Egor Letov. The last underground hero

1. On the mother's side, Yegor Letov comes from the Cossack family of the Martemyanovs, on the father's side - from the North Ural peasants. Letov's father participated in the Great Patriotic war; military by profession; in the 90s he was secretary of the district committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in Omsk.

2. Egor's older brother, saxophonist Sergei Letov was born in Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan) on September 24, 1956. He has three educations: he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Fine Chemical Technology (MITHT), graduate school at the All-Union Institute of Aviation Materials (VIAM) and the pop and wind department of the Tambov Cultural Educational College . The first public performance of Sergei Letov took place in April 1982 with the ensemble percussion instruments Mark Pekarsky. In 1982-1993 collaborated with Sergey Kuryokhin and POP-MECHANICS. In 1983, at one of the Moscow concerts, POP - MECHANICS pulled Yegor, who came to visit, onto the stage. The next time the paths of Letov Jr. and Kuryokhin crossed only in the mid-90s - on the basis of a common passion for politics.

3. As a child, Yegor learned to play the piano. The classes, however, did not last long: the teacher explained to the boy's parents that their son had neither hearing nor any musical abilities.

4. It is believed that the only way Yegor ever got his livelihood besides music was drawing portraits of Lenin for visual propaganda stands (Omsk Tire Plant, Omsk Motor-Building Plant named after Baranov). However, in a couple of interviews, he mentioned that he also worked as a plasterer at a construction site and as a janitor.

5. In addition to the permanent pseudonym “Egor” (according to his passport, as you know, he is Igor), Letov had the nicknames “Ja” and “Dead”. For annotations to solo albums In 1987, he also invented the pseudonyms “Kilgore Trout” and “Major Meshkov” for himself in order to create the illusion of group creativity. Kilgor Trout is a character in a number of novels by Kurt Vonnegut, and Vladimir Vasilievich Meshkov is a real-life person, an employee of the Omsk KGB who caused Letov a lot of trouble, the hero of the song “Ice Under the Major's Feet”.

6. In the late 80s-mid 90s, several GO songs were published in the West: in France - the single “Who is Stronger, That He is Right!”; in the USA - the songs "New Year" and "Incomprehensible" on the collection to help the blind punk from Bangkok; in Germany - half of the album “Everything Goes According to Plan” as part of the LP “Tour De Farce” and “ Good King” as part of the CD-compilation “Luckmeyer Island”; in Denmark - a song on the compilation "Laika", published by the organization "Next Stop".

7. The current director of the GO Sergey Popkov in the mid-80s was the chairman of the Omsk rock club. At the same time, the only rock club that has ever officially registered CIVIL DEFENSE is Leningrad (1989-1990). Not a single member of the group, however, was registered in St. Petersburg and did not live permanently, and OBORONA only once participated in rock club events: it was a performance at VII festival LRK June 8, 1989.

8. During OBORONA's stay in St. Petersburg, the option of joining Viktor Sologub (ex-STRANGE GAMES, GAMES, hereinafter DEADUSHKI) as a bass player was considered. Sologub himself proposed his candidacy, motivating this by the fact that he knows all the songs of the GO and all the bass parts.

9. “Last Concert in Tallinn” - not a solo performance by CIVIL DEFENSE, but part of the festival, which took place on April 13-14, 1990 at the ice arena of the Tallinn Gorhall under the general motto “Rock for Democracy”. It also featured TIME TO LOVE, RAINY SEASON, TV and CHAIF.

10. On September 28, 2000, Letov was detained at the Zielupe border checkpoint at the entrance to Latvia, where he was going at the invitation of the National Bolshevik organization Pobeda in order to give a concert in Riga. The arrest order was issued by the local Security Police. After spending half a day in the bullpen, the border guards sent the musician back to Russia. From now on, Yegor Letov, as well as his brother Sergei, are banned from entering the territory of Latvia until 2099 inclusive - with the wording: "In connection with activities aimed at undermining the country's security." This ban does not apply to other participants in the CIVIL DEFENSE.

Egor Letov no longer with us and, at the same time, Egor Letov always with us. The last soldier of the counterculture, who struggled all his life with inertia, stiffness, inertia. Even gathering thousands of halls, his "Civil defense" never got into show business. The credo “I will always be against it” went with Yegor until his very last days, and there was no one who would refute it.

Egor passed away on February 19, 2008. As if on the head, the news fell: "Egor died." At first I couldn’t believe it, then, when the realization of what had happened came, it became clear that we had lost much more than the person whom several generations had grown up with. Today remembers facts about Yegor Letov, both well-known and unique, which have not previously been published almost anywhere. We tried not to mess around with dirty laundry, and also not to write long-known biography facts of Yegor Letov, but even without this, the information turned out to be as objective as possible and fully revealing the essence of the phenomenon named Yegor Letov.

