Producer Alexander Kushnir revealed the secret of Ilya Lagutenko’s women

The theme of the Mumiy Troll gang evokes a surge of tenderness in everyone who has ever been associated with the group – not a single negative review about working with them, just mi-mi-mi. So the usually cynical, even caustic Kushnir, with unfailing tenderness, told stories about his favorite group for an hour and a half.

– Once I gave a lecture to students, telling them what an ideal press conference is. For clarity, I chose several people from the audience and randomly appointed Mumiy Troll as musicians. Then, about five years later, the students told me that at the next concert they saw the same guy playing the guitar that I then asked Yuri Tsalera to impersonate.

– As usual with “MT”, complete mysticism…

– By the way, he still plays guitar in Mumiy Troll, his name is Artem Kritsin. But this is not about Lagutenko’s 55 years.

– I got the impression that Ilya Lagutenko, in terms of creativity, was always greatly influenced by the women he met at one time or another. Is this really true?

– Women are one of the tools.

– Tools?

– There are different instruments that are sources of inspiration, there are a great many of them, many of which I don’t know or have any idea about… But I think that in Ilya’s case they start with a huge number of books that he reads and tries not to stick it out, but that’s all breaks through equally. That and a huge amount of music. For example, on their very first tour, at soundcheck they suddenly started playing a song from the group “Valery Chkalov’s Squad”. Any normal person should not know this group, but abnormal people know it from the song “Air Force” from the movie “Assa”. The third instrument of inspiration is Ilya Lagutenko’s absolutely unknown deep immersion in painting, in exhibitions, in the acquisition of paintings. He has deep art knowledge in this area.

– Even at school, he constantly drew; instead of lessons and homework, his notebooks were completely covered with covers of future MT CDs, designs for branded T-shirts, which were still a walk to the moon. I visualized how he was standing on stage…

– Contemporary art is a powerful source of inspiration for him. And almost nowhere was this mentioned.

– And what kind of paintings did he buy?

– He told me how in Shanghai he went into a gallery, saw a painting by a Chinese artist, and there was just a Japanese street depicted there. And he said that, in principle, he could have drawn it like that himself, but here, they say, a fresh look, energy, strength, and “I bought it.” This moment says a lot. Because you are either a tourist in Shanghai, or you have a concert there, there are enough worries. Then all these inevitable paperwork, expert certificates, border crossings. What should be on a person’s mind in order to still find time to go to a gallery? Only a person who understands the role of beauty in life can do this.

– Or prone to emotional shopping. This is what many impressionable people do…

– He once said a very cool phrase that falling in love is much more interesting than doing business… Returning to the question of women…

– Yes, otherwise we moved somewhere to the side…

– My version is that he was always smarter, wiser, deeper than the female representatives closest to him. He probably has a visual video landscape in his head—how “this” looks.

– Do you mean that he chose women who were beautiful rather than smart?

– No, rather there should have been a coincidence of the picture, form and content. The picture had to be flawless. A feeling of some kind of freshness in a relationship was important, or entering a new stage of life with a new person. But these are all just my guesses and versions.

– How did you find out about books if it doesn’t stick out?

“One day I dragged him to visit my parents; my father has a nice collection of avant-garde and underground paintings. He walked around, looked, and weighed out art criticism remarks “to the ten” along the way. Then I took a look through a book, it’s quite rare, about the ceramics of Marc Chagall. I don’t think many people know specifically about Chagall’s ceramics. My relatives tell him with trepidation that this is a very useful rare book… Ilya so calmly, in Vladivostok style, notes that he is aware and he has it. This is where I was extremely surprised, because this is already level 80.

– But his family is not simple in origin…

– Yes, I think it’s genes. And here we must definitely remember about grandfather and about Khrushchev.

– His grandfather, architect Vitaly Lagutenko, supervised the construction of the USSR by Khrushchev, his grandfather’s brother was an artist, his father was an architect, his mother was a fashion designer… The talent of the future artist did not grow out of empty soil.

– Before all these online deliveries, which are fashionable now, Ilya had a habit of going to bookstores. Another source of inspiration for him is communication, because he was always surrounded by very vibrant groups of friends. Every city has high-energy parties. It was always difficult to get into the dressing room after a concert. Those who really wanted to and had something to say got there, the bones grew over with meat very quickly. Many new acquaintances later arrived at their “Moomin House”, and some projects were started with them.

Sometimes Ilya himself reached out to those with whom he wanted to work. For example, during the recording of the album “Like Mercury Aloe,” he, walking around London, as usual, bought art magazines. In one of them I saw some awesome photos, and looked at them and saw the photographer’s Russian name underneath them. He called the magazine and they gave him the contacts of that photographer – it was Oleg Mikheev. They got on the phone, and after that the whole image of the album “Exactly mercury of aloe” appeared. Quite revolutionary for those times. It turns out that the necessary information sticks to Ilya from space.

– That photo shoot turned out strange – long hair, dyed strands, something cosmic in the whole surroundings…

– That work showed the strongest influence of Japanese J-rock, “MT” had just returned from a short tour to Japan. In 1999, at the height of the crisis, they refused any performances and locked themselves in Peter Gabriel’s studio near London, where they wrote “Like Mercury Aloe,” and Kylie Minogue walked under the windows, because she was also recording something there at the same time as them. They came out of hiding twice, went to Japan and Moscow – they had obligations to Moskovsky Komsomolets, by the way – they played at Newspaper Day in Luzhniki.

