview again and suddenly realized: the story is no longer funny, but rather painful. Previously, it was just a life tale about the beginning of our friendship with a wonderful musician, a world legend, the owner of seven Grammy statuettes, and now it has become a story of memory – with sadness, nostalgia and regret for the loss. Just like with Dan McCafferty, the cult vocalist of Nazareth, who laughed for so long and sincerely when I “taught” him to sing … I often look at this photo …
Similar emotions, in which happiness from a long friendship and bitterness from loss are mixed, also arose when, during the evening, a recording of one of Eduard Artemiev’s last interviews was turned on on the screens. He recorded it in my studio and said many kind words about me. He was always my friend and mentor, helped a lot in our projects, donated his legendary Hartman synthesizer to our rock history museum, which was made for him on special order and on which he wrote soundtracks for films by Tarkovsky, Mikhalkov, Konchalovsky and many others. Now, from the same studio, footage of his last interview was on the screen …
There are a lot of such stories, and, unfortunately, friends and great musicians are dying more and more often. At such moments, you especially acutely realize how fleeting everything is, our physical incarnation is small, and the memory that we hope to preserve is great.
Newspaper headline:
Forbidden vinyl in exchange for a concert
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