Rare facts about Yegor Letov

The parents of Yegor Letov, whose real name is Igor, were military men, met in the city of Semipalatinsk, which is famous for its nuclear tests. The future leader of the Russian counterculture was born, literally, in Kolchak's stable, converted into Soviet time for living quarters.

Egor's brother Sergey Letov, mentioned that, perhaps, nuclear tests in the city where Yegor was born were the cause of his extremely poor health. Soon the parents got an apartment in the Chkalovsky settlement - this is a gloomy sleeping area of ​​​​Omsk, where the street was converted from the former runway. Gray monotonous houses, and the neighbors are former prisoners. An almost perfect place for the formation and maturation of a singer of the revolution.

Getting older Egor Letov often went to his older brother in Moscow and always returned to Omsk, bringing with him 20-30 kilograms of books. For months without leaving the apartment, Yegor read the brought one, communicated with few people, composed music and poetry. In childhood and youth, Letov read science fiction. Favorite books of Yegor Letov at that time the Strugatsiye brothers, Hunter Thompson, Stanislav Lem, Clifford Simak, Robert Sheckley wrote. But in an interview, Letov said that Fyodor Dostoevsky would forever remain his favorite. Egor felt with him not only an ideological connection, but also a geographical kinship, because it was in Omsk that Dostoevsky was exiled.

Letov began his journey into the world of music by learning to play the drums. Taught Yegor Sergey Zhukov— drummer famous group "Sounds of Mu". Subsequently, he mastered the bass guitar, and then the guitar, which allowed him to further record "Civil Defense" at the studio "Grob Records", created right in the Omsk apartment of the Letov family.

For the first time, Yegor Letov appeared on stage as part of a group "Pop Mechanic #2" famous troublemaker and genius Sergei Kuryokhin. Not having vocational education, Letov was an outstanding music lover and was well versed in creativity, which allowed him in those dark times for Russian music to convict of plagiarism themselves Boris Grebenshchikov And Petra Mamonova.

After the events of October 1993 in Moscow, when the House of Soviets was shot, Letov felt in himself the desire to influence events in the country not only through creativity (sometimes jokingly, and sometimes seriously, he said that it was songs "Civil Defense" collapsed the Union), but also politically. Therefore, he first spoke at rallies of the Labor Russia party of Viktor Anpilov, and then, together with Eduard Limonov and Alexander Dugin, founded the National Bolshevik Party, from which he left in 1997, having party card No. 4.

Being an ardent supporter of the garage even at the peak of his popularity, the leader of the "Civil Defense" managed to avoid signing contracts with labels and concert agencies. This fundamental undergroundness, when "Civil defense" she didn’t belong either in the Leningrad or in the Moscow rock party, she played only a plus - her own special formation of fans formed around the team, which eventually grew into a kind of cult.

Discography of "Civil Defense" has over 50 albums lyrics by Yegor Letov have long been the basis for those who take the first chords while learning to play the guitar.

The derailed trams crash into the building, the fans smash the windows, the riot police arrive ... The massacre begins - there is no other way to call what is happening. This is not a scene from an action movie. This is a failed Moscow concert of the cult Siberian group Civil Defense in 1993. April 17 in the club "Center" will be held big concert: Belarusian musicians will play Yegor Letov's songs. On the eve of the event, Onliner.by prepared a story about the leader of Civil Defense.

“The whole trouble of our scene is that our people do not read anything, do not know, do not listen and do not see. And he doesn't need it at all."- regretted Yegor Letov. Hundreds of thousands of his fans are unlikely to agree with this. It is hard to imagine a person who grew up in the late eighties - early nineties, who has never heard "Civil Defense".

Now it's hard to believe: a group from Omsk has become famous throughout Soviet Union without the slightest hint of any media support. Rather, on the contrary. In the mid-eighties, Years with like-minded people was forced for a long time hiding from the authorities, and then whole year spent in a mental hospital. According to him, many patients there reached an animal state due to medications. Letov barely coped: when he felt that he could not continue, he went to the head doctor and threatened that he would run away and commit suicide, the drug treatment was immediately stopped.

“I left just when perestroika began, thanks to Gorbachev. The plenum ended, and immediately, on March 8, they told me: go for a walk, you are not sick now, ”- recalled the musician.

In fact, Letov and several of his associates came up with the so-called Siberian punk movement. They created group after group, changed places at the microphone. In general, they constructed a myth that this is really a huge movement, and not five people. The records were passed from hand to hand. Letov and his comrades independently distributed albums in major Russian cities.