In Japan, Ilya was apparently very impressed by how the local rockers looked. He wasn’t a fan of the way these bands sounded, but their form was fire back then. Therefore, the design of the album ended up being revolutionary; in the British edition of the disc, 12 beads were placed in each CD box, which rolled back and forth. 12 tracks – 12 beads. In Russia, however, it was not possible to do this; all publishing houses refused because it was “impossible.”

-Did you meet him around that time?

– This was back during the release of “Morskoy”. To begin with, a lot of work with my brain was done by Leonid Burlakov (the first producer of the group. – “ZD”). Then we talked with Ilya on the phone, and it was absolutely impossible! He tried to find a rhyme for all my phrases, and it sounded harmonious. That is, he has such a poetic perception, you know? It’s fun, but it was impossible to discuss constructive things. I thought then: poor Burlakov…

They went to BBC radio, to Seva Novgorodtsev’s show, all the rockers dreamed of going there. But throughout the entire interview, Ilya sat in silence, Burlakov told everything. It was difficult to communicate with him on the phone, as with an alien guest about whom he has a song. Then, finally, at the end of 96, he came to Moscow, and we came up with the idea of ​​​​making something like a film in which he played a rock star, and I played a rock journalist, of course. It was in an apartment where I had a photography workshop together with photographer Sergei Babenko.

I told Babenko, don’t be a fool, shoot the boy, the future star of the new rock wave. Babenko came in, looked at him, said: “Screw him,” and went into the kitchen. He filmed all the classic Russian rock, but somehow didn’t reflect on Lagutenko. During that impromptu interview, Ilya was very calm, looked somewhere into the sky, was in himself, thank you for at least hearing the questions.

– I remember press conferences with Lagutenko, at which it was completely unclear whether he was joking now or not and what he was talking about in general.

– It happened that I gave the “trolls” a voice recorder with me on tour, on their first tour in 1997, and they conscientiously, mainly Ilya, told me travel impressions from the cities. You could tear your stomach from laughing. In some Ural or Siberian city, no one met them from the train in minus 25 degrees below zero. They stand so confused on the platform: “Well, Kushnir, are you feeling good? You are sitting there in a warm apartment in Moscow. And we arrived, naturally, no one met us. Residents of this city are rushing past at breakneck speed to work. We stand and wait by the sea for weather, but neither sea nor weather.” This is such a mood…

– Did you often go on tour with them?

– Yes, if it’s not too far. It’s interesting that for the first two or three years, the entire Mumiy Troll went on tour together, the soloist did not travel separately, as is customary in many groups. On the trains there were a lot of late-night conversations about life, warm and poignant. And then the next conversations from Marx to Mars, and some drinks appeared from somewhere – everyone was getting something. Only the keyboard player didn’t get it, and I thought no one noticed. But at one fine moment Lagutenko says to him: “Do you have a favorite girl?” – “Yes, I have”. – “Do you sometimes give her flowers?” – “Sometimes I give it.” – “It’s strange, you give flowers to a girl, but when you come to the group, you don’t give anything to anyone.” It was already late at night, and such edification from Ilya is very rare.

– Where were the best concerts?

– There are five cities where the band always played the best concerts on all tours. The worst one is easily guessed – this is Moscow. This city never became home to him; it was always harsh and distant to him. And the five best cities are Riga and Vladivostok, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Kaliningrad – for reasons that are inexplicable to me.

– The reasons are obvious – the Baltic with all its maritime romance and power….

– By the way, yes. In Riga there were always some kind of educational or cultural events with friends. One morning after the concert, friends – the group Prata Vetra, which is now known as the group BrainStorm, took us out to go karting for a ride. You have to understand that Ilya and sports are something very distant, although he is miraculously good at yachting, but this is a Vladivostok story, they are all on yachts there… But here karting is completely different! We arrive, there is a large kart center rented for an individual team competition between two groups.

Of course, we signed all the documents that we know how to drive a car and are responsible for our safety. It was clear that Latvians spend almost all their free time there, and this is the first time we’ve seen this, so now we’ll lose badly. And then Lagutenko turned out to be the king. There were two races – the main and the second, repechage. Ilya found out that the winner of the main race and the winner of the consolation race receive prizes. He trained, in the first race he took some 7th place, but in the consolation race he tried very hard and won, to everyone’s surprise, and received a prize – a beautiful statuette, not a cheap one. I was very impressed. The Balts probably even have photographs from this event.

– Maybe they will send it to us at the editorial office?

– Well, yes, by mail in an envelope… I also remembered about Ilya’s inspirations. At the press conference for the Meamours album, one of the journalists asked him if there were female supermodels with whom he dreamed or would like to have sexual relations. Ilya answered briefly: “Absolutely. And they know it.”

– Confidence bordering on arrogance…

– I also remember how I brought Tanya Zykina’s songs to his home studio in New Riga – just to show him. As a result, we did a duet with him on the song “Nora”, there are the following lyrics: “Where is your hole, friend?” I later received the Golden Gargoyle award for this duet. It turned out that Ilya had not become bronzed in 12 years of star life and did not even ask me anything – what would he get for this duet and all that, and I did not have to pay. What I always liked about him was that he never lost not only his creative cord, but also his humanity… And just as he was a “black box” from the very beginning, he remained so.

– Yes, he succeeded in an absolutely incredible way!

– Invented! Ilya Lagutenko is a smuggler! If he takes you into his squad of “smugglers”, you become involved in something magical, be it music, literature or some other art.