“Shatunov fried a frying pan of seeds”: the unknown life of the soloist of “Tender May”

The pain of loss is still strong for many, and the memory of the artist, who became the personification of a bright page in the history of Russian pop music and the first boy band Laskovy May, does not leave many people indifferent. “ZD” talked with one of Yuri’s friends, composer Andrey Slonchinsky.

In the late 80s, the youthful teenage group “Tender May” made a splash in the chaos of the then emerging non-state show business. Until now, talk about this phenomenon, about the “unique” genre of orphan song, which could only be born in Russia, and a heated debate about why the group caused real insanity and crazy love in listeners do not stop.

I did not remember Razin

In the 90s, Yura Shatunov disappeared from public view for several years, but at the beginning of the 2000s he made a loud return with the album “Grey Night”. Then they met with Andrei Slonchinsky, the composer who helped Yura restore the sound of “Tender May” and return to the performer his unique sound, for which he was so loved and which, as it turned out, has not lost its relevance to this day. As a result, “Gray Night” became both a greeting from the 80s and a new trend of the 2000s.

– How was your meeting?

– Yura and I have known each other for more than 20 years – since he worked on the album “Grey Night”. I then lived in Minsk, and I had to fly to him in Sochi, although I didn’t even really understand why. I suspected that there would be some kind of work with Shatunov, but then I was carried away by completely different music. But the decision was made very quickly, I got a call from Yura’s director Arkady Kudryashov, and two days later I flew to Sochi. I leave the airport and see: there is a guy in shorts and a T-shirt, his favorite “alcoholic”, with a cigarette. This is Shatunov! He says: “Let’s go!”. We come to his house in Sochi. And immediately from the threshold we go to the studio: here are the keys, here is the computer – let’s go! This was the first meeting. There was a feeling as if he had known me for a thousand years before that and we were terrible friends, buddies, although only an hour had passed since my landing.

– And you immediately after the plane began to write music?

– Yes, on that day we managed to start doing something at the studio, although, of course, Arkasha came running and took me to show the room in which I will live.

How long have you been working on this album?

– In total, it took about a year. There were two shifts for six months. When I arrived in Sochi, it was summer, I was also in shorts and a T-shirt. The next time I got home, it was already when it was very cold late autumn. We flew to Moscow in the same shorts, drove to Yura’s house, changed me into something warm and sent me to Minsk, to my family. After that, we met a couple of weeks later and continued to write the album until next summer.

– In addition to working in the studio, did you manage to do something else at the resort: go to the sea, go hiking?

– While we were making the album, we practically did not go anywhere. We went only to concerts, and spent the rest of the time on the mountain in the studio. They didn’t even go down to the sea, oddly enough. We went to the doctor, really. He had his own doctor, who constantly monitored the state of his voice. And we were constantly tested for hearing. For some reason, during that period, Yura almost always had a little cold, you can hear it on the album.

Was he interested in anything besides music then?

— At that time, he was very fond of playing the sony psp, it’s such a portable game. If we moved somewhere from place to place, he always cut into this psp. We mostly sat in the studio, and if our brains were already out of our minds, we went down from the third floor. Vasilyevich (Yura Shatunov. – Ed.) took out a bag of seeds from the closet, fried a whole frying pan, and we sat down to watch a movie under these seeds. He told me true stories from the life of “Tender May” – not Razin’s stories, but what really happened. Before the roosters, we sat on the street, chatted, and then, after a little sleep, we started working again, and everything was in a circle.

Did Razin embellish reality or even distort it?

– Yura did not mention Razin, he told stories from the point of view of the boys, how they fooled around at concerts, made fun of each other and of Kuzey (composer and creator of the group Sergey Kuznetsov. — Approx. ed.). He immersed me in the history of “Tender May”. When I went to Shatunov, I did not deal with this music at all. It seemed to me, like many others, that “Tender May” was such an elementary thing, something simple …

— Primitive?

Yes, unworthy of musicians. And I was driving with such an idea that now I will teach you how to make normal music, modern at that time. We went to concerts and tested old songs in a new sound. And, oddly enough, the audience did not perceive them at all. People sat and did not understand what was happening, they even thought that it was not Shatunov. But when the funny sound of “Tender May” began … the hall soared!

— In the end, you had to learn that same sound?

— Yes, they taught me the culture of “Tender May”. They took out a reel-to-reel tape recorder from the closet, took out some reels on which those Kuzinsky songs were recorded … And we sat, listened, analyzed why the people hava, why they do not want anything modern.

– And what conclusion did they come to?

– To none. It’s not at all clear. It `s Magic. That is, the songs of “Tender May”, the songs of Kuzi are magical; why they are so is impossible to analyze.

Why is there so little talk about Sergei Kuznetsov? Many still believe that Shatunov wrote these songs himself.

– So they think about any artist, few people know who writes these songs. This is how we treat authors. If the author does not promote himself, they do not know him. People know who Meladze, Drobysh, Krutoy, Matvienko are – that’s all. And there are many more composers.