- I used to collect all the albums of "Civil Defense", copied from reels to cassettes - there were about fifty of them, because on pirated records they simply shuffled the songs, and this was already considered new album, - says the bass player of the Belarusian band Akute Roman Zhigarev. - It was cool: the group did not advertise in any way, but absolutely everyone knew about it. Letov was very much ahead of his time, I can’t even imagine where he could draw so much information from.

Rumors about the Siberian punk movement, about its leader spread with lightning speed. It was really folk love, and the popularity of "Civil Defense" was comparable almost to "Tender May".

“Rock and roll for me is a movement, it's sex, drugs, celebration, joy, it's a rock revolution. We didn't have it. I tried to do it and did it alone. And it turned out to be such an autonomous revolution for itself. This is not a global phenomenon, it's me here, it turns out, defending the same values ​​that my brothers on the fronts in San Francisco, in New York in the seventies. And it turned out that no one here needs it at all. No one even understands or listens.”- Yegor Letov said in an interview.

However, even three thousand kilometers from his native Omsk, Civil Defense has become a whole cult, and among the well-known Minsk musicians today there are many admirers of Letov's work.

- My teenage period coincided with the time when everyone listened to the "Civil Defense" indiscriminately. Letov was everywhere: tape cassettes were copied ten times, passed from hand to hand. We listened to these tapes to the holes,- recalls Svetlana Ben from the "Silver Wedding". - Egor Letov at that time was very important person. I analyzed it life philosophy, somewhere she didn’t understand her, somewhere she didn’t accept her, but she admired the energy that he radiated. This is boundless freedom, some kind of piercing and perfect maximalism. Letov is a depth inaccessible to me, just a cosmic personality. There were only a few of them in world music. Time passes, but these songs are still super relevant.

Letov often came to Minsk - with concerts and just as a guest. Here he had many friends and like-minded people who were always glad to see their ideological inspirer. They say that this love for Letov sometimes even became the reason for the cancellation of concerts.

- There was a story: planned solo concert Yegor Letov in Minsk. He flew here, spent three days in the city, but in the end did not perform: he was received so well that the musician was simply not able to go on stage. But, as they say, we are all human,- says the Belarusian musician Alexander Pomidorov. - Of course, I have great respect for Letov. He has things that are impossible to listen to without a shudder. If St. Petersburg rockers mostly spoke in Aesopian language, Letov was one of the first to call a spade a spade. And it often shocked even experienced people. Many of my friends collected everything related to the "Civil Defense" - such "coffins" were very easy to identify in the city.

Civil Defense concerts often ended in pogroms: in 1993 in Moscow, cunning organizers sold 10,000 tickets to an 800-seat hall and fled with the box office. The enraged crowd, which could not get into the hall, took the site by storm. Glasses were broken, trams hijacked by fans derailed and crashed into the walls of the building. The musicians were forced to leave the venue under guard.

“I would do concerts, wherever there was no music at all, so that everything would be out of the ordinary, Letov said. - But people did not like such concerts, as I found out. They need everything to be played, to sing well.”

In 1997, Letov met his wife Natalya Chumakova, who became the band's bass player.

“He always ran away when they tried to fit him into some kind of framework,- recalled Natalya. - It seems like at first he allows himself to be taken somewhere, but then he leaves - sometimes consciously, sometimes intuitively. As soon as this dead thing began, which lurks in any finished figure, he immediately left, in any way, suddenly made some kind of feint, threw out some such thing. Yegor wanted to really influence the world and life, and this, of course, can only be done by street art. Since he was well versed in it, he took and combined poetry and this craft. He did not consider himself to be any special musician, although he good musician, what is there.

From April 16 to April 19, the film “Healthy and Forever” will be shown in the Minsk cinema “Raketa”, and on April 17, a big concert will take place at the Center club, at which Belarusian musicians - “Silver Wedding”, Akute, Katya Pytleva, “Drunken Guests ”,“ Red Stars ”- they will sing the songs of Yegor Letov. Ticket price: from 130 to 250 thousand rubles at the office of the Shabli agency and at all theater box offices in the city through the system

The life of Yegor Letov differs from the life of many Soviet performers, his talent and natural nihilism brought him great popularity. The musician and creator of the legendary group "Civil Defense" devoted his entire life to his favorite work - writing and performing songs.

The childhood and youth of the musician

The real name of the artist is Letov Igor Fedorovich. The performer was born in the city of Omsk on September 10, 1964. Even at birth, Yegor Letov had to fight for his existence, as the birth was very difficult, which endangered his life. Ros Letov was a very quick-witted boy, and from the age of two he spoke very well, learned to read early, and was very fond of geography. Already at the age of six, the future musician could tell the whole map of the world from memory. Letov Yegor was very fond of collecting and studying various things that could at least slightly interest him. Egor's mother was a doctor, and his father held a military post for a long time, later he began to act as secretary of the city district committee of the Communist Party.

