Sandler explained why he shaved his head on the day Vysotsky died

The first time the Integral group came to Saratov at the end of 1977. They needed a keyboard player. I was quite young. Open, daring, afraid of nothing and no one. I came to Bari Alibasov and said that I really liked their show and I want to work with them. He said that I was a student at the conservatory and I had good instruments. Bari then treated me with skepticism and suspicion. As he himself later said, he did not like the conservatives, he believed that they were all boring. But I had keys that were considered among the best in the country, and when I played them, showed that I was good at them, Bari agreed to take me into the group. This was the beginning of our “journey”, which lasted for almost five years in Integral, and outside the group continues to this day.

An important fact: Bari took me to the group far from the way most people remember the keyboard player from Integral. I was a student, I walked around in a leather coat that was fashionable at that time. And most importantly, I had hair. Until July 24, 1980. I remember this date for the rest of my life, because on the morning of the 25th I shaved, and in the afternoon it was announced that Vladimir Vysotsky had died.

“Integral” in those days came to Anapa on tour. We lived in the same room with our guitarist Vitya Shchedrin. In the evening, as usual: Anapa, the sea, good mood, took vodka, drank one, two, three. Suddenly, something jumped in my head, I say: “Vitya, I’ll shave my head in the morning!” He, of course: “No, you won’t shave! Just talk!” In general, I argued with him. In the morning I went to the barbershop and shaved my head for 12 kopecks. I’m going back. Against Barry. He looked at me in amazement, obviously did not recognize me, but doubts crept in.

Carefully he asked: “Sandler, is that you?” I say: “I…”. He started yelling, “Are you out of your mind?! This is a challenge to the KGB, the Communist Party and Brezhnev personally! Because of your bald head, they will definitely close us now! And before me, only Khrushchev and Kotovsky were bald in the USSR. And, of course, prisoners and recruits. In general, not only an extremely dubious, but also a very subversive image threatened to appear on the respectable Soviet stage. I confessed, explained to Bari that I admit: the act is stupid, but you can’t glue this hair back, time will pass, it will grow back.

We play a concert in the evening. I got ready, got myself a stage costume. My first wife was a ballerina. I took leggings from her, I had pre-purchased women’s Finnish boots of size 42, since men’s then were only tarpaulin. Dad brought me from the Saratov Aviation Plant a rubberized silver technical heat-resistant industrial fabric for the aviation industry, it was called “silver fabric 500”, and they sewed a jacket with wings out of it. Ray-Ban glasses and motorcycle gloves I bought from sailors who traveled abroad on merchant ships and brought, respectively, outlandish shortages. By Soviet standards, these were people of a very special caste, who, as everyone believed, were terribly lucky, despite all their exhausting work, since only a few managed to get into the coveted “foreign country”.

In such a cool outfit – bald, glasses, with shiny rubber wings and motorcycle gloves, I jumped onto the stage, doing incredible somersaults, did a crazy show in strobe lights, bought a butterfly net, and, running around the hall, put it on my heads viewers. At the end of the concert, 4,000 people chanted in unison: “Bald, yes-wai!” Alibasov approached me right on the stage, confidently said: “No fouling, fixed the image!” He personally came to my room every morning and shaved me.

This jacket, by the way, then turned into a steam room for me. The fabric was designed for high temperatures, it was just incredibly hot in it. After a few performances where I was sweating, I went to a shoe shop and had holes punched into my jacket, into which studs were inserted. It turned out like holes for laces and it became not so hot to work.

Then the image improved itself. I have a sweet tooth, I ate another kilogram of sweets, finely cut the foil, bought a jar of Vaseline for 6 kopecks, smeared it on my head, pasted this foil. The effect was incredible: the head glowed, journalists wrote that an alien was playing the keys in Integral and lasers were shining from his head. All these enthusiastically surprised articles in Soviet newspapers about us and our show played their role. Worked on 5 concerts a day. Very tired, but it was certainly very pleasant. Our concerts were always sold out. We became the first professional rock band in the USSR. After us, other musicians began to do shows on stage.

In 1982, I realized that I had outgrown Integral and left, which was quite painful for the group. Bari often repeats in his stories: “On Sandler’s bald head, the Integral group entered Moscow.” The bald crazy keyboardist at that time was the symbol of the group, and this, as they would now say, “image” did not fit into the generally accepted aesthetic and even moral and ethical standards of a Soviet artist, even if from a rock band.

The very definition of “rock group” was also, by the way, semi-forbidden, and “Integral” became the first band in the USSR that was allowed to present itself on posters as a rock group, and not as a VIA (vocal-instrumental ensemble). But not because the censors missed the ideological sabotage, just the Saratov Philharmonic, to which the team was assigned, earned huge money only on Integral, fulfilling and overfulfilling state plans and providing itself with quarterly bonuses. And Bari set them a condition: either we write “rock band”, or we leave. The issue was agreed upon at the level of the so-called. “art critics in civilian clothes”. And surprisingly they agreed, waved their hand. Like, from one rock band, the braces will not crack, but the financial plan is more important …

After I left, Bari started shaving everyone. First, he shaved the drummer, then the “culprit” of my bald head, guitarist Vitya Shchedrin. But all this was not right, because not only a bald head was needed, but a combination of image and behavior, charisma and energy, and this role was completely unsuitable for the guys. As a result, Bari stopped shaving people, because the desired effect was no longer there.

And every time my bald head reminds me not only of these epic passions, but also of the sad irony of the formation of the “rebellious image”, which began on the day of the death of Vladimir Vysotsky. One, of course, has nothing to do with the other, but it remains a sad coincidence in which many are still trying to find some kind of symbolism …