– It turns out that Yura went towards the audience, keeping these sounds of “Tender May”?

– Yes, for the Yura Shatunov project, the entire style of Tender May had to be observed. For the sake of pampering, we did a bunch of sketches with claims that we are cool guys and we know how to make a modern sound. But it was not particularly perceived then, and now too. Everyone wants to listen to the real “Tender May”.

What kind of music did he like to listen to?

– Absolutely different. Somehow they called him up, he said that he liked The Weekend, they just shot with a sound from the 80s. He knew all the trends, all the fashionable and modern performers and listened to everything.

– Did you meet often?

– Basically, we called each other by phone and immediately after the greeting, we switched to a completely specific sound engineer’s dialogue about programs and different sounds. We could discuss this for hours. Conversations ended, as a rule, when the battery on the phone was already low. He was aware of all sound engineering innovations, constantly buying and testing new equipment.

How did the people around him react to him?

– One day Yura’s concert was to take place in Minsk. They flew in, and he decided to come to my house. I lived in a working-class area, where there are many five-story buildings and mostly people from the Minsk Tractor Plant live. Yura’s driver, no matter how we explained to him where to go, could not find my house. Then Vasilyich came out somewhere and went to look for me himself. And so he walked and walked through all these yards and somehow came out to me. First of all, of course, I began to look at what kind of computer I had, of course, what I work on at home, began to rearrange the system for me – then he was very fond of installing new systems. Then we sat down and went to the concert … Meanwhile, on the first floor of our house there lived a girl from the people who loved to roll hard. And so she tells my wife: count up, she says, she drank herself to a squirrel. I was standing at the window yesterday with a cup of tea, looking out into the street. Then Yura Shatunov comes out from around the corner and comes into our entrance. As I stood, the cup fell out of my hands. I stand, I say, and I think: that’s it, we need to stop drinking. My wife reassured her, and since then everyone in the yard has been very respectful of me …

– He, of course, made an indelible impression on the public …

“We went crazy, of course. Once we went to the day of some city, and I heard how people there were discussing among themselves: “This is Shatunov is not real! I saw Shatunov, he is not like that! In fact, for so many years of his activity, Yura, of course, got used to all this and treated calmly, as part of the work.

— Thank you, Andrey, your memories are very valuable, and I am sure readers will receive them with warmth and gratitude.

sattwic person

Friends and acquaintances of Yura Shatunov often note precisely his simplicity in communication and calm attitude towards his popularity, without narcissism and arrogance. It is especially noted that he almost never even mentioned about Andrei Razin in his memoirs of “Tender May”. Composer Vyacheslav Tyurin, creator and inspirer of the popular Reflex group with Irina Nelson, recalls how he met Yura Shatunov…

– Yura came to my house at the beginning of the 2000s, we were setting up the Internet. Almost by chance, we met among mutual friends, and he offered to help me. Then the Internet was just coming into its own, and Yura was well versed in this. I already noticed then that he is a very independent, calm guy, as yogis say, a sattvic person. All this time we talked with him about how musical technology will develop, what kind of music will be in the future. We never talked about money, he did not criticize anyone, did not condemn anyone, did not talk about conflicts and did not complain, Razin did not even remember. The conversations were mostly about art, about songs, Yura was very creative.

– What do you think, what is the phenomenon of “Tender May”?

“Because I’ve been constantly working with young musicians on my label over the last few years, I’ve seen musical evolution moving and I’ve seen funny things. Everything that is now presented as a revelation, as young people say, is “truthfulness” – we have already seen all this before! This is when you do not know how to sing and play professionally, but you give out sincerity with the help of some simple technical means. Nothing changes, everything is the same. Each generation has had and will have its own “truestness”. At the time of “Tender May”, everyone twisted their faces: “Are you listening to “Tender May”? Ugh!”. This is how you talk among your advanced friends, and then you come home, turn on their cassette, and you understand that it has a great effect on you, and you can’t do anything about it. Exactly the same thing we are seeing now. Modern music, sometimes empty in quality and content, but truthful in essence, according to the message, which is written by teenagers for teenagers in the style of “guys from our yard”.

This taste unpretentiousness is in people who listen to this music because they are very young and not yet sufficiently educated, and not because they are fools. “Tender May” is great, and Shatunov was great, because they were the first to create pop culture, not knowing its laws and patterns, but the way they saw it. Yura Shatunov was the frontman of the project, which came up with Sergei Kuznetsov. The fact that they found a way when a boy from an orphanage who knows nothing will sing their songs was brilliant. If they had given “White Roses”, for example, to Alla Pugacheva, she might not have conveyed this song to people in the way that Yuri Shatunov did in the end. In general, remembering “Tender May”, how can one not talk about the phenomenon of Sergei Kuznetsov, the composer who made this music? But I don’t see him being mentioned often. Whereas Andrei Razin was just a manager, Yura Shatunov was the voice of the project, and Sergey Kuznetsov created this entire project and wrote all these songs …