At school, Yegor Letov studied with varying degrees of success and had a skillful skill to fool his teachers. He started playing the guitar from school bench, worked with teachers for six years. As a teenager, Letov undertook to compose lyrics with his comrades. After that, music became for Yegor not just a hobby - he plunged into it with his head.

In the Letov family, Yegor was not the only musician; from childhood, the boy was instilled with a love of music thanks to his older brother Sergei. Sergey Letov - famous musician, saxophonist, improviser. In 1982, Yegor graduated from high school and moved to his brother in the Moscow region, entered a vocational school as a builder, but after a year of study was expelled for poor progress. After that, returning back to Omsk, Yegor began working at two industrial plants in Omsk as a graphic designer. Later Letov Egor worked as a plasterer and a janitor.

Music by Yegor Letov

In 1982, before entering the vocational school, Letov began to work on the creation of the musical project "Sowing". Upon returning to Omsk, the future "patriarch of Siberian rock" continued to actively engage in music and develop his musical project.

The members of the "Posev" group recorded their first songs on magnetic albums. This process took place at home without the use of professional equipment. The sound was very muffled, and sometimes fuzzy. In the future, when the band had the opportunity to record their songs on high-quality recording equipment, the songs still had a rattling sound. In his interviews, Yegor Letov has repeatedly noted that he deliberately refused the purity of sound in order to create a feeling of a “garage atmosphere” in his songs, which became his signature style of performance.

Creation of the legendary group "Civil Defense"

In 1984 musical project"Sowing" ended its existence, after which it immediately formed legendary band"Civil Defense", also referred to as "Coffin" or "G.O.". Letov enjoyed his work and was completely immersed in writing songs, which he continued to perform in his favorite "garage" style.

When the group's activities began to bring in money, Letov and his friends opened an independent recording studio, which was called "Coffin Records", on which the group's albums, popular to this day, were recorded. The studio was located in an ordinary apartment, and Yegor also gave other Siberian rock musicians the opportunity to record their songs in it.

Soviet youth instantly appreciated the "Civil Defense" for unique style performances and very frank songs for that time. Magnetic albums with the group's recordings were passed from hand to hand, and concerts were organized underground. This spirit of adventurism was very fond of Yegor Letov. The songs became more and more popular every day and fell in love with the audience thanks to deep meaning, original sound and catchy rhythm.

Letov's natural nihilism and his eternal "against" inspired the youth, and his innate talent and high authority could lead anyone. Proof of this authority is the multitude of Russian punk bands that to this day try to be like Civil Defense.

Special services and psychiatric hospital

At the peak of the popularity of "Civil Defense", Yegor Letov became interested in special services. Letov was an opponent of the established system and communism, but at the same time he did not object to the Soviet regime. There was a political-philosophical subtext in his songs, which could not be hidden behind punk indifference.

Letov repeatedly met with employees of the State Security Committee of the USSR, they demanded the cessation of the activities of the "Civil Defense". In 1985, after Yegor Letov refused, he was placed in a psychiatric dispensary. Forcibly, he was treated with potent antipsychotics, which have the ability to change the patient's psyche. After Letov himself compared these methods with lobotomy.

Four months later, Yegor was discharged thanks to his older brother, who threatened to publish in the Western media a story about how the Soviet government was fighting objectionable musicians.

Creativity Letov after discharge from a psychiatric hospital

From 1987 to 1988, Letov continued to work on the Civil Defense project and recorded his popular albums, such as Everything Goes According to Plan and Mousetrap. In the same period, Yegor Letov wrote texts that won the hearts of rock lovers in the future. At that moment, the musician became an independent performer of his songs, sound engineer and producer. In 1989 he began working with Yana Diaghileva. In 1990, Letov closed the Civil Defense project, but already in 1993 he recreated it. The last concert of the Civil Defense group was given shortly after the death of the musician - on February 9, 2008.

Personal life

In an unofficial marriage, Letov was with his colleague in musical activity, Yanka Diaghileva. The couple played gigs together and spent most of their time together. Yanka was his girlfriend, muse and practically a kindred person. Unfortunately, in 1991, Yana Diaghileva died mysteriously and tragically.

In 1997, Letov officially married Natalya Chumakova.

Death of a musician

The musician died in 2008, February 19. By official version the cause of death was heart failure, but after some time the cause was changed to respiratory failure due to ethanol poisoning. Egor Letov was buried in Omsk, near the grave of his mother.

Yegor's father, in his interview after the death of his son, emphasizes that Yegor has been drinking a lot lately, and this has affected his health.

Yegor devoted his whole life to music, but, unfortunately, not all of his ideas were realized. Yegor Letov achieved a lot in his life and in his work. The chords of his songs even today sound in the courtyards of many cities, and Yegor himself lives in the hearts of his fans.